THE BATMAN VS. SUPERMAN CHALLENGE

So the big shocker out of SDCC was that visionary director short-attention-span pot-banger Zack Snyder's MAN OF STEEL sequel will feature a Superman/Batman showdown.  People got all excited and I get why.  The clash of those particular titans was nothing short of DY-NO-MITE in Frank Miller's The Dark Night Returns.  So, when Harry Lennix was brought out to read the dialogue from that epic graphic novel, that's exactly what it evoked.

Say hello to my little friend.

Now, let's be sure to temper that with the follow-up statement that it will be "inspired by" the events in that book, not an actual telling of those events.  This makes sense given that we're dealing with a much younger Superman and, presumably, a somewhat chronologically-matched Bats.  This also however, presents the problem I wish to discuss today.

Who do you root for?  In TDKR(-eturns, not -ises), you rooted for Batman. Hands down. It was his story, and even though he had clearly gone off the deep end, Miller had done a bang-up job of transforming Kal El into a phony government shill AND it was exciting to see Bruce Wayne team up with Oliver Queen to fight dirty against outwit the superfella.

But now it's a Superman story, and only the second in this iteration.  We've only just met this version of the man in blue.  He's young, he's likable, nobody owns him.  So, what, he's just supposed to take it the hard way when this screw-loose vigilante in bat suit starts hurling Kryptonite batarangs his way?  And for that matter, why would the Bat go after him in the first place?  They better answer that pretty darn well before the fists start flying.  (And I'm sure they will.  Maybe it's because this last Son of Krypton lets cities get destroyed.  Who knows?  Think maybe young Bruce's parents were killed in one of those falling skyscrapers?  I mean, a boatload of people were, so why not them?)

Or maybe Superman will go all cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs this time (like, maybe, Mola Ram makes him drink the blood of Kali Ma from a skull or something - I don't know, it's a placeholder...) and they'll call in the caped crusader to reel him back in. [Possible sample dialogue - BATMAN (growls): It was the black sleep of Kali!]

But you see the challenge.  Right now, it's Superman's good will to lose.  We just got to know him.  In theory we kind of like him (well, some people do, anyway).  BUT...In one two-and-a-half-hour movie, they need to get us up to speed on how Clark is doing in his new life at the Daily Planet, show how he uses his super skillz to save the city on a day-to-day basis, introduce the new Batman, give us a villain worth   his or her weight in evil-doing, then come up with a DAMN GOOD REASON why this new Batman and this new Superman would come to blows?  That means at least a two scenes where things seem okay, one or two more where things start to turn, and one big betrayal of some kind that makes the conflict simply unavoidable. (Problem #2: Which city to destroy in the confrontation this time?)

That's a lot of water to carry in one movie.  And I'm predicting right now that it won't be anywhere near as powerful and resonant as it was in TDKR (you know which one I mean).  It can't be.  That battle was borne of decades of these two growing sick of each other and their differing philosophies.  This disagreement will have all of twenty minutes tops to percolate.  Now, some fans might think that's okay, as long as the fight achieves total physical/audio-visual/CGI kickass-osity.  But I say they're wrong.  This one needs to mean something.  It's not some villain of the week, we're talking about here.  It's the two most important characters in the DC universe.

So...yeah...  Let's not all get too excited just yet.  I mean, who knows?  Maybe they'll do some Superfly Level 10 Story Math-nastics and blow our collective mind.  But somehow...I doubt it.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the matter.

OO

ATTENTION STUDIOS! (This is for your own good...)

ATTENTION STUDIOS: The audience doesn't give a crap if you make money.  They don't care if your movie was number one or number ten in its opening weekend, or even if it missed the top ten by two cents.  The audience only cares if it's good.

Now, you may have figured out a pretty good hustle, banking on the opening weekend crowd to make back most of your budget before people realize your movie's just not worth it. It worked really well for a good long time.  But then TV got good.  Real good.  And video games went from two-minute, three-life diversions to became deep, fully-interactive, rich and immersive stories.  Now your little hustle isn't producing like it used to.  So, what do you do? MORE! LOUDER! FASTER! SHOCK AND AWE, SHOCK AND AWE, SHOCK AND AWE!  (Oh and you gotta see it in 3-DEEEEEEE!)

Please listen to me, Studios, because this is for your own good.  People love their stories. They'll turn anything into a story.  They'll translate sporting events into stories. They steal their stories, they love them so much.  They write their own versions, they love them so much.  They tell them around tables and in restaurants and bars, and on playgrounds and in school, and even n their minds while they sleep because they love them so much.

But explosions are not stories. Explosions are brief moments of of empty, albiet spectacular, activity.  Robots are not stories.  Robots are tools used to do work humans don't want to do.  A cool shot or special effect is not in itself a story.

So, in reminding you how to do your jobs, let me ask and try to answer three questions:

1) What is a story?
2) What is entertainment?
3) What is good?

Question #1 may be the easiest to answer.  A story is a series of linear events that change a person forever. Sounds simple enough, right?

Question #2 is pretty easy, too.  Entertainment is an emotionally satisfying experience.  If people step out of their lives for whatever reason - need for escape, a desire to laugh or cry, or simply to pass the time - they want that time to have been spent well.  They may not always use these words, but this is always what they're after.

Question #3 is the bitch. It's easy to tell a story and with a little effort, you might get an audience to say, "It was okay. Decent rental."  But you need more than that, especially with what it costs to make a movie these days.  You need that same guy to come back again and again, to bring his friends and sing to the world about how great this story is.  When that guy sits down in a theater he's making a deal with you: "I'm giving you my time. There's only so much time to give. Make my sacrifice worth it.  Show me that you thought this through, that you've looked at something real that we all experience and came up with a way of looking at it that actually helps me get through it.  Show me who I am in this crazy world and how I can come out of it on top." That's your task no matter what kind of movie you're making...and it's a tall order. So difficult is that to achieve, in fact, that you often look like like you'd rather not even try.

