1 (edited by TechNoir 2013-02-16 14:09:51)

Topic: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

and if you are like me and avoid pre-screening exposure to movies, let me just strongly dissuade anyone from going to see this at the cinema, and making the mistake I made.
It is a lazy, soulless thing with a very poor script, of which 40% is nothing but quick quips back and forth that ultimately have no meaning whatsoever. The cinematography is pretty nice, but the camers operation is constantly jittering to the point where I would gladly have paid for a f*cking tripod with my own money if it had given me one steady shot. Editing pace is not Bourne 2/3 bad, but almost. Lenses used are also like Bourne almost only long tight shots (again, unstabilized) so the action scenes are completely unintelligible, which is exacerbated by the movie cutting between shots in ways where they do not even try to establish geography or situational awareness. They cut from inside car A to outside car B to again inside car A, which makes you think the 2nd shot was outside car A rather than car B. I guarantee if you even try to make sense of it your brain will just automatically zone out for a few seconds. For those of you who remember the car chase in the beginning of Quantum Of Solace, if you like me just cannot stand that, it's more of the same here.

Another weird thing was framing for many scenes was way off, and not entire reels, just some shots. The film was shot Super35, and matted to 2:35 in post. In 2-person shots where 2 people are standing facing the camera, the lower end of the screen cuts them off just by their hips, and the eyes of the 2 people are JUST under the top of the frame. For many closeups, it looks like the camera is trying to impress upon you that the mouth  or nose of the person is the important part, because the eyes keep drifting up and almost out of the frame. The cinema I saw it in also does digital and 3D-projections, so it had to have been a digital screening, thus the projectionist could not have matted it too low. Also some scenes had an important item just at the bottom edge of the frame, which obviously would have been much higher if the projector was showing information too low in the frame.

At this point I almost put AGDTDH next to Taken 2 as some of the worst moviemaking I've seen recently. I wish I had seen the Rotten Tomatoes score beforehand.

If you've sen the film, please share your opinion, I'd love to hear some contrasting views.

EDIT: IMDB stated movie is indeed shot with intended 1.85 aspect ratio. What my cinema was doing I do not know...

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Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

not long to go now...

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I think it's too late to fix this franchise. McClane has now fought and defeated terrorists against insurmountable odds FIVE times. You can't bring that character back to his roots. Much as I hate to say it, Die Hard 4 and 5 are the natural evolution of this franchise. The original film should never have had sequels in the first place.

"The Doctor is Submarining through our brains." --Teague

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Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

I would say 'forced' evolution more than natural but fair enough. The third film took a different turn than the first two and that was successful, 4 and 5 went too far in the wrong direction in my opinion.

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God loves you!

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Not at all surprising given the director. He took Max Payne, which might be the easiest video-game you could possible adapt, and completely fucked it up. This guy is seriously the worst, just look at his imdb. He's worse than fucking Brett Ratner. At least Ratner made Rush Hour 2, this guy literally doesn't have a single good credit to his name.

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He was even a prick in the BTS for Max Payne.

Yeah, Max Payne was shit.

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God loves you!

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12 (edited by redxavier 2013-02-18 02:06:37)

Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

I think Die Hard 3 is a perfect example of how it can be done well. They didn't just rehash the first one, but kept a lot of the elements that make Die Hard great (interesting villain, cool bad guy plan that isn't what it seems, violent and hard hitting action sequences), and most importantly stayed true to the essence of the character. McClane is hung-over, suspended, seperated from Holly, and ends up forced into this crazy situation where he has to rely on his instincts to survive. There's one or two implausible action sequences, but I like to allow 1 of those per movie. Die Hard has the firehose off a sky-scraper, Die Hard 3 it's the water tunnel sequence.

The most important part for me is that McClane is still a vulnerable and relatable hero, he gets ROYALLY fucked up in Die Hard 3 by the end.

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15 (edited by Lamer 2013-02-18 11:08:17)

Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

Die Hard 6 will be about McClane finding out that he's actually immortal now. He'll run around begging people to kill him but noone will be able to.

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16 (edited by Saniss 2013-02-18 11:13:58)

Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

When I watched Die Hard 4, I thought that McClane becoming this old grumpy guy was sort of logical, as they don't try to hide the fact that Willis has aged - McClane has too. And at the beginning, I still related a bit to him. "Okay, so McClane has grown older, he has a daughter now, and screwed up his relationship with her. No surprise here, it's McClane."

But the rest is so over the top it fucks the whole thing up. Now, with what I can hear about Die Hard 5... the only thing that comes to my mind is "screw that. It isn't canon to me anymore. McClane's story ended with Die Hard 3."

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I still defend Die Hard 4 somewhat, in that you can sorta view his character change as a bizarro character arc, where he's survived so many of these crazy fucking things, that by #4, he's understandably kinda cocky about the whole thing. "Oh you're gonna chase me with a helicopter? Well I've killed about 100 bad guys, destroyed planes and helicopters and boats, I got this". It's lame that we have to go there to try to justify it, but at least the action is filmed well in #4, which appears to not be the case with this latest one.

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18 (edited by Saniss 2013-02-18 11:40:17)

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I will say too, that the unrated cut does improve it somewhat. Even if it's a lot of ADR stuff, there are a couple added bits that make it feel a lot more Die Hard. Unfortunately they haven't released that version on blu-ray as of yet.

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God loves you!

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Re: I just watched A Good Day To Die Hard...

God loves you!

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