Die Hard is one of those rare things in nature. Rarer than a hen’s tooth. More rarer than a unicorn. Even more rarer than a Sasquatch riding a unicorn with a hen’s tooth in its innate rareness. No, my friends, enemies, and barely tolerated minor acquaintances at best, Die Hard is one of those rare occurrences where the universe merges as one and in a single, strong and determined voice says that it is a…“perfect movie”. Regardless of how one feels about it being included correctly as a Christmas movie, since it is, Die Hard, even without the holiday trappings, is a perfect movie.
Perfect movies are certainly rare on this great planet we call Earth but what the Xyzzaxitron people call Thybloobal for some incredibly fictitious reason. Given the sheer odds that are against you, just the act of creating a tolerable, bearably watchable film is nigh impossible, let alone making a “perfect” one. There are similar long odds regarding two planets colliding or finding a diamond mine in your backyard or going through an entire Christmas holiday season without suffering through Sir Paul McCartney’s irritatingly cloying “Wonderful Christmastime”. These odds are incalculable by science.
But back in 1988, Die Hard stepped up and entered that rarified hall of cinematic perfection with its head held high. This vulgar and violent action film that wore its heart on its sleeve managed to get mass audience approval and momentum. Die Hard never looked back, winning over a generation and many more generations that have yet to come. Bruce Willis became a movie star, the world took note of Alan Rickman, and the population walked away with one salient point: never take your shoes off during an office Christmas party. Yes, Die Hard was that legendary.
To follow Die Hard up would be like scaling Mount Everest only to find out that there’s another larger, narrower Everest behind it that is covered in motor oil, constant avalanches, and a variety of Lego pieces that will easily pierce through the ice spikes on your boots. But since Die Hard made 20th Century Fox right around $673 kabillion, not adjusted for inflation, the idea of a sequel was greenlit at a speed that left flame trails in its wake.
The Sequel: Die Hard 2 (1990)
Original Movie: Die Hard (1988)
Key Cast/Production Staff Returning from 1st Installment:
| Bruce Willis | John McClane |
| Bonnie Bedelia | Holly Gennero McClane |
| William Atherton | Richard Thornburg |
| Reginald VelJohnson | Al Powell |
| Stephen E. de Souza | Screenplay |
| Michael Kamen | Composer |
| Charles Gordon | Producer |
| Lawrence Gordon | Producer |
| Joel Silver | Producer |
To Start With:
“Oh man, I can’t fucking believe this. Another basement, another elevator. How can the same shit happen to the same guy twice?”
Yes, there was only one man who could possibly helm this movie. And yet, the production went with Renny Harlin instead. I’m kidding, but it had to be quite a leap that they snagged the guy who brought us A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master and then stuck him at the helm of the good ship Die Hard 2. Harlin isn’t a logical choice but Die Hard’s John McTiernan was busy directing a little film called The Hunt for Red October. Richard Donner was blowing stuff up while cranking out the delightful Lethal Weapon 2. James Cameron was in hiding because Ed Harris wanted to rightfully kill him after putting Harris through the unyielding hell that was The Abyss.
Of course, there was one logical choice for directing a huge action extravaganza, but sadly Woody Allen was unavailable since he was filming Alice. Despite being confused as to why 20th Century Fox would want him for this violent shooting frenzy, Allen was gracious and witty whilst turning down the job. Even the letter he wrote to the producers is going to be made into a movie soon.
Like the first Die Hard, there was a book as a starting point. However, this novel wasn’t a follow up to the book that Die Hard was based on. It wasn’t even written by the original author. The book was called “58 Minutes” and it was smooshed through the Die Hard sausage maker, sprinkled with characters from the first movie, and given a splash of Christmas wonder and voila! Here’s John McClane with an incredible amount of ammo that he brought along for some reason while travelling for Christmas, a bunch of different non-German terrorists, a new locale of an airport in Washington DC, even more Christmas, and the chance for the setting to be a wintry wonderland compared to the balmy Los Angeles from the first film.
