November 26, 2025 • 51 mins
In something of an annual tradition, the Holiday Film Fest is back with this Christmas flick for Thanksgiving. Yes, Die Hard 2 is a Christmas movie!
In this film, detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) tries to stop a terrorist plot at Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport on Christmas Eve. After the incident at Nakatomi Plaza, it’s fair to wonder if this guy can ever catch a break.
If nothing else, the broadcast version of this film gave us the iconic phrase, “Yippee Ki‐Yay, Mister Falcon!”
Josh Hajjar is back to help break this one down. You can find Josh on Instagram @amazingjrab https://www.instagram.com/amazingjrab/. Shoot him a follow.
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Check out our gym (Third Street Barbell) at ThirdStreetBarbell.com https://www.thirdstreetbarbell.com/!
Check out our podcast website: 50percentfacts.com https://www.50percentfacts.com/
50% Facts is a Spreaker Prime podcast on OCN – the Obscure Celebrity Network.
Hosted by Mike Farr (@silentmikke) https://www.instagram.com/silentmikke/ and Jim McDonald (@thejimmcd). https://www.instagram.com/thejimmcd/
Produced by Jim McDonald Production assistance by Sam McDonald and Sebastian Brambila. Theme by Aaron Moore. Show art by Joseph Manzo (@jmanzo523)
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/50-facts-with-silent-mike-jim-mcd--5538735/support.
In this film, detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) tries to stop a terrorist plot at Washington D.C.'s Dulles International Airport on Christmas Eve. After the incident at Nakatomi Plaza, it’s fair to wonder if this guy can ever catch a break.
If nothing else, the broadcast version of this film gave us the iconic phrase, “Yippee Ki‐Yay, Mister Falcon!”
Josh Hajjar is back to help break this one down. You can find Josh on Instagram @amazingjrab https://www.instagram.com/amazingjrab/. Shoot him a follow.
____
Join our Discord for free at goodcompanydiscord.com!
Check out our gym (Third Street Barbell) at ThirdStreetBarbell.com https://www.thirdstreetbarbell.com/!
Check out our podcast website: 50percentfacts.com https://www.50percentfacts.com/
50% Facts is a Spreaker Prime podcast on OCN – the Obscure Celebrity Network.
Hosted by Mike Farr (@silentmikke) https://www.instagram.com/silentmikke/ and Jim McDonald (@thejimmcd). https://www.instagram.com/thejimmcd/
Produced by Jim McDonald Production assistance by Sam McDonald and Sebastian Brambila. Theme by Aaron Moore. Show art by Joseph Manzo (@jmanzo523)
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/50-facts-with-silent-mike-jim-mcd--5538735/support.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:12):
Alright, we're in okay, welcome to the studio. I've been
here in a minute. I mean I've been here, but
I haven't been here to record in a minute. I've
been doing everything remotely from home. But hey, I have
I have a guest host with me to guess co
host it with me today. Josh is with me, and
we're going to talk about, uh, the sequel to like
(00:33):
one of the most popular episodes that we did last year,
and this is die Heard two. We did die Hard
last year and it and pretty much ruled. So so
here we are we Diehard Too, die Heard Too. Welcome
Josh Hard. Die Hard. Yes, that's literally what it says,
die harder. I can't know how. I don't know how
(00:53):
to die any harder that I'm already died.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But though I will say that there's a naming pattern
for these movies, and they didn't follow it with the
second one. It's not really called die Harder. It's just
called Diehard Too. But then there's die Hard with a Vengeance,
which is the best one. Yes, there's Live Free or
die Hard, and then there's a Good Day to die Hard.
I've never seen the last two.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I've heard I haven't seen the last two that they
got terrible reviews. Yeah, they were just like pretty trash
money grabs. Yeah. The only thing that that was halfway
interesting is the guy who used to be who used
to be the face of Macintosh in the Mac versus
PC commercials. Oh, he was in. Justin Long was in
one of them. Yeah, he was probably in die Hard,
(01:35):
like he was the Live Free or die Hard. I
think he was in the Russian one, whichever that one was.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, there's one where they bring his son in his
I saw some parts of it. I think it's a
good not a good day to die Hard, Live Free
or die Hard has McLean's son in it, Okay, And
that might be the one with Justin Long. He seems
to be like such a frantic sidekick type character.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah. I think that one of the weirdest things about
this whole series is the wife Holly. Yeah, Like in
the first movie, he's going out to see her for Christmas.
She and the kids have been living in LA because
(02:14):
she took this job with the Nokotomi Corporation and he
has been a cop in New York and this one
he has moved to LA but she has to fly
into d C. And I guess that's where her parents live.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, that was a little jarring because I've lived I
grew up on the East Coast and we actually used
to visit Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Pretty frequently.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And I will say to anybody who's never been, that's
actually a very underrated trip, is going to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And seeing all the monuments in the museums Democracy Disneyland.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, but it's a really nice trip. There's lots of
great things to see. There's lots of good restaurants. But Washington,
d C. In the winter, I don't know if this
is just my memory of the early eighties and late nineties,
it never gets that cold. That's what really jarred me.
They were driving over lakes and water. I'm getting ahead
of ourselves, driving over lakes and water on ice. It
(03:11):
never gets cold enough to ice in washing like they
were in Michigan. Yeah, it's like, well, actually it looked
like they were in Canada or something.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Canada maybe, I don't know where they filmed that part. Yeah,
it was so she there They're in Washington, d C.
And then so much snow on the runway. There's so
much snow. It's really cold. And that's really weird because
from my experience, I've never seen Washington, d C. Frozen
like that. I've seen it when it's been snowing, but
never frozen. I mean, I think it does some, but
I think it's pretty rare, especially these days with all
(03:41):
of the you know, climate change, I guess is the
word I'm looking for. Climate change. I don't want to
say global warming, because it's not just warming. Some places
are cold or someplaces are hotter. Yeah, it interesting film.
A A stat that really blew my mind about this
(04:03):
movie is that it actually made twice as much as
the first one. Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
That was kind of anticipated though, because the first one
was such a hit.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So first one was such a hit, but you think
it would have been bigger yea, And this one is
was was twice as big. I don't know what the
third one brought in. The third one was like, as
you said that, that was the best one. Yeah, this one.
The first one, I don't even know what was based on.
I guess it was probably based on a book at
some point, or just some some specs script running around
(04:30):
Hollywood or whatever. This one is based on a book
and they adapted into a diehard film. Called fifty eight minutes.
Somewhere in the film, somebody says fifty eight minutes.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, and the premise of it being in an airport
and hijacking and all these things. It's such a concept
of that time period, right, right, because now after nine
to eleven, we have TSA and there's so much tight secure,
there's armed soldiers, there's a variety things at airports.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I yeah, I think that that's got to be the
most jarring part of it. I mean, there is a
scene where where Holly Gennaro McLain, his wife, is sitting
on the plane talking to her seat mate, an older
woman who like pulls out of her purse, her purse
(05:28):
of freaking taser.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, she pulls out a she pulls out like it's
one of those cattle protastes. Yes, yeah, And I'm like, wait,
how did she get that on the plane?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Like, I remember that things were a little bit laxed
before nine to eleven, but I don't remember people getting
on with like weapons.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Well, I remember as a teenager when you could smoke
there was a smoking section in the airplane.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, so it's it's it's it's such a like it's
a definitely a piece that's a period of its time.
But shout out to Bonnie Badelia because she is so
great as John McLean's wife.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
She's great, Yes, she they if you have seen the
first one, and actually if you've seen this one as well,
the asshole reporter guy who has the most punishable face ever,
William Atherton, most punishable face ever, is on the plane
with her, but they're supposed to not be near each
other because he has a restraining order against her because
(06:20):
at the end of the first movie she punched him
in the mouth and knocked some teeth out. Yeah, which
and and they know her.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
There's something with either the people who write the screenplay
because this is a different director from the first. This
is Harlan Yeah, and these were directed by mctererne in
the first in the third, which is why the quality
in the third one jumps so high, right, But the
director or whoever wrote the screenplayer, the producers must have
something against journalists, because all journalists. This guy plays a
(06:51):
journalist that you know does terrible things in the first movie,
and then in the second movie he breaks the story
and it causes mass panic and you know, writing so so,
and then there's also the other journalist who's getting on
McLean's nerves in the beginning of the movie, the female
one I can't remember what the name of the character.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Was, who turns out to kind of be okay.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Who turns out to kind of be okay, but she's
still very annoying herself in the last few moments of
the film. So somebody out there had something against journalists.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Journalists whoever one of the producers or something, I don't know.
Some some people did not like journalists at all. This
film may be the only film ever where you're introduced
to the villain naked. You see his whole ass. This
(07:44):
is true, and they're very strategically blocking out his cock. Yes, yes,
I think if it was made today you would see
the whole manty, the full monty.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
But it was a really strange way to introduce it.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It was a very strange way. And that guy has
almost always played some kind of bad guy. The one
good guy that he's played was the president in Iron
Man three. Oh that's right. I didn't realize that that's
how same actor so far apart. Yes, yeah, he definitely.
He doesn't have a he's a scary face, not a
(08:19):
punchable face. Well, they have Robert Patrick as well as
one of the Yeah goes down early and he's but
I mean his facial expressions are just perfect for roles
like this. Yeah. John Lewisamo is in the movie too,
but only very briefly, and apparently they dubbed his voice
so he has no accent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
And I want to give a big shout out to
the crew on the first three DIEHRD movies as somebody
of Middle Eastern descent. None of the villains are committing
terrorist acts in the trilogy of the best movies. They're
usually you know, like white German or in this case,
this was like a white American, you know, military special
(09:00):
former special forces, you know, so no terrorists. There's lots
of airplanes involved, there's lots of terroristic activities, and nobody says.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I'll lock barn Ones.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And so I got to say I can appreciate these
movies for that.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You know, it's it's weird. I don't know if you
watch Slow Horses, but I'm a giant, giant fan of
that show, and I have like read or listened to.
I don't know I'm gonna get credit for I'm gonna
take credit for reading from listening to that series, but
the most recent season of that show, the antagonist villain
(09:37):
folks are in the show they're Lebanese and they create
this whole like reason why they're so pissed off or whatever.
But in the book they were North Korean, which kind
of made more sense to me. But I guess they
felt like it was it was unmotivated or whatever. It
was just like it's a weird switch up. Yeah, it
(09:58):
was a very weird switch up. So you know, apologize for.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
For sawhorses, but that they changed it.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
They changed it.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, so naked villain early on he's
Jack though, I mean you can't really take that away
from and he's doing some kind of tight, chie ish
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I don't evenly really know exactly. He has got some
martial arts moves. Later on, when he fights John McClain,
they don't seem to work out that well for him. No,
they don't.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
And I think this is why these movies are so
universally loved, because John McClain is really just the everyman, right.
