The Die Hard Series

Willis has obviously gone into 100% payday mode.
But what is there left to prove for him?

Salomé wrote:

Willis has obviously gone into 100% payday mode.

I wouldn't go that far. He still stars in a couple of genuinely good films - i.e. MOONRISE KINGDOM.

But they're few and far between nowadays. Unless he's in the next Anderson film the next good Willis film might be far off.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Which was overrated sh**e.

Shit, I've been away for too long. My Stockholm syndrome is starting to wear off and I'm thinking for myself when it comes to films again. I forgot that Shark's opinion is the only opinion ...

http://www.deadline.com/2013/02/friday-box-office-snitch-dark-skies-open-for-weak-oscar-weekend/

Well, so much for that #1 opening last weekend. This weekend it has fallen to 5th place and in the long run it will be trounced by a 250lb woman (Identity Thief). AGDTDH will need better performance overseas to make up for what will be a disastrous U.S. box office.

FOX must be kicking themselves for going back to R instead of PG-13, when they should be kicking themselves for hiring the filmmakers they hired.

John Moore's a good, innovative film maker. He just ends up working with sub-par material.

Largo's Shark wrote:

John Moore's a good, innovative film maker.

I don't dispute this, having seen only A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (which in any case I quite enjoyed), but on what do you base your assessment of Moore's skills if, as you say, he just ends up working with sub-par material?

Where, in your book, is the evidence of his talent? Why do you champion the man?

Loomis wrote:

Where, in your book, is the evidence of his talent? Why do you champion the man?

The direction in all of his previous films have impressed me, despite lousy screenplays. Good intuitive talent.

http://www.deadline.com/2013/03/big-budget-jack-the-giant-slayer-bombs-on-bad-weekend-for-3-new-films/

Only two weeks at the box office and already A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD is at #9. It'll be out of the Top 10 next weekend. It is very unlikely that this film will pass the $100 million mark in the U.S. This has been not only a bomb for 20th Century Fox and Willis, but a major embarassment.

The good news for the film is that it is doing quite well overseas, and may actually make a profit in the long run. But this film, taken on its own merits, will be the LTK or QOS of the series, and force a strong, fresh look at what went wrong and how it can be righted. I'm not sure Willis wants to go out of the series on a flop, so I'd except at least one more Die Hard film from him. Maybe DH-6 will be his SKYFALL.

Hopefully, although I guess we must face the (perhaps not too dreadful) possibility that we've now seen the last of Willis as McClane. Perhaps a few years from now - a decade and change, let's say (partly so that most people will have completely forgotten that A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD ever even existed) - there will be a remake of the 1988 original aimed at rebooting the franchise, or perhaps a prequel based on the DIE HARD: YEAR ONE graphic novels.

Still, I'm hoping for the major rethink that you suggest and for Willis to bow out with a very good film that also gives the series the proper sendoff it deserves. I think it's entirely possible but will certainly require a great deal of thought and love and care and effort. If A GOOD DAY is the ROCKY V of the franchise, let DIE HARD 6 be its ROCKY BALBOA.

I've been watching the DIE HARD movies recently. I'd only seen the first two, but I saw VENGEANCE tonight. Still have yet to see 4 and 5, but I've got 4 on a used DVD and I got 10 bucks of "movie money" for 5, so I may go ahead and see it if I can. Even though it looks like shit and apparently it IS shit.

I support Willis getting one more film. A remake? Fuck that. A new star? Fuck that, too. DIE HARD is Willis' show. Give the series it's STAR TREK VI, ie: a good entry to end the run after a disasterous fifth.

I hope McTiernan will be a free man. Get him to direct it. Get a good book or script and adapt that to DIE HARD. Release it in 2018 for the 30th anniversary. And don't involve this Jai Courtney. He looks like an Eastern European thug that Willis would be gunning down.

On LIVE FREE, did you get the unrated or PG-13 version?

