The Die Hard Series

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

http://latino-review.com/2013/01/03/a-good-day-die-hard-full-length-trailer-here/

New full-length trailer is up. Looks good. I think it looks more promising than Die Hard 4.0.

You can say that again. Indeed, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this looks as though it could be the best of all the DIE HARD sequels. I rather wish I hadn't seen this trailer, though, for (like pretty much all trailers nowadays) it seems to give far too much away.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

The chemistry looks strong between Bruce Willis and Jai Courtney, and it LOOKS like Courtney is being set up to take over the Die Hard series. Based upon the trailer, it just might work. He certainly looks like a worthy successor to Willis.

I may be wrong, but I suspect that the series won't do a BOURNE LEGACY and replace its hero (even with said hero's son) - without John McClane, DIE HARD is, well, nothing. Worse than that, it could be SPEED 2.

I reckon that A GOOD DAY will be a huge hit and that Willis will return in a couple of years for a final outing (no doubt being finally reconciled with Bonnie Bedelia, leading to a LETHAL WEAPON 4-ish final shot of the film and of the series, with Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Jai Courtney and probably Reginald VelJohnson and Dennis Franz all hugging each other and wisecracking). And in a decade or two they'll simply reboot the whole thing with a straight remake of DIE HARD, or perhaps an adaptation of the McClane origin story comic book series DIE HARD: YEAR ONE. Incidentally, if they were rebooting DIE HARD today, would y'all agree that Ryan Gosling would be perfect for McClane?

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

I do not like the last scene in this trailer, where John and Jack are clearly up against a green screen helicopter. Too many f/x these days being done with CGI instead of old-world, in-camera stunt work.

I'm not keen on it either, primarily because it looks like the CGI was used for the sake of the camera angle. I don't mind a bit of CGI for a complex shot or sequence, but this definately looks like CGI for the sake of a stylistic choice.

j7wild wrote:

1. Is it going to be rated R?

Yes.

http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/die-hard/24072/a-good-day-to-die-hard-gets-r-rating

Good, because things had been noticeably and annoyingly 'toned down' in Die Hard 4.0 (well, in the cinema version anyway).

Loomis wrote:

Incidentally, if they were rebooting DIE HARD today, would y'all agree that Ryan Gosling would be perfect for McClane?

RYAN GOSLING?

The first time I saw him I thought he was Jason Connery - you know, the guy with his father's eyes and his mother's femininity.

Alex O'Laughlin maybe, but RYAN GOSLING?!

Good job I'm not a casting agent, then.

Yeah, granted, Gosling's probably not as "macho" as Willis (then again, who is?), but I thought he was quite badass in DRIVE.

And I think he looks a bit like a young Willis. Vaguely.

Then they might as well cast Joseph Gordon-Levitt, who is playing a younger Bruce Willis in Looper.

BTW, has anyone at Fox actually said anything about replacing/recasting John McClane? He was already a made-up hero, why not just make up a new one? (each of the scripts were based on different sources by different authors, adapted for the new action hero character)

Recasting John McClane would be like recasting Dirty Harry, or Riggs & Murtaugh, or...James Bond.

Reboot DIE HARD? DIE HARD was a terrific action movie with a simple concept that it made the most out of. Beyond that it's just a franchise name.

I'm not actually advocating a reboot of DIE HARD (which is, incidentally, one of my all-time favourite films), but merely noting that a reboot seems virtually certain to happen at some point. As you say, it's a franchise and franchises tend to get rebooted once the possibility of further straight sequels is finally exhausted. I don't look forward to the day when DIE HARD is remade/rebooted, but I'm sure that it'll happen. It has the inevitability of, like, an unloved season.

Looks like McClane's son will be in the next one. Maybe they'll try to make it about him at some point.

It's pretty obvious that this film is trying to hand the reins over to a new character, though Bruce Willis has said he wants to do DIE HARD 6 (though he may have meant that he was only wanting to do a maximum of six films).

DIE HARD 666: LEFT BEHIND WITH A VENGEANCE

I rather see Lucy McClaine take over the Die Hard franchise.

It's the 21st Century: time to give women a chance to kick some terrorists ass!

I want to see Shirley MacLaine kick some terrorists ass!

Well, DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE, LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD and (seemingly) A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD are all buddy movies, but with a different partner for McClane in each. Perhaps DIE HARD 6 will give him a new sidekick (his father, perhaps - how about Robert Duvall as McClane, Sr.?). Alternatively - and I'm just throwing this out there - they could have McClane, erm, alone. I dunno, it worked very well for the two best films in the series, DIE HARD and DIE HARD 2.

At any rate, I don't see that it's guaranteed that Jai Courtney will (co-)star in DIE HARD 6. Remember all the talk about Justin Long returning for DIE HARD 5? I seem to recall that, after LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, Willis even commented that Long and Len Wiseman would be necessary for a fifth film.

Yeah and I remember reports of Sam Jackson possibly reprising his role in 4, of course that was around 1998.

If they do bring in McClane's pop, they'll have to use TOO OLD TO DIE HARD.

Frank Oz as Yoda in DO OR DO NOT, THERE IS NO DIE HARD.