He's like, he smokes, he's probably drunk, he drinks a
little bit. He's just this everyman person. He overcomes the odds,
So I don't know when you know, usually on the
internet we have discussions based around like who would win
Batman or Kevin McAllister. But we have to start putting
(10:52):
John McLain in these conversations because the odds that he
overcomes special forces, you know, terrorist operations from j Many
who are looking to rebuild the third or fourth Reich.
You know, the things that he does just seemed to
be overcoming crazy odds and winning at the end.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, I understanding this that the in the premise of
this movie is that his wife is flying in from somewhere.
It's not real clear where she was. Maybe she's coming
in from La but he came in from La White
(11:29):
anything they come together that's not clear, never never addressed
at all. And he on his way into the airport
not only gets his mother in law's car towed, but
he sees a bunch of activity that makes him hinky
that there's something's going on. And as par for the course,
(11:50):
in every one of these frickin' movies, as far as
I can tell, that nobody in authority ever believes him,
even though even in this one, like people of who
he is said and that sort of one of the
least realistic things about it other than an ejection seat
in a cargo plane. Is uh that that the cops,
(12:14):
the other cops are not like fawning over the guy.
You would think that it's like, oh, yeah, you're kind
of a cop hero like I, you know, I want
to be like you. You're a badass whatever, you know,
And they they just totally discount him. And I mean
that was one of the most annoying things about the
first movie, and they just cloned it for this one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And and you know that starts out with Dennis Franz,
who you know, he always plays the same role of
that cop or the Italian, you know, wise guy with
the accent giving him a ticket and just being really,
that's his brother, Yeah, that's his brother's brother, his brother.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yes, Dennis friends is the is the head of the
head of the police.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, and he's not believing him the whole time, and
then his other gives him a ticket. In the beginning,
you know, nobody really recognizes or acknowledgees this crazy story
of Nakatomy Plaza, but then they'll mention it throughout the movie.
Oh you're that NACATOI Plaza guy. You're that Mackatoni Plaza guy,
Like you should.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Have some cred, right, I feel like you should have
some cred.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, and they should be giving him some. You know
that he can recognize certain situations at this point, a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Of difference, just a little bit like somebody fucking believe
this man. You have terrorists on your airport and they're
gonna fuck things up, and you just don't want to listen.
And I guess I don't know that. Roger Ebert used
to call things that didn't make any sense at idiot plots.
There's a little bit of an idiot plot going on,
(13:41):
whether they don't. It's like, if you felt like there
was a threat to your airport, even pre nine to eleven,
you would have done something about it.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I would think, Yeah, I think you would have shut
it down. Yeah, I think you would have at least investigated.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He doesn't take much to shut down an airport. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
He starts out mentioning that the guy's got a glock seven.
This is a really advanced weapon. It costs a lot
of money. Yeah, And it seems like Dennis Brown's is
just ignoring all of his insight into this instead of saying, Okay,
this seems like valid points and maybe we shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, oh yeah, like oh yeah, maybe you have a point.
I guess it doesn't work if you if everybody cooperates.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
With him, I mean, it doesn't tell a good of
his story.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I guess not. I mean that's that's you know, it's frustrating.
And that's that was what was very frustrating about the
first movie too. It's like about that, that's sorry about that?
Was that your stomach from the nurry or was it? Yeah,
that's just one of the things that that that made
(14:45):
me crazy about the first movie, and it really makes
me crazy in this one because like in the first movie,
they didn't no idea who he was. Yeah, none of
the none of the I mean they maybe sort of
looked him up at some point, but you know, they
they just didn't take him seriously. Yeah, because it was
like FBI assholes and and LAPD assholes and whatever. And
this is all airport cops and then military, except that
(15:08):
the military spoiler alert is not the military. No, they are.
They are rogue agents. They were there mercenaries mercenaries, yes, yeah,
and they they you know, they're the earlier scenes where
they're they're ignoring him, and then he comes back with
the fingerprints and you know, the list of the record
on the guy that he killed, and they still just
(15:30):
don't don't listen to him.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
They still don't listen to any of his strategies where
he's talking about, hey, you know, these are going to
be trained killers that are coming after you and your forces.
You know this, this is definitely not what you guys
want to do here. So even after he does prove hey,
I did something and I got information and now here, look,
I'm right about these things, they're still ignoring all of
(15:52):
his insight and all of his strategy.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, and because it, I mean borrowing from from slow
horses for a moment, they just can't be arsed to
figure things out. They just don't. It's like, oh, it's
you know, it's Christmas Eve, like, you know, we just
we can't. We don't have time for terrorists or all right, Yeah,
we just we just have to keep keep moving the
people through here. That's that's all we got time for. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And one of the things I think I appreciated the
most throughout this movie was how meta? Did you realize
how meta?
Speaker 1 (16:22):
It was?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Because as soon as he starts getting into the vents
when he's trying to you know, help he's trying to
help that special force of cops, Yeah, the Swat Force. Yeah,
he gets into the vents, he's like, why do I
always get into these situations?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And then there's multiple comments throughout the film where he
and his wife acknowledged why does this keep happening to us?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah? That and it reminds me in the first the
sort of the middle the original Star Wars trilogy, Well,
they say I have a bad feeling about this. The
first time I realized that it was said that often,
Like I went to a boovie marathon, like it was
like fifteen years after the first one or something, and
(17:01):
they ran four, five, and six in the theater, like
it's like eight hours straight whatever. And you realize by
the by uh, by the third one, by Return of
the Jedi, that they just keep saying that line. So
it's one of those things. Yeah, yeah, like and and
and and uh. I think that Han says something to
(17:24):
look like how bad it is? It? And Luke says
that pretty much like usual, you know, like this is
the kind of ship we get into. Just you know
that happens to us. So it's kind of kind of
like that that that philosophy of oh, well, you know,
we're just gonna be we're gonna be behind the eight
ball like routinely, just on the rag.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, and that probably the audience is thinking to themselves,
you know, oh, here's this big terrorist thread again. Yeah,
and who's at the center of it is this guy
John McLain who's supposed to be the everyman cop R
So how does he just keep getting into these situations?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Isn't he targeted? In the third one?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
He's purposely targeted, That's what I thought. So I can't
remember a time where he says why do I keep
getting into situations like this? Or he gets into the events,
So I think that's again why the third one is
kind of like the Superior movie here. Yeah, but it's
more tightly plotted. It's more tightly plotted, and it just
has really good pacing.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
There was times in.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
This movie, I will say too, where it seemed to
slow the pacing down a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
There is some repetition for sure. Yeah, and you know
the big fight set pieces kind of repeat.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, yeah, and then in between those fight set pieces
they're back in the tower talking about how we're going
to get the tower online. Yeah, they seem to kind
of broke it up in places where it just seems
to slow it down a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, it seems like to me, I actually need to
find this guy's well. They managed to work Reggie Veljoen into.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
This one a little bit, which was great to see.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, John Amos was the commander of the guy who
turned the group of mercenaries who look like special forces.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Who also did a very good job. I will say
that one of the constant themes that I've seen these
early nineties, late eighties movies that are such classics is
that the actors, even the character actors, they really come
in and they do their job. There is not I
could honestly say in this whole film, there's not one
performance that I would look at and say, this doesn't
(19:35):
look believable. They either have a you know, a character,
and they stick to that character. They never go outside
that character. They never go above or or below with
the ranges for that character, but they play it perfectly
on the nose.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
The speaking of which Fred Thompson, he spent years on
Law and Order. Yes, he was also in the Hunt
for Red October. But he was also a United States
representative congressman. Well, that's right, that's right, he was, so
(20:10):
that that was interesting. He died in twenty fifteen, but
he was all over the place, many many interests. That
a very impressive performance to me was this guy Art Evans,
who plays the technician or whatever, who is trying to
(20:32):
help get things back online. Yeah and damn near dies. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
He's trying to go that swat team to the tower
that hasn't been opened, right, yeah, and then he ends
up being involved in the.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Shootout a kind of idiot plot. Issue was for me
was that they didn't figure out earlier on that they
could use the communication at the at the perimeter, which
is normally just a just a repeating sound to broadcast
(21:04):
to the planes that like, like, I guess they had
to have what there's a horrific plane crash in this movie.
That's that's very true, where an entire British airways ish,
I don't know what then what the name of the
actual windsor windsor crashes and burns and everyone's killed because
the terrorists have set the ground level to be higher,
(21:32):
yes than they should. So there was like two hundred
feet higher than it was supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yes, So when they go to land, they're at an
angle and a speed that's way too fast, and yes,
there's a horrific and everybody aboard dies.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'm so glad they showed us what the inside of
that plane look like. So we got to see all
those people die.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
A ball of flame, which it's which as a kid,
you know a lot of our parents had seen the
first die Hard movies. They're a little gory, and you know,
they're they're probably not approved for kids, but back then
they definitely our parents just left the TV on for us, right,
So we ended up watching these movies and things like
RoboCop and they definitely weren't appropriate for us at those ages.
(22:14):
So then as a kid, I think I was maybe
eight or nine years old and probably in my earlier
adolescence when this movie was on in syndication on T
and T and TBS, and to see that, I can't
imagine seeing that as a young child whose parents didn't
expect that this movie was going to be.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
This level of violence. Of violent.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, they had a theme here where they liked to
show the inside of things when they were blowing up
and people were dying.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah. Yeah. A very famous thing about this movie that
has to do with the with the where they're shown
on television is how they dubbed out the swearing. Oh
that's right. So the most famous line from this movie
is not not in the theatrical version. When toward the
(23:00):
end of the film, actually at the the climax of
the film, John McClain says, yippy kaya, motherfucker. Yeah, But
on TV it was yippy kaya mister falcon because it
matched his lips. But at the same time, I guess
the idea was that falcon was the call sign of
(23:23):
the of the bad guy.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah yeah, which which I mean kind of makes sense.
But I think it probably would have done better just
to bleep it out. Maybe they could have just bleeped it.
People would people know, you can infer what's.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Being said from the bleep and then it's still appropriate
for the air. The whole mister Falcon thing is something
you can encounter just in regular you know, online you know, uh,
social media, So people can say mister falcon and you
know what, the reference is.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Crazy And that was That's the other thing that I
noticed early on. John McClain has the singers in these
one liners.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yes, and so according to the trivia for this one.
In the first movie, he did ad lib some stuff
that was that was not in the script that that
ended up in the final film. This one, they just
let him roll, Oh they did. Yeah, so there might
have been there might have been dialogue written, but pretty
much anytime he's just talking to himself, that's pretty much
(24:25):
ad lib stuff. Oh so that's just the genius of
Bruce Willis. Yeah, yeah, I was actually watched the thing
this morning. Speaking of your genius of people ad libbing
different media project Happy Days. Anson Williams, who played Potzy
on Happy Days back in the seventies, talked about Robin
Williams and his first appearance on Happy Days as Morc.
