Today is John McTiernan’s birthday! Obviously, McTiernan’s career has had its ups and downs but he’s still responsible for directing some of the best action films ever made.
4 Shots From 4 John McTiernan Films
Predator (1987, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Donald McAlpine)
Die Hard (1988, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Jan de Bont)
The Hunt for Red October (1990, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Jan de Bont)
The Last Action Hero (1993, directed by John McTiernan, DP: Dean Semler)
Ah, the 80s! Ronald Reagan was president. America was strong. Russia was weak. The economy was booming. The music was wonderful. Many great movies were released, though most of them were not nominated for any Oscars. This is the decade that tends to drive most Oscar fanatics batty. So many good films that went unnominated. So many good performers that were overlooked. Let’s dive on in!
1980: The Shining Is Totally Ignored
Admittedly, The Shining was not immediately embraced by critics when it was first released. Stephen King is still whining about the movie and once he went as far as to joke about being happy that he outlived Stanley Kubrick. (Not cool, Steve.) Well, none of that matters. The Shining should have been nominated across the board. “Come and play with us, Danny …. AT THE OSCARS!”
1981: Harrison Ford Is Not Nominated For Best Actor For Raiders of the Lost Ark
Raiders received a lot of nominations. Steven Spielberg was nominated for Best Director. The film itself was nominated for Best Picture. (It lost to Chariots of Fire.) But the man who helped to hold the film together, Harrison Ford, was not nominated for his performance as Indiana Jones. Despite totally changing the way that people looked at archeologists and also making glasses sexy, Harrison Ford was overlooked. I think this was yet another case of the Academy taking a reliable actor for granted.
1982: Brian Dennehy Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For First Blood
First Blood didn’t receive any Oscar nominations, not even in the technical categories. Personally, I think you could argue that the film, which was much more than just an action film, deserved to be considered for everything from Best Actor to Best Director to Best Picture. But, in the end, if anyone was truly snubbed, it was Brian Dennehy. Dennehy turned Will Teasle into a classic villain. Wisely, neither the film nor Dennehy made the mistake of portraying Sheriff Teasle as being evil. Instead, he was just a very stubborn man who couldn’t admit that he made a mistake in the way he treated John Rambo. Dennehy gave an excellent performance that elevated the entire film.
1984: Once Upon A Time In America Is Totally Ignored
It’s not a huge shock that Once Upon A Time In America didn’t receive any Oscar nominations. Warner Bros. took Sergio Leone’s gangster epic and recut it before giving it a wide release in America. Among other things, scenes were rearranged so that they played out in chronological order, the studio took 90 minutes off of the run time, and the film’s surrealistic and challenging ending was altered. Leone disowned the Warner Bros. edit of the film. Unfortunately, in 1984, most people only saw the edited version of Once Upon A Time In America and Leone was so disillusioned by the experience that he would never direct another film. (That said, even the edited version featured Ennio Morricone’s haunting score, which certainly deserved not just a nomination but also the Oscar.) The original cut of Once Upon A Time In America is one of the greatest gangster films ever made, though one gets the feeling that it might have still been too violent, thematically dark, and narratively complex for the tastes of the Academy in 1984. At a time when the Academy was going out of its way to honor good-for-you films like Gandhi, it’s probable that a film featuring Robert De Niro floating through time in an Opium-induced haze might have been a bridge too far.
1985: The Breakfast Club Is Totally Ignored
Not even a nomination for Best Screenplay! It’s a shame. I’m going to guess that the Academy assumed that The Breakfast Club was just another teen flick. Personally, if nothing else, I would have given the film the Oscar for Best Original Song. Seriously, don’t you forget about me.
1986: Alan Ruck Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Poor Cameron!
1986: Blue Velvet Is Not Nominated For Best Picture
Considering the type of films that the Academy typically nominated in the 80s, it’s something of a shock that David Lynch even managed to get a Best Director nomination for a film as surreal and subversive as Blue Velvet. Unfortunately, that was the only recognition that the Academy was willing to give to the film. It can also be argued that Kyle MacLachlan, Laura Dern, Isabella Rossellini, and Dean Stockwell were overlooked by the Academy. Dennis Hopper did receive a Supporting Actor nomination in 1986, though it was for Hoosiers and not Blue Velvet.
