Tag: Die Hard

A movie about space zombies

I’m not here to judge the quality of Star Trek: First Contact as a Star Trek movie. Trekkies like Angela Collier and Mike Stoklasa have informed me that Star Trek has to be super serious, boring, and never fun. So on that note, First Contact is a terrible Star Trek movie. But as a movie movie, I say that 1996 was my year of awakening. Twister. Independence Day. Star Trek: First Contact. Or, “the triple headed dragon” as I like to say in film history. They changed everything. It was during this era that SFX/CGI was it it’s peak. Special effects were still special and First Contact still holds up remarkably well.

But I’m not here to talk about that shit. Instead I’m gonna talk about the first five minutes or so. It might be hard for kids to remember, but it used to be that plots kicked off starting at the first frame. They were very economical in how they established characters and backgrounds and typically stuck with the “show don’t tell” rule. In First Contact, post credits, the first frame was Picard being assimilated by the Borg. Seconds later, it’s revealed to be a dream. Then BAM. The plot kicks off. No time wasted. Even as a kid, I thought damn, wanna take me out to dinner first? But there was no need. I knew exactly what was going on and what the motivations were.

Mind you, I was a TNG fan so I knew what the history was. But watching this opening now, I can’t help but think how the runtime would be wasted nowadays on thirty minutes of Picard whining to Deanna Troi about his emotional scars and blah blah blah. But this was the 1990s. This was the era of confined space action films like Die Hard, Under Siege, Air Force One, etc. So we all had one question on our minds: what if the USS Enterprise was hijacked by space zombies? And it wasted almost no time in getting us answers.

Die Hard Another Day

It’s a shame that the illustrious Die Hard franchise ended with A Good Day to Die Hard. Sure it had its moments, like fucking up Moscow then driving to Chernobyl on the same day. But it could have been so much more.

“I’m on vacation!”

That’s a wasted line in A Good Day. John McClane wasn’t on vacation! But imagine the final Die Hard movie where he is on vacation: John McClane goes to Bangkok and the CIA learns that the daughter of Hans Gruber, Hanna Gruber, is out for revenge. So CIA agent Jack McClane heads to Thailand to rescue his father. When Jack arrives, he says, “Dad, I won’t ask questions. I’m just here to rescue you.” Right then, Gruber’s minions bust in the hotel room and blow the place up and John goes “I’m on vacation!”. Of course, there’s a car chase through the streets of Bangkok.

Fortunately Jack and John escape the country by boarding a C-17 but it eventually gets shot down. John falls out of the aircraft without a parachute, so Jack throws one on and leaps out of the plane before crashes and grabs his father. As they’re falling to the ground, John screams “I’m on vacation!!!!”

They land in China and while they’re wondering through the jungle, of course, there’s some character development where they say things like “being a dad is hard,” and we shake our head at John’s vague racism towards the Chinese people. Unfortunately, Gruber’s men catch up with them, and they escape by boarding a speed boat. John says “I wanted to go down the Yellow River, just not this one!”.

After a thrilling boat chase, Jack and John arrive in Beijing (which the Yellow River doesn’t flow through) where they are reunited with the CIA. But there’s a double cross and they are recaptured by Gruber. From there, they are taken to Pyongyang, North Korea where we learn Hanna Gruber is in league with Kim Jung-un.

Jack and John are being interrogated at the Ryugyong Hotel but John manages to escape. As a nod to the first Die Hard, John is back in a white tank top and no shoes as he climbs through air ducts and kills off all the bad guys one by one as he tries to rescue his son. Finally, there’s a showdown at the top of the hotel where John is face to face with Hanna Gruber. “You killed my entire family!” she screams to John. “There’s still one more, sweetheart,” John says. Then she falls to her death from on top of the Ryugyung.

To avoid an international embarrassment, Kim Jung-un releases the father and son into US custody, and John shakes his head and says “I could use a vacation.”

The end.