(24:49):
They had written this script and everyone said, oh my god,
this is awful, this is a terrible episode. Why are
we even doing this? And they had another actor attached
and the guy came and he was awful, and they
were they were kind of stuck. And the guy quit.
He knew he was awful, and he quit, and they're like, well,
(25:10):
who can we get to replace him? Under you know,
under pressure here? You know, we only have I mean,
we're we're already basically in rehearsals and we need to
shoot at the end of this week. And a couple
of people, including I guess Penny Marshall knew knew Robin Williams,
and they brought him in and so much of that
was he's like fixed the script like on the fly, yeah,
(25:33):
by with all of his ad libs and stuff, and
they just the genius of being able to talk off
the top of your head in a way that this
still works for the property you're working on and doesn't
have to be bleeped. Yeah, because he could work pretty blue,
Yeah he could. That was definitely the genius of Robin Williams,
and definitely the genius of Bruce Willis to ad lib
(25:55):
a large portion of his dialogue in this movie.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Because the things that he says are really memorable too.
You can definitely hear those one liners and you just
remember off the top of your head. So the character
itself of John McLean is just a perpetual character is
just one of the more impressive ones, not for just
the feats that he does, but just for the way
that Bruce Willis perfectly embodies this character through a variety
(26:18):
of movies, and a variety of situations.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, that makes it even more sad that to know
the condition he's in now he's got I don't know
exactly what the what the diagnosis is some kind of
dementia at this point and does not recognize anybody, and
you know, and I mean his family is still caring
(26:41):
for him, I guess, but you know, it's a difficult situation,
sad that he's just not you know, he's not living
out a normal lifespan as the Bruce willis that we knew. Yeah. Yeah, so, Uh,
(27:02):
there's one more giant explosion at the end of the
film that solves the whole problem of being able to
land these planes. After all the lights have been turned
off and and the and the bad guys are basically
controlling all the lights and the and the communication and
stuff from a church, from a condemned church. I guess,
(27:25):
I don't know. Well, the caretaker that they kill early on, uh,
says that, oh, I'll still come around. I guess that
the parish is going to be using it for some things,
but it won't be it won't be services here anymore
or whatever. And that's like two seconds before they kill him. Uh,
And they blow that thing up so before. I don't
think the parish is going to be using it for
(27:46):
anything going forward. No, it was that I had no
idea where that part was going, and I had seen
this movie before. I had totally forgotten what they did
with what they were doing there and why they were
digging a hole. I didn't understand that. No, I didn't
get that either. I do. I don't know. Did we
ever see them do anything with that hole that they dug, No,
(28:07):
we did.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I don't think they ever did anything with the hole
that they dug. Though they did set the stage pretty
early for the shootout at the church, you know. Yeah,
they did kind of foreshadow that. There's the red Ammo
and then the Blue Ammo. And I had never seen
this movie before until I watched it recently before we
did this podcast, and even I was like, wait here,
(28:30):
why are they switching out from the red to the blue. Oh,
there's something different about the blue Amma. Yeah, that was
easy to tell before the surprise at the end.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
When when he chases them, Like, yeah, when they when
they go to flee from this, when they've been tracked
down and they go to flee from the church, they're
they're fleeing in snowmobiles as you as you point out,
everything's frozen. Everything's frozen, except that it's not because they're like,
how are these things not sinking? Is my question. There's
so much water they go through. I know they break
(29:01):
the ice, and like, how does how do you? I mean,
what is a snowmobile way? For heaven's sakes, it weighs
a lot. Yeah, I would think it would be I mean,
it would just be falling through the ice and they
would be going down with it unless they got off
real quick. I don't know that. That did not make
a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, and then the whole snowmobile thing while they're doing it,
and again I'm looking at this and watching the scene
and saying, this doesn't not look like it was filmed on.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
That's a really good question. I wonder if it says
where they filmed it.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Because this was way too this was maybe, I mean,
maybe there was climate change between them and now, but
I don't know if this was.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I don't know either. That's a really good question.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
That's way too cold that I have early memories of
visiting family who lived in Virginia and stopping in Washington,
d C. And there were snowy like conditions, but it
was nothing.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Like this, nothing like that.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, and this was definitely a shot somewhere where it
was a lot colder, or the it made it look
a lot colder. But I will say that the practical
effects the minis that they used for the planes, the
way that they had them blow up, was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah. The only one that first time, the only one
that kind of looks phony is to me, the Holly's
plane when it lands. There's a shot of it that
just doesn't look right. Yeah, there's something about it. It
just looks like it looks pasty. Yeah, I don't know,
I have any other way to describe it.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Well, it's the scene too where he ejects from the
cargo plane. Now, that's the other thing that's I mean,
that's just a product of its time with CGI and
special effects. They didn't even really use CGI back then.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
No, this was this came out in nineteen ninety and
which which will bring me to another point in a moment.
But yeah, that whole you can just see how green
screened it is. Yes, the explosion in the background.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, and his you know, his facial expressions on the
ejection seat.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, yeah, to see when thirties have ejection seas. I
don't think they do, Like, why would you need an
ejection seat. You would like if you were going to
get out, you would open up the back and you
would jump out with a parachute and not it's movie
movie magic, a fighters jet or whatever. The I cannot
(31:18):
run this down, and I tried last night very hard,
but but my wife and I both noticed it. When
I think it's when the British plane lands. I think
it's then. It might be, yeah, I think it's when
the British because it's fairly early on. There's a music
(31:40):
queue that I swear to God, the same music queue
from the end of the last episode of season three
of Star Trek The Next Generation, when you're waiting for
Riker to say fire at the Borg and and Picarda's
locutus is dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
(32:03):
dumb dumb dum. Oh. But they you know, they use that.
They used that that music a lot and a lot
of films and a lot of movies. It's actually in
First Contact, it's in some of the Star Trek movies.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
With the next generation cast. So they use that, they
use that, they reuse that, and they use that a lot.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I looked up the composers and they're not the same people.
The only thing that's the same is they both were
nineteen ninety yeah, and so I don't know. Maybe they
had like like sound recording studios near each other and
they're like, oh man, that that would work in my spot,
you know.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Or maybe it's just like a session musicians who who
were playing the same soundtrack or something.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
It's a reused sound clip and I've heard I've heard
it in other films. I just can't recall now.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I mean, the orchestration is a little bit different, but
the music itself is spot on, and I just I
don't I could not could not find anything. I did
all the googling. I could possibly, like, you know, AI
ship to whatever, try to to try to make some
kind of connection, and it just wanted to tell me
about the excuse me individually, but not not together. But
(33:14):
it's the same. It's the same music. Cue. Yeah, It's
just that anticipation.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, yeah, that anticipatory, nervous anticipation music.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, this film has a much higher body count than
the first one for sure, eating civilians and uh, criminals alike.
You're not counting the windsor airlines plane. Even if you
don't count that, there's still tens of people who die,
and there's uh, there's way more explosions. Yeah, remember in
(33:47):
the in the first movie there's the explosion towards the end, right,
and this one there's at least there's at least four
or five times that large explosions, not just you know,
small ones, but very large, very large explosion. I think
that the analog of the scene in the first movie
where the roof of the Knokotomi plaza is going to
(34:10):
explode when he ties the fire hose around his waist
and then jumps off the side and then has to
shoot out the window with his bare feet get across
the glass. Yeah, there's a lot of blood loss in
both of these films. For John, I like, you just
have an ivy running at the end of both films.
(34:31):
But I think that the analog for that is the
is the ejection seat scene. Yes, with the explosion. Yeah,
they really they didn't vary that much from the pattern
of the first one at all.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Well, it's again it's it's what John McLean can survive, which,
you know, it seemed to exponentially go up in this film.
There was a little I mean, you.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Know, tying a hose to you and jumping off the
top of a building is kind of a wild thing
that only happens in movies. Right.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
There's no sort of reality that movie. But the rest
of the film kind of follows this. They kind of
stretch the rules of reality and physics a little bit, right,
But the second movie kind of ramps that up exponentially.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
He's on the wing of a plane that's about to
take off, and he's having this climactic battle with this
two Special Forces officers that he kills, not just one,
that's just one, yeah, two that he manages to kill
indirect combat while he's on the wing of a plane.
This everyman LAPD cigarette smoking drinking cop probably you know,
(35:32):
probably doesn't run like a ten minute mile, right, He
just destroys two Special Forces officers hand to hand, hand
to hand, hand to like who taught you to fight?
I don't know, yeah, just overcoming these crazy odds. Grew
up on the streets of New York fighting I don't know. Yeah,
And that's and that's again, that's the reason why these
movies are so well loved.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right, Well, I didn't. I'm sort of remembering that there
was a point where where Bruce willis trying to be
a boxer. I think maybe before.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
He before he broke into acting, before he broke into acting,
before he was on and then a little then a
little bit while he was an actor, when he was
in because his big break was Moonlighting the TV show. Yeah,
so that's before then he was trying to be a boxer.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah. The first season or so of that show was great,
and then it just got really difficult. It's hard for
me to remember. I was so small. I think when
it was out and people were watching it, sylviil Shepherd
was she was really good, but she got very difficult
and she got pregnant somewhere along the line and then
(36:39):
went there and she was kind of a difficult person
to work with and they stopped getting along and so
they were just not even on the on the screen
that much together toward the end of that show.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, but he definitely was a boxer that I remember
him talking about that.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, but is he he's not boxing when.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
No, Yeah, he is street fighting and he just again
overcomes the odds and kills them both before the or
at least he beats the second guy to the point
where he can kind of jump off the wing, yeah
and pull the fuel line right.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Yeah. Yeah. That's another interesting point of the film that
it all the other planes are allowed to land even
though there's no landing lights on the airport because John
McClain has pulled the fuel dump on the plane that's
trying to escape with it. You we even talked about
(37:33):
like the point of this that they were trying to
for some reason liberate this South American drug lord dictator,
former dictator, I don't know. He'd been president or something
and then he got thrown out of office and then
he became a drug lord. That does that? Get that right?
I think so?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
I think he was he was a dictator, but he
was like a really bloody dictator who was who's so
a drug lord?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
After he and a general and a general just like
a variety of things, every yeah, everything, And.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
They never really say did they say where he's from?
Was it supposed to be? Like I don't think they
even said what the country here?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
They made the country. It was a made up country.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
And do you notice too that at points he had
a little bit of a British accent. It's again this
thing where it's like the British accent can be South American,
it could be German, it could be a lot of
different places.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah. Yeah, Actually I was gonna throw this into that.
I was talking about John like Wasama being in this
film and not just barely being in it, mostly cut
out of it and they dubbed his voice and everything.
