The ‘90s cycle of Die Hard clones dried up with time, as all such movements must. It didn’t simply stagnate; action cinema redefined itself, again somehow under the guidance of producer Joel Silver. The Matrix redirected attention to carefully-choreographed fights, a far more Hong Kong approach than the distinctly American flavor of Die Hard. Essentially impossible superheroics became the norm, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon cemented (in a subtitled foreign movie, no less) how American action films would proceed in the ‘00s. Even a less fantastical new style, such as the hyper-editing of the Bourne series, replaced the bullets-and-biceps bluster of classic actioners.
Another major factor limited the perpetuation of Die Hards: 9/11. Seeing as the series can be summed up as airplanes, terrorists, skyscrapers and New York, it is remarkably shocking just how much 9/11 imagery can be found pre-9/11! But suddenly stories making light of international terror seemed inappropriate, and frankly we’re lucky the original Die Hard didn’t get permanently reedited down to a 20 minutes long treatise on a broken marriage.
No matter, deprive audiences of a style for long enough, and it can come back into vogue. With mass media growing increasingly enamored with recycling as its own aesthetic, the ‘00s developed a pronounced nostalgia for the ‘80s, to the point of dozens of horror remakes, live action reboots of old toy brands…and the systematic reintroduction of abandoned 1980s superstars. Attribute some fatigue with the newer, post-Matrix style of actioner, as the positive attributes of outdated forms come into focus. Just as retro gaming allowed for new 8-bit Mega Man games, etc., retro moviemaking began to favor modernized, ‘80s-style slugfests.
This general tenor is best exemplified in R-rated exploitation fare like The Expendables. But that’s just the general aesthetic. Specific heroes returned, in Rambo, Rocky Balboa, and sometimes not even Sylvester Stallone at all, like with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Oh, and John McClane! His fourth outing, Live Free or Die Hard (or Die Hard 4.0 beyond the U.S., where New Hampshire is unfamiliar and idiotically good/bad sequel names are less welcome) is a part of this resurgence.
Though plans for some fourth Die Hard went back for nearly a decade prior to Live Free’s 2007 release. The fundamental Live Free notion, about a computer-based attack on the U.S.’s infrastructure, existed in script form well before 9/11, or even the Die Hard-deadening Matrix. A 1997 “Wired” article, “A Farewell to Arms,” formed the basis for an unrelated spec script, WW3.com by David Marconi. Like Jonathan Hensleigh’s unrelated Simon Says becoming Die Hard with a Vengeance, the Die Hard series perpetuates, even in hibernation, by cannibalizing non-franchise one-offs. So WW3.com became a Die Hard of some title or another, running through a seemingly endless number of script doctors and rewrites. Some drafts gave Bruce Willis’ John McClane a partner in the form of his son. In others, that partner is just a random guy, who falls for McClane’s daughter…Good thing these concepts never intermixed!
It’s likely they’d still be rewriting this thing on a yearly basis to this very day, had a director not come on board and actually filmed it. Len Wiseman, of the Underworld movies (which I’ll have no familiarity with until the inevitable Part Four), took to the plate. The tech-terror plot remains, a somewhat lumpy affair considering its intermittent pre-production biography, so what Wiseman brings to the table is a style for the action itself. In the summer of Michael Bay’s Transformers, Wiseman opted to minimize CGI effects – some still remain, but it’s nowhere near the travesty of Crystal Skull in that field. The lure of a Die Hard in 2007 as a barebones, real world stunt delivery system is appealing. Taking the motto that John McClane is “an analog watch in a digital world,” Live Free strives to be as much like him as possible…to a point.
Oh, there’s the CGI, which ain’t awful. It’s what a Die Hard would have to be in 2007, and it only seems more striking due to the 12-year-gap since the last entry. What hurts Live Free or Die Hard far more is its sudden, arbitrary PG-13 rating, gone down from R just like Terminator Salvation, as it becomes harder and harder to make a blockbuster out of adult fare. This was the studio’s decision, post-production, in an effort to ensure as much profit as possible out of this expensive action picture. Drat the rise to prominence of the PG-13 as basically the only high-draw movie type!
It really is a weird system, as the trademark Die Hard ultraviolence remains mostly intact, in a film with arguably more (implied) innocent civilian deaths than even Die Hard 2. Nope, the kiddies can see as much human desecration as a budget can allow. But in this topsy-turvy world, god forbid a teenager hear the word “Fuck” uttered more than once, and never in a sexual context. (However, the “shits” can fly like wine ad nauseum, preserving at least some franchise vulgarity.) This invalidates even the possibility of McClane uttering his iconic “Yippee kay-yay, motherfucker,” now reduced to “Yippee kay-yay, motherf[gunshot].” Why? The word “motherfucker” implies incestuous fornication, though in context it’s just a synonym for “shithead.”…Oh well, the DVD’s unrated, which is how I opted to enjoy it most recently, making that one glaring mistake (and its attendant awkward, awkward dubbing) moot.
