3

Have a Great Villain

"Have a great villain" might sound like an obvious tip, but two out of four Die Hards did it wrong. Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber is one of the best movie villains of all time. He was one of the first intelligent and complicated bad guys, a villain who was as intense and layered as the hero.

Two Die Hards later, we met Jeremy Irons' Simon Gruber, another outstanding, cunning, badass villain. Die Harder, unfortunately, traded in all of the intelligence that made Hans so menacing for the overall craziness of its villain. Want to know the quickest way to tell your audience that the bad guy is crazy? Have him do a bunch of naked air-fighting in his very first scene:

Both Grubers gave you the feeling that they were always several steps ahead of everyone else; they were patient, meticulous, and controlled. They had elaborate plans, and the cops never knew exactly what they were up to until it was too late. Colonel Stuart had a really boring and simple plan ("Release this prisoner or I'll kill lots of people!") and did naked kata, like a crazy guy. Live Free or Die Hard had a villain with a similarly complicated and interesting plan, but it's hard to buy Timothy Olyphant as an intelligent bad guy, because his acting bag only has two tricks ("angry" and "angry with a mustache").

2

Stay in One Location

The first Die Hard takes place entirely in a building, and it rules. Die Hard 2, for all its flaws, also managed to keep to mostly one location, an airport. By the time Vengeance rolled around, they decided to cover an entire city, and by Live Free, several states.

And, uh ... here.

That was a mistake. One of the coolest aspects of Die Hard was the consistency of the location. McClane, the terrorists, and the hostages were all trapped together for a few hours. The stakes were clear. There was no way out. There was a time factor. You had McClane on one floor and the terrorists on another, and you knew they'd eventually have to meet up, and that it would be awesome. It's important in a Die Hard that the game is John McClane vs. the Bad Guys. Die Hard wouldn't have had any tension if you thought even for a second that the police or the army could come rushing in and take out the terrorists.

1

Put Black People in It

I don't want to tiptoe around this. In the best Die Hard, John McClane had two funny black sidekicks:

The second best Die Hard was a buddy movie with a black partner who received just as much screen time as McClane:

In Die Hard 2, we only get like two minutes with Reginald VelJohnson, and in the fourth film, McClane doesn't have any black accomplices.

I have no theories. I have no idea what this says about race, and I'm too dumb to figure out what it means, in a big, grand sort of way. I just know that there is an inarguable relationship between how many black friends John McClane has and how good a Die Hard movie is. Do the right thing, Die Hard 5. There's still time to recast John McClane's son with Donald Glover.