A Classic of the Genre: The Enduring Appeal of John McClane
John McClane invariably finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, yet he consistently triumphs over armies of terrorists, all while delivering his signature line, “Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker!”
The legendary Die Hard franchise is now over two decades old, and it’s hard to imagine that Bruce Willis, early in his career, was known as a comedic actor, making his casting as John McClane far from obvious. Instead of a superhero with a steely gaze and a square jaw, we got a charming everyman who, with jokes and quips, repeatedly saves people simply because no one else will. While the police, FBI, and SWAT teams puff out their chests, flaunt their authority, and strike heroic poses, McClane does their job single-handedly. He crawls through ventilation ducts, leaps from skyscraper roofs, falls into elevator shafts, and fights on the wings of airplanes.
The plot cleverly combines two genres: an ode to the lone hero and a buddy cop story, as McClane always finds a willing accomplice. Formally, it’s an action movie where good people collectively defeat bad people. But the series likely wouldn’t have achieved its cult status if it stopped there. At its core, it’s a story about how irony triumphs over pretension. McClane faces off against blonde beasts, highly trained mercenaries, and Teutonic brutes with his perpetual smirk, acting faster and better than the bureaucratic police, armed only with common sense.
The Unlikely Hero
Never once does he appear heroic. Throughout the first film, he’s barefoot, walking on glass in a dingy tank top. In the second, clueless police officers push him aside “so he doesn’t get in the way.” In the third, he’s suffering from a hangover. In the fourth, a bald, old-fashioned McClane finds himself in a changed world of computer technology, earning a great description from the main villain: “You’re like a mechanical watch in a digital age.” And here, he remains true to himself: he can still give any arrogant smart aleck a good old-fashioned beating – with his bare hands.