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Die Hard (1988) and North by Northwest (1959) SPOILERS for Both Movies

posted 5 years ago by ecarle (14979)
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It has been said a time or two that "North by Northwest is ground zero for the action movie."

Rather like "Psycho,"one year later in the Hitchcock canon, launched "the slasher movie" and a new era of violent horror, "North by Northwest" took SOME of what had come before (Foreign Correspondent and Saboteur in Hitchcock) in action chase thrillers, and created the template for the future: suave, wise-cracking action hero and ladies man; sexually available but tough heroine; elegant sinister master villain complete with henchmen -- and plugged them into a movie with "action beats" across the entire film and a spectacular action climax(here, on Mount Rushmore -- no movie has ever been able to do better for a climax locale.)

Within a few years, the first child of North by Northwest arrived: James Bond. The first Bonds were much cheaper than NXNW, and From Russia With Love sported a rather sloppy re-do of the crop duster scene(with a helicopter). But soon the Bonds were very big in budget, and Goldfinger rather replaced Grant, Saint, and Mason with Connery, Blackman, and Froebe(not really big enough names, but now they are.)

Bond's domination for the next twenty years(while Hitchcock failed to keep up and simply walked off the field) was finally matched in the Spielberg/Lucas era with "Raiders of the Lost Ark," which put a historical and fantasy bent on the NXNW template....but we STILL had a tough wise-cracking action man(Indy Jones), a feisty-sexy love interest(Marion Ravenswood, soon to be replaced, like a Bond girl, with other heroines later, before coming back to marry Indy in the end); and a reasonably suave villain(Belloq, who is rather replaced as the villain by a couple of Nazis.)

7 years after "Raiders" came another entry in the action epic. Nobody quite saw it at the time, but the decades have proven that if North by Northwest has a REAL match in the world of action thrillers, Die Hard is it.

Indeed, a younger generation reading this who have seen both Die Hard and North by Northwest would likely say: "There's no contest at all -- Die Hard is much bigger and better -- and certainly more action-packed -- than North by Northwest."

And that's true. "Die Hard" is where you end up only AFTER NXNW begat Bond, and Bond begat Indy...with a few additional additives along the way: Dirty Harry to give us the "action cop"; Star Wars to go "big with the effects" -- so that by the time "Die Hard" came along, it was the NXNW template as refracted through 30 years of ever-bigger action movies and a Hollywood more inclined to make A action movies than any other(they are called superhero movies, now.)

Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman. A TV star with a coupla failed movies and a stage actor unknown to films at the time. And yet -- HERE were two actors to FINALLY give Cary Grant and James Mason a run for their money. Gert Froebe and the interchangeable Bond villains never quite had Mason's star charisma; Sean Connery was great, but his Bond wasn't "a regular guy." Roger Thornhill is a regular guy. John McClane is a cop(trained in combat and used to death) but by 1980's standards, a "regular guy"(compared to musclemen Sly and Arnold.)

And as for Alan Rickman -- man, what a find! A classic Hitchcock villain -- even though Hitchcock was dead 8 years when Die Hard came out. Rickman's Hans Gruber is stylish, wry, articulate, well-tailored -- and far more ruthless than James Mason was (he shoots the Asian executive just like that when the man gives him no answer on the count of three -- THAT's something you don't always see.) Actually, Mason and Company in NXNW were ruthless too -- from start to finish, all they wanna do is kill Roger Thornhill, they brook no argument. But Gruber and his gang were R-rated villains -- killing some hostages and not simply WILLING to kill all the rest , but INTENDING to kill all the rest. They're bad.

Raiders of the Lost Ark(and its sequels) were the "big" action movies of the 80's, but it seems that Spielberg didn't really get the rhythm right with Raiders. Unlike NXNW and Die Hard(which both build to a spectacular climax); Raiders rather peaks in the second act -- with the fight under the flying wing followed by the truck chase. Thereafter, the movie rather lazily winds down to a climax which -- while rather reminiscent of Mount Rushmore in matte shot look -- really doesn't involve the hero at all(he is tied up with his eyes closed while everything happens.) Plus, Raiders really loses track of its villains at the end -- and chooses to melt them all, equally.

Between "Raiders" and "Die Hard" came "Temple of Doom," which DID build to a big cliffhanging climax, but that movie rather collapsed under its own infantile weight, it was too much of a good thing, too geared to kids --and yet too gory and sadistic FOR kids.

"Die Hard" got the balance right -- we felt that adults were on duty, and that Hitchcock's many lessons of suspense were being followed.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

A great scene in "Die Hard" -- showing the tight structuring of the script and the Hitchcockian quality control -- comes when the Good McClane and the Evil Hans first meet face to face. Its long before the climax. McClane has a gun on Hans(my audience applauded and cheered) but -- oh no! Hans acts like he's just some schlub in the building named Bill Clay(Hans read "WM Clay" on a directory -- and smartly enough, goes for the more informal "Bill.") And McClane hands his GUN over to "Bill Clay" and -- my audience went crazy with suspense -- but when Bill Clay elects to fire the gun -- ha! Its out of bullets, McClane KNEW he was talking to a bad guy. The audience cheers -- but other bad guys arrive to shoot. "You were saying?" Hans snidely remarks as all hell breaks loose.