"But, you don't understand. Movies cost so much to make and people aren't going to theaters anymore.   We gotta give them something bigger than they can get at home or, to be honest, we'll never make our money back."

Nobody cares.

"But don't you want us to keep making movies?"

Not like this.

"But this is what people pay for!"

They're starving for better but they'll take anything.

"But Man  of Steel made $400 million!"

Nobody cares but you.

"People want spectacle.  They vote with their dollars."

Not when it's empty spectacle.  Then they'll steal off the internet.

"Okay, Smartguy, so you tell me what they want!"

All right, then...

It's not the war, it's the farm boy who thinks he's missing it and the princess who falls for the scoundrel.

It's not the Nazis with the supernatural weapon, it's the archeologist who needs to stop them making it up as he goes.

It's not the shark, it's the three unlikely friends teaming up to hunt it down.

It's not the extraterrestrial, it's the kid who befriends him.

It's not the UFOs, it's the family man who's affected by their contact.

It's not the building with the terrorists, it's the cop who can't believe he has to stop them if he ever wants to patch things up with his wife.

It's not the Mafia, it's the hopes of one father for his favorite son.

All of these movies were blockbusters.  All of them broke the hundred million mark in a time when tickets cost a fraction of what they do now.  All of them are watched again and again and again in homes.  What do they all have in common?  Oh, come on, that's an easy one.  Fine, I'll tell you.  They all have, at their centers, identifiable characters with real human emotions.  The spectacle is secondary to the truth.  This is what we all want when we settle down in our chairs, alone in the dark, to lose ourselves in a movie.  We want to see someone on the screen that is us.  We want to see someone going through a problem like ours and we want to see them prevail.  Now, whether that takes place in outer space or net to the kitchen sink doesn't matter one bit.  What matters is that we can see ourselves in them. What matters is that we can identify. You give them that and you'll make your money.  Trust me.

Do you get it now?  Somehow, I don't think you do.

- OO

THE WORST OSCARS EVER!

Tonight is Oscar night - my Superbowl Sunday.  I make no apologies for the Oscars, as has become the fashion of late, because, to be frank, there is no need to.  The Academy Awards are a great Hollywood tradition, a celebration of the art and craft of movies.

Yet, every year, people complain.  They don't like them movies that were nominated or the show was too long or there were too many musical numbers or there were not enough musical numbers or the speeches were dull or the speeches got played off or the host was lame... (For my money, the funniest complaint in recent history was, "No stars showed up."  Ah, but they did, in droves.  They were just young stars.  Stars an older audience didn't recognize.  That one said a lot about the one doing complaining.)  Suffice to say, every year it's "the worst Oscars ever."

Though, that's a patently silly (and grandiose) statement - it's becoming as much a tradition as the Oscars themselves.  It makes me wonder what people think the Oscars should be.  You get conflicting answers when you ask people that, most of them mere lists of what they shouldn't be.  But that's not the question.  What should they be?

To answer that, it's important to first state in no uncertain terms what the Oscare actually are - a benefit party that helps to fund the great work the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences does to advance the art, science, innovation, resotration and preservation of film.

1. They should be a lavish and unapologetic celebration of movies, let's us relive some of the moments we loved. Because movies matter to our cultural identity.
2. They should be hosted by a gracious lover of movies who doesn't see him or herself as sitting at the kids' table.  He or she should be a friend of the movies, too, and as such, have the right to poke a little fun at his or her old buddy without being insulting.
3. They should feel like a relaxing, fun party, where all your friends, dress up, get together and have a good time.
4. They should be a chance for artists to show real gratitude for the honor they've been given.  (I think we all agree the worst speeches usually involve lists of agents' and managers' names, whereas the best ones are given by Daniel Day Lewis.)
5. They should be about movies, nothing else.

I think if the Oscars hit these five points, they will work...every time.

But they need the audience to meet them half way.  We can't approach them with cynicism year after year.  We need to let them be okay.  But there are forces that want to keep that form happening.

Ever since the fashion industry intruded on the awards, there's been a steady rise in snark levels.  This isn't intrinsic to movie fandom.  It's poor behavior learned from outsider fashionistas.  "Who are you wearing," is irrelevant to cinema.  I agree with enjoying the fashions on display, but a three-hour red carpet fashion show isn't a celebration of movies.  It's not as if filmmakers show up to the fashion awards and complain about the designers' taste in movies.  That would be silly.  Especially if it got a three-hour televised special right before the awards began.

Anyway, I hope the show is good.  I hope host Seth McFarlane handles himself with grace and remembers that his "Family Guy" voices have nothing to do with movies.  And hope, when tomorrow comes, that people can resist the tired old critique, "That was the worst Oscars ever."

- OO

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (Part 4 - The Five Major Mistakes of Die Hard 5)

I'm a little aghast right now.  I just got back from seeing this travesty...

There were about 20 people in the theater.  One of them left around 20 minutes in and never came back.  That being said, this was one matinee.  By all accounts DH5 will top the weekend box office. And the good people at Fox will think they did everything right because money.  (Sigh...)

Okay, to be completist, I need to write about this one, but it's just been released and I detest spoilers.  So I'm going to be vague about the plot.  I suspect, however, if you go see it, you'll be amazed at how little more there is to tell.  A few key words and phrases, a reveal here and there, but not much more.  Here's goes.

