Coming soon: Die Hard 5 - The Zimmer Frame

Since he's no longer required to save Earth from asteroid armageddon, Bruce Willis has been checking out potential helmsmen for Die Hard 5 - The Zimmer Frame. Actually, we made that last bit of the title up, since any suggestion that Willis is too geriatric to reprise his role as John McClane would doubtless be a matter for a …

[Anonymous Coward]

Die Hard and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Shia LaBeouf stars as Bruce Willis's estranged son, and single handedly manages to destroy yet another multi-million pound franchise?

[Michael H.F. Wilkinson]

Die Hard just won't DIE

obviously

[Richard Taylor 2]

No...

It's just dying hard - no problem with trade descriptions here sir, just move on, nothing to see

[Trygve Henriksen]

Not another one!

Wasn't 'Rocky: the fight for Depends' enough?

What's the next worn-out franchise to spawn another episode?

Looking in my crystall ball I see:

300 +.05

Back to the future: Origins.

Alf: The hidden years.

Avatar: The really, really extended directors cut, now with sweepings from the cutting-room floor!

Shrek: Oops, we did it again.

[Elmer Phud]

New title

It's actually to be called 'Dick Head 5 -- Return to the Bank'

[Reality Dysfunction]

there is a country for old men

Watched Bruce last night in RED (Retired Extremely Dangerous) and he was excellent for his age or half his age, he did seem to have got a decade younger than the last film I saw him in though. On the other hand the love interest was Mary-Louise Parker who is 46 but doesn't look it either.

[Anonymous Coward]

I too thought he was good in RED

I also thoroughly enjoyed the film.

[Ammaross Danan]

RED

RED was a very good film IMHO. Of course, with Hollywood, they can make anyone look young/old (with a margin of success at least....some actors are exempted by this sweeping generalization too....).

As for content, most movies you watch nowadays are as much BS as watching "The NET" was.... "What did you do to stop the upload????" "I injected malicious code in the upload stream and caused a buffer overflow in the router that broke the Internet." "How many were affected?" "All of them...." (last NCIS: LA episode...). They seriously need to get a REAL tech consultant. Or at least become better at shoveling BS....

Either way, I'll likely was DH5, if for no other reason than why I watched Bond last time...or the time before that....and before that....

[Anonymous Coward]

Why?

I would have thought the abortion of Die Hard 4 would have ended that franchise?

No? Oh well. Another movie to avoid on purpose.

[Sir Runcible Spoon]

Sir

Hey Lester, I seem to note a touch of cynicism in your article, that can't be right can it?

[lawndart]

says:

Lester has probably discovered the plot involves evil Brits dropping paper-packaged WMD on California from helium balloons hovering at the edge of space.

[Tom 7]

Beaten to death with tena pants.

That should wipe the smile of the villains faces.

Just need something to wipe the smile of Willises

[Greg J Preece]

Oh God, no

Die Hard 4 was an atrocity. Why can't people know when to stop?

[Nick Davey]

Oh dear

"penned by Skip Woods of A-Team, Wolverine and X-Men Origins fame." Fame or infamy, while we haven't seen origins yet I think this man's previous works do not bode well for this being a box office hit!

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: Oh dear

You have seen X-Men origins: it and Wolverine are the same film, or "X-Men Origins - Wolverine" to give it its full title. I think Lester needs a new researcher.

[Kevin Reader]

Erm actually

the comic geek websites were so (un-)impressed it probably needs two titles just to carry the amount of shame and infamy heaped on it by the fans.

[bluesxman]

Die Hard - Take the Fifth

"Please. Take it. We don't want it."

[Salu]

Die Hard: with Viagra

I've always thought that Hexogenarian Bruce would Die Hard with a tablet...

[Pete 31]

The originals weren't exactly realistic either

Yes Die Hard 4 was silly, as was Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull.

