10 First Choices For Big Movie Roles (That Would Have Totally Sucked)
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger As John McClane (Die Hard)
The hardman trio of Schwarzenegger, Stallone and Willis dominated action cinema in the 1980s, through a selection of movies that are still beloved today by anyone who grew up in that era. It's possible to imagine many of them switching roles and the movies still working every bit as well. That would not have been true, however, if Arnold Schwarzenegger had been John McClane in Die Hard.
During the development of Die Hard, so the rumour goes, it was repurposed as a sequel to Schwarzenegger's 1985 hit Commando. This has been denied by writer Steven de Souza, but it is certainly true that, whether it was set to be a Commando sequel or not, the script, in an unfinished state, was shown to Schwarzenegger and he entered discussions to star.
Much of the appeal of John McTiernan's genre classic is in its characterisation of McClane as an everyman carrying out heroic acts. That's something that's impossible with Schwarzenegger as the leading man.
It's not about his limitations as an actor, but more about the fact that a human being who is the size of the Nakatomi Plaza could ever be believable as an average off-duty cop. His Die Hard might still have been fun, but it wouldn't have been the same without Willis.