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| I know I left a good script down here somewhere! |
It's pretty universally known that A Good Day to Die Hard didn't just suck, but it also killed the legacy of one of cinema's greatest action heroes. John McClane was an everyman, an ordinary guy in extraordinary situations who took out the bad guys to save the innocents. All he wanted was a normal Christmas with his family, but that never seemed to happen...innocent people were in trouble so he had to do whatever he could, regardless of risk to self, so that those people would be safe. The latest entry in the Die Hard series gave us someone that was not only tactically stupid but also indifferent to collateral damage while trying to execute men he assumes did something bad, even if he was unsure of what it was.
We were given no witty McClane, no mention of enduring great physical pain to save the day, basically nothing that made him an American hero. I've boiled this down to screenwriters/producers that apparently thought the reason we liked the guy was because he made things go BOOM. My proof comes in the series tagline, "Yippie-Ki-Yay". How does this prove that they understood absolutely nothing about the character? Well, the line was originally said as a smartass retort to Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber. Gruber calls McClane a cowboy, to which McClane says "Well Yippie-Ki-Yay Mutherf'er". Singularly bad ass. Saying it by itself just sounds like an extra vulgar line from an episode of Howdy Doody, but in response to what the bad guy thinks is an insult is a different game entirely. Fast forward to A Good Day to Die Hard. The line is said, this is true, but it's said to no one in particular while McClane is by himself as almost a wink to the audience and nothing more. What really drives the point home about the writers not getting the character is that there is a PERFECT opportunity earlier in the film for the line to be used in a way that not only makes sense but is the same setup as when it was originally used. 45 minutes into the "film" a henchman has McClane and son on their knees an seemingly unarmed. The bad guy goes into a tirade about how they're idiots and could never have won, that just like most Americans they thought they were cowboys from the wild west. Then there's a pause. NOTHING is said. Not thinking to insert the line here is unfathomable...I mean come on! Even a casual series fan would know that this is where John McClane would be the bad ass that we all have come to know and love. It just shows perfectly how Hollywood picks up our beloved franchises and shits them out without taking even the shallowest of looks at why we liked them in the first place.
