“From the perspective of an ignorant little kid, Die Hard was a revelation, imprinted into the very fabric of my being. It continues to have the same effect on people — even with age, the gunfights and high-wire stunts haven’t soured in quality, still holding up as exciting visuals to this day.” —Zachary Berman
Watch enough Jason Statham or Arnold Schwarzenegger films, and you’ll realize all action movies are basically imitations of each other: A man (or, less often, a woman) uses skill and incredible dumb luck to defeat a series of villains. From the days of oral epic poetry to modern cinema, the story has always been the same, only now with more explosions.
And yet despite the obvious truth that director John McTiernan’s 1988 action masterpiece Die Hard is similar to its ancestors, contemporaries and descendants, there’s always been something different about the film.
Of course, there’s the palpable sense of excitement, several stunning set pieces and the requisite witty (if trite) quotable lines of dialogue, but that doesn’t explain what has made the film stand as a shining achievement in entertainment throughout more than two decades.
As an unabashed fan of Die Hard — and its sequels — I have been waiting on edge for the arrival of the fifth installment, A Good Day to Die Hard, premiering today and continuing the series’ penchant for amazing sequel titles that may not have been originally intended to be so tongue-in-cheek (looking at you, Die Hard 2: Die Harder).
The wait is nearly over, but the question still has to be asked: Why is Die Hard so special?
For me, there are two answers to that question.
First, as a small child, Die Hard was the second R-rated movie I had ever seen, the first being Aliens (and I blame the subsequent nightmares on my dad’s poor choice of Blockbuster rental).
As an R-rated experience, Die Hard introduced me to a lot of things: terrorism, brutality, Alan Rickman, etc.
Action movies have had a notoriously strong effect on the imaginations of little boys throughout history, and it was no different for me. When I saw exceptional everyman John McClane (Bruce Willis) kill blank-slate terrorist No. 33 Marco and throw the man’s body out of a 30th story window, I knew I could never go back to Disney sing-along tapes.
From the perspective of an ignorant little kid, Die Hard was a revelation, imprinted into the very fabric of my being. It continues to have the same effect on people — even with age, the gunfights and high-wire stunts haven’t soured in quality, still holding up as exciting visuals to this day.
Now, as an adult with years of repeated viewings behind me, I have a different conclusion about the lasting effect of Die Hard. What really makes the series work — despite the relative incoherence of Die Harder and the PG-13 rating of Live Free or Die Hard – is Willis.
It’s not often that the man gets recognized for his acting ability — don’t forget Pulp Fiction and Sin City, as well as recent turns in Moonrise Kingdom and Looper — but Willis has always played John as a normal man. Sure, he accomplishes superhuman feats, but he’s never enjoyed or been rewarded for his ability to save people’s lives.
In the Die Hard universe, each subsequent film shows just how screwed up John’s life became after previous fiascos — separated from his wife, out of contact with his kids, never promoted at his job, etc.
Beyond that, John gets terribly injured in the process. Unlike a Schwarzenegger or a Statham, Willis’s character requires serious medical attention at the end of every film, whether his feet are full of glass shards in Die Hard or he has shot himself in the shoulder in Live Free or Die Hard.
Through it all, John has perpetually become more sarcastic and disbelieving of the situations he’s landed himself in but soldiers through nonetheless.
It’s this sense of humanity that has sold almost every ludicrous plane crash and snowmobile chase the series has had to offer.
Even so, other action films perpetually fail to pick up on why Die Hard was actually successful, explosions aside. It’s a joke in the movie industry that every action film is pitched as “It’s Die Hard in a (insert place here)” — Speed was “Die Hard on a bus,” Air Force One was “Die Hard on a plane,” Executive Decision was also “Die Hard on a plane,” The Rock was “Die Hard in Alcatraz,” Sudden Death was “Die Hard in a hockey rink,” and so on.
These movies fail to be as definitive as Die Hard, however, without that all-important ingredient: humanity.
Whether A Good Day to Die Hard is a worthy successor remains to be seen, but watching our hero use skill and incredible dumb luck to defeat a series of villains certainly sounds like a great time, if only because it’s John McClane.