Some high-level Russian politician goes to see an aging prisoner who is set to testify in a major court case.  The politician says something like, "You give me the file and I'll give you back your life."  And the prisoner tells him he doesn't really care about his life.  The politician says he'll never let him testify, and none of this makes any sense yet. You just kind of go along thinking, "They'll tell us at some point."  Then a young guy goes into a Russian nightclub, commits an obvious and publicly visible crime that he's arrested for.  We know from the trailers that he's Jack McClane.

In New York, John McClane (who's still an excellent shot after all these years on the force) gets the news that his son has been arrested in Russia.  John looks weary, crestfallen. Maybe this is heartbreak for his son, who we're told grew up a troubled problem child, always getting in his own way.  His generic cop buddy from the NYPD gives him the whole scoop on Jack's arrest and when his hearing will be.  John plans to take his vacation time to go to Russia to try and help Jack out.  Generic NYPD guy warns John that they do things differently in Russia.  John's response? "Yeah, me too."  (Really? You've been to Russia and you know you do things differently there?  Okay, whatever.)

So John gets a ride to the airport from Lucy.  (Always nice to see her.)  Here's what she looks like driving him to the airport.

"Dad, try not to make and even bigger mess of this."

She gives him an Idiots' Guide to Russia and tells him she loves him.  (Because she does ever since they made up in the last movie.)  Next thing you know John is on a plane, studying the files Generic NYPD guy gave him.  These files are all in Russian.  Then before you know it, he's on the ground, stuck in Garden Ring traffic.  His cabbie is a jovial fellow who takes pity on him for being so uncomfortable in Russia and let's him get out and walk without paying.  He walks to the courthouse, arriving just in time to see Jack get loaded off a prison truck and hustled into court right behind the aging prisoner we saw at the opening of this thing.  A bunch of noisy stuff happens and soon Jack is out of shackles and escorting the Russian prisoner to a disguised panel van so he can  escort him to a safe house somewhere in Moscow.  But in walks John, looking a little bit like this.

"You're only making it worse."

In fact, for the next 20 minutes or so, this is how he looks.  Confused.  This is because, HE HAS NO IDEA WHAT'S GOING ON!  He still thinks Jack is in trouble for being some kind of troubled youth.  He doesn't wonder why Jack is barking orders in Russian at this older prisoner.  Jack keep telling he shouldn't be here, he's not wanted here, he's in the way.  John honestly thinks he's being a good dad by chasing his son and trying to keep him from getting in more trouble than he's already in.

Meanwhile this nice, young woman...

"Zzzzzzziiiippp."

...had ordered some gunmen to kill Jack but make sure they take back the older prisoner alive.  So the gunmen chase Jack and prisoner in the biggest dump truck looking thing you've ever seen, and John, wanting to catch up to his son and talk some sense into him, steals the biggest flatbed truck you've ever seen.  These three monster trucks have a high speed chase-shootout-demolition derby on the streets and highways of Moscow, nary a cop in sight, I might add.  John tumbles the flatbed and has to steal some other guy's car - by punching him the face and saying, "I don't understand a word you're saying." Finally, John pulls a maneuver that lets Jack get away, but it costs he rolls his second car and Jack decides he has to go back for him.  They manage to get away and head for the safe house.  (The guy who left, never saw the end of this sequence, by the way.  It was just too much of a noisy, blurry, shaky cam experience for him, I guess.  And I guess some people just like to know what the heck is going on in a car chase. That wasn't really an option here most of the time.)

Okay, so they wrecked the city and Jack's mad that John is there, but at least they made it to the safe house.  End of Act 1.  John finally figures out that Jack is in the CIA.  They want the Russian alone because he has a file full of evidence that will help them with whatever job they've been working on.  John's relieved and here comes the only reference to Holly since the end of DH3... "Your mom, will be relieved.  She and I thought it was drugs."  Okay, this is key because it tells us that 1) Holly is still alive in the world of Die Hard and 2) she and John occasionally talk about the kids.  But then the safe house stops being safe and they have to flee.

On the street, Jack tells John (whom he doesn't want there) to babysit the most important prisoner in all of Russia while he goes to check if the coast is clear.  This allows the most important prisoner in all of Russia to have a father-to-father talk with John about how it's never too late to make things right with your kids.  He has a daughter, so he knows.  (Any guesses who the daughter is? If you guessed the only important female character in all of Russia, you, too could run a studio.)

NOTE: Service elevators don't play "Girl From Ipanema."
Only cliche movie elevators do.

Look I don't want to relive the whole wafer-thin plot.  Suffice to say, it doesn't feel like Die Hard.  Not once.  Not ever.  In Die Hard, if an assault helicopter destroys a downtown hotel, someone gets the President on the horn.  In Die Hard noisy spectacles not only end up on the news, they represent a golden opportunity for the men and women who report the news.  In Die Hard people everywhere get involved in one way or another.  For example, that Russian cabbie?  I guarantee we would have seen him again, were this a Die Hard movie. But here, it's all done wrong (except maybe McClane's costume - they got that right, at least), but not only is it all done wrong, it's all done wrong in the washed-out monochromatic blue and amber hues of some of today's top shelf TV commercials.  This is some of the worst camera work and color timing Hollywood has to offer.

So, to move on to the title of this post, here are the five things wrong with Die Hard 5.

