Ruined #5: Die Hard
Deciding which movie franchise has disappointed me the most over the years is a bit like deciding which testicle I would rather be punched in. It is difficult enough sustaining one film throughout its duration, let alone three or four or five. Typically by the 3rd entry whatever steam a franchise had begins to dissipate and we are left with the lingering feeling of having wasted one's youth. Die Hard somehow managed to pull off an unrelated trilogy of films in which John McClane faces off against increasingly large numbers of terrorists. Die Hard - that is to say Die Hard 1 and not Die Hard: Die Harder or Die Hard With A Vengeance - ranks among cinema's crowning achievements. The year is 1988. Hard boiled Detective John McClane, in an effort to patch things up with his estranged wife, Holly, has come out to Los Angeles to spend Christmas with her. But before too long, terrorists take over Nakatomi Plaza and typical fish-out-of-water hi-jinks ensue. Over the course of the movie, Bruce Willis would kill a number of people and teach Reginald VelJohnson to love again. The film would be a success, and as is typical with such things, it would see two more sequels; the aforementioned Die Harder and With A Vengeance. Idiotic titles aside, Die Hards 2 and 3 would simply follow the template that Die Hard laid out in increasingly larger locales. As with most sequels, things would take a turn for the stupid somewhere around the third film, though it would be the embarrassingly titled Live Free or Die Hard which would cause the shaking of heads worldwide. Long gone were the Euro-trash villains of yore, replaced instead with computer hackers and the I'm A Mac guy. Worse yet, the studio release of Die Hard: Revenge of the Nerds would receive the dreaded PG-13 stamp. In addition to featuring the most ridiculous stunts of the series such as the infamous Bruce-Willis-drives-a-car-into-a-helicopter. It would also manage to be the most boring of the series despite having Bruce Willis drive a car into a helicopter. Though unlike RoboCop 3 it would somehow manage to gross 383 million dollars proving once and for all that I hate the majority of the film going public. Despite the film's success, it would be 6 years before the return of John McClane in what is commonly accepted to be the worst of the bunch, Die Hard 5 (also known as A Good Day To Die Hard). Despite numerous negative reviews at home, it managed to gross $305 million worldwide with most of that coming from South Korea. It would be not long after that the 6th installment of the Die Hard franchise would be announced. Tentatively titled Die Hardest, "it will take place in Tokyo." Also featuring his son from Die Hard 5, I look into the heart of the sun in the hopes that I will never have to set eyes on what is to be The Worst Die Hard. So far.
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