1987: R. Lee Ermey Is Not Nominated For Best Supporting Actor For Full Metal Jacket
One of the biggest misconceptions about Full Metal Jacket is that R. Lee Ermey was just playing himself. While Ermey was a former drill instructor and he did improvise the majority of his lines (which made him unique among actors who have appeared in Kubrick films), Ermey specifically set out to play Sgt. Hartmann as being a bad drill instructor, one who pushed his recruits too hard, forgot the importance of building them back up, and was so busy being a bully that he failed to notice that Pvt. Pyle had gone off the deep end. Because Ermey was, by most accounts, a good drill instructor, he knew how to portray a bad one and the end result was an award-worthy performance.
1988: Die Hard Is Not Nominated For Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, or Director
Die Hard did receive some technical nominations but, when you consider how influential the film would go on to be, it’s hard not to feel that it deserved more. Almost every action movie villain owes a debt to Alan Rickman’s performance as Hans Gruber. And Bruce Willis …. well, all I can say is that people really took Bruce for granted.
1989: Do The Right Thing Is Not Nominated For Best Picture
Indeed, it would take another 30 years for a film directed by Spike Lee to finally be nominated for Best Picture.
Agree? Disagree? Do you have an Oscar snub that you think is even worse than the 10 listed here? Let us know in the comments!
Up next: It’s the 90s!
Yes, Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
And, in an alternative universe, it was a Frank Sinatra movie.
Released into theaters in 1988, Die Hard was based on a novel called Nothing Lasts Forever. Nothing Lasts Forever told roughly the same story as Die Hard, with one of the big exceptions being that the cop fighting the terrorists was not the youngish and quippy John McClane but instead was a weary, aging and retired detective named Joe Leland. Leland previously appeared in another novel called The Detective. In 1968, The Detective was turned into a film and the role of Leland was played by Frank Sinatra. As a part of his contract, Sinatra had the right to play Leland in any sequels to The Detective. When Die Hard was in pre-production, Sinatra could have demanded that the film be a Joe Leland film and that he be allowed to star in it. Fortunately, Sinatra did not do that and Joe Leland was instead transformed into John McClane. And, after the role was was turned down by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Clint Eastwood, Nick Nolte, Mel Gibson, Don Johnson, Harrison Ford, Burt Reynolds, Paul Newman, James Caan, Al Pacino, and Richard Dean Anderson, popular television actor Bruce Willis finally received the role.
Seriously, just consider that. Bruce Willis was not only not the first choice for John McClane but even Richard Dean Anderson was offered the role before the filmmakers finally went with Willis. It’s hard to imagine anyone else starring in Die Hard because, to most of us, Bruce Willis is John McClane. Growing up and watching Die Hard on television every Christmas, it was very easy to assume that Willis probably spent all of his spare time fighting terrorists and coming up with snarky quips. Definitely, it’s difficult to imagine Stallone and Schwarzenegger in the role. What made McClane such a compelling hero was that he wasn’t superhuman. He was just a blue collar guy who hurt his feet, got tired, and had his moments of frustration just like everyone else. He was the relatable action hero. It didn’t matter how many stories that one heard about Bruce Willis having an ego or occasionally being difficult to work with. Bruce Willis was John McClane and, after everything that McClane had been though, he had every right to occasionally be difficult.
You’ll notice that I haven’t really discussed the plot of Die Hard because …. well, everyone knows that plot. I mean, this is one of those films that has such a permanent place in pop cultural history that even people who somehow haven’t seen the film still know what it’s about. John McClane is an NYPD cop who flies to Los Angeles to see his estranged wife, Holly, for Christmas. Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) works for the Nakatomi Corporation. During the company’s Christmas party, terrorists led by Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) take over the skyscraper. The terrorists claim to be politically-motivated but, actually, they just want to break into the building’s vault and make off with a lot of money. McClane makes his way through the unfinished skyscraper, killing the terrorists one-by-one. He only has two allies. Al Powell (Reginald VelJohnson) is an LAPD sergeant who is outside the building and who communicates with McClane via radio. Argyle (De’Veroux White) is the friendly limo driver who spends almost the entire siege oblivious in the parking garage. (The first time I ever watched Die Hard, I was so worried something bad would happen to Argyle.)