I'd like to see 6 bring back some of the characters, maybe just for bit parts. Holly, Al, Zeus, Lucy, ect. Dunno how that could work, but it would be a nice nod to the series as a whole if they really wanna make a worthy last entry. Let McClane work on his own again, no more partners this time.

Python wrote:

On LIVE FREE, did you get the unrated or PG-13 version?

I'd like to see 6 bring back some of the characters, maybe just for bit parts. Holly, Al, Zeus, Lucy, ect. Dunno how that could work, but it would be a nice nod to the series as a whole if they really wanna make a worthy last entry. Let McClane work on his own again, no more partners this time.

The LIVE FREE DVD has both versions. I was gonna ask which one to watch.

6 should be totally back to basics. Find some book or script that has a great concept. McClane on his own. Some returning characters would be nice. Holly and Lucy would be on the top of the list.

Haven't seen the PG-13 version since theaters, but I do remember it having abrupt editing with dialogue and bad ADR to get rid of all the F-bombs, including THE line.

And when they released the R-rated version on DVD, all they did was dub the lines over the film, so half the time the voices are out of sync with the lips.

I'm gonna try to watch both soon, this should be interesting. Actually, I do remember the unrated version got rid of the "I was out of bullets" line and replaced it with something about car accident statistics or whatever.

Yeah, that was a pretty lame line.

See, all this could be avoided if they just went back to the movies being 'R' in the States and 15/18 in the UK. Stop 'pussyifing' them so that teenagers can get in, there's enough out there for them already.

GOOD DAY is rated R in the states.

Sadly, most everything that can make money has to be accessible to teens now.



I'll probably watch the theatrical first. Catch the Unrated one sometime. I won't watch it until tonight after a long rehearsal anyway, so I'll decide later.

Watching LIVE FREE (Unrated). Marginally watchable so far. Really pretty generic direction to me. I don't like the framing at all, and the color timing is super fucking ugly. The whole movie looks like vomit.

But Willis is strong. The villain is a bit dull to me.

I'm only 47 minutes in, I'll keep going.

From the guy who did UNDERWORLD and TOTAL REMAKE, a far cry from McTiernan. Even Renny Harlin was a better hack. What makes it watchable for me is Willis, and the chemistry he has with Long. Weakest parts for me is when McClane is just standing around looking at Long do computer stuff. Mendes sorta talked about those kind of scenes in the SKYFALL commentary, about how lots of movies that pull off those scenes like that aren't too interesting so he had Bond play an active role in the Q lab so he could have something to do other than just stare at a big monitor.

Python wrote:

From the guy who did UNDERWORLD and TOTAL REMAKE, a far cry from McTiernan. Even Renny Harlin was a better hack. What makes it watchable for me is Willis, and the chemistry he has with Long. Weakest parts for me is when McClane is just standing around looking at Long do computer stuff. Mendes sorta talked about those kind of scenes in the SKYFALL commentary, about how lots of movies that pull off those scenes like that aren't too interesting so he had Bond play an active role in the Q lab so he could have something to do other than just stare at a big monitor.

Yeah, I have an aversion to computer stuff in movies. I think GE grinds to a halt for a while with that stuff.

Okay, so I watched a little more. Saw Tuvok. Then the DVD froze. Perfect. It kept freezing. No wonder some asshole sold it to Half Price Books. I got it for 5, and I could have gotten a new one for 5 at Best Buy! So I'll just do that some time. Get a new copy. I enjoyed the movie enough so far to at least do that if it's cheap.

it's funny, I got the first three on Blu, and the first one was defective. Still have to exchange it. Watched it on my old DVD. 2 and VENGEANCE looked great on Blu, especially VENGEANCE.

McTeirnan is rock solid at directing this stuff. And the writing also is such that you know what's going on. LIVE FREE felt a bit a vague in both of those departments to me. Lot of seemingly random shit going on. But lots of random shit going on is what passes for action filmmaking now.

The main source of that random shit IMO is the complete abandon with which the movie treats "hacking" and what it can do, to the point where for the purposes of LIVE FREE, hacking equals magic.