by Gill Pringle in LA
The five-man comedy troupe behind the Super Troopers franchise were unsure whether Brian Cox would return for a third round of their hilariously immature humour in Super Troopers 3. Even if the Scottish actor had been with them since their first 2001 film, there were no guarantees that he’d be game for a third helping after becoming a global sensation as Succession’s Logan Roy.
For much of his career, Cox had built a reputation as one of the finest dramatic performers of his generation, winning acclaim on stage and screen for playing kings, military leaders, villains, and powerful authority figures. Thus, making his appearances in the Super Troopers movies all the more surprising – and all the more memorable.
“He owes everything to us. He’s a superstar now. We had Cox before anybody else had Cox,” jokes Kevin Hefferman who plays Trooper Farva.
In fact, if the veteran thespian had turned them down, director Jay Chandrasekhar says that he would have called him out. “If he’d said no to us, then I would have called him and been like: ‘Oh really, you just got big time, and now you’re not coming and being with the guys who helped make you’,” jokes the filmmaker who also stars as Trooper Thorny.
“So, he came and swore at us for a couple of days, and then he got out of there. He was really angry at us for like the first 24 hours and then he mellowed out and started being nice to us,” says Chandrasekhar who has directed all three films.
In fact, Cox even gets in on a little romantic action in the latest film, enjoying a his’n’hers bathtub scene with former Wonder Woman Lynda Carter.
“Actually, that’s the only reason he agreed to come and do the movie with us, because he read that scene and said: ‘Oh if I can be in a bathtub with Lynda Carter, I’ll be there’. And then afterwards, he said it was the only scene he really enjoyed filming on Super Troopers 3,” Chandrasekhar says.
When Cox first debuted his stern Captain John O’Hagen, the long-suffering commander of the Vermont State Troopers in the first Super Troopers, he already had an impressive résumé, appearing in acclaimed films such as Braveheart and Manhunter, in which he became the first actor ever to portray Hannibal Lecter on screen.
Known for bringing intelligence and gravitas to every role, seeing him headline a wildly silly comedy from the Broken Lizard comedy troupe caught audiences off guard.
While the five titular troopers spend most of their time playing pranks, arguing with local police officers, and generally behaving like overgrown children, O’Hagen serves as the exasperated father figure trying to keep everyone in line. His permanently frustrated expression and booming delivery made every lecture funnier because he played the role completely straight.
One of the funniest aspects of Cox’s performance is that he never seems to be in on the joke. Rather than trying to outdo the comedians around him, he grounds every scene with absolute sincerity. That contrast makes the Broken Lizard gang look even more ridiculous, and a big reason why so many of the film’s funniest moments still hold up today.
Interestingly, Cox wasn’t the filmmakers’ first choice. The Broken Lizard team initially hoped to cast Bill Murray as O’Hagen, but when that didn’t work out, they turned to Cox instead.
Looking back, it is difficult to imagine anyone else delivering classics like his famous warning about “shenanigans” with such perfect deadpan authority.
After waiting eight years for this third installment, Super Troopers 3 reunites our favorite Vermont State Troopers for another round of outrageous comedy with its familiar mix of ridiculous pranks and bizarre investigations that helped turn the original 2001 film into a cult classic.
When FILMINK catches up with the five members of Broken Lizard – Chandrasekhar, Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter, and Erik Stolhanske – they are all gamely wearing their Trooper uniforms, complete with matching mustaches.
And if they are older now, their characters clearly haven’t matured much, and the chemistry between the five comedians remains the heart of the series, each character playing off the others’ quirks and competitive personalities.
This time around, the troopers find themselves caught up in another strange law enforcement mystery that quickly spirals into complete chaos.
As always, solving the case seems to take a back seat to elaborate practical jokes and endless attempts to embarrass one another. Whether they’re pulling over confused motorists or arguing over the most trivial details, the comedy comes from their complete inability to behave like professional police officers.
This latest film features a mysterious Canadian drug ring, a case of maple syrup vandalism, an out-of-control mushroom-laced bachelor party, an elephant, Farva’s wedding celebrations and even a homage to Han Solo’s iconic carbonite-frozen scene in Star Wars – only, of course, involving maple syrup.
Chandrasekhar will go as far as describing the new film as “Meet the Parents meets Super Troopers.”
“We have our typical Super Troopers pranks, ridiculous dialogue, and plot points, but also, it’s Thorny desperately trying to stop Farva from marrying his sister while Farva is trying to win over his parents.”
Lemme – who plays Trooper Mac, reveals how the plot begun percolating almost ten years ago. “When we were making Super Troopers 2, there was an Indian wedding going on in the parking lot of our hotel. It was a bit of a makeshift thing. The groom was supposed to ride in on an elephant but this particular groom arrived in a pickup truck. We started riffing on it, and we thought: What if Farva marries his sister?”
As for bachelor parties, these has always been part of Broken Lizard folklore, having first met as undergraduates at Colgate University and continuing their friendship throughout all of life’s passages and milestones until today where they are all in their 50s.
“The opening scene of Super Troopers was inspired by one very famous bachelor party with a trip over the border into Canada, where a joint was found on the dashboard of the Winnebago, and everyone had to step off because no one would claim it, and there was one guy who was holding the mushrooms for the entire bachelor party, and he ate them all, and then started tripping in the holding cell,” recalls Chandrasekhar.
“Then three hours later, when he was tripping balls, for lack of a better term, his brother took credit for the joint on the dashboard, and the Canadian border guard said: ‘Okay, well, then just turn around and go back to America, and you’re not allowed back in here for seven years’, and everyone’s like: ‘Wait, that’s it?’ And they were like, ‘yeah, get out of here’. We’re like, ‘oh shit, if we knew that, we would have….’” he laughs.
Joined by newcomers Nat Faxon (The Way Way Back), Chace Crawford (The Boys), Hannah Simone (New Girl), and Iqbal Theba (Deli Boys), Chandrasekhar hopes that even their die-hard fans will be surprised by this latest film. “It’s kind of a love story, right? I mean, it’s got those wedding elements to it, which is a whole new thing, I think, for a Super Troopers movie, because you have the romance, and the wedding and a little bit of heart.
“These are things that were not in the previous films, so I think people who come and see this, they’ll get the same Super Troopers feel but with these new elements. I think that’s kind of fun and the emotional elements are a new twist for us,” he adds.
Super Troopers 3 is in cinemas 6 August 2026
