Bruce Willis has reprised his beloved role of John McClane in an advertisement for Die Hard brand car batteries.
The actor played the character – a heroic New York cop with a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time – in the hit 1988 action film Die Hard, as well as its four sequels.
On 17 October, Willis’s daughter, Rumer Willis, had tweeted a short teaser for the ad, along with the hashtag “Die Hard is back”, prompting speculation that another full Die Hard film was set to be announced.
However, the teaser was in fact referring to the two-minute-long battery advertisement, which paid homage to the hit action franchise throughout.
Sending Willis’s McClane on a tongue-in-cheek mission to purchase a new car battery, the advert includes cameos from De’voreaux White, who played limo driver Argyle in the original film, and Clarence Gilyard, who played the terrorist hacker Theo.
There are also other nods to the original Die Hard, including a part in which McClane is seen climbing through air vents, mimicking one of the film’s best-known sequences.
While some fans were disappointed at the lack of a new Die Hard movie announcement, the advert was surprisingly well-received.
“Well, still better than Die Hard 5,” wrote one commenter.
Another agreed: “Ironically, this 2 minute advert is superior to the entire duration of A Good Day to Die Hard. ”