1) The credit "A John Moore Film" - This is the first of his movies I've ever seen, so I'm not going to go down the road of critiquing his body of work.  My beef with this is that it I got the sense that it actually was a John Moore film.  When you take the reins of the latest installment of a franchise, you don't get the luxury of "putting your stamp on it."  Your job is to step out of the way so much that you become invisible, like a runway model whose job is to make you see the clothes, and let the essential truth of the franchise be your North Star.  If you have Die Hard or Star Wars or Star Trek or any such name in the title of your film, it's not YOUR film.  It's a film you got to direct.  It's a ship you are must steer straight.  It's not yours to plot a new course.  Nobody cares about seeing "Your Die Hard," John Moore.  We want to see Die Hard, plain, simple and clean.  (To be fair, though, for all I know John Moore fought tooth and nail to make it more Die Hard and less him.  I guess we'll never know.)

2) John McClane isn't in it - From the moment we see him, John is quiet, sullen, morose, weary.  He looks old, barely awake.  Never do we see what made Bruce Willis everybody's favorite action guy for a good decade or more - his natural sense of humor.  He was more John McClane in Moonrise Kingdom than he was here.

3) Holly - Don't reference her if it's going to be empty.  There's a moment at the end for, in any and all true life circumstances, Holly would have been present.  Her absence was as glaring as the freeze frame  (!) before the final fade out.  Ironically, it makes her the absentee parent.

4) Isolation - Nothing had any effect on the actual world around it.  By that, I mean the mega-destrcutive car chase in Act 1, the destruction of the downtown hotel, the eventual climatic battle in a remote location - all of it is done in complete isolation, far from all the civilians and authorities that would want to get in the way.  It makes the entire exercise achingly generic.

5) Scale - This is a very small flick.  Die Hard was an event.  They treated it like an event even before they knew what a crowd-pleasing hit it would be.  That sense of importance, the feeling that his is one of Fox's flagship titles.  But this film feels like a B-movie at best, dumped in February on as many small screens as possible.  Nobody seems to care what an opportunity this was.  Instead, they churned out a product that will not be long remembered.

This begs the question that got me blogging about this in the first place. Can Die Hard be rescued?  I do believe it can, if done carefully.  It's not enough to drop in an Ode to Joy ringtone or snippets of Michael Kamen's original score here and there.  You need a writer who remembers what made it great and a director who wants to honor what came before and a studio exec who understands what all this means.  My fear is that nobody in the position to make that happen really thinks it's necessary.

Okay, I'm done with this thing.  It's bringing out too much negativity in me.  Next time I'll start with something I'm genuinely excited about.

- OO

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (Part 3 - Nothing Lasts Forever)

Twelve years passed since Die Hard With a Vengeance.  Then, in June of 2007, we were given DH4, with the somewhat cumbersome (and oddly New Hampshire state motto-ish) title Live Free or Die Hard.

Its not your father's Die Hard...or yours either, come to think of it.

The titel alone was the first bog indicator that something had changed.  It implied history, the freedom of this great nation threatened by tyranny.  (Deep-throated trailer voice: "And only one man can stop it." Yippie-ki-yay.)  This would be a big story, with the security of the entire country at stake.  Let me repeat, THE ENTIRE COUNTRY.  Not a building in Los Angeles, or an airport in DC, or the subways and city blocks of Manhattan.  No, this time, it was that which makes America America that was being threatened.  This time, the danger would cross state lines.

So, how do you finagle a story line to justify a NYC Police Detective getting wrapped up in what is essentially a federal cyber-terror manhunt?  Well, you make him a babysitter.  See, when some anonymous hackers (see what I did there?) knock out the power at the FBI's Cyber-Security Division, the G-men look to the usual suspects only to find most of them have been murdered. The ones that are still alive need to be taken into protective custody stat!  

Justin Long plays one of these top-rated hackers.  A stammering, but charming young fellow named Matt Farrell. (We buy him as a hacker, by the way, because he played a computer on TV...)

"Hi, I'm a PC." "And I'm a Mac."

So, he knows about these things.

Naturally, when a single hacker needs to be taken into protective custody and transported from New York to DC, you get the guy who stopped terrorist attacks in both of those cities.  (I feel like if they could have figured out a way for him to swing by Avenue of the Stars between Olympic and Santa Monica on the way, they would have.)  You get, Detective John McClane.  Naturally.

So, on his way, McClane gets dressed down for being a lousy absentee father and husband by none other than his now college-age daughter, Lucy, played by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in an inspired casting choice... 

"McClane residence. Lucy McClane speaking."

...before she storms off to let him think about what a loser he's been to her and her brother and her mom all her life.  (I guess she only saw DH3...)  In any case, it's good she stormed off when she did because a second more of arguing would have kept McClane from reaching Matt Farrell's apartment and saving his life in nick of time.  At this point in the theater, I was squirming in my chair, wrestling with mixed feelings.  I was excited to get more Die Hard and I was still assuming that once the setup business was all in order, we'd start seeing some.  I sat through the Lucy/John confrontation, preparing myself to accept the truth that the studio and I simply disagreed on the direction of John and Holly's marriage and since they had all the money, and in the battle of who McClane was in 1 & 2 vs. who he was in 3, they decided to go with 3 and that was just how it was going to be from here on out.  I decided to give it some time and see if maybe they could make it still feel like a Die Hard movie.  And to be honest, the next thing that happened didn't disappoint.  McClane got to Farrell just as the bullets started to fly and in short order he was throwing Justin Long around the room, telling him what to do to stay alive.  I bought this.  McClane knows how to avoid a bullet or two.  He's a man of quick thinking action.  All Matt Farrell knows is his keyboard.  It was fun to see John McClane coaching this kid on survival in the middle of an intense gunfight.

Crazy things happen for the next several minutes.  You remember this exchange from the trailer, don't you?   

"You killed a helicopter...with a car?"

