Despite its long history, the freeze-frame ending is gloriously, inextricably linked in the annals of pop culture with the glossiness of ’80s blockbusters. One could argue that makes it an aesthetic extension of the decade’s particular brand of cultural rot — the Wall Street excess, the bland patriotism, the shameless consumerism. The Rocky movies feel explicitly designed to illustrate that point. The triumphant freeze-frame at the end of the original Rocky (1976) might’ve been an uplifting corrective to the often cynical dénouements of ’70s movies, but by Rocky IV (1985), the once-relatable underdog had gone full superhero, with the final freeze-frame capturing a ’roided-out Rocky literally wrapped in an American flag. Elsewhere, ’80s filmmakers found more nuanced uses of the freeze-frame ending, with John Hughes employing it in a variety of ways across his filmography. While John Bender’s fist in the air might capture the character’s defiant sense of triumph in The Breakfast Club, the parting close-up of John Candy’s half-smile in Planes, Trains & Automobiles communicates genuine happiness with an ocean of pain lurking just beneath it. Each of those freeze-frames imprints a lasting image on your brain that later, when thinking back on it, can act as a sort of mental shortcut to a whole movie’s worth of emotions.
Sometimes, though, that mental shortcut just brings you back to thinking, Fuck yeah, Axel Foley is awesome. The first two Beverly Hills Cop movies end with Axel saying something quippy to his partners, Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Taggart (John Ashton), before driving off while looking back toward the camera as one of the franchise’s various bops kicks in on the soundtrack and the credits roll. It’s a trick that never gets old (even when the third film puts its own spin on it) and that leaves you pumping your fist while wondering, What’s that crazy guy gonna get up to next?, which is probably about the best exit survey a money-grubbing movie studio could hope for. Axel F tweaks the formula slightly so that a freshly wounded Axel is in the car with Rosewood and Taggart, coaxing them back into one more case while they grumble about being too old for this shit. He wins them over, obviously, and we get a freeze-frame of Axel grinning in the backseat as the series’ iconic synth score plays. We’re so back, etc.