But this movie was produced by Joel Silver and so
was Executive Decision, and John, like Guizamo, had a like
central role in Executive Decision. Another I think of that
(38:50):
one as the flip side of Air Force one. Yeah,
and then came out around the same time, and I
think that Executive Decision is the better movie in part
because they kill off John Claude van Dam in the
first five minutes, Like, who doesn't want to see that?
You should do executive decisions sometimes, that is a that
is a great flick.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
We should, we should, We should cover a lot of
these action flicks from this time period, because I feel
like when it comes to movies now, if it's not
a really big spectacle, And that's why I kind of
this movie was a little strange because this was like
a terrorist operation in Washington, DC, where like thousands of
people were gonna die, so the stakes got really high.
(39:31):
But now movies are these big spectacles, like the superhero movies,
and it's like, oh, the end of the world is coming.
It's not just you know, this one attack that's happening
and the everyman overcoming the odds. I feel like this
is a genre they don't really touch anymore. I haven't
really seen or looked at or or gone to the
(39:52):
theater to see a movie where it's a thriller like this.
It's an action thriller with an everyman who can die.
Possibly there's there's significant.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Risk that can die. Part is probably the biggest one,
because I always say that probably Mission Impossible would be
the closest.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, Mission Impossible. They've but they're almost so formulaic.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Now. Yeah, there's almost ten of them. Yeah. I did
not see the last one because it got such horrific reviews. Yeah,
and I have no idea what happened. And then there's
The Fast and the Furious. But they've all every character.
Every character in that movie has become pretty much like
a superhero who cannot die by any normal human means.
Even when they die, they come back.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, so there's no stakes. Yeah, but then there's no
movie like this where you see the hero get really hurt.
You know, he got stabbed, he's bleeding. You know, you're
talking about how much blood is he losing during this movie,
and it might be a little unrealistic at the end,
he's going to be anemic and weak, right, Yeah, but
there's nothing like that. There's nothing comparable to die Hard
(40:51):
that has come since then. And these movies were so
popular and so well loved. I remember my friends and
I when we were in high school and Diehard with
a Vengeance came out, and then it came out on VHS.
This is how old I am. Audience came out on VHS.
We went to the video store, we rented it probably
every week that we could, and just watched it every
(41:12):
weekend at a sleepover when we were fourteen years old. Yeah,
and so these movies became iconic. We started repeating John
McLean's lines from die Hard with a Vengeance And they
don't have anything similar these days. With all the sequels
that they're coming out with the remakes, they haven't thought, hey,
maybe we can make something similar to die Hard, but
not die Hard.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
I think maybe the closest on TV might be.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
A Reacher yeah, which is episodic.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, it's episodic, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Which is what we get now, Like we either get
the big spectacle superhero movies, some pretty good art horror
movies that they're coming out with these days, oscar Bait,
but they don't stay in the theater is very long
or the you know, this franchise has to make a
billion dollars or it's a failure, which is part of
the reason and why I really appreciated that the tone
(42:04):
of this movie, it was dark like in modern film.
I don't know what they do, and I don't know
if Sebastian knows to speak to this better, but it
feels like they put everything digitally through a filter where
everything is brighter. In this movie they weren't afraid for
It was probably a shot on you know, like physical
it's probably cellular, right, and that has this grainy, darker
(42:26):
texture for all the scenes where there's shadows that they
can play with. And that's one of the things I've
noticed about modern films that it looks like aside from
the green screen stuff and all the cgi they put
in that you might not even notice. They seem to
just get rid of any sort of shadow on the
faces of the actors, and I feel like it adds
so much more layers and tones and emotions when they
(42:48):
can play with those shadows.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that actually makes sense. I think that
there was a I don't know if it was intentional,
but it looked intentional to me. Easter from airplane in
this and it's when when the news casters broadcasting from
the plane and everyone knows that that that they're terrorists
(43:11):
and all this stuff's going on because they people in
the airport have not been told the truth about what's
happening at all. They've been just like like, oh, you know,
just we're having technical problems or whatever, and we'll get
it back online as soon as we can, and planes
will be arriving and you're not going to miss your
connections and whatever whatever. And uh, when people start panicking
and running out, they were running through the doors and
(43:34):
like the doors broke and people were falling on the
on the on the on the on the ground. There's
a scene an airplane where they're running and I think
they hit the doors and the whole like thing comes
down and then they keep running. Nobody falls though. An airplane,
an airplane, it looks it looks very similar an airplane.
(43:55):
We did Airplane sometime back. Airplane is based on another movie.
It was called Zero Hour. Yeah, and it's a satire
satire of Zero Hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What else do
we want to say about this film before we wrap
it up? Did we see where it was shot? I
was gonna see if it's said.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I think it's right there where it says the one
more down, good, yeah, down, one more, one more. The
shooting was originally yeah, going to take place in Washington State.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Oh right, Yeah, and they but it was warm. It
was too warm.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
They tried to find snow everywhere, and they were getting
snow trucked in from Canada.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yes. And then when they were.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
In Colorado for the snowmobile chase, Oh it got to
seventeen degrees.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Gets a fake snow when a massive blizzard of temperatures
will blow freezing swept the state and shooting got to
be shut down. Yeah, so that the Snowmobille sequence was
in Colorado, Yeah, where was really cold? They should just
have shown it. They should just have said it was
Denver because a port. Yeah, yeah, mile High, you know,
(45:09):
and that's where Holly McLean's family could have been from. Yeah,
they didn't have to be in d C. I mean,
I mean the only reason that it would be that
they had used d C was that they were bringing
in this this fugitive dictator, drug lord general guy. Yeah,
so they had to set up that part of it.
He Uh, he had many roles to play, I guess, yeah,
(45:33):
fugitive drug lord, general, dictator, got dictator. Don't never forget
the dictator, all right. I say that we we throw
a little rating on this sucker, and uh and I
try to come up with a way to rate it
every time, like a A a unit of measurement, and uh,
(45:54):
for this one, I think maybe it's going to be
ridiculously convenient. Ejection seats. I was gonna say, ejection seats.
There you go. Yes, what are we doing? One through five?
One through five? Yes, five is best, one is one
is worst? Oh man, I got to give this one
(46:14):
a three and a half. And I think it's just
because of those pace the pacing problems. Yeah, yeah, those.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Times where they had to add the little dialogue in
between the action scenes. It just chopped it up too slow.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
The other the other Diehards were almost perfect. I mean
Diehard with the Vengeance, the the in between action set
pieces were paced perfectly, so.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Comparing it to the first film. In the third film,
this one just moved too slow at some points. This
one was just over two hours. I'm curious about what
the what the first one and the third one were, Yeah,
link run time. Let me see two hours and twelve
minutes for the first one, but it was still tighter,
and Vengeance is two hours and eight minutes. Yeah, so
(47:02):
this one's shorter, but things about it feel longer.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yes, things about it feel longer in this one, and
so I had to That was one of the things
I was struggling with it was it was hard not
to let my focus wander when the pieces where they
were talking about the tower and how we're gonna get
the communication up would come up. It was hard not
to let my focus wander. It just got so out
of there. And then, as a fun thing, I watched
(47:27):
this the Diehard two yesterday in the afternoon, and then
die Hard with a Vengeance popped up on my you
should watch this fee and I watched it again. I
was like, this movie is just so I would give
that one a five out of five.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, yeah, I can't disagree with you there. Yeah, it's
it's it's a tighter film, even though it's a little
bit longer. The thing that the knock against three is
that it slices up New York in terms of travel
time in ways that are impossible.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yes, which is the fun part of it. They're running
through the parks, they're taking taxis through Central Park and
just to get you know, they're they're talking about how
you can't get you know, from downtown to uptown in
this amount of time, how impossible it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And then everybody you know who's in New Yorker, who's
lived there the whole life, Samuel Jackson, Zeus and John McClain,
they're like, no, I know how to get there. We'll
do it this way, and they do it and it works.
The same is true of Bullet in San Francisco, same
is true of Collateral in La Like, even though it's
late at night, there's still no way you're getting around
that fast. Yeah, that's a weird movie too. I don't
know that that's not exactly a thriller, but that might
(48:35):
be one to talk about at some point. Yeah, for me,
if the three and a half is probably about right,
three three and a half is in ejection seats. It was.
It was better than I remembered it being, and I
this is one I don't think I ever I didn't
think I ever saw this one in the theater or anything.
I think I followed up years later to watch this one,
(48:58):
and I remember feeling like it wasn't as good as
the first one, which now I think it's it's in
some ways, you know, on a par it's it's more
ridiculous than the first one, for sure, but but it's
it's good. And that the ejection seat scene bothered me
more the first time because I didn't see it coming
(49:20):
and it looks terrible. This one, I knew it was coming,
and so it's like, oh, I see how they did that. Yeah. Yeah,
this was the first time I'd ever sat down and
watched this movie in its entirety. It's just funny since
you're such a fan of the third one.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, And the reason being is that I had thought
that I had seen this movie for a really long
time because it had always been on in syndication during
the holidays, and back then when TNTTBS, whatever Turner Network
was showing this during that period of time, they would
stretch the run time by breaking it up with a
bunch of commercials. So it ends up being like more
(49:57):
like a three and a half to four hour movie.
So you're down and you're watching it progressively through like
a holiday, but then you're getting up to do things
and then you totally lose the movie. So I had
memories of watching this movie in bits and pieces in
the past. Some of it was really refreshing my memory.
Oh maybe I'd seen this part, I'd seen this part,
but I'd never sat down and watched the whole thing
(50:17):
all the way to the end and saw the ending.
I'd never realized it. Kaye, motherfucker came.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
From the end of the end of this movie.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, so that's because I mean back when we again,
when we were kids, the cool thing was finding like
t shirts with John McLain that said kaya you know,
that was like counterculture thing in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Yeah, So it.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Was really nice to finally watch it, and it was
a lot better than I had remembered.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
The snippets being. But those again, those pacing issues really
knocked it down for me. Yeah, all right, Josh, where
can people find you?
Speaker 2 (50:47):
People can find me at Amazing j rab on Instagram
or joshajar h a jja R on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
I am at the Jim mcdeon all the social media.
This show is fifty percent facts. For percent is the
word of fifty six numbers, fifty recent facts of the
Spreakerbrime podcast, associate with the art media on the Obscure
Celebrity Network, and I will talk to you the next time.
Thank you sir. That was fun. It was fun. Cheryl
(51:14):
actually sat down and watched this with me, and she
like she appreciated just the time capsule of it, you know.
