I meant to go leave this in the thread for A Good Day to Die Hard, but after I typed it all out, the thread said it wouldn't let me post it due to its age. So, since I had already written all this nonsense, I'm going to start a new thread and deposit it here instead. Can't let ramblings go to waste.
So, shortly before Christmas I was able to see the original Die Hard again on the big screen, and it remains as awesome as ever and still the best way to see it, if possible. It put me in a mood to rewatch some of the sequels which I hadn't revisited in a little while, so I found a pretty good deal for a Steelbook collection of all 5 movies on Blu-ray. Even though I already have a separate Steelbook set of the first movie, I took the plunge. This meant upgrading the 2nd and 3rd movies from my old DVD copies, and owning the last 2 movies for the first time.
Over the last week, I've been making my way through the whole set. Quick capsule reactions of the previous sequels:
Die Hard 2: Back in the day, I honestly thought it was even greater than the original, and I still like it but it hasn't held up as well. It at least still very much feels like the same world of the original movie and John McClane the same guy (as he himself reminds you a few too many times over the course of the film that he's done this before). The bad guys aren't as compelling, but then, if you measure every villain by the standard of Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, the vast majority will fall way short. I did like the slow burn and rising tension, and man did that plane crash ever hit hard back in the day (even if the plot require that McClane get over it within about 10 minutes). I love the true wintry setting, even if some of the snow looks distractingly fake in HD.
Plum's grade: I still like it, don't love it the way I did back then. **1/2
Die Hard with a Vengeance: The best opening of the whole franchise, with "Summer in the City" blasting, and the huge "SLAM" sound as the words "with a Vengeance" crash together on scene, followed by the montage of New York City waking up and starting its day. Then the big explosion. It's easy to forget this came out barely a month after the Oklahoma City bombing, so that moment was extra shocking. The change in tone, both in McClane and the movie itself, is hard to deal with at first...both of them are so much darker, more cynical, and flat out meaner than what came before. I found the change in McClane---burned out, bitter, alcoholic---difficult to accept back in the day, even though I liked the film. I thought most of the action was great, I loved the "Simon Says" game, I loved the music, especially "When Johnny Comes Marching Home" as a motif, I enjoyed the antagonistic chemistry between McClane and Samuel L. Jackson as Zeus, I loved Jeremy Irons as the villain, and I really loved the stakes, going from a less claustrophobic setting to using all of New York City as its playground. I think the first 2/3rds of the movie is absolutely great and totally within shouting distance of the original movie in terms of awesomeness. But the last 1/3rd of the movie does fall apart, and the ending is not satisfying. Still, though, even if you have to squint your eyes to do it and accept that the character has fallen in his life from where he was before, I think this is the last time in the franchise where John McClane feels like the same guy who went through the Nakatomi incident in the first movie.
Plum's grade: My 2nd favorite of the franchise. ***
Live Free or Die Hard: I think this was the first time I watched this one in at least a decade. Like many, I found the movie enjoyable back in the day, but it felt like it was from an entirely different series of movies, an entirely different world from the first 3 movies, and McClane no longer felt like the same guy, but more of a borderline superhuman and fearless character. The guy who, despite his toughness, spent every second of the original movie in a state of terror at what was happening around him is completely gone here. The bit in the original movie where Willis leaps off the exploding rooftop with a firehose tied around his waist is, of course, ridiculous, but it's the character's own absolute terror at what's happening and what he's doing that sells it and makes it feel real enough to accept. The McClane of this movie would have just done it all with a grimace and while yelling at somebody the whole time. McClane here has far fewer wisecracks and just seems to be an all-around asshole, without even the previous film's alcoholism as a contributing factor. Most of the set pieces feel more out of the Fast and Furious movies than Die Hard (like crashing a car into a helicopter in flight and McClane jumping onto a jet, then onto a collapsing freeway and surviving it all without a scratch), and I also have trouble getting past feeling like this movie's scenario is one that's just way too big for a NYC detective, even one with a tendency to "be in the wrong place at the wrong time".
But all that said, I did enjoy this. McClane had more chemistry with the Justin Long character than I remembered, and Mary Elizabeth Winstead is just fantastic as Lucy, McClane's daughter. the strongest element of the movie. She should have had a much expanded role. The action is overall pretty good, even if a lot of it doesn't feel like "Die Hard" action to me. Timothy Olyphant was unfortunately wasted...he has such great natural charisma, he could have been an absolutely fantastic villain but the script did him no favors there. He certainly didn't get the lines to chew on that the Gruber brothers did. Alas. But if you scrape off the Die Hard decals, I think this is a perfectly good---not great---action movie on its own terms. And the bit where McClane and hacker-boy are almost killed by the airborne car in the tunnel is a truly great moment.
