A Good Day to Die Hard?

So, for Valentines Day, Christina suggested not celebrating it as it's over commercialized and kinda pointless. Why should we need a specific day to express ourselves towards others? So instead of doing something sickeningly romantic we went the other way and went to watch the new Die Hard film!

He takes your wife hostage simply 'cause he can.

Now, I absolutely love a good action film (who doesn't?) and am no stranger to the Die Hard movies. I love the first 2 and I really enjoyed the fourth one. The third one I don't like to talk about, it's good but it doesn't hold a candle to the first 2, mainly the second one which is my favourite. I mean they were excellent films, some of the best action movies I've seen and I've seen quite a few. They were and still are fantastic action movies, they were made back in the 80s and are still awesome! Back when the stunts weren't completely fake, when the heroes and villains exchanged witty dialogue that wasn't too cliched and the story was more than just "These guys are bad, this guy is good, watch him kill the bad guys.", admittedly it wasn't much more than that but still it was more than that. The new one however is literally just that. The bad guys aren't built up to the point where we should dislike them. In Die Hard, Alan Rickman makes us hate him in the first 5mins of his screen time, he plays the bad guys so damned well you can't help but love hating him, not just because we're told to, but because we want to. This new bad guy? I'm not even sure what his freaking name is let alone what he was trying to achieve....something to do with taking over the world somehow. I mean yeah that's the next logical step after you save a tower block, an airport, a city and then a country. There's not much else left to save but the rest of the world....next time though is McClane going to have to stop aliens from taking over the solar system? Then the galaxy? Before we know it John McClane is involved in a bigger war than Luke Skywalker and I don't think he's got the years left in him to make it to a galaxy far far away....My point is, whatever happened to the villains with the clearly defined objective? In all of the old Bond movies you knew what the bad guy was trying to achieve and why he (or she) shouldn't be allowed to do that but now action movies are all about you hating the bad guy because you've been told to not for what he's done or is trying to do.

Possibly one of the most iconic scenes.

In the first two films you kinda can't help but feel bad for McClane as he crawls through ventilation shafts and maintenance tunnels to dodge the bad guys that are trying to kill him simply because he's in their way. He's just an ordinary guy who happened to be in the area when shit starts to go down and being a cop he's there to serve and protect and you know, do his job. He's not there because someone is paying him alot of money or because he's been told to be there by the powers that be, he's just there because he has an everyday life. When he's done he probably goes to his local bar and has a beer and watches "football" with his friends, he doesn't go out looking for his next mission...he's not a superhero, he's just a hero. The third one he gets sucked into because *SPOILER* he happens to kill off the bad guy's brother in the first film and he's pissed at him for that (rightly so....even if they didn't get on, family is family), but even when he's sucked into the sadistic game of some nutter from Germany, he's still trying to battle a hangover from the night before. The same kind of applies to the fourth movie, he's just going about his business until shit hits the fan and he has to go on a road trip across America stopping cyber terrorists trying to tear the country apart and take it for all its worth (the spoiler warning above still covers this right). The fifth movie though he's actively going out of his way to find trouble and it's stupid. He's a cop not a special agent, he should leave that shit to his son. It's crazy how he goes from a begrudging hero to badass who hunts terrorists just because "Fuck it, why not?". No cop would go ahead and get involved in the events of the fifth movie the way McClane does just because his son is in trouble, surely you'd stop to think "Maybe that's a little out of my jurisdiction....being the otherside of the globe and all....". Yeah he gets away with it in the other movies because he has no other choice, he's thrown into the fight because he's there not because he went looking for it.

Badass.

One more thing! (Jackie Chan Adventures reference, yeah that show's awesome) It's a well known fact that McClane takes quite a beating throughout the course of his movies, the same goes for all other action movie heroes, starting off maybe a little bruised if not completely fine and ending up a bloody wreck that can barely stand by the end of the film. In Die Hard it's acceptable, he never takes such a beating that he can't walk away (well maybe hobble) and the same holds true for at least the second movie, admittedly falling off the wing of a plane is going to hurt quite a bit but it is onto snow which will cushion the blow a bit. The third one I can't think of any ridiculous injuries he sustains but there's probably something I'm forgetting. The fourth one he takes more of a beating than usual and probably goes a bit over the top but I've not seen the movie recently enough to say....what I can say for certain is that the fifth movie goes way over the top. Trying to run McClane and his son as badass action heroes for the whole movie seems to become a 1-up contest as to who can pick up the most life threatening injuries throughout and it just gets ridiculous. They both survive things that should either kill them or at least put them in hospital with a few broken bones, especially their legs, but they miraculously seem to walk everything off and barely even wince...

I'm not saying the movie is outwardly bad, I didn't enjoy it because I found it was too far flung from the originals I know and love so well. It's not a Die Hard movie in the sense that I'd like, it's just another action film. As a stand alone movie it'd be fantastic but as an extension to the Die Hard franchise it's a travesty. The scripting isn't up to scratch and the stunts are obviously faked, admittedly they're really well CGI'd but still faked. The villain lacks defining character and the plot is kinda hazy and unclear for most of the film but like I've said, if it was just another action movie, not a Die Hard, then it'd be great. The action scenes are good, the pyro is pretty spectacular, the car chase is pretty intense and the plot is almost non-existant, all good things with regards to modern day action movies, Christina loves it for all those reasons and she loved the previous films too. 

It's a good film if you just want to see some gun fights and explosions and Bruce Willis kicking some more ass (even if it's not clear why) but not if you want to see a Die Hard movie like the ones you (and I) have gotten to love. I was disappointed with it because I was expecting it to be more like the movies that have come before it, but you might not be Mr. (or Mrs. or Miss or Ms.) Reader.

Catch ya later folks