Which leaves Live Free free of many blemishes. It isn’t a perfect movie, nowhere near the par of Die Hard – for it lacks most of the subtler franchise flourishes, boiling things down mostly to “ultra-action.” That’s not a bad thing – The action in Live Free is ridiculous, starting at 11 and going from there! It fits perfectly into what a fourth Die Hard should be, if we accept the inevitability of sequel escalation. Granted this, they’ve completely evaporated the possibility of the first’s successful claustrophobia.
Indeed, setting-wise we’ve gone from “building” to “complex” to “city” and now to “the entire Eastern U.S. seaboard.” Every action sequence takes place in a different state (or district)! Each set piece is like a self-contained “Die Hard on a _____,” those “______s” now being “apartment,” “tunnel,” “power station,” “server farm,” and “freeway interchange.” It’s an effective evolution of the Die Hard concept, keeping the series’ tenor without staying wedded to a tired action formula.
Cyber-terrorists (giggle!), led by mastermind Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant, notably of “Deadwood”), have begun a three-stage attack upon the U.S., using “whatever” technology to shut down transportation, communications, and other major utilities. As the attack starts up, the FBI requests all known hackers be brought in to “advise” on the problem. Senior detective John McClane, by dint of his superior ranking, is assigned to retrieve Matt Farrell in Camden, New Jersey. (And isn’t it just like a Die Hard to set its first action scene in the lamest part of Jersey?!) So McClane’s involuntary involvement against terrorists (always such a struggle for the sequels) comes about as a part of his regular policing duties, which avoids the “for the hell of it” of Die Hard 2, and the “terrorist request” of With a Vengeance.
Matt Farrell (Justin Long, making a feature-length joke out of his Mac ad campaigns) is to be McClane’s comic foil for the day, much like Samuel L. Jackson’s Zeus. The difference now is not race, but age, and technological familiarity. (It is a minor series thread that McClane is stymied by new technologies.) This is an appropriate concept, though in actuality Farrell it too much of a pushover. Long lacks Jackson’s ability to aggressively counter our hero. Instead, he gets something of the everyman role McClane is absolutely beyond inhabiting. Actually, Farrell is completely worthless in an action sequence, rather like a damsel in distress. He’s an essential plot component, forever expositing what McClane’s next move ought to be, and fixing the computer stuff (he’s like Natalya in GoldenEye, but less attractive). Farrell just seems a little, I dunno, milquetoast, as does villain Gabriel, throwing the ball almost entirely into McClane’s court.
Technology is Live Free’s theme, which it lever lets us forget. Die Hard subtext used to be more subtle. Actually, Live Free stands as the standard bearer for Hollywood’s eternal confusion with how to treat new tech, going back as far as The Net. From the very get go, hardly anything we see the computers do is believable, though I do say this as a bit of a Luddite myself (internet blog aside). But as a means of justifying silly action set pieces, which violate Newton’s laws of physics just as egregiously, Live Free’s attitude towards tech it totally forgivable. And credit Wiseman for making the least boring scenes of dudes typing that’ve ever been filmed – this stuff really oughtn’t to work nearly this well.
Anyway, tech is the theme. More appropriately, so is generational shift. All of the henchmen McClane most mow through this time belong to a younger action movie mentality, nicely contrasting against McClane’s tough, inelegant directness. Let’s see, he battles ‘00s-style threats like parkour madmen, or a spandex-clad action chick (Maggie Q). I kinda wish they’d’ve been able to identify more such tropes, and really hammer home this point, but the notion is there. As a microcosm of the whole 2007 Live Free and Die Hard mentality, this nicely contrasts against the McClane style of heroism we see little of nowadays.
So McClane moves Farrell along to D.C., only to find the FBI characteristically useless. In keeping with the McClane life philosophy, he’d just as soon unload Farrell on some other guy, and go do his own thing (i.e. likely get drunk), even as the nation is completely incapacitated by Gabriel’s technological shenanigans. Owe it to circumstances, largely to the destruction of the communications grid at the most narratively convenient moment, that McClane alone has access to Farrell, who coincidentally is the only person with knowledge that might stop Gabriel’s attack. (Farrell was unintentionally one of Gabriel’s startup guys.) Yup, it’s another Die Hard owing its existence to major coincidences, but these problems are buried far more effectively than they were in Die Hard 2.