Plum's grade: as an action movie, ***. as a Die Hard movie, **1/2.
And lastly, the reason I found this thread to rant...
A Good Day to Die Hard: This was the first of three times in 2013 where I actually walked out of the movie theater in a state of anger (Man of Steel and The Lone Ranger being the other two). I couldn't believe how little anyone involved in making it seemed to care. Hack script. Hack direction. An utterly uninterested Bruce Willis who no longer has even the slightest embers of the original characterization of John McClane. Ugly cinematography. A co-star in Jai Courtney, who I'm sure is a totally lovely person in real life, but here he sucks every ounce of what little life and charisma the movie already had right out of the screen. He did the same in Terminator Genisys, so it's ironic that he turned out to be one of the best parts of the turd that was Suicide Squad. Completely forgettable villains which even all combined together don't amount to a quarter-Gruber.
I hated this movie. Hated what they had done with this franchise, and hated how little Bruce Willis himself seemed to care in it. He seems even farther removed from the John McClane of the original movie than in LFODH. The wisecracks are completely gone, and his only personality seems to be that he is just a miserable asshole who yells out "I'm on vacation" every 20 minutes because it's supposed to be endearing, I guess.
I did rent it on Blu-ray when it came out, back when video stores were still a thing, because I wanted to give it another chance and be fair, but I was just "nope" about halfway through and tapped out.
So, last night was my first time watching it in full, to the best of my recollection, since seeing it in the theater on opening day back in February 2013, and somehow the movie has actually gotten worse since then.
The action is just incompetent and incomprehensible. McClane is pretty much a villain himself for much of the movie, in terms of how many innocent civilians he either kills or endangers without a care. The one line where he punches out a random Russian civilian to steal his car, after the guy yells at him in his own language, leading McClane to yell "Do you think I understand what you're saying?" at the guy's unconscious body....it wasn't even funny back then, but feels more like a real ugly American moment now.
And the son, Jack, only calling his dad by his first name was pointless and irritating, just a surface level attempt at forcing in character conflict. But also repetitive, as didn't Lucy do the same thing in the previous movie?
And McClane, or the character they are calling John McClane, is even more of a fearless superhuman than ever, at one point drives a truck off a bridge and across the tops of several other vehicles before finally coming to the ground without a scratch. At another point, he and his black hole of a son jump out windows at the top of a very tall building with no idea that there is anything there to break their fall. After falling through a long tube, several layers of scaffolding, and other stuff, they both reach the ground with not a single broken bone. All ridiculous. And there's other stuff, but I'm too depressed to go into it.
This movie is just staggeringly awful in every way. The extended edition at least has a very brief appearance from Mary Elizabeth Winstead as Lucy, but I almost feel bad she got dragged into this abomination.
I watched a few of the special features on the Blu-ray. I certainly didn't watch the whole thing, but from what I saw, the screenwriter was nowhere to be found. And the director, John Moore, who to me is the very definition of a hack, at least in terms of his talent, just seemed....odd. His mannerisms, the way he spoke....plus, he seemed like he truly could not find a single substantive thing to say about the movie or how he created it. It was weird.
It all makes me long for one final movie in the series, which brings back the REAL John McClane, one in which Willis cares again, and which wraps up the series on a high note. Bring back the elements from the older movies that worked and which have some believable rationale for returning, like Lucy and hopefully Al Powell. Bring back McClane's "real guy" factor. Keep him tough but not the unlikable asshole he's mostly been the last few movies. Give it real stakes, and do as much of the action in-camera as possible.
Give us a screenwriter and a filmmaker who get what we loved about the original movie and John McClane, and know how to give it to us again in a modern and fresh way. And someone who knows how to get Bruce Willis---an actor and star I've always loved, despite his increasingly bad reputation off-screen---to care again.
Christopher McQuarrie, who's written and directed the last few Mission: Impossible movies---our greatest ongoing action franchise---would be an awesome pick. I think he, more than anyone else, could redeem and properly end the franchise on a high note.
I saw Die Hard 2 on opening weekend with my college buddies, and we thought it was awesome. I still remember that bone-chilling moment when the mercenaries reveal they are bad -- John Amos (I think) says "You know, I wish you had been there with us, too." And he shoots the one guy who wasn't in on the crime.
A cohort of my college buddies entered a fierce argument with me in the weeks that followed -- they insisted the name of the movie was "Die Harder." I (correctly) insisted that was a tag line, not the name of the movie. The way they were marketing the movie, they made it a legitimate argument. (Kind of like the way Edge of Tomorrow went with "Live, Die, Repeat" a few years back.)