Oh yeah, that was one of the things.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
I was just how it was such a.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Snippet of the early nineties. Yeah, if you want to
do one for Christmas, scrooged have you ever seen the
bill Murray Baby screwg Yeah, I am not my favorite
Christmas very long time. Yeah, we do that one. Let's
do that one for Christmas. The Film Festival last year
Alright, we're in okay, welcome to the studio. I've been
here in a minute. I mean I've been here, but
I haven't been here to record in a minute. I've
been doing everything remotely from home. But hey, I have
I have a guest host with me to guess co
host it with me today. Josh is with me, and
we're going to talk about, uh, the sequel to like
(00:33):
one of the most popular episodes that we did last year,
and this is die Heard two. We did die Hard
last year and it and pretty much ruled. So so
here we are we Diehard Too, die Heard Too. Welcome
Josh Hard. Die Hard. Yes, that's literally what it says,
die harder. I can't know how. I don't know how
(00:53):
to die any harder that I'm already died.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
But though I will say that there's a naming pattern
for these movies, and they didn't follow it with the
second one. It's not really called die Harder. It's just
called Diehard Too. But then there's die Hard with a Vengeance,
which is the best one. Yes, there's Live Free or
die Hard, and then there's a Good Day to die Hard.
I've never seen the last two.
Speaker 1 (01:13):
I've heard I haven't seen the last two that they
got terrible reviews. Yeah, they were just like pretty trash
money grabs. Yeah. The only thing that that was halfway
interesting is the guy who used to be who used
to be the face of Macintosh in the Mac versus
PC commercials. Oh, he was in. Justin Long was in
one of them. Yeah, he was probably in die Hard,
(01:35):
like he was the Live Free or die Hard. I
think he was in the Russian one, whichever that one was.
Speaker 2 (01:38):
Yeah, there's one where they bring his son in his
I saw some parts of it. I think it's a
good not a good day to die Hard, Live Free
or die Hard has McLean's son in it, Okay, And
that might be the one with Justin Long. He seems
to be like such a frantic sidekick type character.
Speaker 1 (01:54):
Yeah. I think that one of the weirdest things about
this whole series is the wife Holly. Yeah, Like in
the first movie, he's going out to see her for Christmas.
She and the kids have been living in LA because
(02:14):
she took this job with the Nokotomi Corporation and he
has been a cop in New York and this one
he has moved to LA but she has to fly
into d C. And I guess that's where her parents live.
Speaker 2 (02:31):
Yeah, that was a little jarring because I've lived I
grew up on the East Coast and we actually used
to visit Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Pretty frequently.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
And I will say to anybody who's never been, that's
actually a very underrated trip, is going to Washington, d C.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
And seeing all the monuments in the museums Democracy Disneyland.
Speaker 2 (02:49):
Yeah, but it's a really nice trip. There's lots of
great things to see. There's lots of good restaurants. But Washington,
d C. In the winter, I don't know if this
is just my memory of the early eighties and late nineties,
it never gets that cold. That's what really jarred me.
They were driving over lakes and water. I'm getting ahead
of ourselves, driving over lakes and water on ice. It
(03:11):
never gets cold enough to ice in washing like they
were in Michigan. Yeah, it's like, well, actually it looked
like they were in Canada or something.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
Canada maybe, I don't know where they filmed that part. Yeah,
it was so she there They're in Washington, d C.
And then so much snow on the runway. There's so
much snow. It's really cold. And that's really weird because
from my experience, I've never seen Washington, d C. Frozen
like that. I've seen it when it's been snowing, but
never frozen. I mean, I think it does some, but
I think it's pretty rare, especially these days with all
(03:41):
of the you know, climate change, I guess is the
word I'm looking for. Climate change. I don't want to
say global warming, because it's not just warming. Some places
are cold or someplaces are hotter. Yeah, it interesting film.
A A stat that really blew my mind about this
(04:03):
movie is that it actually made twice as much as
the first one. Wow.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
That was kind of anticipated though, because the first one
was such a hit.
Speaker 1 (04:09):
So first one was such a hit, but you think
it would have been bigger yea, And this one is
was was twice as big. I don't know what the
third one brought in. The third one was like, as
you said that, that was the best one. Yeah, this one.
The first one, I don't even know what was based on.
I guess it was probably based on a book at
some point, or just some some specs script running around
(04:30):
Hollywood or whatever. This one is based on a book
and they adapted into a diehard film. Called fifty eight minutes.
Somewhere in the film, somebody says fifty eight minutes.
Speaker 2 (04:44):
Yeah, and the premise of it being in an airport
and hijacking and all these things. It's such a concept
of that time period, right, right, because now after nine
to eleven, we have TSA and there's so much tight secure,
there's armed soldiers, there's a variety things at airports.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
I yeah, I think that that's got to be the
most jarring part of it. I mean, there is a
scene where where Holly Gennaro McLain, his wife, is sitting
on the plane talking to her seat mate, an older
woman who like pulls out of her purse, her purse
(05:28):
of freaking taser.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Yeah, she pulls out a she pulls out like it's
one of those cattle protastes. Yes, yeah, And I'm like, wait,
how did she get that on the plane?
Speaker 1 (05:38):
Like, I remember that things were a little bit laxed
before nine to eleven, but I don't remember people getting
on with like weapons.
Speaker 2 (05:44):
Well, I remember as a teenager when you could smoke
there was a smoking section in the airplane.
Speaker 1 (05:49):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Yeah, so it's it's it's it's such a like it's
a definitely a piece that's a period of its time.
But shout out to Bonnie Badelia because she is so
great as John McLean's wife.
Speaker 1 (05:59):
She's great, Yes, she they if you have seen the
first one, and actually if you've seen this one as well,
the asshole reporter guy who has the most punishable face ever,
William Atherton, most punishable face ever, is on the plane
with her, but they're supposed to not be near each
other because he has a restraining order against her because
(06:20):
at the end of the first movie she punched him
in the mouth and knocked some teeth out. Yeah, which
and and they know her.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
There's something with either the people who write the screenplay
because this is a different director from the first. This
is Harlan Yeah, and these were directed by mctererne in
the first in the third, which is why the quality
in the third one jumps so high, right, But the
director or whoever wrote the screenplayer, the producers must have
something against journalists, because all journalists. This guy plays a
(06:51):
journalist that you know does terrible things in the first movie,
and then in the second movie he breaks the story
and it causes mass panic and you know, writing so so,
and then there's also the other journalist who's getting on
McLean's nerves in the beginning of the movie, the female
one I can't remember what the name of the character.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Was, who turns out to kind of be okay.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Who turns out to kind of be okay, but she's
still very annoying herself in the last few moments of
the film. So somebody out there had something against journalists.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
Journalists whoever one of the producers or something, I don't know.
Some some people did not like journalists at all. This
film may be the only film ever where you're introduced
to the villain naked. You see his whole ass. This
(07:44):
is true, and they're very strategically blocking out his cock. Yes, yes,
I think if it was made today you would see
the whole manty, the full monty.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
But it was a really strange way to introduce it.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
It was a very strange way. And that guy has
almost always played some kind of bad guy. The one
good guy that he's played was the president in Iron
Man three. Oh that's right. I didn't realize that that's
how same actor so far apart. Yes, yeah, he definitely.
He doesn't have a he's a scary face, not a
(08:19):
punchable face. Well, they have Robert Patrick as well as
one of the Yeah goes down early and he's but
I mean his facial expressions are just perfect for roles
like this. Yeah. John Lewisamo is in the movie too,
but only very briefly, and apparently they dubbed his voice
so he has no accent. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (08:36):
And I want to give a big shout out to
the crew on the first three DIEHRD movies as somebody
of Middle Eastern descent. None of the villains are committing
terrorist acts in the trilogy of the best movies. They're
usually you know, like white German or in this case,
this was like a white American, you know, military special
(09:00):
former special forces, you know, so no terrorists. There's lots
of airplanes involved, there's lots of terroristic activities, and nobody says.
Speaker 1 (09:09):
I'll lock barn Ones.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
And so I got to say I can appreciate these
movies for that.
Speaker 1 (09:13):
You know, it's it's weird. I don't know if you
watch Slow Horses, but I'm a giant, giant fan of
that show, and I have like read or listened to.
I don't know I'm gonna get credit for I'm gonna
take credit for reading from listening to that series, but
the most recent season of that show, the antagonist villain
(09:37):
folks are in the show they're Lebanese and they create
this whole like reason why they're so pissed off or whatever.
But in the book they were North Korean, which kind
of made more sense to me. But I guess they
felt like it was it was unmotivated or whatever. It
was just like it's a weird switch up. Yeah, it
(09:58):
was a very weird switch up. So you know, apologize for.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
For sawhorses, but that they changed it.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
They changed it.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Yeah, yeah, but yeah, so naked villain early on he's
Jack though, I mean you can't really take that away
from and he's doing some kind of tight, chie ish
kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
I don't evenly really know exactly. He has got some
martial arts moves. Later on, when he fights John McClain,
they don't seem to work out that well for him. No,
they don't.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
And I think this is why these movies are so
universally loved, because John McClain is really just the everyman, right.
He's like, he smokes, he's probably drunk, he drinks a
little bit. He's just this everyman person. He overcomes the odds,
So I don't know when you know, usually on the
internet we have discussions based around like who would win
Batman or Kevin McAllister. But we have to start putting
(10:52):
John McLain in these conversations because the odds that he
overcomes special forces, you know, terrorist operations from j Many
who are looking to rebuild the third or fourth Reich.
You know, the things that he does just seemed to
be overcoming crazy odds and winning at the end.
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, I understanding this that the in the premise of
this movie is that his wife is flying in from somewhere.
It's not real clear where she was. Maybe she's coming
in from La but he came in from La White
(11:29):
anything they come together that's not clear, never never addressed
at all. And he on his way into the airport
not only gets his mother in law's car towed, but
he sees a bunch of activity that makes him hinky
that there's something's going on. And as par for the course,
(11:50):
in every one of these frickin' movies, as far as
I can tell, that nobody in authority ever believes him,
even though even in this one, like people of who
he is said and that sort of one of the
least realistic things about it other than an ejection seat
in a cargo plane. Is uh that that the cops,
(12:14):
the other cops are not like fawning over the guy.
You would think that it's like, oh, yeah, you're kind
of a cop hero like I, you know, I want
to be like you. You're a badass whatever, you know,
And they they just totally discount him. And I mean
that was one of the most annoying things about the
first movie, and they just cloned it for this one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
And and you know that starts out with Dennis Franz,
who you know, he always plays the same role of
that cop or the Italian, you know, wise guy with
the accent giving him a ticket and just being really,
that's his brother, Yeah, that's his brother's brother, his brother.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
Yes, Dennis friends is the is the head of the
head of the police.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, and he's not believing him the whole time, and
then his other gives him a ticket. In the beginning,
you know, nobody really recognizes or acknowledgees this crazy story
of Nakatomy Plaza, but then they'll mention it throughout the movie.
Oh you're that NACATOI Plaza guy. You're that Mackatoni Plaza guy,
Like you should.
