Superhero Media: Die Hard 2 Die Harder

In the halcyon days before there were more than three Die Hard films, Die Hard 2 Die Harder was seen as the ugly stepchild, offending the trilogy by not being as good at the films either side of it. Now, however, staring down the barrel of a 6th film in the franchise, Die Harder gets a little more appreciation, which is only fair because, in all honesty, it's pretty damn good. A few years after the events of Nakitomi Plaza, John McClaine has moved to LA to be with his family, and is waiting at Dulles airport to pick up his wife for Christmas with the in-laws. When odd things start happening, it's up to McClaine to prevent a major incident and prevent the escape of a South American dictator, rather than be in the limited space of a building, this time he has a time limit; two hours before the plane his wife is on runs out of fuel. In the middle of a blizzard, how will one cop stop an international incident and save the lives of hundreds of innocent passengers? 

Despite being made in 1990, Die Harder is a bang-on '80s sequel, complete with references to the original, guest spots from characters that make no sense to be there and even bigger stunts for McClaine to miraculously survive. There is an awareness to Die Harder that I quite like, with McClaine uttering "How could the same shit happen to the same guy twice?" and several figures in authority dismissing that he has any truly pertinent experience just because he survived the events at Nakitomi Plaza. As much as this is meant to turn us, as the audience, against these naysayers, this actually makes perfect sense; why would McClaine get special treatment just because he was lucky enough to not die several times over? Of course, as previously discussed on this blog, we know that McClaine is a low-grade superhero with probability-manipulation powers and a healing factor, so those terrorists better watch out. Oh, for my younger readers, the antagonists, Esperanza and Stuart are references to the Iran-Contra scandal, making Die Harder a political critique as well. 

In an age where John McClaine has killed helicopters with police cars and rescued CIA operatives from Russia, seeing him save a single airport from Right Wing Extremists is pretty satisfying. The slower build-up to the action is perhaps not as engaging as the first Die-Hard, but it's nice to see McClaine have to do some actual detective work to kick things off. From what we know about McClaine, he may not be that good an investigator, with most of his breakthroughs being the result of "grunt" police work, like fingerprinting and using a phone book to find a warehouse, but I guess that's better than nothing and if he was too competent, he'd be less relatable. How far am I going to push the Die Hard series as superhero cinema idea? Well, they pretty much only get more fantastic and improbable from here on out, so I hope you're not sick of this yet. Join us next time for the second best film in the franchise before it all goes downhill rapidly.