But have you watched any of the originals recently? they're full of plot holes, impossible escapes, improbable stunts and creaky bluescreen effects, and we love them for it.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: The originals weren't exactly realistic either

Realistic isn't the point. Die Hard and Raiders are both absolutely brilliant films on their own terms in a way that makes any nitpicking null and void.

I couldn't give a crap about Die Hard 4 - I stopped watching when Kevin Smith's stupid face hove into view - but Crystal Skull made me quite cross. Now I pretend it was all just a bad collective hallucination.

[Shakje]

I quite enjoyed KotCS in its own right...

up until the last half hour or so when it all got exceedingly silly. Until it's compared to the other Indy films it's ok as a film, not terrible. The reason the other films got away with so much is that they had a pretty much perfect mix of humour, fantasy, action and good dialogue. The plots were incidental to those other components but held up enough to set the stage for them. The problem I had with DH4.0 was that it just didn't make sense from the word go. You've got international terrorists who are watching these kids, have had access to their apartments, HAVE TO ACTIVATE THE BOMBS before they can be triggered, and then are reliant on the kid pressing escape (the escape key? Seriously? Do these people use computers?). If you had all that explosive, and knew when the person you wanted to kill was in their room, why not just have some sort of trigger? And if you don't care if it looks like an accident or not, why not just shoot them full stop? When you have to be that contrived to make the start of the movie work, I just lose all interest. The great thing about the first films was that, no matter how ridiculous it got, you actually felt like it all made sense because of the slow and well-executed escalation and the fact that the bad guys took the SIMPLEST route to their goal that you could think of, with the really silly stuff near the end. Is it really sensible to wire explosives to the ground floor of a tall building? I don't care, it works in the film, but once you drive a car into a helicopter, the film can't go much further.

[Trygve Henriksen]

Agreed!

We all watched the first two for the violence, not the plot.

(I assume there must be one in there, somewhere not that I ever looked for it)

[Philippe]

RED was good.

As Reality Dysfunction and Lee mentioned before me, RED was really enjoyable.

The cinema was packed full and there was no engineered trailer to get people there. Just word of mouth.

Bruce can still pull the crowds and he can still play, but please No more Die Hard.

Watching 4.0 was way too traumatic, I can't and won't go through that again..

[Vladimir Plouzhnikov]

A solution

Surely they can shoot the film with a young stunt-double, then just map Bruce's head on him in post-production these days?

[Goffee]

at least

no one has mentioned the term "reboot" yet... but it'd be good if it got stripped down to basics; men, guns, tunnels, human suffering, robbery... no jet fighters or vehicle chases

[chuBb.]

ummmm

"Wolverine and X-Men Origins"

Arent they the same film? Unless he has also written first class as well...

[Graham Bartlett]

Can it get any worse

... than Die Hard 4?

The first one was great - as in *really* great. Die Hard and Aliens between them define what an action film should be. Doesn't have to be stupid, doesn't have to be badly-scripted or acted. Blowing shit up is nice, but if you don't care about the people then you're screwed.

Second was distinctly average. Third was rather good, mainly because it went back to character-driven, and one of the characters was Samuel L Jackson.

And then there was Die Hard 4, which was such a gross turkey that even Bernard Matthews couldn't have mechanically-reconstituted it.

[Anomalous Cowherd]

Someone likes it

Every "Die Hard 4 Sucks" comment has been downvoted. Can't understand why - when he leapt gamely onto the bonnet of an F-35, I was a little bit sick in my mouth.

[ChrisC]

Hopefully DH5 will follow the trend...

...of, as you've noticed, it only being the odd-numbered DH's that've been worth watching.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sequals? Are you sure?

I think you'll find, in the same way there was only ever one Matrix film, there was only ever one Die Hard film. In my version of reality at least.

They did make two excellent Alien films though, but luckily stopped before ruining the series.

[jai]

Re: Sequals? Are you sure?

"They did make two excellent Alien films though, but luckily stopped before ruining the series"

so you haven't seen Alien 4 (which did ruin the series), or AVP or AVP2 then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stop while you are ahead

There was Alien, then Aliens. Both great.