In those days, there was no Web to click around and settle arguments. You just had to dig in your heels in and go with the information available.
By the way -- same group of guys thought the hoverboards used in Back the Future 2 were real. Because of a throwaway joke in the "making of" documentary we all saw, one of the director types said it was hard to get ahold of some of this new technology, but they did.
I saw Die Hard 2 on opening weekend with my college buddies, and we thought it was awesome. I still remember that bone-chilling moment when the mercenaries reveal they are bad -- John Amos (I think) says "You know, I wish you had been there with us, too." And he shoots the one guy who wasn't in on the crime.
I had unfortunately missed that twist my first viewing, as I had chosen that moment to run out to the bathroom. I was very confused when I came back, and one of my friends had to whisper to me what had happened.
We came back again the following weekend for a 2nd viewing, and that time I saw the whole thing.
And you're right, that was John Amos. It was right after the audience-pleasing bonding moment between him and McClane, where McClane says he had wrongly pegged him as an asshole, and he replies with a twinkle in his eye, "Oh, I'm an asshole. I'm just your kind of asshole."
A cohort of my college buddies entered a fierce argument with me in the weeks that followed -- they insisted the name of the movie was "Die Harder." I (correctly) insisted that was a tag line, not the name of the movie. The way they were marketing the movie, they made it a legitimate argument.
I admit, I thought that Die Hard 2: Die Harder was the actual name of the movie for a long time and called it as such, even though the only title in the movie itself is just Die Hard 2. But you were right, Die Harder was only a tagline in the advertising.
A cohort of my college buddies entered a fierce argument with me in the weeks that followed -- they insisted the name of the movie was "Die Harder." I (correctly) insisted that was a tag line, not the name of the movie. The way they were marketing the movie, they made it a legitimate argument.
I admit, I thought that Die Hard 2: Die Harder was the actual name of the movie for a long time and called it as such, even though the only title in the movie itself is just Die Hard 2. But you were right, Die Harder was only a tagline in the advertising.
That's what they thought -- that it was something belonged after a prefix of Die Hard 2. Like Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And that it was therefore okay to refer to it as "Die Harder."
We watched it this past year, and it still holds up. Die Hard is kind of like The Beatles -- it was so influential, and so copied, that if you watch it now there's a danger of not realizing how great it was, because so much of what came after was along the same lines.
But even with that being the case, the movie still holds up and rocks. Just remember when you watch it that it was a much fresher concept when it came out.
I may have to type up a few thoughts on the original movie later today as well, if time permits.
But for now I'll say that you should see it just for Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber alone, easily on the very very short list for greatest movie villains ever. The guy puts on a masterclass in movie villain acting here and owns the screen every second he's on it.
As great as Willis is as John McClane as well as the rest of the cast, especially Reginald VelJohnson as Al Powell, and as awesome as pretty much the whole movie is in every way, I do think it's fair to say that Rickman might be the greatest reason the movie is an enduring classic.
This was the first of three times in 2013 where I actually walked out of the movie theater in a state of anger (Man of Steel and The Lone Ranger being the other two).
Agreed. How dare these movie studios make us wait MONTHS to purchase the DVD after seeing the glory and majesty in the theaters?
A cohort of my college buddies entered a fierce argument with me in the weeks that followed -- they insisted the name of the movie was "Die Harder." I (correctly) insisted that was a tag line, not the name of the movie. The way they were marketing the movie, they made it a legitimate argument.
I admit, I thought that Die Hard 2: Die Harder was the actual name of the movie for a long time and called it as such, even though the only title in the movie itself is just Die Hard 2. But you were right, Die Harder was only a tagline in the advertising.
That's what they thought -- that it was something belonged after a prefix of Die Hard 2. Like Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And that it was therefore okay to refer to it as "Die Harder."
But I was staunch. Staunch, I say.
They say it's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II but everyone calls it RAMBO II.
I say this for no particular reason, I just want that to be out there.
I have never seen a Die Hard movie. This thread kinda makes me curious.
The first one is mandatory viewing, IMO. It's a classic that belongs alongside other iconic action films such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator, Alien, Bloodsport IV: The Dark Kumite, etc.
I have never seen a Die Hard movie. This thread kinda makes me curious.
The first one is mandatory viewing, IMO. It's a classic that belongs alongside other iconic action films such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator, Alien, Bloodsport IV: The Dark Kumite, etc.
