The Die Hard Series

The villains could sneak themselves into the location they take over as a film crew under the pretext of making a movie. It's not the same as hijacking a studio, but it could work.

Though it sounds a lot like Ben Affleck's ARGO.

Largo's Shark wrote:

A prison sounds depressing. Think about all the other options.

A hospital.

A mall/ shopping centre.

A theme park.

A huge gym/ leisure centre.

A film studio (my personal favourite).

Random thought. As a kid when I heard of a movie titled Waterworld I assumed it was DIE HARD IN A WATER PARK. Not only was I way off, but I wish that's what it actually was instead of Costner drinking his own piss.

Now I really want a Die Hard film set in an amusement park. Called YOU MUST BE 48" OR TALLER TO DIE HARD or THE HAPPIEST PLACE TO DIE HARD.

It's about time for this franchise to curl up and die hard.

Die down?

Diefall.

Tubes wrote:

Loomis wrote:

What's with the aspect ratio, BTW? Is this the first DIE HARD film not in 2.35:1? I hope so - it'd make a refreshing change.

According to IMDB, DH5 was shot in Super35 with an intended ratio of 2.35:1. That's hardly definite, as not only does IMDB get it's info wrong sometimes, but trailers aren't indicative of aspect ratio either. WRATH OF THE TITANS comes to mind, with all the trailers show in 2.35, but the movie shown in 1.85.

Thanks. I remember that ROCKY BALBOA was shot in Super35. The trailers were in 2.35:1, but for some reason the film itself was shown in 1.85:1.

Super36 is a poor man's anamorphic and with all the grading they'll do, they might as well shoot it on digital.

My own DIE HARD sequel idea would be a bit like Ridley Scott's BLACK RAIN - or, even better, Sydney Pollack's THE YAKUZA (one of my favourite films).

Bringing the series full circle, it involves a yakuza plot against the Nakatomi Organisation and its employees, including Holly (Bonnie Bedelia), who is now a senior manager on a generous expat package in Tokyo. McClane, whom she is still divorced from, is poorer than ever, although his miserable pension hasn't prevented his sliding back into alcoholism and even - whisper it - smoking. On arrival in Japan, he's delighted to find that desks in offices there still have ashtrays built into them.

The final shootout occurs at Nakatomi's Tokyo HQ (in broad daylight this time rather than at night, with thousands of people trying to get their work done during the mayhem), and the film could take place over New Year, making the use of Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" highly appropriate.

As a gaijin in Japan with no police powers, McClane is once again a fish out of water (along with his boozing this is another important element of the series, I feel).

The villain could be a Japanese ultranationalist (Takeshi Kitano) who supposedly has a political grudge against Nakatomi but in reality, of course, just wants to tap them for a few billion yen. At the end of the film, he and McClane fight one-on-one in Nakatomi's HQ. The villain uses a samurai sword, while McClane wields a baseball bat (which he's grabbed from a cabinet or something - maybe it was presented to the CEO of Nakatomi by a U.S. President). This would be a nod to PULP FICTION, as well as John Frankenheimer's THE CHALLENGE.

There would be a shootout in an old temple somewhere, and maybe a foot chase through an old village or something, but most of the film would take place in and around Nakatomi's Tokyo base. The action would be "back to basics" - plenty of gunfights and fistfights, and, sure, one or two big explosions, but no moments like McClane surfing a fighter jet.

It would also be pretty cool to see Nakatomi's "project in Indonesia" - mentioned in the first film, with its models admired by Hans Gruber - now up and running. A couple of scenes could take place there.

Call it DIE HARD: THE WAY OF JOHN McCLANE.

Largo's Shark wrote:

Super36 is a poor man's anamorphic and with all the grading they'll do, they might as well shoot it on digital.

Well, at least it's nice that it's being shot on film, no?

Largo's Shark wrote:

Super36 is a poor man's anamorphic and with all the grading they'll do, they might as well shoot it on digital.

Yeah, the whole digital intermediate thing, coupled with the way film stocks have been 'finessed' to show so much unwanted detail in the shadows in the last couple decades, makes the whole film/digital thing almost irrelevant ... unless you go anamorphic or real IMAX. The images are so unfilmlike you are losing all the advantages of originating on celluloid.

trevanian wrote:

Largo's Shark wrote:

Super36 is a poor man's anamorphic and with all the grading they'll do, they might as well shoot it on digital.

Yeah, the whole digital intermediate thing, coupled with the way film stocks have been 'finessed' to show so much unwanted detail in the shadows in the last couple decades, makes the whole film/digital thing almost irrelevant ... unless you go anamorphic or real IMAX. The images are so unfilmlike you are losing all the advantages of originating on celluloid.

Didn't know that about the shadows. How far do you have to go back to find film stocks with decent blacks?

I'd think the early 90s (though you've got a huge change just went highspeed stocks first came in around 1970 or so, given that folks could go back on location and shoot available light.) It was around 1992 or so, a little after Gulf War I, that I noticed ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT and a lot of those infotainment shows started employing shitty visual treatments like triple-printing to their 'news' stories; at that same time I thought film was sliding towards a video look, and that predates digital intermediates by nearly a decade.