In the final analysis, the climax of NXNW and the climax of Die Hard are the same -- somebody hanging by a thread from a high place, somebody falling to their death. In NXNW, its only two henchman who fall to their deaths off of Rushmore. In Die Hard, the fall is given to the Big Cheese himself -- Hans. And it is most satisfying.

(As things turned out, it would be one year and one summer later that a blockbuster climaxed even CLOSER to NXNW -- Tim Burton's Batman had Michael Keaton holding Kim Basinger over an abyss while Jack Nicholson stepped on his other hand -- exactly the scenario with Cary Grant, Eva Marie Saint, and Martin Landau in NXNW. And thus, the Batman series has its roots in NXNW as well.)

There is this difference between NXNW and Die Hard: whereas NXNW has the twice-divorced Thornhill mutually seducing, bedding and eventually marrying Eva Marie Saint, Die Hard starts with a married couple on the rocks(John McClane and his wife)...and uses the adventure to bring them together. It is the wife hanging in danger at the climax of Die Hard.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

I'm expect that any young person watching North by Northwest and Die Hard back to back today will see no contest whatsoever in terms of action between the two movies. Die Hard wins -- it took 30 years of action changes to get there.

But I'm old enough to remember when "North by Northwest" was pretty much "the only game in town" for action movies. The drunken drive, the crop duster sequence -- the Rushmore climax. It was as big an action package as the movies ever delivered. Now we get "North by Northwest" once a week during the summer movie season.

But the thing of it is this. Compared to North by Northwest, the Bond movies were actually pretty lumpy in their plotting and unsuspenseful in their play out. Compared to North by Northwest, the Indiana Jones movies seemed uncaring about the talent playing the bad guys and a bit on the "kiddie" side...though the first one (Raiders) really comes close to the Hitchcock template of excellence.

No...it took until Die Hard to get the kind of action movie that STICKS with you, makes you care while you are watching it, always brings fond memories of how great it was. (And neither the Die Hards to follow nor OTHER action movies ever really came up with an arch villain to beat Rickman as Hans Gruber.)

I'll take them as a near-tie: North by Northwest in 1959 to start the genre; Die Hard nearly 30 years later in 1988, to finally match it.

[–] Redsfan001 (6146) 5 years ago

Nice post. Interesting how action evolves.

I remember reading a post about how parents cannot get their kids to watch the original Mary Poppins...too dull by today's standards.

As a young man I remember seeing the preview for Die Hard in the theater. The audience kind of chuckled at the end of it (Showing McClane crashing through the window yelling)
We we're thinking- isn't that the TV guy? That is going to bomb.

Boy we're we wrong on that one.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Nice post. Interesting how action evolves.

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I think so. Keep in mind that North by Northwest was considered, in 1959, to have "wall to wall action" because it had THREE action setpieces in a movie over two hours long. The rest was talk, romance, suspense.

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I remember reading a post about how parents cannot get their kids to watch the original Mary Poppins...too dull by today's standards.

--

Yeah, I personally can't "sell" NXNW as an action movie anymore. I didn't see it on 1959 release, but once it hit TV in the 60s and 70s, I found it to be the biggest and the best. The Guns of Navarone was too slow in the second half; the Bonds had more action, but were fairly cheap and slow moving(Thunderball takes forever to unfold.)

---

As a young man I remember seeing the preview for Die Hard in the theater. The audience kind of chuckled at the end of it (Showing McClane crashing through the window yelling)
We we're thinking- isn't that the TV guy? That is going to bomb.

Boy we're we wrong on that one

--

Fox had so little confidence in Bruce Willis as the star that the first posters didn't even have him in them. Just the skyscraper and helicopters and a push to come "get blown against the back wall of the theater." It was only once the movie was clearly a hit -- and Willis was clearly accepted as its star -- that Willis ended up in the ad.

Willis only got the role after some "usual suspects" turned it down -- Sly and Arnold, for two. Even lesser light Richard Gere turned it down.

[–] ecarle (14979) 5 years ago

Two interesting turn-downs:

Clint Eastwood turned it down. He instead starred and self-directed Dirty Harry 5 (The Dead Pool) and turned in his usual low-budget, rather insulting cheap and desultory job(anchored by his star power) -- and watched as the big budget spare-no-expense boom of Die Hard wiped Cheap Harry out at the summer 1988 box office. The 70s were long gone and Dirty Harry wasn't surefire -- but Clint eventually regrouped.

Al Pacino turned it down -- and regretted it in a later interview, once he saw how good it was. Imagine -- "Yippee kay yay, mfr" with Big Al yelling it. Could'a been big for him.

The producers were so desperate to get SOMEONE that they paid "the TV guy" bigger money than most established stars got. And it paid off for everybody. Bruce Willis "fit" John McClane and the movie ; Willis became a big star immediately. The movie became a big hit at least partially BECAUSE of Willis (and Rickman, says I. And Bonnie Bedelia. And Reginold Veljo--however you spell it. And everybody else in that epic cast.)