New York cop John McClane’s trip to his wife’s L.A. office block for a Christmas party that gets taken over by armed terrorists is the setup formed the basis for one of the most lucrative action movie franchises ever created. The Die Hard sequels have varied in quality, with the second movie moving the original’s premise to an airport, the inventive third one seeing the return of director John McTiernan, the fourth one taking the scope of the story nationwide, and the fifth and most recent one being universally panned.
The sequels to Die Hard have had some great scenes, but they’ve also had some terrible ones (the ratio differs from sequel to sequel).
10 Die Hard’s Best: The Roof Jump
John McClane’s most useful ability is the ability to think quickly on his (bare) feet. When he gets all the hostages up onto the roof in Die Hard, the sniper-wielding FBI agent in the helicopter above mistakes him for one of the terrorists and prepares to open fire.
So, McClane ties a fire hose around his waist and jumps off the roof, narrowly avoiding an explosion. When he fails to break the window below with his bleeding feet, he shoots the glass and swings through. Then, the hose falls from the roof and threatens to drag McClane back out the window.
9 Die Hard’s Worst: “The Quarterback Is Toast!”
Naming the worst scene in Die Hard is difficult because it’s a near-perfect action movie masterpiece and there’s something to enjoy in almost every scene. But, all the stuff with the computer hacker, Theo, has aged very poorly since 1988, particularly his one-liners, including the ironically iconic “The quarterback is toast!”
8 Die Hard 2’s Best: “How Can The Same S*** Happen To The Same Guy Twice!?”
Renny Harlin’s sequel to Die Hard pretty transparently nabs the premise of the original and crams it into a new setting. Instead of saving his estranged wife from the hostile takeover of an office building, McClane now has to save his estranged wife from the hostile takeover of an airport.
But, as long as Die Hard 2 was going to copy its predecessor’s premise, at least it got meta with it. When McClane gets a minute to himself, he says, “how can the same sh*t happen to the same guy twice!?”
7 Die Hard 2’s Worst: Ejecting Out Of An Exploding Plane
After McClane races Stuart and his henchmen to a plane in Die Hard 2, they manage to lock him in the cockpit and fill it with grenades, ensuring that he’ll die. McClane’s escape requires the audience to stretch their imagination a lot as he straps himself into the ejector seat and comes flying out of the explosion like Indiana Jones in a fridge.
6 Die Hard With A Vengeance’s Best: The Subway Bomb
McClane and Zeus’ first experience with Simon Gruber’s bombs takes place in New York’s subway system. While Zeus is in a tense standoff with a cop who won’t let him answer Gruber’s call, McClane is frantically searching a crowded train for a bomb that’s about to go off.
This culminates in an explosive payoff, literally, as McClane chucks the bomb out the back of the train right before it blows and the train is propelled into the station by the blast.
5 Die Hard With A Vengeance’s Worst: McClane Is Spat Out Of A Vent Right Next To Zeus
One of the most fun things about Die Hard with a Vengeance is that it’s a buddy cop movie that pairs up McClane with Harlem shopkeeper Zeus Carver. Bruce Willis shares impeccable chemistry with Samuel L. Jackson, and their two characters share a hilarious dynamic.
When McClane is flooded out of a tunnel and gets spat out into the street, at that precise moment, Zeus happens to be driving past that exact spot on his way back from Yankee Stadium, and it’s a little too coincidental to be believable.
4 Live Free Or Die Hard’s Best: The Apartment Shootout
The Die Hard movies work best when McClane is reluctantly drawn into the action. At the beginning of Live Free or Die Hard, he’s ready to call it a night when he’s sent to bring in hacker Matt Farrell. When he gets to Farrell’s apartment, the place is ambushed by mercenaries in tactical gear and his computer is blown up.
Suddenly, McClane is thrust into another wildly dangerous situation as he tries to get Farrell out of the apartment and foil his highly trained attackers, all while firing off one-liners like “that’s gonna wake the neighbors.”
3 Live Free Or Die Hard’s Worst: The Fighter Jet Chase
While cyberterrorist Thomas Gabriel is headed to his hangar to make a getaway with a kidnapped Lucy McClane, her father John is close behind in a truck. But, when the military sends a fighter jet to shoot missiles at Gabriel, the jet mistakes John’s truck for Gabriel’s vehicle and starts firing at him.
There are a lot of scenes in Live Free or Die Hard that stretch the audience’s suspension of disbelief, like when McClane sends a police car soaring toward a helicopter, but, for a franchise that began with a regular guy cutting his feet on broken glass, this scene is a little too over-the-top.
2 A Good Day To Die Hard’s Best: McClane Arrives In Russia
The character played by Bruce Willis in A Good Day to Die Hard doesn’t even feel like John McClane. He’s just a gun-toting maniac who starts popping off an automatic weapon whenever Eastern Europeans come near him—in other words, a generic action movie protagonist.
The only time that McClane almost feels like McClane is when he first arrives in Russia. He’s chatting to his cab driver when a bomb goes off, and he sees his son fleeing the scene. As he steals a truck and drives toward the chaos, McClane grumbles to himself, a classic hallmark of the character.
1 A Good Day To Die Hard’s Worst: Let’s Go To Chernobyl
The screenplay for A Good Day to Die Hard was never going to be the smartest piece of literature ever written, but that didn’t mean it had to be interminably dumb. Throughout the Russian-set movie, the characters talk about a “meltdown” in Chernobyl when really, the pressure vessel ruptured.
That’s forgivable, but what isn’t forgivable is McClane and his son driving a car full of guns across a freeway to Chernobyl in a couple of hours. Chernobyl isn’t even in Russia. It’s like this movie was written by children.
from ScreenRant - Feed https://ift.tt/2VwAC8a
0 Comments
Please don't use vulgar comments and avoid discussion on Religious matters