Speaker 1 (13:12):
Have some cred, right, I feel like you should have
some cred.
Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yeah, and they should be giving him some. You know
that he can recognize certain situations at this point, a
little bit.
Speaker 1 (13:21):
Of difference, just a little bit like somebody fucking believe
this man. You have terrorists on your airport and they're
gonna fuck things up, and you just don't want to listen.
And I guess I don't know that. Roger Ebert used
to call things that didn't make any sense at idiot plots.
There's a little bit of an idiot plot going on,
(13:41):
whether they don't. It's like, if you felt like there
was a threat to your airport, even pre nine to eleven,
you would have done something about it.
Speaker 2 (13:52):
I would think, Yeah, I think you would have shut
it down. Yeah, I think you would have at least investigated.
Speaker 1 (13:58):
He doesn't take much to shut down an airport. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:00):
He starts out mentioning that the guy's got a glock seven.
This is a really advanced weapon. It costs a lot
of money. Yeah, And it seems like Dennis Brown's is
just ignoring all of his insight into this instead of saying, Okay,
this seems like valid points and maybe we shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
Yeah, oh yeah, like oh yeah, maybe you have a point.
I guess it doesn't work if you if everybody cooperates.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
With him, I mean, it doesn't tell a good of
his story.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
I guess not. I mean that's that's you know, it's frustrating.
And that's that was what was very frustrating about the
first movie too. It's like about that, that's sorry about that?
Was that your stomach from the nurry or was it? Yeah,
that's just one of the things that that that made
(14:45):
me crazy about the first movie, and it really makes
me crazy in this one because like in the first movie,
they didn't no idea who he was. Yeah, none of
the none of the I mean they maybe sort of
looked him up at some point, but you know, they
they just didn't take him seriously. Yeah, because it was
like FBI assholes and and LAPD assholes and whatever. And
this is all airport cops and then military, except that
(15:08):
the military spoiler alert is not the military. No, they are.
They are rogue agents. They were there mercenaries mercenaries, yes, yeah,
and they they you know, they're the earlier scenes where
they're they're ignoring him, and then he comes back with
the fingerprints and you know, the list of the record
on the guy that he killed, and they still just
(15:30):
don't don't listen to him.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
They still don't listen to any of his strategies where
he's talking about, hey, you know, these are going to
be trained killers that are coming after you and your forces.
You know this, this is definitely not what you guys
want to do here. So even after he does prove hey,
I did something and I got information and now here, look,
I'm right about these things, they're still ignoring all of
(15:52):
his insight and all of his strategy.
Speaker 1 (15:55):
Yeah, and because it, I mean borrowing from from slow
horses for a moment, they just can't be arsed to
figure things out. They just don't. It's like, oh, it's
you know, it's Christmas Eve, like, you know, we just
we can't. We don't have time for terrorists or all right, Yeah,
we just we just have to keep keep moving the
people through here. That's that's all we got time for. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
And one of the things I think I appreciated the
most throughout this movie was how meta? Did you realize
how meta?
Speaker 1 (16:22):
It was?
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Because as soon as he starts getting into the vents
when he's trying to you know, help he's trying to
help that special force of cops, Yeah, the Swat Force. Yeah,
he gets into the vents, he's like, why do I
always get into these situations?
Speaker 1 (16:35):
Right?
Speaker 2 (16:35):
And then there's multiple comments throughout the film where he
and his wife acknowledged why does this keep happening to us?
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yeah? That and it reminds me in the first the
sort of the middle the original Star Wars trilogy, Well,
they say I have a bad feeling about this. The
first time I realized that it was said that often,
Like I went to a boovie marathon, like it was
like fifteen years after the first one or something, and
(17:01):
they ran four, five, and six in the theater, like
it's like eight hours straight whatever. And you realize by
the by uh, by the third one, by Return of
the Jedi, that they just keep saying that line. So
it's one of those things. Yeah, yeah, like and and
and and uh. I think that Han says something to
(17:24):
look like how bad it is? It? And Luke says
that pretty much like usual, you know, like this is
the kind of ship we get into. Just you know
that happens to us. So it's kind of kind of
like that that that philosophy of oh, well, you know,
we're just gonna be we're gonna be behind the eight
ball like routinely, just on the rag.
Speaker 2 (17:43):
Yeah, and that probably the audience is thinking to themselves,
you know, oh, here's this big terrorist thread again. Yeah,
and who's at the center of it is this guy
John McLain who's supposed to be the everyman cop R
So how does he just keep getting into these situations?
Speaker 1 (17:56):
Isn't he targeted? In the third one?
Speaker 2 (17:58):
He's purposely targeted, That's what I thought. So I can't
remember a time where he says why do I keep
getting into situations like this? Or he gets into the events,
So I think that's again why the third one is
kind of like the Superior movie here. Yeah, but it's
more tightly plotted. It's more tightly plotted, and it just
has really good pacing.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
There was times in.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
This movie, I will say too, where it seemed to
slow the pacing down a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
There is some repetition for sure. Yeah, and you know
the big fight set pieces kind of repeat.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Yeah, yeah, and then in between those fight set pieces
they're back in the tower talking about how we're going
to get the tower online. Yeah, they seem to kind
of broke it up in places where it just seems
to slow it down a lot.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, it seems like to me, I actually need to
find this guy's well. They managed to work Reggie Veljoen into.
Speaker 2 (19:00):
This one a little bit, which was great to see.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
Yeah, John Amos was the commander of the guy who
turned the group of mercenaries who look like special forces.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Who also did a very good job. I will say
that one of the constant themes that I've seen these
early nineties, late eighties movies that are such classics is
that the actors, even the character actors, they really come
in and they do their job. There is not I
could honestly say in this whole film, there's not one
performance that I would look at and say, this doesn't
(19:35):
look believable. They either have a you know, a character,
and they stick to that character. They never go outside
that character. They never go above or or below with
the ranges for that character, but they play it perfectly
on the nose.
Speaker 1 (19:49):
The speaking of which Fred Thompson, he spent years on
Law and Order. Yes, he was also in the Hunt
for Red October. But he was also a United States
representative congressman. Well, that's right, that's right, he was, so
(20:10):
that that was interesting. He died in twenty fifteen, but
he was all over the place, many many interests. That
a very impressive performance to me was this guy Art Evans,
who plays the technician or whatever, who is trying to
(20:32):
help get things back online. Yeah and damn near dies. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (20:36):
He's trying to go that swat team to the tower
that hasn't been opened, right, yeah, and then he ends
up being involved in the.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Shootout a kind of idiot plot. Issue was for me
was that they didn't figure out earlier on that they
could use the communication at the at the perimeter, which
is normally just a just a repeating sound to broadcast
(21:04):
to the planes that like, like, I guess they had
to have what there's a horrific plane crash in this movie.
That's that's very true, where an entire British airways ish,
I don't know what then what the name of the
actual windsor windsor crashes and burns and everyone's killed because
the terrorists have set the ground level to be higher,
(21:32):
yes than they should. So there was like two hundred
feet higher than it was supposed to be.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
Yes, So when they go to land, they're at an
angle and a speed that's way too fast, and yes,
there's a horrific and everybody aboard dies.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
I'm so glad they showed us what the inside of
that plane look like. So we got to see all
those people die.
Speaker 2 (21:51):
A ball of flame, which it's which as a kid,
you know a lot of our parents had seen the
first die Hard movies. They're a little gory, and you know,
they're they're probably not approved for kids, but back then
they definitely our parents just left the TV on for us, right,
So we ended up watching these movies and things like
RoboCop and they definitely weren't appropriate for us at those ages.
(22:14):
So then as a kid, I think I was maybe
eight or nine years old and probably in my earlier
adolescence when this movie was on in syndication on T
and T and TBS, and to see that, I can't
imagine seeing that as a young child whose parents didn't
expect that this movie was going to be.
Speaker 1 (22:29):
This level of violence. Of violent.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Yeah, they had a theme here where they liked to
show the inside of things when they were blowing up
and people were dying.
Speaker 1 (22:37):
Yeah. Yeah. A very famous thing about this movie that
has to do with the with the where they're shown
on television is how they dubbed out the swearing. Oh
that's right. So the most famous line from this movie
is not not in the theatrical version. When toward the
(23:00):
end of the film, actually at the the climax of
the film, John McClain says, yippy kaya, motherfucker. Yeah, But
on TV it was yippy kaya mister falcon because it
matched his lips. But at the same time, I guess
the idea was that falcon was the call sign of
(23:23):
the of the bad guy.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
Yeah yeah, which which I mean kind of makes sense.
But I think it probably would have done better just
to bleep it out. Maybe they could have just bleeped it.
People would people know, you can infer what's.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
Being said from the bleep and then it's still appropriate
for the air. The whole mister Falcon thing is something
you can encounter just in regular you know, online you know, uh,
social media, So people can say mister falcon and you
know what, the reference is.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Crazy And that was That's the other thing that I
noticed early on. John McClain has the singers in these
one liners.
Speaker 1 (24:02):
Yes, and so according to the trivia for this one.
In the first movie, he did ad lib some stuff
that was that was not in the script that that
ended up in the final film. This one, they just
let him roll, Oh they did. Yeah, so there might
have been there might have been dialogue written, but pretty
much anytime he's just talking to himself, that's pretty much
(24:25):
ad lib stuff. Oh so that's just the genius of
Bruce Willis. Yeah, yeah, I was actually watched the thing
this morning. Speaking of your genius of people ad libbing
different media project Happy Days. Anson Williams, who played Potzy
on Happy Days back in the seventies, talked about Robin
Williams and his first appearance on Happy Days as Morc.
(24:49):
They had written this script and everyone said, oh my god,
this is awful, this is a terrible episode. Why are
we even doing this? And they had another actor attached
and the guy came and he was awful, and they
were they were kind of stuck. And the guy quit.
He knew he was awful, and he quit, and they're like, well,
(25:10):
who can we get to replace him? Under you know,
under pressure here? You know, we only have I mean,
we're we're already basically in rehearsals and we need to
shoot at the end of this week. And a couple
of people, including I guess Penny Marshall knew knew Robin Williams,
and they brought him in and so much of that
was he's like fixed the script like on the fly, yeah,
(25:33):
by with all of his ad libs and stuff, and
they just the genius of being able to talk off
the top of your head in a way that this
still works for the property you're working on and doesn't
have to be bleeped. Yeah, because he could work pretty blue,
Yeah he could. That was definitely the genius of Robin Williams,
and definitely the genius of Bruce Willis to ad lib
(25:55):
a large portion of his dialogue in this movie.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Because the things that he says are really memorable too.
