DIE HARD: YEAR ONE is Still Happening, Len Wiseman Reveals Plot Details
Sounds like the people at 20th Century Fox aren't going to be able to resist trotting out Bruce Willis for Die Hard: Year One, even though there is absolutely no reason anyone needs to see a prequel of John McClane as a cop before the events of the first movie. The entire reason the first movie works so well is because he's just a normal guy who hasn't had anything crazy happen to him before, and seeing a normal man overcome the odds was (and continues to be) such a satisfying thing, especially in an era when on-screen heroes were massive, oiled up buff guys like Stallone and Schwarzenegger.
But I guess none of that matters to Fox, who has already burned the legacy of the franchise to the ground with the abysmal A Good Day to Die Hard, so they're apparently fine with continuing to tarnish it by just tacking on more and more potentially terrible films to the end of its life. Len Wiseman, who directed Live Free or Die Hard, is producing this new movie, and he spoke to Collider about it and revealed some plot details:
“After doing the fourth one, there were so many conversations that Bruce [Willis] and I were having about what he put into the character for Die Hard 1. That character comes in with so much baggage, emotionally, and experience. He’s already divorced, he’s bitter, his Captain hates him and doesn’t want him back. So, what created that guy?”
“We’ve never seen the actual love story. We know its demise, but we’ve never seen what it was like when he met Holly, or when he was a beat cop in ‘78 in New York when there was no chance of him making detective. It’s always been something I’ve been thinking about, and now we’re doing it. And it ties in.”
Wiseman says the film will be a prequel/sequel (something Willis said was "a very good idea"), and he elaborated on that and the timeline for the movie:
“The reason I say prequel/sequel is because I wasn’t going to do it without Bruce. I’m also not going to do it with Bruce being a cameo bookend gimmick. It’s really working into the plot, with the ‘70s having ramifications on present-day Bruce. It inter-cuts in a very fun, imaginative way with present-day John McClane.”
“The film itself will take place on New Years’ Eve 1979, so trying to gear things towards that would be fun, if we could come out around the same time, but these movies take their own paths.”
Die Hard: Year One is currently searching for an unknown actor to play young McClane. You already know how I feel about this movie, but what do you all think? Have it out in the comments below.