Val Kilmer in DIET HARD

Michael Dorn in A GOOD DAY TO....oh

Kelsey Grammer in THE, HARD, THE.

And just in case that reference is too oblique (though with that avatar, I am at least hoping that Tubes will get it):

Spoiler:

NEVER SAY DIE HARD AGAIN

Loomis wrote:

Alternatively - and I'm just throwing this out there - they could have McClane, erm, alone.

The problem is that modern audiences don't want the "wrong place, wrong time" heroes that made DIE HARD work. They want the highly-trained and ultra-resourceful Jason Bournes.

A Good Day ... will make 3 Die Hards in which McClane's been 'buddied-up', and yet the best 2 movies in the franchise are the first 2 (IMHO) when he's ploughing on as the lone hero. So maybe on his ownio again for the 6th would be a good way to wrap it up.

Blunt Instrument wrote:

A Good Day ... will make 3 Die Hards in which McClane's been 'buddied-up', and yet the best 2 movies in the franchise are the first 2 (IMHO) when he's ploughing on as the lone hero. So maybe on his ownio again for the 6th would be a good way to wrap it up.

I disagree. I think he was "buddied-up" in the first one: with Reginald Vel Johnson's Sgt. Powell. It's just that the relationship was over the phone.

Of course the first Die Hard was the best one, but the follow-ups have not been without merit. But, quite honestly, as admirable as having Lucy McClane was, a woman cannot be John McClane. She cannot take over the franchise.....and I don't really know why Jack McClane wasn't in Die Hard 4, because he originally was. I think, in retrospect, a lot of time got wasted in Die Hard 4 setting up a character that was never going to work in the long run; just as Holly could not continuously exist in the Die Hard films, there is simply no room for Lucy to exist over and over in these films. She's not the lead character and she'll never take over the series (I almost feel dirty even talking about taking over the "franchise", but we all know that these Die Hard films will continue to be made without Bruce Willis at some point).

So, having said all that, *can* you have a Die Hard film without Bruce Willis? Well, yes, you can. Can it be good? Yes. The way they're going about it in this film *looks* promising. I like the chemistry, so far, between Courtney and Willis. If you can create a John McClane Jr., so to speak, you might be able to get away with making more films with DIE HARD in the title and also bring something both familiar and new to the series (Courtney). He looks like he could be John's son, he looks like an action hero, and so far the humor I've heard from him sounds a bit like what we know and love from Willis. If Courtney clicks in this film, it's reasonable to expect that he would gradually move to front and center and take over these films as Willis steps away. I think it can be pulled off without having to completely "reboot" the series. Let his son take over the series (providing, of course, Courtney does a great job of providing us with *A* reasonable version of John Jr.); it feels more organic that way than simply "rebooting" the series with a new actor.

To my mind, you need John McClane for a DIE HARD film. Sure, you could do one without him, just as you could do a LETHAL WEAPON without Riggs and Murtaugh.... but why bother? Why not just launch a new action franchise? And unless it's a prequel or a reboot, I wouldn't want McClane to be played by anyone other than Willis.

Unless Jai Courtney's Jack McClane turns out to be a really great and compelling character and an enormous hit with viewers, the idea of his continuing the series in Willis' absence seems about as appetising as carrying on the Indiana Jones franchise with Shia LaBeouf or making ROCKY VII with Milo Ventimiglia in the lead.

Loomis wrote:

To my mind, you need John McClane for a DIE HARD film. Sure, you could do one without him, just as you could do a LETHAL WEAPON without Riggs and Murtaugh.... but why bother? Why not just launch a new action franchise? And unless it's a prequel or a reboot, I wouldn't want McClane to be played by anyone other than Willis.

Unless Jai Courtney's Jack McClane turns out to be a really great and compelling character and an enormous hit with viewers, the idea of his continuing the series in Willis' absence seems about as appetising as carrying on the Indiana Jones franchise with Shia LaBeouf or making ROCKY VII with Milo Ventimiglia in the lead.

Problem with your analogy is that nobody wanted to see anything with Shia LeBeouf in it. Look, I've been a proponent of recasting Indiana Jones; I think the series could go on without Ford, but keeping both Ford and Willis in franchises that they are no longer suitable for because they are too old does everyone a disservice. People probably thought 007 couldn't survive without Connery, but it has.

And I think, at one point, there was an idea of moving the Lethal Weapon series along without Glover and Gibson (neither one I have any use for anymore) by bringing on their sons....or am I thinking of Beverly Hills Cop?

I'm just saying that, based upon the trailer, Jack McClane looks like a reasonable approximation of John McClane to the point where you could say: he's new, but he's familiar, and I think people *might* be willing to go along with a Die Hard series with Jack McClane (having been established with the viewers) rather than rebooting the entire series. If people like Jack McClane, if people think he's reasonably close to John, viewers wouldn't feel like they are being disloyal to the series by supporting it with Jai Courtney once Willis has left. I certainly don't think viewers would have stuck around with Lucy McClane in the lead role, but with Jack they may give it a chance.

The lame f/x are what may ruin the film, though. Why does a film from 1988 look more realistic than a film in 2013 with 100x the budget and greater access to f/x talent? H'wood is too dependent on CGI. They can't see the ruin they are causing even when it is staring them right in the face.