A good day to quit while they were ahead was the day they wrapped production on Live Free or Die Hard. This is one too many times drinking from a very dry well.
A Good Day to Die Hard
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Live Free or Die Hard
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It’s been a good couple of years for restarting movie franchises. 2005 gave us Batman Begins and 2006 begat Casino Royale. It also gave us Superman Returns, so no trend is bulletproof. However, it did continue in 2007 with a fourth installment in the Die Hard series, which was easily the most consistently entertaining of the sequels. The original is, of course, still miles ahead, even from this one, but that’s to be expected.
Die Hard: With a Vengeance
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It’s almost axiomatic that the third iteration of a movie franchise is when the sucking starts to begin, assuming that the first sequel didn’t already bring the suck to the table. The good news is that the third Die Hard movie, with John McTiernan back at the helm, manages to avoid this “curse of the third movie.” The bad news is that it doesn’t miss the mark by all that much. This is a Die Hard movie done mostly by the numbers and it’s only because of the sheer professionalism of the enterprise that they bring it off at all.
Die Hard 2
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This follow-up to the 1988 genre-buster is one of those movies that does just about as much wrong as it can without completely sucking. It’s also not bad for a Renny Harlin movie, but if all you can claim is you’re better than Cutthroat Island, that’s not much to hang your hat on. The best you can say about it is that it keeps your eyes and ears sufficiently entertained that you don’t notice that your brain hasn’t joined in the reindeer games.
Die Hard
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When 1988 began, this guy Bruce Willis was a popular enough TV star, known for his years on Moonlighting, but his two ventures into film were a pair of alleged comedies that had a negligible impact at the box office. At the same time, action movies had been in a creative black hole, full of invulnerable superman battling hordes of commies and terrorists. So, when Die Hard appeared with an unproven star, there weren’t a lot of expectations for its success. It certainly wasn’t expected to reinvent the entire genre. Well, Merry Christmas in freakin’ July, Hollywood.