Movie Thread

[Guest]

You have an uncanny knack for having the worst opinions on movies

I'm a modern day Roger Ebert, I know

Roger Ebert was a furfag?

[Rushy]

You have an uncanny knack for having the worst opinions on movies

I'm a modern day Roger Ebert, I know

Roger Ebert was a furfag?

No, he wrote Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

[Guest]

I'm a modern day Roger Ebert, I know

Roger Ebert was a furfag?

No, he wrote Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls

Ah. A general degenerate then.

[rabidtictac]

The only good grudge movie.

[Keith Chegwin]

Both second and third had absolute stupid plots, but second had some good action scenes, action in it was gritty and well choreographed whereas action in the third installment was silly and cartoonish. Jeremy Irons sure was more memorable villain than the villains in the second movie, I hardly remember anything at all from them eventhough one of them was played by Franco fucking Nero!

But they both were vastly better than that completely forgettable and futile fourth installment.

I can't comment on action because it's been a million years since I last saw Die Hard 2, but your dismissal of the plots is where I must disagree because it's in elements of plot that Die Hard 3 proves itself to be the only worthy sequel to Die Hard.

Die Hard 2 does what all bad sequels do, which is just wallow in the original. You've got a similar set-up, there's a bit of dramatic tension there but McClane is more competent and generally in a better place than he was in the first film. As Rushy pointed out, it's the only Die Hard where McClane's marriage isn't either on the rocks or over completely.

Die Hard 3, conversely, does what all good sequels do, which is expand on the original. The set-up is completely different. The original Die Hard was vertical. All the action took place on the various levels of that one building. Die Hard 3 is horizontal. All the action is taking place throughout New York City. In the original film McClane was married to his job and his actual marriage was on the rocks. In Die Hard 3 his marriage is pretty much over and McClane is a dysfunctional wreck suspended from the police force and damn near an alcoholic. In the first film McClane had a friendship with the black police officer, who's never seen his face but trusts him implicitly. In Die Hard 3 McClane forms a tenuous alliance with Samuel L Jackson, who isn't a cop and hates white people, but somehow they find a way to work together. Then you've got Jeremy Irons, who is a charismatic and compelling villain enough to rival Alan Rickman from the first film and from him you get the idea of a blood feud between him and McClane which makes for some intriguing drama.

All this, plus the fact that Die Hard 3 was directed by John McTiernan, who directed the first film as well as such classics as Predator, The Hunt for Red October and the Pierce Brosnan Thomas Crown Affair, is what makes the film, in my opinion, the only worthy sequel to the original Die Hard.

[da PAC Nigguh]

Going to agree with Die Hard With a Vengeance being the only good sequel. Die Hard 4 or 4.0 or Live Free or Die Hard or whatever the fuck it ended up being called was nonsensical. It had the plot of a bad episode of a bad TV show. It also came out during that time when Hollywood absolutely would not release an R rated movie because they needed those sweet teenager bux.

I got maybe 1/3 of the way through Die Hard 5 before shutting it off. I don't remember a thing about it because it was years ago, but I'm sure it was bad enough that I would have rather been doing absolutely anything else instead of watching it.

[Keith Chegwin]

It's ironic because Die Hard 5 was the only one originally written to be a Die Hard film, all the others were originally intended to be other films, and it's the worst one.

The thing about 4 and 5 is that they completely miss the point of John McClane's character. The whole point originally was that McClane wasn't an Ahnold or a Stallone-type action hero, you know invincible supermen types with muscles upon muscles. He was just a regular guy with regular vulnerabilities. Then Die Hard 4 came along and made him just another indestructible action hero.

[Rushy]

Then Die Hard 4 came along and made him just another indestructible action hero.

It really didn't. I mean, him surviving all that shit is insane, but the other Die Hards had just as many physically impossible situations, just not as OTT ones.
The only thing different about McClane is that Willis plays him much more apathetically, giving more generic action hero vibes. As a character, he still doesn't rush into danger if he can help it(hell, he flat-out says in the film he'd give up Die Harding in a second if he could). And he still gets physically fucked up.

[Keith Chegwin]

You're hopped up on cat piss. The other Die Hards didn't have McClane destroying a helicopter with a car or shooting through his own shoulder to kill the bad guy

[VoiceOfReasonPast]

Flanderization is a serious issue.