"I was out of bullets."

Sigh...

Okay.  It's gonna be that kind of movie.  Now, look, I'm not opposed to a big crazy over-the-top action movie AT ALL.  I love 'em.  But when that movie also had Die Hard in the title, I guess I just hope for a little something extra.  Again, DH1 came out and people were blown away because it was a big action blockbuster that also had great characters. There were peaks and valleys, ebbs and flows of emotion that made you invest in, nay really care about, these people.  Let me state that again with the appropriate emphasis.  They made you care about THESE people:

Let's take a walk back in time for s moment.

At this point in 1988, I knew McClane was nervous about being in a strange city, his wife was back to using her maiden name (ouch), he was hoping to show her he'd evolved enough to win her back, a rich coke-head (Hart Bochner)... 

"Sprechen sie talk?"

...was trying to put the moves on her, she was eclipsing him in every way and there was nothing he could do about it.  This was looking like it was going to be be the worst Christmas of his life.  THEN hostages take over the building and the one person he cares most about becomes a hostage.  And here he is on the run with not even the shoes on his feet.

At this point in 1990, I knew McClane had transferred to LA, despite misgivings, but because it was the good thing to do for his marriage and family (take note, grown-up Lucy).  He had gone ahead to visit the in-laws in DC with their two kids and Holly was coming on a later flight because, well, work is work.  He borrows his in-laws car to pick her up at Dulles and it gets towed.  Great.  As he waits for the flight to land, he spots some suspicious behavior, goes to report it, and is summarily dismissed by the local PD.  

"You'd be surprised what I make in a month."

Because nobody messes around at an airport, ever, let alone when your wife is n the air headed that way, he investigates himself.  Not the smartest idea, but he's always been a bit of a cowboy, hasn't he?  THEN, terrorists hijack the control tower, crash a jumbo jet and issue their demands in order to be kept from crashing more jumbo jets.  The one person he cares about most is a hostage again, only this time, IN THE AIR, with fuel running out.  At least he has his shoes on this time.

At this point in 1995, shaky start.  Holly' not really in the picture.  John's kind of given up.  Harder to root for a guy who's given up on the person he cares about most.  But bombs are going off on New York City.  It has to stop.  The police are at their wits' end.  THEN the bomber demands that McClane be brought in.  Nobody wants him there, but they want bombs going off in Manhattan less, so they comply.  They do what the bomber wants and put him on a street corner in Harlem in his boxers and a sandwich board that declares a bomber-prescribed hate for African Americans using the worst worst there is for them.  Local man of conscience, Zeus Carver, steps in to keep him from getting killed and soon they're tied together in a series of puzzles orchestrated by the big crazy bad guy.  Not exactly 1988 or 1990 is it?  What keeps Zeus invested?  Conscience alone?  Maybe.  But now we're getting into questions of why and how and what...and we're thinking, we're doing math.  Summer vacation is over.

So here we are back in 2007, and hackers we don't know - who themselves attacked a government security division - are getting murdered by someone.  McClane (and presumably a handful of other cops in other regions of the country - what are their stories?) is sent to take one of them into protective custody.  But first, his daughter is mad at him.  Not in danger or anything, just mad.  McClane and the hacker get shot at, they flee, reach the FBI in DC and on the way to being moved to a safer environment, they get ambushed and kill a helicopter with a car.  THEN the cyber-terrorists start shutting down computer systems and networks all over the country and they have to drive to West Virginia to stop them from blowing up a power station and then...and then... and then...  I'm sorry, who am I supposed to be caring about right now?  (Too...much...math...must...remember...it's...summer...)

Over the next hour they go to Maryland, trade words with Kevin Smith, figure out that the bad guy, Thomas Gabriel, (a pre-Justified Timothy Olyphant) used to work as a hacker for the government and was drummed out because they didn't believe we were vulnerable to a cyber-attack and now he wants to steal the social security information of everyone in America or something... Eventually, he kidnaps Lucy - because...we...need to make it personal for John?  Finally?  Somehow?  And we get the first and only scene in the entire movie that feels like Die Hard.  Gabriel puts her on the phone with John to prove she's alive.  She looks around the room, taking a head count, then blurts out, "There's six of them..." and goes on to list some vital information she knows he'll use to find them and kill them.  I loved her in that moment.  She's daddy's little girl all right.

Blah, blah, blah...they track her down, McClane kills Maggie Q by dropping an SUV on her in an elevator shaft - as one might expect - and it comes down to a showdown designed to echo the one at the end of DH1.  And this is where McClane finally says Yippie-Ki-Yay Mother--  Ah, but in the theatrical version, the second half of his word is covered by the sound of a gun.  DH4, it seems, is rated PG-13.  It is he first Die Hard movie not to get an R rating.  It's the first one that wasn't made by adults for adults.  Rather it was made by adults for 13-year-olds.  And this goes a long way to explaining why it's devoid of the kinds of complex themes that made the original films so compelling.  Kids just don't want to hear a bunch of grown-ups dealing with grown-up things, right?  I mean, we all know that.  Right?

You would think.  But, a friend of mine recently showed his 14 year old son the original Die Hard and the response was not what you would expect.  The boy said, "The beginning was slow, but the rest was really great."  My friend wisely told his son that it's because the beginning was slow that the rest was really great.  The kid got it.  It made perfect sense to him that he was invested in the characters and their outcomes because he was given time to get to know them first as people.

I mean, as an action movie all by itself, DH4 is still better than your average straight-to-cable whatnot.  But as a Die Hard movie, it's a big, fat, missed opportunity.  The secret to Die Hard is that the spectacular action set-pieces were incidental to the more important and far more satisfying personal stuff.  

