Last week I read on Ain’t It Cool News, Dark Horizons and Coming Soon.net that 20^th Century Fox had commissioned writer Skip Woods (writer of Swordfish, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Hitman, and the upcoming summer movie The A-Team) to begin to write the fifth installment in the Bruce Willis led Die Hard series. That’s Die Hard 5 if you couldn’t understand what I wrote. I’m both excited and nervous about this proposed sequel and I’m going to tell you why.

For as long as I can remember I’ve been a huge, HUGE fan of the Die Hard series. I remember seeing 1 and 2 on TV. I sat through the poor dubbing from the curse induced Die Hard 2: Die Harder as it aired for the first time on CBS many years ago where they censored John McClane’s famous last words with “Yippee-Kay-Yay, Mister Falcon.” I went to go see Die Hard: With A Vengeance back in 95, right after Matt Cohen’s Bar Mitzvah and proceeded to argue with some friends at school at which action movie was better that summer, Die Hard or Crimson Tide (Die Hard still holds strong in my book).  I remember buying magazines throughout the mid to late 90’s discussing a forth and the possible story behind it. How it was based off of a script called “Tears of the Sun” (which would later be its on film, starring Bruce Willis). I remember hearing that they were going to start working on a Die Hard 4 (then called Die Hard 4.0).

Waiting, ever so impatiently, for Die Hard 4.0 to come out, was one of the most difficult things to do. There were rumors of it being edited down to a PG-13 rating, which concerned me, I didn’t want something like this movie to be harmed by this. How could they do this? At the time Terminator Salvation hadn’t come out and the only two action film series to ever go from Rated R to PG-13 were both Beverly Hills Cop and Robocop (both had their part three film turned into a PG-13 film) and both of them turned out to be so bad that it would be years before anyone would ever even consider making another movie. I also remember when I heard that they changed the title from Die Hard 4.0 to Live Free or Die Hard (at least only in the United States) simply because the numbers in sequels is now no longer in style (at least for the majority of movies, some movies like Iron Man 2 work just fine) and how I was disappointed and even Len Wiseman the director of Die Hard 4 and Bruce Willis both said that they still consider it simply, Die Hard 4.

I even went to go see the movie opening night! I went with Melissa, who put up a fight because she didn’t want to see the movie, let alone go on opening night. I can’t blame her. As the years have passed by I’ve gotten irritated with film goers and how loud they can be, the chomping of the popcorn, the talking, the fidgeting…but let me tell you, nothing beats seeing a hot movie with a hot crowd. Sometimes the reactions of the crowd make the movie.

I loved this movie. I know a lot of people are split on the 4th film, but I thought it was great. In fact, I feel like it is safe to say I love all of the Die Hard movies differently. I think the series is one of the few that I can probably sit and watch from beginning to end without any hesitation. In fact…I’m highly considering that in the near future…hmm…

With all this being said, I’m sure you can understand why I’m excited…and if you read between the lines you’ll notice I have not said anything truly bad about the series. Which is why I’m hoping that if they are considering making a fifth movie that they don’t mess it up. Please don’t kill off John McClane, don’t ruin the series by changing the formula, don’t make it PG-13 again (and if you do, at least let them shoot it as an R-rated movie and then edit it down, like you did the LForDH). If you are going to make a fifth movie, make it just the same as the last one, just make it bigger, better and make sure that it ends with a “Yippee-Kay-Yay Mother F*cker!”

I look forward to hearing more about this movie in the coming months and years, seeing that IMDB says that it’ll be coming out in 2012, we’ll see what happens. And I hope that whatever happens that it’ll live up to all the expectations that the rest of them have given me over the years.

–Cos

PS Did anyone realize that 24 was pretty much like a TV version of Die Hard? Or am I out of line there?