I've also never seen a Rambo movie (though I do have Jim Rugg's Rambo 3.5 mini comic, which is hilarious), or ay Bloodsport films. The only one I really enjoy from your list is Alien, which I think of more as horror/suspense rather then action. Of course Aliens is pure action movie. But I don't like it. I was very disappointed in it after seeing Alien in the theatre when it came out and then watching it many more times on home video. Aliens was not what I liked about Alien. After Piranha II and Terminator, James Cameron never did much I enjoyed. I guess I am not much of an action movie fan, but I still might check out Die Hard.
_________________ “Don’t take life too serious. It ain’t nohow permanent.”
I saw Die Hard 2 on opening weekend with my college buddies, and we thought it was awesome. I still remember that bone-chilling moment when the mercenaries reveal they are bad -- John Amos (I think) says "You know, I wish you had been there with us, too." And he shoots the one guy who wasn't in on the crime.
IIRC, they cut the guy's throat - they didn't shoot him. It made it that more more horrible for me.
I was so disappointed to learn jet plane fuel wouldn't burn like that at the end.
I have never seen a Die Hard movie. This thread kinda makes me curious.
The first one is mandatory viewing, IMO. It's a classic that belongs alongside other iconic action films such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator, Alien, Bloodsport IV: The Dark Kumite, etc.
I've also never seen a Rambo movie (though I do have Jim Rugg's Rambo 3.5 mini comic, which is hilarious), or ay Bloodsport films. The only one I really enjoy from your list is Alien, which I think of more as horror/suspense rather then action. Of course Aliens is pure action movie. But I don't like it. I was very disappointed in it after seeing Alien in the theatre when it came out and then watching it many more times on home video. Aliens was not what I liked about Alien. After Piranha II and Terminator, James Cameron never did much I enjoyed. I guess I am not much of an action movie fan, but I still might check out Die Hard.
Rambo is great genre-flick for the initiated, but it's a niche taste. Die Hard is a classic for a wide audience. It is the Citizen Kane of movies.
A cohort of my college buddies entered a fierce argument with me in the weeks that followed -- they insisted the name of the movie was "Die Harder." I (correctly) insisted that was a tag line, not the name of the movie. The way they were marketing the movie, they made it a legitimate argument.
I admit, I thought that Die Hard 2: Die Harder was the actual name of the movie for a long time and called it as such, even though the only title in the movie itself is just Die Hard 2. But you were right, Die Harder was only a tagline in the advertising.
That's what they thought -- that it was something belonged after a prefix of Die Hard 2. Like Terminator 2: Judgment Day. And that it was therefore okay to refer to it as "Die Harder."
But I was staunch. Staunch, I say.
They say it's RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II but everyone calls it RAMBO II.
I say this for no particular reason, I just want that to be out there.
I have never seen a Die Hard movie. This thread kinda makes me curious.
The first one is mandatory viewing, IMO. It's a classic that belongs alongside other iconic action films such as Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Terminator, Alien, Bloodsport IV: The Dark Kumite, etc.
I've also never seen a Rambo movie (though I do have Jim Rugg's Rambo 3.5 mini comic, which is hilarious), or ay Bloodsport films. The only one I really enjoy from your list is Alien, which I think of more as horror/suspense rather then action. Of course Aliens is pure action movie. But I don't like it. I was very disappointed in it after seeing Alien in the theatre when it came out and then watching it many more times on home video. Aliens was not what I liked about Alien. After Piranha II and Terminator, James Cameron never did much I enjoyed. I guess I am not much of an action movie fan, but I still might check out Die Hard.
The Bloodsport IV thing was a joke, just to see if anyone was paying attention. I'm sure it's straight garbage.
So, shortly before Christmas I was able to see the original Die Hard again on the big screen, and it remains as awesome as ever and still the best way to see it, if possible.
We watched it this past year, and it still holds up. Die Hard is kind of like The Beatles -- it was so influential, and so copied, that if you watch it now there's a danger of not realizing how great it was, because so much of what came after was along the same lines.
But even with that being the case, the movie still holds up and rocks. Just remember when you watch it that it was a much fresher concept when it came out.
Yep there are a hundred movies that came out after, usually described as "Die Hard in a...<thing/place>". Speed was one that was actually pretty good (Die Hard on a Bus).
I don't think it's worth watching anything after the third one though. 1, 3, and 2 in that order for me (in terms of quality), with the rest utterly different things, generic action movies.
This is the opening to Die Hard with a Vengeance, which I declared in the top post to be the best opening of the series. Thus ever is it so.
But man, the quick glimpse of the World Trade Center can't help but make you think that the morning of 9/11, just 6 years later, probably looked an awful lot like this.
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