TEASER - 194: Die Harder (with Brian Abrams)

Access this entire 68-minute episode (and additional monthly bonus shows) by becoming a Junk Filter patron for only $5.00 (US) a month! Over 30% of episodes are exclusively available to patrons of the show. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.patreon.com/posts/194-die-harder-118608075 In part two of our discussion of the Die Hard series, Brian Abrams, the author of Die Hard: An Oral History and I go over the sequels to John McTiernan’s 1988 masterpiece. We make a case for Renny Harlin’s Die Hard 2 (1990) as the platonic ideal of a blockbuster sequel - a bigger, dumber version of the original with a great supporting cast which delivers on the formula and also serves as a better “Christmas movie” than the first one to boot. We itemize our issues with McTiernan’s return to the franchise with Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995), and trash the final two films in the series, Len Wiseman’s Live Free or Die Hard (2007) and John Moore’s rock-bottom final entry, 2013’s A Good Day to Die Hard, inexplicably set in Russia. Follow Brian Abrams on Letterboxd and check out his website. “Die Hard: An Oral History” by Brian Abrams is available to download as a Kindle Single "Robert Costanzo, the Essential Worker", by Brian Abrams, for Lowbrow Reader, 2022 “Die Hard is Back”: Bruce Willis’ final performance as John McClane in a 2020 battery commercial Music video for “Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun”, The Beastie Boys