Die Hard: 5 Ways To Redeem This Once Great Franchise

4. Make The Action Scenes More Believable

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Look, I know action movies can be a stretch sometimes given the nature of the beast. If all action movies were completely realistic, they would revolve around spiders trapped in your car instead of terrorists taking over buildings. And yeah, they would be a bit boring. But dammit, we have to draw the line somewhere. Case in point, this scene where John McClane fights a jet plane with a semi:

Really? Seriously? Was one of the producers watching their grandson play with his toys on some beach in Tahiti and think this would fit in the movie just perfectly? The problem with this scene isn€™t just how ridiculous it is, but that it breaks action movie screenwriting rule #1: the action must progress the story and be completely necessary. If this scene was cut out of the film, no one would have noticed because it is so inconsequential to the plot. So not only is it crazy unrealistic but it is also pointless. Well done!

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Ryan Estabrooks is a film writer/director and photographer. When he is not busy solving mysteries, he can be found working on his feature length film. You can view all of his work at the imaginatively-titled RyanEstabrooks.com