Exploring the highs and lows of Hollywood’s obsession with ‘Die Hard’ clones
In addition to being one of the greatest action movies ever made, Die Hard states a strong case for being the single most influential, based solely on the sheer volume of films to have emerged over the last 35 years that have carried several notable strands of its DNA.
As well as igniting a shift in the entire genre that slowly phased the musclebound beefcakes of the Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone era out in favour of flawed, relatable, and more vulnerable heroes, the broad strokes of John McTiernan’s classic were replicated across dozens upon dozens of titles.
It’s still going on today, which underlines just how seismic an impact Die Hard made on the medium. There’s a clear distinction between what action cinema was before and what action cinema was after John McClane scurried around the Nakatomi Plaza in a white vest that kept on getting dirtier, with the basic concept being facsimiled for decades to come.
At its core, Die Hard is about a hero caught firmly out of their depth in a single location, forced to battle insurmountable odds in order to save the day. It’s a simple setup but one that’s given rise to an array of spiritual successors that range from the classic to the abjectly terrible. No longer just a mere motion picture, the ‘Die Hard on a [insert location/mode of transport here]’ is a genre unto itself.
As mentioned, though, not all of them are lazy rip-offs. Michael Bay’s The Rock is Die Hard in Alcatraz, Jan De Bont’s Speed is Die Hard on a bus, Harrison Ford’s Air Force One is Die Hard on a plane, Simon West’s Con Air is Die Hard on a prison transport, and Sylvester Stallone’s Cliffhanger is Die Hard in the mountains. They’re all solid in their own right, but that’s only one side of the coin.
If it weren’t for Tommy Lee Jones and Gary Busey hamming it up, Steven Seagal’s Under Siege would be an entirely forgettable Die Hard on a boat, Jean-Claude Van-Damme’s Sudden Death is a kitschy Die Hard in a hockey arena, while both Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down are Die Hard in the White House, but neither of them are even remotely remarkable.
Anna Nicole Smith and Dwayne Johnson both share the distinction of starring in movies called Skyscraper that do Die Hard in a very tall building, and they’re each entirely forgettable. They Live star Roddy Piper did Die Hard at the Hoover Dam in Terminal Rush, Mickey Rourke tried Die Hard in a shopping centre with Point Blank, Peter Weller tackled Die Hard in a casino in Top of the World, never mind Dolph Lundgren doing Die Hard at a rock concert after starring as an ass-kicking drummer in Performance Command.
The recurring thread is that the majority of them are terrible and fail to take a solitary cue from what made Die Hard so special beyond its basic fundamentals. It’s telling that even though some of the clones have been stellar in their own right and even excellent on occasion, not a single one of them has been better.
Alan Rickman summed up why the original can’t be touched when speaking to The Independent, explaining its longevity in a nutshell. “I walked into a screening in New York anonymous and walked out not anonymous. You are aware that something has happened,” he said. “Nowadays, everyone wants to be in an action or superhero movie, I notice. What seems to have been forgotten along the way, is that Die Hard has wit and style. That’s why it lasted.”
