Die Hard: 5 Ways To Redeem This Once Great Franchise
2. Have Villains That Are Actually Scary
For the most part, I really enjoyed Live Free or Die Hard. Most of the action was great and Just Long proved to be an oddly entertaining teammate for Mr. Willis. There was one setback though, and its a shame because its kind of a big one: the villain inspired no fear. At all. In Live Free or Die Hard, the villain who is causing all sorts of trouble for John McClane is a guy named Thomas Gabriel (played by Timothy Olyphant, who is solid as always). Is he a war veteran with a scarred face who loves to kill for pleasure? A terrorist ready to die if it means hundreds of others go with him? No. He is a computer hacker. He writes computer code and refuses to get his hands dirty, causing chaos from a lab with a group of other hackers.
Its hard to fear someone like that who threatens you behind a keyboard from miles away. Its also hard to fear someone who has his little workers go out and do the heavy lifting for him. I get that the writers may have wanted to show how our society has changed, how big battles are fought online by people in their basements. Our water, electric and gas systems are mostly run by computers now and could be compromised at any moment from someone on the other side of the planet. But when the main villain of an action movie attacks our hero by... changing the stoplights from red to green? It doesnt exactly make us clench up and cover our eyes.
Give us a villain that makes us worry for our hero, that is dangerous, menacing. A great recent example is Silva from Skyfall, the latest James Bond movie. He too was an expert computer hacker who could overrun Ms headquarters, bragging about how he could start wars by pushing a button. The difference is, not only did he have a believable and very personal reason to cause havoc, he dove in with the rest of his men. He didnt hide in a lab the whole time, he put on a police uniform, rushed into a courtroom and opened fire on everyone there.
We dont always need a cliche tough guy who just wants to rule the world. But at least give us someone who looks like they might be able to hurt our hero, not someone who could be in a business commercial.