This is the biggest piece of shit news I’ve had to report on a movie in a long time. If you were looking forward at all to the new Die Hard movie, Live Free or Die Hard, just forget it right now. This movie should be dead to you, it’s screwed, they’re pissing all over the franchise and throwing it in the garbage because Live Free or Die Hard is rated PG-13.
The news comes from AICN, where they claim June’s Vanity Fair will contain an interview with Bruce Willis in which he voices his displeasure with the movie being edited down to get a PG-13 rating. Willis says, “I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first one, which I always thought was the only really good one.” Wow, he’s not pulling any punches. Basically in once sentence he’s trashed Die Hard 2, 3, and 4. Alright, I’m with him about 2 and if 4 really is PG-13 then he’s probably right about that one too. But come on Bruce, Die Hard 3 was kind of cool.
Seriously though Fox, PG-13? You’ve made a PG-13 Die Hard movie? Now some of you are probably thinking, “Ok what’s the big deal.” Think about this a minute. What’s John McClane’s trademark catch phrase? “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker,” right? Well now he can only say it once, because you can only say fuck once in a PG-13 movie. Being R-rated is the motherfucking essence of McClane’s character and the movies he’s in. Die Hard isn’t some squeaky clean espionage movie. It’s a about a foul mouthed dude who gets beaten, broken, battered, and ripped to shreds in brutal, cringe-worthy ways and survives not because he’s slick but because he just won’t give up no matter how many horrible things you do to him. Well forget about that, the movie is PG-13. McClane will have to tone down his language and try not to bleed all over the filmstock, there might be kids in the audience.
Look, I was worried when I saw those overly slick Live Free or Die Hard trailers. But then I saw the International ones, and they seemed to have more of the dirty McClane we know and love. Well maybe that’s because they aren’t being edited down to a PG-13. You think? That’s the only explanation I can come up with, because it sounds like here in America at least, John McClane is being neutered by the same gutless, spineless, idiot executives at 20th Century Fox who destroyed the X-Men franchise and turned Galactus into a low pressure system.. What the hell kind of madness is this? This is mutherfucking Die Hard, if I want a PG-13 version of it I can turn on my TV and watch ‘24’. I don’t’ want to watch ‘24’, I want to watch Die Hard. I was looking forward to watching Die Hard. This summer when I show up to see Live Free or Die Hard, I will not be watching Die Hard, I will, as AICN suggests, be watching Live Free or Die Limp, and so will you.
