Mark Molloy tried to bring old-school 'danger' to Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F

Mark Molloy needed to "make the danger real" in 'Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F'.

The Australian filmmaker has made his feature directorial debut in the return of the action franchise and set out to do practical filming in Los Angeles to bring a sense of the perils faced by the characters to audiences in a way that older movies did.

Mark told Collider: "It's much harder to do it that way, but I was very adamant from the start that I wanted to make the danger real. Sometimes there's so much CGI these days that everything's so over-designed and perfect that you don't feel that danger anymore.

"And I look back at those films, 'Beverly Hills Cop' and 'Beverly Hills Cop II', and a lot of action from the 70s and 80s, and the danger is so much more apparent.

"But it was difficult, especially on location in LA, flying helicopters through the streets. It was much more difficult. But I'm glad that when you watch the film, you can feel that there."

The Netflix picture is the first film in the Eddie Murphy-led series for 30 years and Molloy learned valuable lessons during test screenings about the movie's appeal for both new and returning audiences.

He recalled: "We had the tone of the film right. We learned there were some areas that we could improve on, but we learned that the fans loved it. Do you know what I mean?

"The fans really embraced it, so we wanted to hold on to that. But we also took a lot of learnings of how new people are coming into it and how we bring new people into the franchise too."