Die Hard Director Says Comic Book Movies Are "Made By Fascists"
How to win friends and influence people, the John McTiernan way.
If you'd ever wondered whether John McTiernan - legendary director of Die Hard - had any aspirations to make a comic book movie, wonder no more. He doesn't, and by the sound of it, he's not particularly enamoured by the idea of ever making movies in Hollywood again.
The director has been talking to Premiere France to decry hyper-masculinity and the impact it has on Hollywood film-making, with particular reference to the current state of the blockbuster slate. He's not a fan of what's going on with comic book movies either. Heads up to DenOfGeek for the considerably better translation than Google Translate could offer:
“I hate the majority of [major studio] films for political reasons, I can’t really watch them. I’m annoyed the second they start.“Captain America, I’m not joking… The cult of American hyper-masculinity is one of the worst things to have happened to the world during the last 50 years. Hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this idiotic delusion. So how is it possible to watch a film called Captain America?!”“All they’re making are comic book adaptations. There’s action but no human beings, they’re films made by fascists. They’re making all the kids in the world think that they’ll never be important enough to have a film made about their life. And it’s a unique moment in the history of cinema, it didn’t used to be like this. A kid used to be able to learn how a man or a woman should act by watching films. Morals. Comics make heroes for businesses”.
So he doesn't want to be considered for the director's job on Captain America 4, is what I'm getting here.
It must be particularly difficult to take for him that John McClane - traditionally the anti-hyper-masculine action hero - has been pushed through the same filter now. He's unremarkable as he once was and almost entirely unrecognisable (and he needs to be reclaimed).
Look, it would be foolish not to address the fact that Die Hard isn't exactly the most politically progressive of movies, but a man can change his opinion over the years. And he's entirely right about the removal of humanity from comic book movies for the most part (who wants unsuper superheroes, after all - it's kind of the point?)
Anyway, he might get some frosty receptions if and when he comes back to Hollywood. If he actually bothers.
He also spoke about his new film project - his first since being released from prison - “I hope to make it with a French producer and film in France or in Serbia. The idea is to film the whole thing in Europe. There’s not much dialogue, so we can film in French and English at the same time. It’s a very simple story. Well, it seems very simple, but it isn’t… The main character is a woman. It’s about a woman without a child and a child without a mother. And it’s still an action film!”
The original source interview can be found at Premiere France, here.