I have a fairly controversial take on the Die Hard franchise. I think that Renny Harlin’s Die Hard 2 is the best sequel in the bunch, and is a better “Die Hard” movie (in tone and intent) than the sprawling Die Hard with a Vengeance. Heck, I even wrote a book celebrating Bruce Willis’s film career, and dedicated an entire chapter to the ongoing debate pitting Die Hard 2 against With a Vengeance. So you KNOW that when I got the chance to interview Harlin on behalf of his upcoming horror movie The Strangers: Chapter 1, we were going to bring up Die Hard 2, but I was still shocked by what I learned.
Renny Harlin took over the Die Hard franchise from original helmer John McTiernan, and immediately faced a racing clock. The director was given a novel as source material, and a release date. He was off to the races. But when Harlin stopped by CinemaBlend’s official ReelBlend podcast, we started talking about Die Hard 2, and he elaborated on how he and Bruce Willis disagreed over the direction the movie should be going. Willis, it turns out, wanted to strip away more of the humor that was present in Die Hard. Harlin opposed the idea, and told ReelBlend:
There were two disagreements I had with Bruce when doing that. One was that he had just become a movie star. He had done Moonlighting for years, but now he had become a movie star. And he was hellbent on making Die Hard 2 a serious movie. Like a real dramatic, serious action drama. And I spent countless days just talking to him about replicating the experience. The audience loves your blue color cop, who is in love with his wife. They had problems originally, but is now in love with his wife, and is an every man, and has a sarcastic sense of humor. That's the character the audience loves. And you can’t now just say, ‘He doesn't crack any jokes anymore. He's just serious.’ That was one big disagreement.
Thinking about this critique, and the notion that Bruce Willis wanted to push Die Hard 2 to be more serious, it makes me think that between Moonlighting, the failed rom com Blind Date, and the quips in Die Hard, Willis might have feared he was being typecast. Certainly, Willis wanted to be seen as a serious actor. In the wake of Die Hard 2, he took big swings with The Bonfire of the Vanities, Mortal Thoughts, and the vanity project Hudson Hawk.
But it was Renny Harlin’s second argument that he had with Bruce Willis that really gets me heated, because I totally agree with the director, and I think it gets to a core issue I have with the Die Hard sequels that followed Die Hard 2. John McClane eventually forgot his family. He was a drunk. Estranged. And was ostracized by the children he fought to protect. Die Hard 2 was the last movie that had him fighting for the pure love of his family. And Harlin agreed with that angle, telling ReelBlend:
I don't want to go too deep into personal opinions and things. But (Willis) was not so convinced that this family aspect was so important in the second (movie). I kept telling him, and everybody around, is that the whole point of why this movie will work is that he is not saving the world from a nuclear disaster. He's saving his wife. Over the course of it, he's saving all these other people, and he's an incredible hero. But why is he really so hellbent and desperate and passionate about what he's doing? It’s because his wife is there. It's about the wife. And that's why when they finally get together in the end and they hug, that's it. It's not ‘Yeah, we've avoided a nuclear disaster!’
This is the scene Renny Harlin is discussing. And it’s magical, still, to this day.
That type of character development can make a standard action sequel special. It’s a huge part of the reason why I truly love Die Hard 2 more than Die Hard With a Vengeance. And the less we say about the putrid A Good Day to Die Hard, the better.
Renny Harlin, in the meantime, returns to theaters with the upcoming 2024 movie The Strangers: Chapter 1. It looks to be the beginning of a trilogy, so make sure to check that one out, then prepare for the other two.
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