Die Hard As Man Versus Architecture
The typically wonderful BLDG BLOG has a typically insightful and provocative article up today about Die Hard, calling it “one of the best architectural films of the past 25 years.” I’d agree, but the site’s Geoff Manaugh makes the argument so well that you should just read his piece. Plus, you’ll read about militant tunneling through urban fabric and the horrors of warfare permeating notionally solid barriers.
In the comments, I argue a bit in defense of Die Hard With A Vengeance, though I probably lose points by defending Die Harder in a neighboring breath:
I’d argue, though, that the second two Die Hard pictures are still meant to be explorations of place and defiance of traditional movement, to some extent. The second film uses the redefinition of sea level as a weapon to destroy a passenger plane, for example. It otherwise doesn’t try very hard, I agree.
The third film, Die Hard With A Vengeance, though, is full of illicit urban movement and things masquerading as other things, especially as traditional urban tropes like police officers that turn out to be thieves and playgrounds that turn out to be bombs. Again, I don’t think it’s as successful, but the third film (also a McTiernan picture), is, I think, pursuing a similar agenda at least. I think it’s restrained by its script (which was not originally written to be a Die Hard movie at all, as I understand it) and by the difficulties in pulling off the same ideas on an urban scale, but I admire its attempts to pursue the idea.
Some day I would really like to be smart enough to be able to write the book on Die Hard that I’ve long wanted to read.
Really, this is all there in the fourth film, which is not as bad as some people say it is. Actually, I quite like #4, despite it’s too-soft nature.
And, it’s very much “man versus architecture.”
Tunnels, overpasses, power grid, etc.
– c.
I think Live Free or Die Hard, which I can appreciate on one level, is maybe intentionally elevating things to Man Vs. Infrastructure, and it plays with Die Hard tropes and notions of scale in interesting ways, which is good fun. I appreciate how it plays with scale while trying to keep McClane McClane, and adding to his arc. Still, it’s lacking in the layers of drama and subtext that the first one has.
Still, I think Die Hard 5 should go back to a claustrophobic space, some place limiting, to make use of handheld (but not necessarily shaky) cameras for a new installment of pressure-cooker action. No kidding, I think it should be John McClane in a hospital — using his age as part of the barefoot-and-outnumbered equation.
I’d write it, truly, if I thought I could shop it.
Thinking about the BLDG BLOG post, it also occurs to me that the notion that McClane bends the Nakatomi Space to his needs is exactly wrong — the whole point is that the building barely yields. McClane moves around it in all manner of ways, but even the copious amounts of C4 detonated do little to reorganize the building. Like McClane, the building takes a pounding and just keeps being useful. It is, like McClane, a durable instrument, weathering the events of the film and never falling — unlike some people.
Some day I would really like to be smart enough to be able to write the book on Die Hard that I’ve long wanted to read.
It might be time to start writing it and learn how smart you are, then.
My friend Eric Lichtenfeld is pretty much at the forefront of serious critical study of the modern action genre. You should read his book, Action Speaks Louder. It may be part of the book about Die Hard that you want to read.
Action Speaks Louder: Violence, Spectacle, and the American Action Movie