You can definitely hear those one liners and you just
remember off the top of your head. So the character
itself of John McLean is just a perpetual character is
just one of the more impressive ones, not for just
the feats that he does, but just for the way
that Bruce Willis perfectly embodies this character through a variety
(26:18):
of movies, and a variety of situations.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, that makes it even more sad that to know
the condition he's in now he's got I don't know
exactly what the what the diagnosis is some kind of
dementia at this point and does not recognize anybody, and
you know, and I mean his family is still caring
(26:41):
for him, I guess, but you know, it's a difficult situation,
sad that he's just not you know, he's not living
out a normal lifespan as the Bruce willis that we knew. Yeah. Yeah, so, Uh,
(27:02):
there's one more giant explosion at the end of the
film that solves the whole problem of being able to
land these planes. After all the lights have been turned
off and and the and the bad guys are basically
controlling all the lights and the and the communication and
stuff from a church, from a condemned church. I guess,
(27:25):
I don't know. Well, the caretaker that they kill early on, uh,
says that, oh, I'll still come around. I guess that
the parish is going to be using it for some things,
but it won't be it won't be services here anymore
or whatever. And that's like two seconds before they kill him. Uh,
And they blow that thing up so before. I don't
think the parish is going to be using it for
(27:46):
anything going forward. No, it was that I had no
idea where that part was going, and I had seen
this movie before. I had totally forgotten what they did
with what they were doing there and why they were
digging a hole. I didn't understand that. No, I didn't
get that either. I do. I don't know. Did we
ever see them do anything with that hole that they dug, No,
(28:07):
we did.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
I don't think they ever did anything with the hole
that they dug. Though they did set the stage pretty
early for the shootout at the church, you know. Yeah,
they did kind of foreshadow that. There's the red Ammo
and then the Blue Ammo. And I had never seen
this movie before until I watched it recently before we
did this podcast, and even I was like, wait here,
(28:30):
why are they switching out from the red to the blue. Oh,
there's something different about the blue Amma. Yeah, that was
easy to tell before the surprise at the end.
Speaker 1 (28:39):
When when he chases them, Like, yeah, when they when
they go to flee from this, when they've been tracked
down and they go to flee from the church, they're
they're fleeing in snowmobiles as you as you point out,
everything's frozen. Everything's frozen, except that it's not because they're like,
how are these things not sinking? Is my question. There's
so much water they go through. I know they break
(29:01):
the ice, and like, how does how do you? I mean,
what is a snowmobile way? For heaven's sakes, it weighs
a lot. Yeah, I would think it would be I mean,
it would just be falling through the ice and they
would be going down with it unless they got off
real quick. I don't know that. That did not make
a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, and then the whole snowmobile thing while they're doing it,
and again I'm looking at this and watching the scene
and saying, this doesn't not look like it was filmed on.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
That's a really good question. I wonder if it says
where they filmed it.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
Because this was way too this was maybe, I mean,
maybe there was climate change between them and now, but
I don't know if this was.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
I don't know either. That's a really good question.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
That's way too cold that I have early memories of
visiting family who lived in Virginia and stopping in Washington,
d C. And there were snowy like conditions, but it
was nothing.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Like this, nothing like that.
Speaker 2 (29:54):
Yeah, and this was definitely a shot somewhere where it
was a lot colder, or the it made it look
a lot colder. But I will say that the practical
effects the minis that they used for the planes, the
way that they had them blow up, was pretty impressive.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Yeah. The only one that first time, the only one
that kind of looks phony is to me, the Holly's
plane when it lands. There's a shot of it that
just doesn't look right. Yeah, there's something about it. It
just looks like it looks pasty. Yeah, I don't know,
I have any other way to describe it.
Speaker 2 (30:30):
Well, it's the scene too where he ejects from the
cargo plane. Now, that's the other thing that's I mean,
that's just a product of its time with CGI and
special effects. They didn't even really use CGI back then.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
No, this was this came out in nineteen ninety and
which which will bring me to another point in a moment.
But yeah, that whole you can just see how green
screened it is. Yes, the explosion in the background.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Yeah, and his you know, his facial expressions on the
ejection seat.
Speaker 1 (30:58):
Yeah, yeah, to see when thirties have ejection seas. I
don't think they do, Like, why would you need an
ejection seat. You would like if you were going to
get out, you would open up the back and you
would jump out with a parachute and not it's movie
movie magic, a fighters jet or whatever. The I cannot
(31:18):
run this down, and I tried last night very hard,
but but my wife and I both noticed it. When
I think it's when the British plane lands. I think
it's then. It might be, yeah, I think it's when
the British because it's fairly early on. There's a music
(31:40):
queue that I swear to God, the same music queue
from the end of the last episode of season three
of Star Trek The Next Generation, when you're waiting for
Riker to say fire at the Borg and and Picarda's
locutus is dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb dumb
(32:03):
dumb dumb dum. Oh. But they you know, they use that.
They used that that music a lot and a lot
of films and a lot of movies. It's actually in
First Contact, it's in some of the Star Trek movies.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
With the next generation cast. So they use that, they
use that, they reuse that, and they use that a lot.
Speaker 1 (32:22):
I looked up the composers and they're not the same people.
The only thing that's the same is they both were
nineteen ninety yeah, and so I don't know. Maybe they
had like like sound recording studios near each other and
they're like, oh man, that that would work in my spot,
you know.
Speaker 2 (32:38):
Or maybe it's just like a session musicians who who
were playing the same soundtrack or something.
Speaker 1 (32:45):
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (32:46):
It's a reused sound clip and I've heard I've heard
it in other films. I just can't recall now.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
I mean, the orchestration is a little bit different, but
the music itself is spot on, and I just I
don't I could not could not find anything. I did
all the googling. I could possibly, like, you know, AI
ship to whatever, try to to try to make some
kind of connection, and it just wanted to tell me
about the excuse me individually, but not not together. But
(33:14):
it's the same. It's the same music. Cue. Yeah, It's
just that anticipation.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Yeah, yeah, that anticipatory, nervous anticipation music.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Yeah, this film has a much higher body count than
the first one for sure, eating civilians and uh, criminals alike.
You're not counting the windsor airlines plane. Even if you
don't count that, there's still tens of people who die,
and there's uh, there's way more explosions. Yeah, remember in
(33:47):
the in the first movie there's the explosion towards the end, right,
and this one there's at least there's at least four
or five times that large explosions, not just you know,
small ones, but very large, very large explosion. I think
that the analog of the scene in the first movie
where the roof of the Knokotomi plaza is going to
(34:10):
explode when he ties the fire hose around his waist
and then jumps off the side and then has to
shoot out the window with his bare feet get across
the glass. Yeah, there's a lot of blood loss in
both of these films. For John, I like, you just
have an ivy running at the end of both films.
(34:31):
But I think that the analog for that is the
is the ejection seat scene. Yes, with the explosion. Yeah,
they really they didn't vary that much from the pattern
of the first one at all.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Well, it's again it's it's what John McLean can survive, which,
you know, it seemed to exponentially go up in this film.
There was a little I mean, you.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Know, tying a hose to you and jumping off the
top of a building is kind of a wild thing
that only happens in movies. Right.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
There's no sort of reality that movie. But the rest
of the film kind of follows this. They kind of
stretch the rules of reality and physics a little bit, right,
But the second movie kind of ramps that up exponentially.
Speaker 1 (35:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
He's on the wing of a plane that's about to
take off, and he's having this climactic battle with this
two Special Forces officers that he kills, not just one,
that's just one, yeah, two that he manages to kill
indirect combat while he's on the wing of a plane.
This everyman LAPD cigarette smoking drinking cop probably you know,
(35:32):
probably doesn't run like a ten minute mile, right, He
just destroys two Special Forces officers hand to hand, hand
to hand, hand to like who taught you to fight?
I don't know, yeah, just overcoming these crazy odds. Grew
up on the streets of New York fighting I don't know. Yeah,
And that's and that's again, that's the reason why these
movies are so well loved.
Speaker 1 (35:51):
Right, Well, I didn't. I'm sort of remembering that there
was a point where where Bruce willis trying to be
a boxer. I think maybe before.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
He before he broke into acting, before he broke into acting,
before he was on and then a little then a
little bit while he was an actor, when he was
in because his big break was Moonlighting the TV show. Yeah,
so that's before then he was trying to be a boxer.
Speaker 1 (36:18):
Yeah. The first season or so of that show was great,
and then it just got really difficult. It's hard for
me to remember. I was so small. I think when
it was out and people were watching it, sylviil Shepherd
was she was really good, but she got very difficult
and she got pregnant somewhere along the line and then
(36:39):
went there and she was kind of a difficult person
to work with and they stopped getting along and so
they were just not even on the on the screen
that much together toward the end of that show.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, but he definitely was a boxer that I remember
him talking about that.
Speaker 1 (36:52):
Yeah, but is he he's not boxing when.
Speaker 2 (36:58):
No, Yeah, he is street fighting and he just again
overcomes the odds and kills them both before the or
at least he beats the second guy to the point
where he can kind of jump off the wing, yeah
and pull the fuel line right.
Speaker 1 (37:12):
Yeah. Yeah. That's another interesting point of the film that
it all the other planes are allowed to land even
though there's no landing lights on the airport because John
McClain has pulled the fuel dump on the plane that's
trying to escape with it. You we even talked about
(37:33):
like the point of this that they were trying to
for some reason liberate this South American drug lord dictator,
former dictator, I don't know. He'd been president or something
and then he got thrown out of office and then
he became a drug lord. That does that? Get that right?
I think so?
Speaker 2 (37:54):
I think he was he was a dictator, but he
was like a really bloody dictator who was who's so
a drug lord?
Speaker 1 (38:00):
After he and a general and a general just like
a variety of things, every yeah, everything, And.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
They never really say did they say where he's from?
Was it supposed to be? Like I don't think they
even said what the country here?
Speaker 1 (38:13):
They made the country. It was a made up country.
Speaker 2 (38:15):
And do you notice too that at points he had
a little bit of a British accent. It's again this
thing where it's like the British accent can be South American,
it could be German, it could be a lot of
different places.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah. Yeah, Actually I was gonna throw this into that.
I was talking about John like Wasama being in this
film and not just barely being in it, mostly cut
out of it and they dubbed his voice and everything.
But this movie was produced by Joel Silver and so
was Executive Decision, and John, like Guizamo, had a like
central role in Executive Decision. Another I think of that
(38:50):
one as the flip side of Air Force one. Yeah,
and then came out around the same time, and I
think that Executive Decision is the better movie in part
because they kill off John Claude van Dam in the
first five minutes, Like, who doesn't want to see that?
You should do executive decisions sometimes, that is a that
is a great flick.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
We should, we should, We should cover a lot of
these action flicks from this time period, because I feel
like when it comes to movies now, if it's not
a really big spectacle, And that's why I kind of
this movie was a little strange because this was like
a terrorist operation in Washington, DC, where like thousands of
people were gonna die, so the stakes got really high.