I think all other films following, including AVP were awful and should be ignored. I could be wrong, I'm sure there were some bits to like (even in Alien 3). But nothing to compare to the first two.

[Citizen Kaned]

oh dear

irony just too much for you eh?

actually die hard 1,2,3 were all good. 2 being the worst.

alien 3 was ok but 4 was a bit shite. i actually enjoyed AVP but requiem wasnt up to the job. and of course predators was a pretty fun film.

[Anonymous Coward]

Mandatory XKCD reference

http://xkcd.com/566/

[Big Will]

55

Zimmer Frame, Arthritis Tablets, Retirement Home, so how old is this Methuselah of an actor?

Bruce Willis is 55, the retirement age in the real NYPD is 63.

[Tom Servo]

And in other current news...

Henry VIII to divorce - Pope said to be "nonplussed"

Breaking news please reg, this is weeks old.

[Sarah Bee]

Re: And in other current news...

News is in the named director, but far be it from me to interrupt your happy complaining.

[Tom Servo]

Re: And in other current news...

Ok, not weeks old but this was around last week, pigeon post would have been faster.

What isn't mentioned is this chump's "distinguished" filmograpy - Bruce has a nasty habit of choosing directors he can lord it over - see Len Wiseman's experiences on DH4.

When he's an actor for hire, you get Die Hard or Pulp Fiction.

When you're the star with director approval, you get striking distance, die hard 4 and pretty much every film he's made in the last 10 years.

[Anonymous Coward]

John McLean is Awesome!

I for one would continue to watch Bruce Willis open up a can of whupass on bad guys for as long he has breath in his body.

Now get off my lawn.

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not the whupass that makes him great

but the "psychopath in a battered grubby white hat" characterisation. It's as if every time he does something ridiculously heroic he's thinking "fuck this is going to hurt, but I have to do it because I'm the good guy - no matter, I'll get you for it later".

[jai]

i liked DH4

Admittedly, it did seem a bit daft and over the top at times the first time i saw it, but the second and third times i've seen it i really enjoyed it.

I also enjoyed the A-Team and Wolverine though - i wasn't expecting amazing pieces of cinema from them, and what i got was an enjoyable film.

So I shall expect no more from DH5 and see how it turns out.

[Marvin O'Gravel Balloon Face]

ah yes, the A-Team film

If I had a penny for every time I'd seen a 30 tonne, 40 foot container kept afloat by a handful of inflated car airbags...

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

Yippy-ky-ay (grand)mother-fu**er!!!!

Die-hard with a fully paid up Sun Alliance funerary costs insurance plan.*

* - Free Glock 9mm or stained white vest upon enquiry. No obligation. No medicals required. No salesmen will call.

[The Fuzzy Wotnot]

Oh God no!

Saw "Die Hard" and for a minute thought the dodgy 80's Geordie metal band VENOM were coming out of retirement to torture us again! Nnow I realise it's worse, corset-featured, slap-head Willis is back "kicking-ass", whoopee!

[F111F]

Reprise Hudson Hawk?

Actually, I liked Hudson Hawk and have been (secretly) hoping for a sequel...

[Youngdog]

Another RED fan here..

..but Ashton Kutcher's Dad always gets a pass from me thanks to The Fifth Element. One of the most witty, original and downright entertaining movies I have ever seen. And he was great in Sin City too.

Under the boardwalk

Boardwalk

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh but!

Ba, for those of you who are Die Hard fans, you all know that you will watch it, dont lie now!

You may think it will suck but you will have that little itch thats screaming to be scratched.

Course you could all just download it whenever its out there by releaving you of that nasty itich and showing the producers no mercy which will hopefully perswade them to not make more crap

course if it turns out ok, then you also know you will buy it too, so everyone wins!

[disgruntled yank]

Not a fan of B. Willis

never seen the DH series--but seriously, John McClain? Is his sidekick Sara Phelan? This definitely has potential.