I'll be frank: when I posted the then-rumor that they were doing a DIE HARD prequel with a new actor as young John McClane with Willis showing up for bookends, I half-thought it was bullshit, or at least an aborted idea. God, how I wish I was right.
Collider, who also recently broke the 10 CLOVERFIELD LANE news via one of their interviews, got some choice quotes from LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD vet Len Wiseman as to the direction they’re going in the next film:
“After doing the fourth one, there were so many conversations that Bruce [Willis] and I were having about what he put into the character for DIE HARD 1. That character comes in with so much baggage, emotionally, and experience. He’s already divorced, he’s bitter, his Captain hates him and doesn’t want him back. So, what created that guy? We’ve never seen the actual love story. We know its demise, but we’ve never seen what it was like when he met Holly, or when he was a beat cop in ‘78 in New York when there was no chance of him making detective. It’s always been something I’ve been thinking about, and now we’re doing it. And it ties in.
The reason I say prequel/sequel is because I wasn’t going to do it without Bruce. I’m also not going to do it with Bruce being a cameo bookend gimmick. It’s really working into the plot, with the ‘70s having ramifications on present-day Bruce. It inter-cuts in a very fun, imaginative way with present-day John McClane.
The film itself will take place on New Years’ Eve 1979, so trying to gear things towards that would be fun, if we could come out around the same time, but these movies take their own paths.””
There it is, guys. All that “baggage” we’ve always wondered about will finally be revealed in this one, as well as just how Holly Gennaro became the best thing that ever happened to a bum like McClane. Because, of course.
This almost doesn’t warrant mentioning, but a huge part of the charm of the first DIE HARD was that this guy was in a situation that was way, way, way above his pay grade, and that there was very little likelihood he’d make it out on top (or at least without bleeding wounds all over his body). One of our editors posited that a FRENCH CONNECTION-type riff on DIE HARD could work, if they kept the threat local and added a gritty, TAXI DRIVER-era feel to his early days on the NYPD, but knowing Wiseman, there’s about as much chance in that as McClane not saying his trademark catchphrase at some point in the film. The baddies inevitably be larger than life, if not quite in the same ballpark as Hans & Co., thus negating the whole “wrong place at the wrong time” hook that made the first one the classic that it is. After all, if he’s been killin’ terrorists since the ‘70s, then he was just waiting for those German dudes to storm a building he was in right after he had a fight with his wife, right?
As for Wiseman’s comment about “the demise” of McClane and Holly’s marriage, well, someone seems to be forgetting that the end of both of the first films solidify their relationship after the strain that the cross-country move put on it. Is there anything to be gained from actually seeing how John actually wooed his future wife, other than some requisite scenes of tough banter (that will undoubtedly pale in comparison to their interplay in the original)?
But at the end of the day, the main reason this one won’t work is that no one gives a fuck about anyone else playing John McClane. Sure, they’ll slap Bruce’s face all over the poster, even if he’s really just a “Special Appearance,” but once people figure out that it’s essentially TRAIL OF THE PINK PANTHER, that’s all she friggin’ wrote, I’d imagine.
Does anyone have any interest in seeing young John McClane’s early days as a beat cop in NYC? If so, who should take the unenviable task of inhabiting the role that singlehandedly catapulted Bruce Willis to global superstardom??
As for the fact that it takes place at a New Years’ Eve party, mirroring the Christmas settings of the first two DIE HARDs, well, that just makes me think of a particular joke in this:
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