In 1990,Bruce Willisreturned to the big screen as John McClane inDie Hard 2. Following the success ofDie Hardwas not easy, but once again the movie saw McClane in a Christmas Eve tussle with terrorists, and the movie proved to be just another step up the ladder for Willis as an action hero. While the movie was a hit, the movie’s directorRenny Harlinrecently revealed that the making of the movie was not all full of good will, as he clashed with Willis over the direction of McClane’s character. He toldEmpire:
“Bruce had turned from a Moonlighting TV star to a movie star overnight with one movie. And it’s not uncommon that when actors get into that position, they sort of develop different goals. So Bruce had this notion from the beginning that he wanted to now play John McClane totally straight, that this movie had to be serious. I said to him, ‘That’s not the John McClane the audience loves. They feel like you’re their friend now, and they don’t want to lose their friend.’ We had a major disagreement about this.
He said, ‘Those one-liners and jokey comments — that’s bullsh*t. With lives on the line, you can’t say that kind of thing.’ I said, ‘Yeah, not in real life, but this is a movie. This is Die Hard.’ It came to a point where I had to go to Joel (Silver) and say, ‘We have a real problem.’ We had a big meeting, Joel and Bruce and I. The outcome was that Bruce agreed to do as many takes as he wanted of the way he wanted to do it, and then we’d do one take the way I wanted to do it, with humor. He did it reluctantly, and not so happily, but he did it. And in the end, every single funny moment that could be caught — even a smile he might have flashed before he realized the cameras were rolling — was cut into the movie. The first question the executives asked, when they saw it, was, ‘Do you have any more moments with humor?’ I said, ‘Unfortunately, I used everything I had.’”
Related:Die Hard: Every Main Villain from the Franchise, Ranked
Does A Sense of Humor Enhance Action Movies?
There are very few action movies that don’t have a sarcastic or wise-cracking hero at their heart. Whoever is bringing the muscle,one-liners and flippant throwaway linesare usually the bits of blockbuster action movies that are repeated until they become an integral part of the franchise’s popularity. Every big action movie fromTerminator, throughRambo, toDie Hardand theJames Bondfranchise has an endless list of witty put-downs that are usually delivered by a hero just before cutting down a whole room of bad guys.
While Bruce Willis may have been against making John McClane a funny catchphrase kind of hero, it certainly didn’t work out badly for him or theDie Hardfranchise. Following the uneven tone ofDie Hard 2, future movies saw the character throwing out as many quips as bullets, which made plenty of fans happy. While there was sense of diminishing returns about the final movies in the series, John McClane will go down as one of the greatest action heroes of all-time, and that is something everyone can yippee-ki yay about.
