Die Hard With A Vodka

Bruce Willis is determined to make his most famous franchise live up to its name.  Yes, that's right, we'll soon be getting yet another Die Hard movie.

...yay?

Die Hard seems to follow the Inverse-Star Trek formula for quality; the odd numbered movies are pretty great and the even numbered ones are pretty disappointing.  Despite the promise of five being an odd number, I still find myself hard-pressed to muster up any excitement about this latest installment.  My skepticism is rooted in the movie's two major changes from our last go-round: the action will take place in Russia and McClane will now be paired up with his son in an obvious "Bruce-Willis-is-really-old-and-maybe-we-can-pass-the-torch-on-this-franchise" move.  Both of these decisions reek of desperation and have been unsuccessfully attempted in plenty of previous franchises. (Police Academy 7 and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, respectively.  Never thought you'd see those two franchises paired together, did ya?)

Forget about the fact that McClane has no jurisdiction in Russia, as the whole point of the series is that he's ALWAYS out of his jurisdiction.  While Mary Elizabeth Winstead was enjoyable in the Live Free Or Die Hard, I don't want to spend 90+ minutes getting to know yet another member of the McClane brood.  I can already tell you he almost certainly resents McClane for being an absentee father and blah blah blah I already watched this in the last movie.  The flip-side would be that his kid is some kind of supercop or CIA agent or something, but that just pulls focus from and/or diminishes the awesomeness that is John McClane, who is, you know, the only reason people show up to watch these movies.  If Fox thinks they can somehow spin this franchise off and make Die Hard movies without Bruce Willis, then they're even more insane than I thought.

No word on a director yet, but Len Wiseman definitely (and thankfully) won't be returning.  The short list seems to include John Moore (May Payne, The Omen remake, Behind Enemy Lines) and some wildly overqualified names like Nicholas Winding Refn (Bronson, Drive) and Joe Cornish (Attack The Block, which I'm seeing on Thursday.)  I don't even think there is a director I want to see attached to this to be honest.  So long as it doesn't pull talent from a more interesting project, I'm pretty ambivalent.

I'm just waiting for the announcement that the new villain will be named Mr. Falcon, at which point I will simultaneously laugh and weep.