Now with plenty of familiar faces in tow along with plenty of new faces that are familiar, the return of the original film’s screenwriter, composer, and producers, and the fresh look from the man that directed the highest grossing Freddy movie to that point all here for Die Hard 2, how did the movie end up?
Anything Done Better than the Original?
“Just once, I’d like a regular, normal Christmas. Eggnog, a fuckin’ Christmas tree, a little turkey. But no. I gotta crawl around in this motherfuckin’ tin can.”
Die Hard 2 wastes no time. McClane is busy shooting at bad guys in the back-room luggage sorters before the paint dries on the opening titles. (By the way, isn’t this luggage area incredibly understaffed despite all this travel during the busy Christmas holiday?) I don’t think we’re twenty minutes in before McClane needs to reload. We don’t have a grasp as to what the plot even is before there’s a dead guy and Dennis Franz is shouting at McClane. I like that economy. We know why we’re all here, so let’s waste no time in getting John McClane in over his head, being a thorn in the side of these ne’er-do-wells, shooting them left and right and all the directions in-between!
Also, the stakes are higher here when compared to the original Die Hard. We get to see an entire airliner filled with British people of all ages explode into the ground because terrorists fed O’Brien from Star Trek: The Next Generation incorrect ground level information for landing. And that’s just one plane that blows up in this movie. So, for what the baddies lack in personality, they more than make up for in a sizeable body count. We don’t need a big reason for McClane to take these guys out, but it certainly makes it even more satisfying when he does.
On a side note, remember that one flight attendant on the not-British Airways flight that’s consoling a worried old woman? Frankly, that stewardess has a terrible English accent. I mean, c’mon, at least Dick Van Dyke was trying in Mary Poppins. This air hostess was like, “Hell, I’m going to be vaporized in a fiery maelstrom in about 3 minutes, who cares what I sound like? So guv’nor, get me the bloody drink cart!”
Anything as Good as the Original?
John McClane: “Guess I was wrong about you. You’re not such an asshole after all.”
Grant: “Oh, you were right. I’m just your kind of asshole.”
Bruce Willis is firing on all cylinders here. He is clearly comfortable in the role and there’s still the illusion that he’s an everyman in the wrong place at the right time, getting his arse kicked the whole time. Seriously, his parka must weigh at least 26 pounds heavier with all the blood and sweat he accumulates during the run time. Willis wears John McClane like a comfy pair of shoes here and we are glad to see him run with the character.
Die Hard has some great moments of violence to be sure, but it seems like Die Hard 2 saw the first movie and then said, “Pfft. Hold my beer.” There are fountains of blood and beautiful squibs exploding throughout. It doesn’t get to the level of Total Recall per se, but it does begin sniffing around those levels of Verhoevenian gory glee. And when McClane stabs that bad guy with an icicle, breaking it off in his eye socket with a satisfying “SNAP!”, it still brings a glorious smile to my face, each and every single time I see it. It’s my It’s a Wonderful Life moment, a true symbol that signifies Christmas. “Teacher says, ‘Every time a terrorist gets an icicle stabbed into his brain, an angel gets its wings’.”
Anything Not-So-Good as the Original?
“Oh, McClane. John McClane. The policeman hero who saved the Nakatomi hostages. I read about you in People magazine. You seemed a bit out of your league on Nightline, I thought.”
Man, did Alan Rickman set the bar high, eh? Seems foolish to even try to have someone try to match the presence of Hans Gruber. Die Hard 2 seems to realize this and instead of trying to top Rickman, they just figured that having a flood of bad guys will be enough of a distraction from having a definitive one. This means we get Franco Nero, John Amos, William Sadler, Robert Patrick, and even John Legiuzamo in a blink-and-you’ll-certainly-miss-him-part. They thought that showing Sadler’s naked behind would be enough to get us to forget that there’s no Rickman-type confidently striding into the scenes here. (We don’t even get a moment for McClane and Nero to at least draw on each other, so we can see Willis go up against the original Django?! It ain’t right. And seeing Gordy the weatherman from Mary Tyler Moore getting sucked into a jet intake just isn’t the same as watching McClane deliberately let Hans Gruber fall off Nakatomi Plaza.)
