Earlier this week Fox announced that it was in negotiations with gifted auteur Len Wiseman (Live Free or Die Hard) and master of the craft producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura (the cinematic genius behind every single Transformers film) for a sixth Die Hard. That's right, they're prodding the corpse a couple of years after it got killed in Russia to see if there's even an inch of life left in it. This is, of course, necessary, given the $300m+ box office haul of the last one.
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| A Good Day to Die Hard (2013) - a big hit...somehow |
And their brilliant, innovative, subversive story idea revolves around John McClane's origin story set in 1979, which of course we needed, because the first film didn't provide us with enough information about McClane's backstory, just that he was a street-wise New York cop with two kids who had a faltering marriage and a tendency to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. And the third one, which actually did blatantly show McClane as a cop on the streets of New York, wasn't enough because that was a sequel and not a prequel, and prequels are always so great and successful, so they feel the need to make one.
I know I'm supposed to maintain a certain journalistic integrity and present the news plain and simple and unbiased, but I'm not exactly reporting about a war here, it's a new Die Hard movie, so the hell with it. This is the worst idea I have ever heard. Doing a sixth Die Hard in the first place is a bad idea in itself, even if they did have a good premise (which they don't), after the travesty that was the fifth one.
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It was a nice, consistent action franchise until that Christ-awful fifth one. There were many factors at play that ruined that movie - among them a complete disregard for the logic at least loosely considered in previous instalments - but one most glaring reason immediately comes to mind, and his name's Jai Courtney. If Dwayne Johnson saves franchises (evidenced by his heroic rescue of the Fast & Furious and G.I. Joe series), then Jai Courtney kills them (Die Hard, see also: Terminator, Jack Reacher's struggling to get a sequel going, the DC movieverse will never get off the ground since he's in Suicide Squad).
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| It's him - the author of all your pain |
A Good Day to Die Hard (and a terrible day at the movies) confirmed that the franchise was dead. Let's just accept that and move on. It's over. But no. It made a lot of money. So they're handing the reins to Len Wiseman, the greatest director on planet Earth, the guy who brought us the Underworld movies because apparently he thought that's what the world needed, an entirely Earth-set remake of the quintessential Mars movie Total Recall, and that Sleepy Hollow TV show we all asked for. On top of all of that, he originally learned the craft of filmmaking from one of the greats, Mr. Roland Emmerich, on the sets of his masterpieces Stargate and Godzilla (1998). Come on, Wiseman, wise up. You're no good!
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| Here's Len standing with the reason he's always too distracted to make his movies good |
OK, so Live Free or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4.0, whatever you call it) was good, but that wasn't because of Len Wiseman. That was because it had Bruce Willis playing John McClane, and not that weird, callous psychopath with McClane's name and face that went to Russia and stole trucks and shot people without thinking and jumped through brick walls and fell from helicopters through windows without feeling pain. McClane cuts his feet on shards of glass, he doesn't soar through windows and move on without so much as a groan.
But that's what Die Hard needs, Bruce Willis as John McClane. That's basically what Die Hard means. The fans want Willis, not some twentysomething Willis lookalike playing a younger version. That's a completely different movie for a completely different franchise. What the hell are you thinking, Fox?! Have you all gone mad!!? You think it'll be a box office hit, we all know that's why you're doing it, but it won't even make money if it doesn't have Bruce in it! Do us all a favour and either cancel the movie or set it in the present day with a good script, a good director, and Bruce fucking Willis as his own character!!
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| Take note: THIS is what Die Hard should look like (hair optional) |
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