Like it or not, McClane pressgangs himself into the noble cause of rescuing the country. He has a pretty nice conversation with Farrell about being “that guy,” an unwitting hero when no others will stand up, and what it’s done to his life. It’s a rare quiet, reflective moment for McClane, getting to the fundamental notions of the franchise, and even highlighting his evolution into essentially a Terminator with better one-liners. In all the interstate mayhem of Live Free’s violence, cherish these moments.
But thoughtful series introspection is not Live Free’s concern, especially when much of its audience would have zero familiarity with any prior entry (the Die Hards are wonderful standalone actioners, with no overarching mythos, so that’s not a problem anyway). The action’s the thing, and Wiseman devises a degree of over-the-top variety which overshadows the best of the rest of the series combined. While I fear sacrilege, I’d say Live Free has by far the best action of any Die Hard – though the overall quality, not so amazing.
The computer thing isn’t just a gimmick (well, it is, but go with me). It informs the action. Gabriel has the ability, at a distance, to manipulate a setting to turn on McClane – For example, he redirects traffic to throws cars, or simply causes explosions. There’s also apparently C-4 inside everyone’s hard drive, but let’s ignore anything stupid if it results in a boom. This is another fruitful notion, like the modern-styled henchmen, which I really wish they could’ve done more with. For all its insanity, sometimes it feels like Live Free is holding back – We barely get a sense of the larger-world disaster which is transpiring, for one thing. We never know what other countries make of the U.S.’s sudden vulnerability. But as long as McClane is exploding helicopters with cars, we do not care.
Of course, it all comes down to a heist, because what self-respecting Die Hard would do otherwise? (Part Two.) As with With a Vengeance, it’s likely WW3.com was retooled at some point during the Die Hardification process to accommodate this. As such, how does the coordinated destruction of a nation enable a simple burglary? It all boils down to computer fail safes, specific things so unrealistic, they are explained as being the villain’s specific invention from back when he worked for the government. Okay, sure, whatever, Gabriel created a facility which stores all the country’s financial information, in case of a terrorist attack, then he orchestrated such an attack in order to access said funds. In essence, Gabriel steals all the wealth of the United States…How does he intend to spend it?! Really! After the $160 billion of With a Vengeance, this unspecified wad is one of the few larger targets imaginable.
In fact, Die Hard represents sequel escalation far more potently than nearly any other series. The first one was pretty low-key, all things considered. In four movies, its hero is stopping schemes that’d seem outrageous in some of the sillier James Bond movies. It has been recently postulated that, should more Die Hards continue, by Part Six McClane will be saving the entire galaxy. Any preliminary discussions about a possible Die Hard 24/7 suggest that Part Five will indeed be a worldwide epic. Possibly with every single scrap of every single currency as the contested prize.
It’s hard to imagine how they can continue to expand at the exponential rate Live Free maps out. By the finale of this epic, they flat out go to the edge, and pit John McClane against a freaking F-35! And John wins! It would be impossible to recap this sequence without writing every single sentence in italics. Suffice it to say, John McClane in a big rig is somehow still superior to the most expensive hardware the U.S. government can ignorantly toss at him. It helps that the fighter plane is helmed by just about the most incompetent pilot is history, barring Launchpad McQuack. Even so, this is a movie that starts out with “exploding an apartment,” and ends with “our hero surfing the wing of an out-of-control, unmanned stealth bomber amidst a crumbling freeway infrastructure.” One can either accept the sheer nuttiness of it all, admit this is what the series has been leading towards, or rather slump and lament it.
We’re a long way from sneaking around elevator shafts. The closest Live Free gets is by dangling an SUV vertically in such a shaft, for a big kung fu fight. It’s that kind of movie. Were Live Free and Die Hard not so good in its extremity (a difficult thing to pull off, as Bond’s Die Another Day demonstrates), I would almost say the time was at hand for a reboot – Were a reboot even needed.
Well, okay, they did something like that, with an ongoing comic book, “Die Hard: Year One” (ooh, that’s an original comic name!), chronicling John McClane’s first year with the NYPD during 1976. There was, at some stage, talk about doing this as a movie, a sort of desperate prequel gambit likely to itself never engender sequels – Still, the comic is a nice substitute for an unfeasible movie idea, ala “Freddy vs. Jason vs. Ash.”
Nope, rebooting likely wouldn’t mean much in this mythos-free series, which has always been one-offs anyway. There’s always the possibility the series could buck its ongoing escalation, in contrast to every recent thing Willis has told MTV, and do another claustrophobic single building entry. Though that’d be a retread. I say there is no point to a Die Hard movie without Willis as McClane (I mean, as each has been an adaptation of an independent idea, he is the only unifying factor). Let the series continue on, if at all, as Willis likes. Then let it retire with him. Its legacy is secure.
RELATED POSTS
• No. 1 Die Hard (1988)
• No. 2 Die Hard 2 (1990)
• No. 3 Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
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