(39:31):
But now movies are these big spectacles, like the superhero movies,
and it's like, oh, the end of the world is coming.
It's not just you know, this one attack that's happening
and the everyman overcoming the odds. I feel like this
is a genre they don't really touch anymore. I haven't
really seen or looked at or or gone to the
(39:52):
theater to see a movie where it's a thriller like this.
It's an action thriller with an everyman who can die.
Possibly there's there's significant.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Risk that can die. Part is probably the biggest one,
because I always say that probably Mission Impossible would be
the closest.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
Yeah, Mission Impossible. They've but they're almost so formulaic.
Speaker 1 (40:11):
Now. Yeah, there's almost ten of them. Yeah. I did
not see the last one because it got such horrific reviews. Yeah,
and I have no idea what happened. And then there's
The Fast and the Furious. But they've all every character.
Every character in that movie has become pretty much like
a superhero who cannot die by any normal human means.
Even when they die, they come back.
Speaker 2 (40:31):
Yeah, so there's no stakes. Yeah, but then there's no
movie like this where you see the hero get really hurt.
You know, he got stabbed, he's bleeding. You know, you're
talking about how much blood is he losing during this movie,
and it might be a little unrealistic at the end,
he's going to be anemic and weak, right, Yeah, but
there's nothing like that. There's nothing comparable to die Hard
(40:51):
that has come since then. And these movies were so
popular and so well loved. I remember my friends and
I when we were in high school and Diehard with
a Vengeance came out, and then it came out on VHS.
This is how old I am. Audience came out on VHS.
We went to the video store, we rented it probably
every week that we could, and just watched it every
(41:12):
weekend at a sleepover when we were fourteen years old. Yeah,
and so these movies became iconic. We started repeating John
McLean's lines from die Hard with a Vengeance And they
don't have anything similar these days. With all the sequels
that they're coming out with the remakes, they haven't thought, hey,
maybe we can make something similar to die Hard, but
not die Hard.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
I think maybe the closest on TV might be.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
A Reacher yeah, which is episodic.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah, it's episodic, yeah.
Speaker 2 (41:41):
Which is what we get now, Like we either get
the big spectacle superhero movies, some pretty good art horror
movies that they're coming out with these days, oscar Bait,
but they don't stay in the theater is very long
or the you know, this franchise has to make a
billion dollars or it's a failure, which is part of
the reason and why I really appreciated that the tone
(42:04):
of this movie, it was dark like in modern film.
I don't know what they do, and I don't know
if Sebastian knows to speak to this better, but it
feels like they put everything digitally through a filter where
everything is brighter. In this movie they weren't afraid for
It was probably a shot on you know, like physical
it's probably cellular, right, and that has this grainy, darker
(42:26):
texture for all the scenes where there's shadows that they
can play with. And that's one of the things I've
noticed about modern films that it looks like aside from
the green screen stuff and all the cgi they put
in that you might not even notice. They seem to
just get rid of any sort of shadow on the
faces of the actors, and I feel like it adds
so much more layers and tones and emotions when they
(42:48):
can play with those shadows.
Speaker 1 (42:50):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that actually makes sense. I think that
there was a I don't know if it was intentional,
but it looked intentional to me. Easter from airplane in
this and it's when when the news casters broadcasting from
the plane and everyone knows that that that they're terrorists
(43:11):
and all this stuff's going on because they people in
the airport have not been told the truth about what's
happening at all. They've been just like like, oh, you know,
just we're having technical problems or whatever, and we'll get
it back online as soon as we can, and planes
will be arriving and you're not going to miss your
connections and whatever whatever. And uh, when people start panicking
and running out, they were running through the doors and
(43:34):
like the doors broke and people were falling on the
on the on the on the on the ground. There's
a scene an airplane where they're running and I think
they hit the doors and the whole like thing comes
down and then they keep running. Nobody falls though. An airplane,
an airplane, it looks it looks very similar an airplane.
(43:55):
We did Airplane sometime back. Airplane is based on another movie.
It was called Zero Hour. Yeah, and it's a satire
satire of Zero Hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What else do
we want to say about this film before we wrap
it up? Did we see where it was shot? I
was gonna see if it's said.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
I think it's right there where it says the one
more down, good, yeah, down, one more, one more. The
shooting was originally yeah, going to take place in Washington State.
Speaker 1 (44:29):
Oh right, Yeah, and they but it was warm. It
was too warm.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
They tried to find snow everywhere, and they were getting
snow trucked in from Canada.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
Yes. And then when they were.
Speaker 2 (44:39):
In Colorado for the snowmobile chase, Oh it got to
seventeen degrees.
Speaker 1 (44:46):
Gets a fake snow when a massive blizzard of temperatures
will blow freezing swept the state and shooting got to
be shut down. Yeah, so that the Snowmobille sequence was
in Colorado, Yeah, where was really cold? They should just
have shown it. They should just have said it was
Denver because a port. Yeah, yeah, mile High, you know,
(45:09):
and that's where Holly McLean's family could have been from. Yeah,
they didn't have to be in d C. I mean,
I mean the only reason that it would be that
they had used d C was that they were bringing
in this this fugitive dictator, drug lord general guy. Yeah,
so they had to set up that part of it.
He Uh, he had many roles to play, I guess, yeah,
(45:33):
fugitive drug lord, general, dictator, got dictator. Don't never forget
the dictator, all right. I say that we we throw
a little rating on this sucker, and uh and I
try to come up with a way to rate it
every time, like a A a unit of measurement, and uh,
(45:54):
for this one, I think maybe it's going to be
ridiculously convenient. Ejection seats. I was gonna say, ejection seats.
There you go. Yes, what are we doing? One through five?
One through five? Yes, five is best, one is one
is worst? Oh man, I got to give this one
(46:14):
a three and a half. And I think it's just
because of those pace the pacing problems. Yeah, yeah, those.
Speaker 2 (46:19):
Times where they had to add the little dialogue in
between the action scenes. It just chopped it up too slow.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:27):
The other the other Diehards were almost perfect. I mean
Diehard with the Vengeance, the the in between action set
pieces were paced perfectly, so.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
Comparing it to the first film. In the third film,
this one just moved too slow at some points. This
one was just over two hours. I'm curious about what
the what the first one and the third one were, Yeah,
link run time. Let me see two hours and twelve
minutes for the first one, but it was still tighter,
and Vengeance is two hours and eight minutes. Yeah, so
(47:02):
this one's shorter, but things about it feel longer.
Speaker 2 (47:06):
Yes, things about it feel longer in this one, and
so I had to That was one of the things
I was struggling with it was it was hard not
to let my focus wander when the pieces where they
were talking about the tower and how we're gonna get
the communication up would come up. It was hard not
to let my focus wander. It just got so out
of there. And then, as a fun thing, I watched
(47:27):
this the Diehard two yesterday in the afternoon, and then
die Hard with a Vengeance popped up on my you
should watch this fee and I watched it again. I
was like, this movie is just so I would give
that one a five out of five.
Speaker 1 (47:40):
Yeah, yeah, I can't disagree with you there. Yeah, it's
it's it's a tighter film, even though it's a little
bit longer. The thing that the knock against three is
that it slices up New York in terms of travel
time in ways that are impossible.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Yes, which is the fun part of it. They're running
through the parks, they're taking taxis through Central Park and
just to get you know, they're they're talking about how
you can't get you know, from downtown to uptown in
this amount of time, how impossible it's going to be.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
And then everybody you know who's in New Yorker, who's
lived there the whole life, Samuel Jackson, Zeus and John McClain,
they're like, no, I know how to get there. We'll
do it this way, and they do it and it works.
The same is true of Bullet in San Francisco, same
is true of Collateral in La Like, even though it's
late at night, there's still no way you're getting around
that fast. Yeah, that's a weird movie too. I don't
know that that's not exactly a thriller, but that might
(48:35):
be one to talk about at some point. Yeah, for me,
if the three and a half is probably about right,
three three and a half is in ejection seats. It was.
It was better than I remembered it being, and I
this is one I don't think I ever I didn't
think I ever saw this one in the theater or anything.
I think I followed up years later to watch this one,
(48:58):
and I remember feeling like it wasn't as good as
the first one, which now I think it's it's in
some ways, you know, on a par it's it's more
ridiculous than the first one, for sure, but but it's
it's good. And that the ejection seat scene bothered me
more the first time because I didn't see it coming
(49:20):
and it looks terrible. This one, I knew it was coming,
and so it's like, oh, I see how they did that. Yeah. Yeah,
this was the first time I'd ever sat down and
watched this movie in its entirety. It's just funny since
you're such a fan of the third one.
Speaker 2 (49:34):
Yeah, And the reason being is that I had thought
that I had seen this movie for a really long
time because it had always been on in syndication during
the holidays, and back then when TNTTBS, whatever Turner Network
was showing this during that period of time, they would
stretch the run time by breaking it up with a
bunch of commercials. So it ends up being like more
(49:57):
like a three and a half to four hour movie.
So you're down and you're watching it progressively through like
a holiday, but then you're getting up to do things
and then you totally lose the movie. So I had
memories of watching this movie in bits and pieces in
the past. Some of it was really refreshing my memory.
Oh maybe I'd seen this part, I'd seen this part,
but I'd never sat down and watched the whole thing
(50:17):
all the way to the end and saw the ending.
I'd never realized it. Kaye, motherfucker came.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
From the end of the end of this movie.
Speaker 2 (50:25):
Yeah, so that's because I mean back when we again,
when we were kids, the cool thing was finding like
t shirts with John McLain that said kaya you know,
that was like counterculture thing in the nineties.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
Yeah, So it.
Speaker 2 (50:36):
Was really nice to finally watch it, and it was
a lot better than I had remembered.
Speaker 1 (50:40):
The snippets being. But those again, those pacing issues really
knocked it down for me. Yeah, all right, Josh, where
can people find you?
Speaker 2 (50:47):
People can find me at Amazing j rab on Instagram
or joshajar h a jja R on Facebook.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
I am at the Jim mcdeon all the social media.
This show is fifty percent facts. For percent is the
word of fifty six numbers, fifty recent facts of the
Spreakerbrime podcast, associate with the art media on the Obscure
Celebrity Network, and I will talk to you the next time.
Thank you sir. That was fun. It was fun. Cheryl
(51:14):
actually sat down and watched this with me, and she
like she appreciated just the time capsule of it, you know.
Oh yeah, that was one of the things.
Speaker 2 (51:22):
I was just how it was such a.
Speaker 1 (51:24):
Snippet of the early nineties. Yeah, if you want to
do one for Christmas, scrooged have you ever seen the
bill Murray Baby screwg Yeah, I am not my favorite
Christmas very long time. Yeah, we do that one. Let's
do that one for Christmas. The Film Festival last year
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