So there is this new action movie coming out this summer called Live Free or Die Hard. This is the fourth installment of the Die Hard series, a series which seriously altered the way we look at action heroes. John McClane was a different type of action hero. Unlike Schwarzenegger and Stallone, when he got shot or punched or whatever, he got hurt. He ran out of bullets. He made bad decisions which lead to innocent people getting killed. Though he didn't want it to happen, they did. He made mistakes. But he rose above and defeated the bad guys in the end. And he usually did it with a sarcastic smirk on his face.
But like I said earlier, McClane was a different kind of action hero. He wasn't muscle bound and invincible. He wasn't specially trained to kill. He wasn't a cyborg or a genetically altered super-human. He was a wise-ass cop from New York. That's it. And we loved him for it.
John McClane also did something that I think is significant, considering the times and the type of movie it was. This little action was probably shrugged off by the causal viewer but for me it really stuck out. At the end, when he hugs the black cop (the dad from Family Matters). That's it. That hug. Never in an action movie in the 80s, a time of uber-masculinity (thanks to Schwarzenegger and Stallone) and homophobia (thanks to society), would two dudes embrace. Ever. Especially if they just defeated a group of German terrorists. Not even then.
This is where my problem with the new Die Hard comes in. I saw the preview and I see that the idea of John McClane was thrown away. This new John McClane is blown out into the realm of stylized action super-men. McClane can be seen performing fantastic feats of strength and dexterity like swinging onto a platform from a bar like some Russian gymnist. Also from the trailer, he can be seen climbing all over an F-15 to which he leaps about fifty-plus feet to a destroyed free way. I really hope I'm wrong but judging from the trailer, I'm right and it's a sad thing to behold. It looks like Hollywood raped the idea of a revolutionary character in order to please the over-sensitived, onanist teenage minds of America.
Your comments on the new "Die Hard" film are spot-on as far as the need for constant, impossible stunts and effects. It's sheer impossibility of much of this action that wears thin for me. This is not limited to "Die Hard", though. I was really put off by the ridiculously over-the-top action in the recent Peter Jackson version of "King Kong", in which a CGI Naomi Watts was thrown about tossed over Kong's shoulder like a rag doll in a way that would have crushed a human body instantly. Not that I'm exactly demanding strict physical realism in a film about a giant ape, but a little subtlety and internal logic is nice. Character and story are constantly thrown out the window in exchange for ever-increasing "effects".
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