Who could forget the moment when Sgt. Al Powell beat his own personal demons?

Who can forget this guy...

...realizing something was seriously wrong and punching out this guy...?

Or this working relationship?

Or him...

...being so mad about this...

...that he wants a one-on-one fight to the death with McClane.  Then there's this charming fellow...

"You let me in or I call INS..."

Everyone who played a role in this movie is memorable.  None of them, besides John and Holly, were more memorable than this guy, of course...

"Nice suit. John Phillips, London. I have two myself. Rumor has it Arafat buys his there."

...but that's as it should be.  (I wanted to do a whole paragraph on Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber, but to be honest, a paragraph just isn't enough. And anyway, heroes and villains are interconnected. So for him to be this good, John and Holly had to be as well.  And they were.  And he was.)

So, what's the point of all this?  The point is that when Die Hard was made, in 1988, there was a minimum basic requirement that movies had to meet to be considered movies at all.  They were required to have a cast of distinct and identifiable characters with genuine concerns.  Those characters had to be stressed into moments where they faced who hey were when nobody was looking and came to terms with themselves.  The had to change because the story they were living demanded it of them and they became better people because of it.  They had to want what everyone wants - to love and be loved.  All of this is baseline.  The job of the movie maker was to do all that, every time, in a fun way that was new to the eyes and the ears.  The job was to make movies you didn't just watch, they were movies you felt and would go on feeling for decades to come. Die Hard not only met that standard, it exceeded it, dwarfed it.

Today, the standard has changed.  Movies are still fun and all, but it's very rare that one will stay with you.  Every time a movie comes out with Die Hard in the title, there's a part of me that hopes it plays by the old rules, just for a little while.  But alas, as the title of the book that started all of this will tell you, Nothing Lasts Forever.

- OO

P.S. - I'm going to see A Good Day to Die Hard. (I expect I'll have a thing or two to say about it, so keep an eye out for Part 4 of this little exploration.)  Now, I don't know if it will be a fun time at the movies yet or not.  I hope it will, as I always do.  But I'm not encouraged by the one criticism I've heard so far that really matters - that John McClane isn't really John McClane anymore.  A Die Hard movie is supposed to be better than the average action flick because John McClane is better than the average action flick hero.  Take him out of the equation and the best you can hope for is an average action flick.  And there's no shortage of those.  There's an exchange in the trailer that may say it all, though.  "Need a hug?" "We're not really a hugging family."  Oh no...?

I beg to differ.

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (Part 2 - Wait...But I Thought...WHAT HAPPENED?

Die Hard With a Vengence (DH3) came out in 1995.  Movies had changed somewhat since DH2 in 1990 and a lot since DH in 1988.  There was a dwindling level of emotional content in action movies taking place in the 1990s.  Maybe it was audience impatience.  Maybe studios just figured what audiences really wanted was a little less conversation, a little more action.  Whatever the reason for this changing aesthetic, DH3 fit in perfectly with it.

Now, there's a lot about DH3 worth liking (more on that below).  Another terrorist - a mad bomber this time - is blowing up buildings and throwing NY into chaos.  For some strange reason, he talks in puzzles and demands that one man be brought in to be a part of the drama, John McClane.  The department is happy about this because John can be a bundle of trouble.  But to stop the killing of innocent citizens, they haul him in.  And this is the one of the first looks we get at John McClane in this latest installment.

He's back in NY (no longer LAPD), beaten down, hungover, angry and - for reasons only agents and business affairs executives will ever really know - once again estranged from Holly.  This represents the film's first major lapse in judgement.  Though it makes perfect sense that Holly shouldn't be given the exact same story function she held in the first two movies (heck she needn't be in the film at all for that matter), but to deny her essential importance to John's character arc through two entire films, explaining away their separation as a the result of marriage doomed to failure due to John's character flaws was a cynical and lazy choice.  He overcame those character flaws and won her back.  We saw it happen.  So why were they trying to tell us now that he's incapable of change?  In choosing this path for McClane, the filmmakers consciously decided to step back from the originality of the character and redirect him to be a generic James Bond knock-off.  From this decision on, his job was to save the world, not just stop a crime that endangered a group of innocents that happened to include someone he cared about deeply.  Again, I'm not insisting that Holly had to be a part of this story, but she didn't need to be thrown to the lions either.  In fact, the wasted opportunity here is for John to be the one in danger for a change.  To know that someone out there cares for you and needs you around is a strong motivation for survival.  This is especially true for first responders, like, say, cops.

So starting with the original premise: A mad bomber is terrorizing New York City.  His one big demand is that John McClane be forced to play a role in whatever effort is made to stop it.  The feds are involved now and McClane's being hauled in against his will anyway, so why not haul him in from LA to join the NYPD for a special investigation?  Maybe he's grown to like the sunshine of Los Angeles.  Maybe he's starting to wonder why he didn't come here sooner?  He and Holly and the kids have a nice house.  Al Powell is an easygoing partner.  Life ain't so bad.  Then the feds come and tell him they need him to come back to hellish, congested Manhattan in the middle of an August heatwave to stop a madman.  He's driven by duty, because he's that kind of guy.  Holly knows it, so she sends him off with a kiss and a dire warning that he better come back in one piece.  And, now, John McClane, who loves his wife and hates to fly, has to leave her behind and board a plane for JFK - unsure of why this murderous lunatic is demanding his attention.   Had they opened that way, well, then now I still feel like I'm in the world of Die Hard.