Was there a more emotional moment than when Al Powell and John McClane first met face to face in Die Hard? I don’t care how manly mannish you are in your manhood as a man, that is a legitimate reason for the room to get dusty when you’re watching that moment. A true bond of friendship is formed under tremendously trying circumstances. And if there wasn’t a tear in your manly man-face by that point, you certainly get one when Al finally draws his gun to blow away the stringy-haired henchman from Witness who is attempting to shoot McClane. I’m getting teary right now thinking about that scene. (I think I need a minute. Go ahead and read on, I’ll catch up with you, I just need to compose myself.)
McClane has taken the leap to join the LAPD to be closer to his wife (I’m back now, thanks for waiting!), so you’d think there’d be some more Al time too. But nope, not here. John’s in DC, Al’s in LA. We get a little bit with Al helping McClane via fax, but ultimately Al is wasted in Die Hard 2. In fact, he’s got so little screen time, it makes one sad that they even bothered to bring him back if they weren’t really going to use him.
And the sad part: we will never see Al Powell again in this series. Although chances are the filmmakers would’ve done something stupid like have Al killed as a motivation for McClane in some throwaway entry, so I guess we should be thankful that Family Matters was there for Mr. VelJohnson. (Although, given how much Urkel took that show over, perhaps Reg would have preferred getting killed in a Die Hard. He certainly would’ve volunteered Jaleel White to be offed in one instead.) So everyone: raise a Twinkie for Al! We love you!
Anything Far Worse than the Original?
“Listen Dick. That is your name? Dick. If you’re gonna continue to get this close do you think you might consider switching aftershaves?”
I can suspend my disbelief several miles up in the sky with the best of them. I can fully believe that when you shoot a scuba tank, it will blow up a great white shark’s head. Without even a flutter of niggling doubt in my cynical mind, the flux capacitor exists and works, lightspeed is attainable, and a bunch of enlisted misfits can be trained in a matter of hours to perform a grandstanding graduation parade drill display by Bill Murray and Harold Ramis.
But for me to believe that not only is Bonnie Bedelia on one of the affected flights circling the DC airport that terrorists have taken over but she also ended up on the flight with William Atherton, and they never saw each other getting onboard?! They kind of weakly explain it away by saying that Atherton arrived late and was originally in First Class, so Bedelia apparently wouldn’t have seen him boarding. But for whatever reason he was bumped to business/coach class midflight, and they then shove him near the same section as her? This softball-sized plot-convenience pill is a mite large to swallow.
I can believe terrorists having enough time to set explosives by a new terminal’s communication center to then go and pose as construction guys afterwards, hanging out in the area just on the off chance that the airport would send a mightily armed S.W.A.T. team over there to investigate. (Well, it only sounds silly when you type it out.) But I cannot believe for an instant that of all the people in all the world, the one guy that Bonnie Bedelia has bad blood with manages to get himself convolutingly on the same plane, on the same flight, in the same section as her, for the same movie.
That also goes for when McClane has a dramatic demonstration to prove the guns had blanks by “shooting” Dennis Franz in the middle of the airport police HQ. You cannot tell me that as soon as he started blasting away, there wouldn’t have been a dozen cops returning live fire, making McClane look like Sonny Corleone at the toll booth. (Yes, I know I am far from the first person to notice this issue. My dad said it when we first watched Die Hard 2 and I also said it to my daughter when we watched it last week. That makes it a family tradition that I hope she one day passes along to her kids. A Christmas institution indeed! I think I am going to cry again.)
Follow-up installments?
“Oh, we are just up to our ass in terrorists again, John?”
Seeing as how Die Hard 2 was a terrific box office earner, you best believe that trying to get a sequel made was a given. Unfortunately, the series should have ended with the third one, as there was definitely signs that engine was sputtering. In retrospect, we all love that warm and fuzzy feeling that comes from a solid trilogy. Think about it: the original Star Wars trilogy, the Back to the Future trilogy, the Indiana Jones trilogy, and the Police Academy trilogy are all marvelous examples. But no, that’s not what happened. Of course it didn’t.
Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
- John McTiernan returns to the franchise to direct. Samuel L. Jackson makes for a nice Pulp Fiction cast reunion. Jeremy Irons is not Alan Rickman but is a definite upgrade compared to the bevy of bad guys from Die Hard 2. The ending is a bit of a meh considering how much time passes between having McClane and Jackson on a ship to the finale of blowing up Irons in a helicopter. No Bonnie Bedelia or Reginald VelJohnson or Christmas either. Apparently William Atherton never fully recovered from the stun gun.
Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
- I think more than a decade between installments was a bit too much. Plus, even releasing a Die Hard movie in PG-13 was sanitized madness. Timothy Olyphant is a great actor, capable of many wonderful portrayals, but being the main big baddie in a Die Hard sequel just isn’t one of them. Winsted is a nice addition to this group. Despite the wackiness, I love the car being launched at the helicopter. Ending just dribbles out unsatisfyingly. Kevin Smith is…another Kevin Smith-type. Audience left confused, not sure if what they saw was good or not. Still no Christmas, but if there were, it would be a PG-13 Christmas, which is yippee-ki-yay-boring.
A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)
- At least it makes the previous entry look like a sublime work of cinematic genius. I think the bottom line is that we here in the United States simply don’t care if stuff blows up in Russia. McClane’s son is a charisma vacuum. Unfortunately, this was one of the few studio releases Willis did as he went down the geezer teaser path into oblivion. Given Willis’ health issues, the Die Hard series ends here, which makes this entry even sadder. Christmas asked not to be mentioned as this film would give it a bad name. (And this was the same Christmas that had no problem with being namedropped in any of the Silent Night Deadly Night entries, so go figure!)
I would be several miles beyond remiss if I didn’t mention that there was also a wealth of clones of Die Hard and Die Hard 2 in the following years. Anytime there were terrorists in some sort of enclosed area, it became Die Hard on a (insert something here). For instance, there was Under Siege, which was “Die Hard on a destroyer”, Sudden Death which was “Die Hard at a hockey game”, Passenger 57 which was “Die Hard on a plane”, and of course, Sister Act which was “Die Hard at a convent”.
And Finally:
“When you get those feelings, insurance companies start to go bankrupt.”
Well, truth be told…I really like this one. The box office agreed with me too, since it made more than the first one, which is remarkable. Yes, it is formulaic. Yes, it hits a lot of the same beats. Yes, the characters are seemingly aware that they are in a sequel. Yes, there’s enough cussing to make the cast of Scarface blush. But at the end of the day, it is a solid sequel and a high point in what became a 5-movie (?!) series.
Now there is a level of retroactive hate thrown at this movie, which I don’t understand. Most it comes from the fact that it isn’t the first movie, which it never could be. Die Hard was lightning in a bottle. But at least Die Hard 2 never embarrasses itself, not by a longshot. I’m sure most folks dump on the film because they never took the time to sit and watch it. My daughter is in her rockin’ teen years and watched Die Hard 2 for the first time this year, after watching the original Die Hard last Christmas. You know what she thought? She thought that watching John McClane blast through hordes of terrorists is very satisfying. Right then and right there I realized two things: 1) she’s absolutely right, and 2) I am doing an amazing job parenting.
“Hey, Carmine, let me ask you something. What sets off the metal detectors first? The lead in your ass or the shit in your brains?”
Oh and as we close out, people are so worried about classifying Die Hard as a Christmas movie. The debate has raged for years, with definite lines drawn and opinions solidified on the matter at hand. This has caused nothing but friction amongst families and friends, which is tragic to suffer through over the holidays to be sure. But finally at the end of the day in conclusion, no matter what one thinks about Die Hard being a Christmas movie or not, let us all come together, hand in hand and heart to heart and with one confident voice declare and agree that no matter what: Die Hard 2 is definitely a Christmas movie.
A Full Rich Blather 
The first three Die Hard movies are perfect, in my opinion. The rest, well, let’s say I’m not a fan. Kinda Star Wars…
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