Live Free or Die Hard opens the day after tomorrow and I’m really pumped. The trailers are awesome and Willis looks good enough to pull off playing McLane 20 years later.
There are some clouds on the horizon though:
Who’s the he’s dragging around? Added to appeal to the younger domographics?
Why did they push the release date forward from July 4th?
However, judging from the trailer (spoilered in case you haven’t seen it):Seeing Willis in a duel between a semitruck and a jet fighter will thoroughly make up for it.
Yay. Huge explosions, stupid one-liners, people running and screaming and shooting.
Yippee-kai-ay-mother-fu**er!!! I hadn’t heard about this. I love me some Die Hard. Every time I catch it on TV, from whatever spot, I watch it - quoting the dialogue the whole time. My husband can’t stand me sometimes…
[spoiler]I’m looking forward to it, too, but not for the over-the-top action stuff like that. The first movie was great, and it was just one guy with a walkie-talkie and a gun. It was the ingenuity and surprises, on both sides, that made it great. The second movie had exploding airplanes and McClane surrounded by idiots (so he could be the lone hero), and suffered for it.
So, I like the idea, but these movies are best when they keep things simple. McClane walking into the Federal Reserve infiltrated with East German agents is good, tense stuff. McClane inside a huge water pipe surfing on a dump truck is ridiculous. What I’ve seen in trailers for the new one hasn’t looked promising.[/spoiler]
I don’t know. This thing has gotten some pretty bad early buzz. It’s PG 13, for one thing, which means it can’t really be a full on Die Hard movie with the watered down violence and profanity. McClane can’t even say “motherfucker.” Another bad sign is that it still hasn’t been screened for critics. I also think the trailer looks ridiculous and goes against the Die hard formula in notable ways, like the lack of a closed environment and the lack of any grounding in reality. Part of the appeal of the original movie was that it tried to be realistic. It didn’t go in for absurd, impossible stunts like McClane fling a car into a helicopter or jumping onto a jet from an overpass (yes, in this movie, he reportedly jumps onto a jet in flight from an overpass). That doesn’t sound like die hard, it sounds like the Transporter movies (which employ the same kind of cartoon physics).
This may end up being an enjoyable film on its own terms but it doesn’t sound much like a Die hard movie and the lack of a critics’ screening is always a huge red flag.
Is that so? I know they had the premier at Radio City this weekend. I’m sure at least one or two press members were there. Can’t say I know squat about the normal procedure for screening the press, so it could be separate.
There aren’t any reviews up at rottentomatoes yet. Usually they’re up this close to a release date. Sometimes critics are asked to embargo their reviews until the day the movie comes out. maybe that’s what’s happening (although that’s still not a good sign either).
The first movie in the franchise launched Willis from a funny guy in Moonlighting to an A-list action star, but even if it was a closed environment, and McClane’s achilles’ heel was telegraphed in the first scene, it was still full of improbable events, from him running on broken glass to jumping off the roof with a fire hose tied around his waist. It was cartoonish then and with new and improved cgi, it’ll be cartoonish now.
Pushing the release date to a week with art and kiddie movies is troubling, as is not letting reviewers see it (or publish) before release.
After writing the above, I checked a review at AICN, and I’m still psyched.
Was this the Die Hard where McClain jumped off the exploding roof of Nakatomi Plaza tied to a fire hose, the one where he blew up a plane by lighting a trail of jet fuel Roadrunner style or the one where he outran a flooding water tunnel in a dump truck?
Significantly, the first set up an environment in which McClane jumping off the roof tied to a fire hose was an example of the hero’s desperation and ingenuity and not a contrived stunt explodin’ sequence. It was improbable but it was smart and it was motivated and it was consistent.
I’d have to see the new movie to comment, because trailers are often misleading. But it looks dumb.
I see your point about the sequels, at least. But the original film was still pretty grounded in reality and even the firehose jump (while admittedly a stretch) was still within the realm of real physics. Jumping onto a jet plane in flight and jumping a car into a helicopter are on a different order of absurdity, in my opinion. Not that absurd CGI action can’t be entertaining, but the action in LFODH looks (from what I’ve seen) to be somewhat removed from the established physical parameters of the orginal DH universe.
From the trailer I’ve seen, it looks so over-the-top that it’s almost like a parody of action movies. I mean, even the superspy secret agents who are trained and conditioned by secret intelligence organizations to the point of being living weapons don’t jump onto flying jets from an overpass. It’s got to be parody. Except that the folks behind it don’t seem to think that it’s a parody. This does not bode well.
I’d just like to see his sidekick Justin “I’m a Mac” Long get owned so that McClane has to go avenge him. (I always feel sorry for PC and think that Mac is kinda smarmy.)
