If you want to get something promoted in Japan, forget about posters and life-sized cardboard cutouts. What’s the best way you can think of to promote A Good Day to Die Hard? Putting the film’s image on an oily sleeveless wife beater? Releasing a bald plush doll that says “Yippee kay-yay, motherfucker?” (Since the fifth film reverts back to its R-rating and all.) How about just getting Bruce Willis to show up and say a few words about the film? Those ideas are worthless, puny American.
Eiga presents to you “Chocolate John McClane” created to promote the film, as translated in Japanese Die Hard The Last Day. I never thought I would say that Bruce Willis looked delicious without immediately having to renege on my words.
The most badass piece of chocolate in history didn’t come to the event alone, of course. K1 fighter Nobuaki Kakuda, who also sang the theme song to the anime series Sgt. Frog, walked over a pile of glass, dressed as John McClane, while singer /actress Norkio Sakai rode up on the back of a motorcycle, looking pretty delicious herself dressed in black leather. After a Japanese preview of A Good Day to Die Hard, they are joined by voice-dubbing artist Satoshi Nozawa, who surprisingly did not emerge from a pregnant octopus or something.
The presentation and following interview were captured on video, though everything is in Japanese, which I am far from fluent in. Still, the first minute is a bit of a surreal wonder in and of itself. Check the video below.
I wonder if the chocolate version is as hollow as all the Die Hard ripoffs there have been over the years. Perhaps for the Japanese release of Man of Steel they’ll attach heated laser implants to everyone’s eyeballs.