That's around the same time that Kodak started making more stocks just for bluescreen and greenscreen shooting too, so they were thinking more and more about images being scanned and manipulated. Don't know if there is a correlation or connection, though. I'd love to be able to pin this all on George Lucas's electronic cinema efforts, but to be honest, there might not always have been a conspiracy involved.

Early 90s is when I started noticing photoshop in place of traditional retouching in a lot of sources ... there was a TIME issue that had a two-page spread of soldiers in foreground, desert in middleground and burning oil wells in background that looked like it had been seamed together from 3 separate images. Shadows didn't match, it was like that Oswald LIFE cover but in color.

Loomis wrote:

My own DIE HARD sequel idea would be a bit like Ridley Scott's BLACK RAIN - or, even better, Sydney Pollack's THE YAKUZA (one of my favourite films).

I like it, but there are a few little things that I would change. I think you've made McClane a little too cynical; I, for one, think he's at his best when he's being sarcastic, though the cynicism is there.

Anyway, here are a few of my ideas for what a great DIE HARD could be:

McClane, having been "encouraged" to take an early retirement (read: it's the nicest version of fired that the NYPD has) takes a job working a private security detail for the Nakatomi Corporation at their annual corporate retreat, which this year is being held in Cancun. He is mostly interested in seeing Holly again; although they are still divorced, they are civil towards one another, and while McClane isn't interested in getting back together with her romantically, he finds that he misses her company. His plans for a purely platonic friendship with her are run off the rails when he learns that she recommended him for the job, which he interprets as her taking pity on him. Shortly after their argument, the resort Nakatomi has booked out is taken over by a gang of Mexican narcoterrorists. Infighting has crippled the ranks of one of the country's most powerful cartels, and while the leaders slaughter one another, a middling lieutenant has plans to take control of the cartel for himself. He targets Nakatomi because the company's communications department has a government contract with the Americans, and he wants access to it because he believes he will learn the identity of a plant inside the cartel that betrayed them to the federales, thus starting the war.

Possible titles would be ONLY THE GOOD DIE HARD, or maybe A MAN WHO WON'T DIE HARD.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Possible titles would be ONLY THE GOOD DIE HARD, or maybe A MAN WHO WON'T DIE HARD.

I read elsewhere that TAKEN 3 is now in pre-production based upon excellent box office for TAKEN 2. My first instinct was to dismiss TAKEN 2 and TAKEN 3 as derivative of the first film, but I could also make the same complain about DIE HARD....and James Bond. Having said that, I won't be watching TAKEN 2 or 3; it's not my cup of tea.

Possible future titles for the Die Hard series (since it does appear they are handing it off to the son in this next flick and that Die Hard 5 exists solely to spin the series off with a new character):

ANOTHER WAY TO DIE HARD
LIVE AND LET DIE HARD
PERMISSION TO DIE HARD
YOU ONLY DIE HARD
NOBODY DIES FOREVER
JOHN McCLANE (since we now have movies coming out called JACK REACHER, JACK RYAN, ALEX CROSS, and just recently had JOHN CARTER).

Where do you think I got ONLY THE GOOD DIE HARD and A MAN WHO WON'T DIE HARD from?

It was "Only the good die young" and "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live".

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Where do you think I got ONLY THE GOOD DIE HARD and A MAN WHO WON'T DIE HARD from?

It was "Only the good die young" and "A man who won't die for something is not fit to live".

So you've come up with two Die Hard titles based upon a Billy Joel song and a speech of Martin Luther King Jr's?

What did I tell you? The guy's crazy.

Largo's Shark wrote:

What did I tell you? The guy's crazy.

I have a cross-eyed cat wearing pajamas as my avatar. I can't throw stones.

Incidentally, I merged the two "A Good Day To DIe Hard" threads into one.

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

So you've come up with two Die Hard titles based upon a Billy Joel song and a speech of Martin Luther King Jr's?

It's very difficult to find well-known sayings that a) contain the word "die" in them, and b) don't sound completely stupid when you add "hard" to them.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

Gravity's Silhouette wrote:

So you've come up with two Die Hard titles based upon a Billy Joel song and a speech of Martin Luther King Jr's?

It's very difficult to find well-known sayings that a) contain the word "die" in them, and b) don't sound completely stupid when you add "hard" to them.

Live & Let Die Hard
Tomorrow Never Dies Hard
Die Hard Another Day
Another Way To Die Hard

Something To Die Hard For

Life is hard. Then you die.

So, they should just brazenly rip off James Bond titles?

No, let me rephrase that:

So, they should just brazenly rip off James Bond titles that even James Bond fans despise because of the over-use of words like "die"?

DIE HARDON.

Prisoner Monkeys wrote:

So, they should just brazenly rip off James Bond titles?

No, let me rephrase that:

So, they should just brazenly rip off James Bond titles that even James Bond fans despise because of the over-use of words like "die"?

once you get down to sequel 5 you might as well

Largo's Shark wrote:

DIE HARDON.

now your talking
change things up a bit
:cheers:

Any Which Way But Die

Die Any Which Way

yep.