5. 12A Rating
In the last few days, the Internet has been abuzz in nerd rage after news broke that Fox would be giving A Good Day to Die Hard the Taken 2 treatment and cutting it to ensure it received a 12A rating in the UK to maximise their profits. This won't matter to American audiences, who got the full R-rated cut, but bear with me. Though it's a small series of cuts to remove blood and swearing, the result is a severely neutered product overall, and it unmistakably looks like the bloodless mayhem we've all seen on Fox's hit TV show 24. That show has certain network constraints to adhere to; this film cannot say the same thing - and worse still, it's rated R in America (though some blood and swearing won't do anything to remedy its myriad issues). The most infamous edit surely related to how poorly Willis' signature Yippee Ki-Yay line is obscured in the film; McClane gets into a truck that's loaded inside a helicopter, and slams down on the pedal to interrupt the swear word. Given how he drops the F-bomb several times earlier in the film, would it not make sense to have ditched one of those and used it on the most iconic utterance in the series' history instead? Oh, and remember that clip from the trailer where Yuliya Snigirs sexy femme fatale starts stripping off in a parking lot? Yeah, that's cut from the film; there's not even a basic titilatory quality to this turgid mess.