Bruce Willis And 'Die Hard 2’s' Renny Harlin Had ‘Two Disagreements’ While Filming The Sequel, And I Agree With The Director On Both
Interview with Finnish Film Director & Producer, Renny Harlin of Die Hard 2
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00:00I want to come back around to Chapters 2 and 3 in a second, but I have to detour here.
00:04I have a book coming out on June 11th, and it's about Bruce Willis and his career, a
00:09celebration of his filmography.
00:11And I have to tell you that Die Hard 2, in my opinion, is the only true Die Hard sequel.
00:17It's the only one that legitimately feels like the original film, the original McTiernan,
00:23because it's limited to one location.
00:25It's McClane fighting for the love of his family.
00:29From Vengeance, with a Vengeance on, he's a disgruntled drunk who doesn't really, he's
00:33not connected to his family.
00:35The fact that McClane is fighting to save his family is, to me, what the connection
00:41of the familial roots of the first one, and keeping him limited to a location where he
00:46can't leave, he can't go too far away from it, has always been why I argue that Die Hard
00:512 is the best sequel in the franchise.
00:55And I couldn't agree with you more.
00:58I don't want to put down anybody else's movies, and that's not my intention.
01:04But I think that that's exactly what I was talking about, replicating the experience,
01:08which you so intelligently analyzed.
01:11It's the environment, it's that he's forced into this thing, and more than anything, it's
01:15about the family, it's about his wife.
01:20I get goosebumps when I talk about this, because you're so, you're hitting the nail right on
01:26the head, that this was one of the, well, there were two disagreements I had with Bruce
01:33when doing that.
01:35One was that he had just become a movie star, he had done moonlighting for 20 years, but
01:42now he had become a movie star, and he was hellbent on making Die Hard 2 a serious movie.
01:49Like a real dramatic, serious action drama.
01:54And I spent countless days just talking to him about replicating the experience.
02:00The audience loves your blue-collar cop who is in love with his wife, had the problems
02:07originally, but is now in love with his wife, and is an everyman, and has a sarcastic sense
02:15of humor.
02:16That's the character the audience loves.
02:18And you can now just say, he doesn't crack any jokes anymore, he's just serious.
02:23That was one big disagreement.
02:25And the second one was regarding the family.
02:27And like, well, I don't want to go too deep into personal opinions and things, but he
02:38was not so convinced that this family aspect was so important in the second one.
02:46It's integral.
02:47It's integral to his character.
02:48I kept telling him, and everybody around, is that the whole point why this movie will
02:56work is that he is not saving the world from a nuclear disaster.
03:02He's saving his wife.
03:03Yes.
03:04And of course of it, he's saving all these other people, and he's an incredible hero.
03:08But why is he really so hellbent and desperate and passionate about what he's doing is because
03:16his wife is there.
03:17It's about the wife.
03:18And that's why when they finally get together in the end and they hug, it's like, that's
03:22it.
03:23It's not about like, yeah, we avoided a nuclear disaster.
03:28And actually, when you think about it, very few movies nowadays do this, because you take
03:34any giant action movie, it's like, people are just always racking their brain, like,
03:38what are they going to do?
03:39Are they going to spread anthrax everywhere in the universe, or it's the biggest, biggest
03:44nuclear weapon that is going to blow up the whole universe, and that kind of stuff.
03:47Or it's a meteorite that is going to destroy the world.
03:50But when you can make it about the characters and people root for them and relate to them,
03:59that's golden.
04:00I had to fight for some of the scenes.
04:04And it's an example of a scene that works because it's emotionally so strong that it
04:09works, and the audience doesn't stop to think about the reality of it, really.
04:14And it's when they talk to each other via phone, Bruce is on a pay phone, and she's
04:19on kind of an air phone on the plane, which, you know, I guess today you could do anything,
04:24but in those days, it's like a complete impossibility.
04:28But it was emotionally so important that they connect.