Once he's in NY, we could still have all the things that work well about the film as it stands: Seeing McClane on the streets of NY, the serious and unglamorous team of cops led by Larry Bryggman's weary but reliable Inspector Cobb.  Fellow cops Joe Lambert (Graham Greene) and Connie Kowalski (Colleen Camp) and the others can (and should) still be in the fold, talking smack about playing their badge numbers in the lottery and busting each others' chops like they do.  (These are the people McClane came up with.  They're not impressed with his adventure at Nakatomi or Dulles.  Imagine the fun they'd have at Hollywood McClane's expense.)

The guys don't mess around.

Putting John McClane back in NY was actually one of the things this film did right.  It gave the series the grit and sweat of a great, old, big-city cop movie.  It gives us a glimpse into the NY cop in his element for a change.  But it would have worked better to have him dragged back there.  That way,  when we find out later that the bomber is actually the vengeful brother of Hans Gruber, who has a personal vendetta against John McClane's, his return would make good thematic sense.  His past is thrust at him in ways he thought they never would be if he had any say in the matter.  He's forced to face what he left behind in more ways than one.

Now the action can begin with a nice foundation of emotional backstory.  Now we have a reason to get on his side other than wanting to hear the solutions to the puzzles thrown his way.  And above all, no mater what happens, we want him to accomplish two things beyond stopping the bomber. 1) Make peace with his old NYPD chums and 2) Get safely back to Holly where he belongs.  The added bonus to all this is that you haven't blown up the bridge to Die Hard 1 & 2, in fact, you've built  a new one.

And much of what is great about Die Hard is at work in DH3.  I enjoyed the addition of new sidekick, Zeus, played by Samuel L. Jackson.

Manhattan on foot in the sweltering heat was a great arena for testing McClane's physical limits.  The public schools being threatened, the subway cars at risk of being blown to pieces, the taxi chase through Central Park - all of this was fresh territory for the series.  But the one scene that stands out, in my estimation, that really feels like a microcosm of how the math of a Die Hard movie works, is the scene on the elevator in the Federal bank.

McClane is escorted by a bad guy dressed in and NYPD uniform and he recognizes the badge number of this imposter as that of a fallen fellow officer.  How does he remember a detail like the badge number?  Because he just had the conversation about playing badge numbers in the lottery earlier in the film.  McClane knows he's in the presence of a villain, but the villain doesn't know he knows.  It's a brilliant reversal of the Hans Gruber/Bill Clay scene from DH1.  McClane plays it cool until he sees an opening that allows him to take down everyone in the elevator.  It's that kind of detective-work moment that made us love McClane in the first two films because it allowed us to think, "Yeah, if I were him, I would've remembered that, too."

However, if the first major misstep of DH3 is the handling of Holly, the second is the gradual elimination of McClane's vulnerability.  By the end, he survives a hundred foot drop onto the deck of a ship and goes on fighting for one-and-a-quarter acts.  In DH 1 & 2, when McClane got beat up, he needed time to recover.  That ended up being valuable time for us to get inside his soul as he assessed what really mattered to him in this crazy world.  He wasn't allowed that here.  Instead, he bounces back from his and falls like he's made of steel.  When that happens, he started to drift away from being the guy we knew, the new kind of action hero that took us by surprise, and he became a much more conventional, and less interesting superhero.  AND becausee they never set up a still strong and meaningful relationship with John and Holly, the ending where he calls her to make amends (again!) just rings hollow.  They cheated themselves out of a stronger, more emotionally-satisfying ending in which he could have re-earned the respect of his old NYPD partners and headed back to L.A. wiser man who is still grateful he survived to see her another day.

UP NEXT: LIVE FREE (OF ANY NOTICEABLE RELATIONSHIP TO) DIE HARD

NOTHING LASTS FOREVER (Part 1 - Our Love Will Never Die Hard)

A Good Day to Die Hard (or as I'll refer to it from here on, Die Hard 5, or DH5) opens today and is sure to have monster-size opening weekend attendance.  I mean, of course... Who doesn't want to see a good John McClane movie again?  You remember good-old John McClane!  He was the NY cop from the seminal 1988 action film Die Hard who was a breath of fresh air because he wasn't like any other movie NY cop we'd ever seen!

"Come out to the coast. We'll get together. Have a few laughs."

Here's a guy who's afraid of flying, hates L.A., his wife has a skyrocketing career and he isn't used to that idea yet.  But he's been working on it and now all he wants is to go to LA for Christmas to see if he can somehow show her.  And maybe he can even convince her to move back to NY and restore their family under one roof.  The love's still there, after all, it's just...complicated.  So, how hard can it really be to fix?  Of course, then he screws up and slips back into old patterns, doesn't he?  Damn.  But at least he reprimands himself for it.  He is still trying.  But he's  imperfect, vulnerable, only human.  Then, AW, MAN! Terrorists lock down the building!  He didn't come to LA to save the world, he just came to save his marriage.   Now he can't do that unless he keeps these robbers from killing his wife.  This problem is above his pay grade, so he tries to report it and stay alive long enough for the cavalry to arrive and handle it.  He'll only step in if it becomes necessary and he'll only take the minimum action required to get from A to B.      

Man, I love that guy!  And audiences love that guy!  You know why?  Because, dammit, we're all imperfect and trying to be better, too.  We all want to avoid trouble so we can focus on getting or keeping our lives happy and worry-free.  When faced with trouble, we all want it resolved with a minimum of effort, too.   He's just like us in that way.  So, yeah, if they want to tell more stories about this guy, then Yippie-ki-ay.  Let's do it.

