We always struggle to find movies to watch with the 9yo. She’s generally anti-movie, having grown up with Netflix, and pouts every time we say it’s movie night. Friday, while browsing through the new releases on the Xbox, there wasn’t much we’d let her watch, never mind anything that she wanted to watch.
Ended up picking Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales.
The review of said film goes something like this: The kid sat next to me on the couch and read a book the entire movie. Steph occupied at times the middle of the couch, but finished at the other end playing on her phone … until 20 mins or so were left in the movie, at which point she relocated to the other room because “noise.”
I found it boring enough that I kinda wanted to shut it off … but didn’t because I spent $5.99 to watch the goddamn thing.
Some jackass critic on the internet (heh) said it was “the best Pirates” movie since the first one. He was wrong. The last two have been crap. They should’ve stopped at the end of the first trilogy (and yes, I’m aware most would say they should’ve stopped at one, but I liked them).
On Sunday, the girls left to do some xmas shopping, so I popped in my shiny new blu-ray of Die Hard. The transfer to blu-ray is a helluva lot better and sharper than my old dvd. Color is better. Everything. Totally worth the $9.99 I paid for it, again, on Amazon.
Die Hard is one of, if not the best action movies ever made, and it has almost nothing to do with the action. I mean, don’t get me wrong, the action’s still pretty good. Nothing happens without a lead-in, there is no deus ex machina going on. It’s one of the best scripts ever. I mean, hell, there is actual character development.
Consider Sgt. Al Powell. He doesn’t show up in the movie for a good half hour, and when he does, he’s getting harassed for buying Twinkies for his pregnant wife, and then saying “to hell with this” instead of thoroughly checking out Nakatomi Tower, and then reversing for his life across a parking lot while some Eurodouche shoots his car full of holes.
Then he starts building a relationship with John, sticking up to his superiors, trusting his cop instincts. SPOILER ALERT: In an intimate moment, he tells John he works a desk because he shot a kid with a toy gun on accident. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability in a macho as hell movie.
His whole role in the film is that. To be a human foil for John on the outside. But they still give him his developmental arc. At the end of the film, when all of John McClane’s heroics are finished, who saves the day? Sgt. Al Powell, who despite saying he could never draw his gun again, does exactly that.
It’s not the kind of thing you really see in modern action films. Shit just happens to the characters and they deal with it and move on. You don’t see a lot of emotional development from Capt. America in any of the Avengers movies, though you do get some of it with Downey’s Tony Stark.
But back to Die Hard. All the things you get with Al, you also get with John. He’s definitely a hero of the Indiana Jones variety: overwhelming odds against, always gets his ass kicked, always gets back up. He doesn’t always get it right, and even when he does, shit goes wrong. When he tricks Hans, another dude shows up in the elevator. When he gets the people off the roof, the FBI guys shoot at him. The bit with the glass.
John McClane, in the first film, is a normal dude doing what he feels he has to, and just barely getting by. It’s what makes it so compelling. Very few other action films pull off the trick. They concentrated on the scenario and not the character, the spectacle and not the limitations. Sometimes playing inside the box leads to more creative solutions. Think of all the things John has to improvise because of what he does and doesn’t have with him … The escape in the vent shaft where he uses the H&K as a grappling hook? Scotch taping the gun to his back? Using the stolen cigarette lighter to set off the fire alarm?
Later Die Hard movies aren’t as good because they lack a lot of the things that made the first one special. They have him doing superhuman bullshit like using an ejection seat to escape from a plane. They missed the whole damn point.
And you know what I love most about it? They can’t remake it. John’d have a cell phone if they updated it, and the cops would be there in 10 minutes and the movie would be over. I mean, I guess you could have him leave it in the room with his shoes …
All this and I haven’t even brought up Alan Rickman. That was his first movie role. I mean, what the hell, who does that the first time at bat?
Last, it’s one of the best Christmas movies of all time. McClane starts out as a Scroogian sorta guy, gets put through holiday trials, and emerges thankful and full of love for his family.
As Theo the safecracker says, “Merry Christmas.”
skepticlysm 
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