And my love of movies was just beginning to kick into full gear. I wasn’t just obsessed with movies themselves anymore. I was quickly becoming enthralled in the production aspects as well. I know that year brought us the classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit. For a long time…that was it. I didn’t need anything else. A movie filled with live-action AND cartoons? Yes! Please, yes!
I devoured magazine articles that told how all the special effects were done. I was amazed at the lengths they went to make a cartoon rabbit drink out of a real whiskey glass. It was amazing!
As I have grown, I still have a fond appreciation for that film. I watch it every now and again to scratch that nostalgic itch. But several other films came out in 1988 that I also consider among my favorites. Tom Hanks was getting Big…Michael Keaton was grossing us out in Beetlejuice…and Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman had the classic Rain Man.
It wasn’t until a few years later that I started to grow an appetite for action movies. By the time I was 15 or 16, I was hooked on films that had heart-thumping shootouts, car chases, people hanging from buildings, explosions, and everything else you’d associate with brainless popcorn films. One thing that I’ve noticed is that many of the action flicks I loved as a teenager seem to be cut from a template. There is a pattern that most of them follow that leads to them becoming successful. It’s a quality that has only been done perfectly one time; in the movie that created the cloth from which all others are cut.
Die Hard.
Die Hard stars Bruce Willis, Bonnie Bedelia, Alan Rickman, and Reginald VelJohnson. It was directed by John McTiernan, who was mostly known for the film he’d directed the year before… Predator.
Bruce Willis was a fairly well-known person in 1988. He was in a pretty popular comedy/drama called Moonlighting at the time. But, in my opinion, this movie solidified him as a leading man in film.
Willis plays John McClane, a cop from New York who flies out to LA to spend Christmas with his family. His marriage has been on the rocks lately, and he’s hoping to get back into his wife’s good graces. His wife is Holly McClane (Bedelia). She has recently taken a job as an executive for the Nakatomi Corporation. They are having their Christmas party when John arrives. When he gets there, he goes to the bathroom just in time for some terrorists, led by Hans Gruber (Rickman), who want to steal the bearer bonds that the company has in their vault. They take the party-goers hostage except for John. Iit is up to him to stop the terrorists from killing any innocent victims and save his wife.
Before I tell you what I think of the movie (love it), I want to give you a bit of background info that I’ve always found interesting.
Die Hard was based on a novel called Nothing Lasts Forever, written by Roderick Thorpe in 1979. In the book, the main character’s name is Joe Leland. He is a retired New York City cop. He flies out to visit his daughter who is working for a big corporation, and they're having their Christmas party. The rest of it is pretty much the same. He even swings through the window just like Willis does in the film.
This is where it gets a little interesting. Nothing Lasts Forever was the sequel to another novel that Thorpe wrote in 1966 called The Detective. That book was made into a movie starring Frank Sinatra as Joe Leland. He had in his contract that if they ever decided to make a sequel to that film, he would get the first opportunity to reprise his role. So, honoring the contract, Fox offered the lead role in Die Hard to Frank Sinatra. Can you imagine ol’ Blue Eyes, in his late sixties, crawling through the ductwork in his undershirt and with his bleeding feet? It would have been something altogether different.
Luckily, Sinatra turned the role down. It was retooled into what we have now. Bruce Willis was chosen mainly because he was new and he was a lot cheaper than some of the big stars that were eyeing the role.
The rest is history.
And what can I say about Alan Rickman? He was one of my favorite actors. So many movies that I love he was a part of and just made them so much better by doing what he does best. The slow, methodical way he delivered his lines with just enough of an accent to make them seem more menacing was incredible. And this was the first movie that I ever remember seeing him in. If he had not been there, I don’t think this film would be the classic that I think of it as being today.
I really can’t do anything but gush over this movie. I watch it at least once a year. It was so well received, they made another one a couple of years later that was very good as well. It wasn’t AS good as sequels usually aren’t. But it was strong and stood on its own.
The third one though…wow! We’ll have to see in a week or so, but I think that one has a chance of making it on this list as well.
Then we get the stories of movies written to be Die Hard sequels and ended up becoming their own thing. You can see the origins coming from that original film. Under Siege (Die Hard on a ship). Speed (Die Hard on a bus). The list goes on.
And then there are the movies that were supposed to be other things and eventually were rewritten to put John McClane in them. Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard both suffer because of that.
But there was a teenager that just happened to be in the room one night when his dad turned on the TV and started watching Die Hard…and that kid was hooked on stupid blow-em-up flicks ever since.
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