BUT...if the hard-to-avoid reviews are accurate, then John McClane isn't in this DH5.  Oh, sure, Bruce Willis is using the name John McClane.  But apparently he's using it to represent a chaos-seeking, indestructible robot.  By all accounts so far, the guy we know, love and identify with is nowhere to be found in the smear of car wrecks, explosions and shattered glass.     

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven't seen DH5 yet, but I do want to.  Or, more to the point, the nostalgic, masochistic boy in me wants to.  But not having seen it doesn't disqualify me from talking about the McClane character's replacement with a genetically identical, but inexplicably soulless copy.  I saw that happening in Live Free For Die Hard - henceforth, Die Hard 4 or DH4.  In fact, the first shades of his transformation were already visible in Die Hard With a Vengance or DH3.)

When DIE HARD hit theaters, it was the culmination of lessons learned well over nearly a century of moviemaking.  It was based on a book nobody had read, "Nothing Lasts Forever" by Roderick Thorp.  There was an attempt to make the film many years earlier with Frank Sinatra as the lead, but it never panned out.  Over the years, they retooled the character, gave him a wife instead of an adult daughter, and went in a new direction.  When it finally got a release date in 1988, Bruce Willis was best known for his turn as snarky-romantic P.I., David Addison, in TVs "Moonlighting." It was hard to imagine what kind of action star he'd be.  The pre-release posters featured the building.  No face.  They eventually released this version:  

We all felt it.  Hollywood was afraid they would scare us off with a mere TV star, so they were easing into the idea, using their tools carefully to manufacture a movie star.  What none of us who sat down in theaters realized until the film started rolling is that they didn't have to work too hard to make that happen.  Willis exuded relatable, everyman charm - the key component to making John McClane who he needed to be.  The movie itself crackled.  Director John McTiernan had found the precise balance between character, action, space, time, truth, spectacle, tension, humor, immediacy and resonance that movies must strive for to stand the test of time.  It was The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3 meets The Towering Inferno.  It was an event.  You just knew there would be sequels.

The key to the Die Hard, in the end, was not the stunts or gunfire or swinging or running or jumping or the exploding helicopters - those elements were all just fun, necessary pieces of activity.  The foundation upon which Die Hard was built on how important it was for John McClane to be good enough to deserve his marriage to Holly Gennaro.

"As long as you love me so...Let it Snow, Let it Snow, Let it Snow."

Bruce Willis and Bonnie Bedelia were a couple so believable, so ordinary and inconspicuous, that they became us, our parents, our grandparents.  They argued like us and, when they worked out what was coming between them, they made up like us.  In the end, it was those two against the world.  And the world just wouldn't leave them alone.  When John realized he was wrong, when he thought he was going to die and asked his new best friend, Al Powell (Reginald Veljohnson), to tell Holly he was sorry, he became the man she knew he could be.  From that moment on, their marriage was healed for the rest of their days.  He'd been through hell putting things right and he wasn't going to lose her twice.

This essential truth is what makes the film's follow-up, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, arguably its most successful sequel.  (It's also the thing nearly all the imitators missed when they started pitching their "Die Hard in a [Insert Location Here]" ideas.  It was never about the lockdown.  It was always about who was locked down.) In DH2, they found a new sandbox in which to play - Dulles Airport in Washington DC - and a new way to keep Holly in on the action - when the airport is taken over by paramilitary terrorists, she's on one of the planes that can't land.  As time ticks on and her plane's fuel runs low, John is once again determined to get her back in one piece.  Saving the lives of hundreds of other passengers is a close second.  Stopping the terrorists remains the merely incidental activity that needs to happen to accomplish goals one and two.

Now, the action and dialogue were not as elegant as the DH1 (outside of one of the most efficient recap/exposition scenes in modern movies to open things up - he moved to LA, despite not liking it, he did it for Holly and he still cares about what her parents think of him as a husband - all good stuff).  And maybe director Renny Harlin didn't move with the grace and confidence that McTiernan did.  There was a somewhat silly-by-today's-standards anti-technology motif, for example.  (I excuse it, in the end because it became a key part of the film's climax.)  The villain (played by William Sadler) is less unique.  (Hard to top Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber.)  But at its core, DH2 was far truer to its characters than anything that came after.  Because it knew what the central conflict was in the world of Die Hard movies, it was able to recapture the magic to some degree.

"Why does this keep happening to us?"

Not only that, they did a clever job of substituting characters from the first film. Al Powell makes an appearance, but his sidekick role is taken over by airport employee Leslie Barnes (Art Evans).  Airport Police Capt. Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) provides as formidable (and comical) an obstacle to McClane as Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson (Paul Gleason).  Also William Atherton's Richard Thornburg is a welcome return.  These are the players that make a Die Hard movie.  (Of course, they can't all be in every film, but this one managed it.  Maybe some future episode will bring back Thornburg or Powell, for old times' sake.)  That fact that consideration was given to all these roles helped make DH2 feel like its predecessor.  In a way it was like the feeling you get when you cook one of your mother's old recipes.  You didn't get it just right, but it takes you right back.

And again, the fact that John McClane takes a serious beating in his quest for his share of domestic bliss, allowed us to identify.  It allowed us to say, "Yeah, I'd go through that for the person I love.  If I really had to."

So, what happened next?  Well, after going through hell TWICE to keep his marriage intact, John McClane would be faced with his greatest challenge yet...how to do it again.

We all agree another terrorist mastermind taking Holly hostage in a contained space wouldn't really work. "We gave it to you once," we'd have said, "But this time you gotta do something new." That was the bridge between the first two films, but to go there again would be a bridge too far.  So what did the keepers of the Die Hard franchise do?  They blew up the bridge.

UP NEXT: WHAT'S WRONG WTH THIS PICTURE?