'Stop or I'll shoot, you bloomin' rotter' ... Bruce Willis as John McClane in Die Hard 4.0
Bruce Willis is back on our screens this week in the role that made him a star - supercop John McClane. And almost 20 years after the first Die Hard, he's looking older, balder and worse for wear. Yet in Die Hard 4.0 we get an emasculated McClane, one with a much cleaner mouth.
To appeal to a wider audience and make as much money as possible, Fox demanded the film be cut from the R rating originally awarded to a PG-13. Which means it doesn't matter how high the bodies pile up, or how much destruction McClane wreaks, as long as no blood spurts and nobody says fuck, all is OK. In fact, the word only crops up once in the entire film. Which is a damned shame, because a filthy mouth has always been a part of the McClane persona. It's a bit like sitting through Goodfellas or Pulp Fiction with the characters reduced to saying "freak" or "shoot".
The first three Die Hard films - all of which were rated R in the US (18 in the UK) - have made Fox almost $1bn. And the f-word count rose with each film - the first had 50, Die Hard 2: Die Harder had 63 and Die Hard With a Vengeance (co-starring Samuel L Jackson) had 93. And speaking of Mr Jackson, wasn't he the man who had the script for Snakes on a Plane rewritten to have MORE fucks squeezed in? You bet he was.
Understandably, the diehard Die Hard fans were mightily pissed off when news of the toned-down film broke in an interview Willis gave to Vanity Fair. Expressing his disappointment at Fox's decision to cut the film, he says: "I really wanted this one to live up to the promise of the first one, which I always thought was the only really good one. That's a studio decision that is becoming more and more common, because they're trying to reach a broader audience. It seems almost a courageous move to give a picture an R rating these days."
The response online was immediate and vitriolic, particularly from a poster named Vern who vented his spleen at the Fox execs in a piece posted at Ain't-It-Cool News. The comment boards ran rampant with unhappy filmgoers badmouthing the film - so much so that Mr Willis himself, posting as Walter B and claiming to be John Mafuckin'Clane, jumped in to defend the film.
All to no avail. The film is out now (it opens in the UK today) and while it's been garnering generally good reviews, those wanting a REAL Die Hard movie are somewhat disappointed as it lacks the grittiness and the edge of the earlier outings. And some of the cuts made are glaringly obvious. But we will more than likely be appeased later this year with an R-rated DVD of the film's original cut. Yippee-ki-yay.