McClane has a lot of enemies and not all of them are terrorists. The Deputy Chief of the LAPD (Paul Gleason) thinks that McClane is making the situation worse. Two FBI agent, both named Johnson (and played by Robert Davi and Grand L. Bush), seem to view the entire siege as being a game with the older Johnson talking about how much it reminds him of Vietnam. A reporter (William Atherton) makes the situation worse with his on-the-spot reports. Meanwhile, there’s Harry Ellis (Hart Bochner). A coke-addled executive, Ellis actually thinks that he’s helping McClane by trying to negotiate with Gruber. I know that some people can’t stand Ellis but I always feel sorry for him. In his way, he was trying to help and you could tell that he was so proud of himself for not telling Gruber that McClane was in Los Angeles to see Holly.
Needless to say, there’s a lot of action in Die Hard. A lot of people die. One thing that I appreciate the movie is that the bad guys get as upset over their friends and family being killed as McClane gets over Holly being threatening. No one in the film is one-dimensional and even the bad guys have their own distinct personalities. Theo (Clarence Gilyard) gets so excited about the idea of opening the vault that you can’t help but relate. Karl (Alexander Godonuv) appears to be nearly indestructible. Hans Gruber may be totally evil but he has a quick wit and there’s something intriguing about how confident he is. Alan Rickman, famously, was not happy that his first role led to him being typecast as an international villain and one can’t blame him. Still, almost every action movie villain who has followed has owed something to Alan Rickman. Just as it’s difficult to imagine anyone other than Bruce Willis as John McClane, it’s impossible to imagine anyone other than Alan Rickman as Hans Gruber.
(That said, I’m sure there’s another alternate universe out there, right next to the Sinatra universe, where Blade Runner was not as troubled a production as it was and, as a result, Die Hard was made with Ridley Scott directing, Harrison Ford starring as McClane, and Rutger Hauer playing Hans.)
For all of the action, there’s also a lot of moments that make me laugh out loud and I’m not just talking about McClane’s one liners. The two FBI agents don’t get much screentime but Davi and Bush make the most of what they have. Paul Gleason is wonderfully deadpan as the clueless Chief Robinson. Even Rickman gets his share of laughs. “I read about them in Time Magazine” indeed.
Die Hard is a Christmas tradition with my family and a lot of other families as well. Does Die Hard count as a Christmas movie? I would say yes. The terrorists may not respect the holiday but John McClane does. No one ruins McClane’s Christmas!
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films lets the visuals do the talking.
Merry Christmas!
Let’s get today started with….
4 Shots From 4 Christmas Films
The Godfather (1972, dir by Francis Ford Coppola)
Lethal Weapon (1987, dir by Richard Donner)
Die Hard (1988, dir by John McTiernan)
Die Hard 2 (1990, dir by Renny Harlin)
I recently reviewed John McTiernan’s classic scifi action Predator. It is a film that many kids both young and those young at heart loved watching on the bigscreen. The 1980’s some would consider the golden years of action filmmaking.
It was a decade where action instead of dialogue ruled. Where muscle-bound stars like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone dominated the box-office. Even with the resurgence and current renaissance of the action film genre, many still reminisce about the action flicks of the 80’s and how they truly didn’t make them like they used to.
If there’s ever a great example of just how over-the-top and testosterone-fueled the action films were of this decade of the 80’s (also known as the decade of excess) then one can’t go wrong with showing the uninitiated the jungle shootout scene from Predator.
One doesn’t need to be into guns to appreciate the majesty of this scene.
It would be accurate for one to say that Arnold Schwarzenegger was king of the 80’s action flicks. He first burst onto the scene in the titular role in Conan the Barbarian then it’s follow-up sequel. Yet, it would be his role in James Cameron’s The Terminator in 1985 that would make him a household name.
He began to crank out action films after action film every year to varying degrees of success and quality between 1984 and 1987. It would be in the summer of 1987 that he would add a third iconic action film role to stint as Conan the Barbarian and the relentless cybernetic killer, the Terminator.
Maj. Dutch Schaefer in John McTiernan’s action scifi Predator cemented Arnold Schwarzenegger as the most bankable movie star of the 1980’s. The film itself has become a go-to classic whenever film fans of all stripes discuss what were some of the best films of the era. Yes, I do categorize Predator as one of the best to come out of the 1980’s. It does more than hold it’s own when stacked up against Oscar winners, festival darlings and indie cult-favorites.
It’s a film that takes the premise that “man is the most dangerous game” to new levels by adding in a scifi element to the story. That scifi element being an extraterrestrial hunter who comes to Earth every so often to hunt. It’s chosen prey tends to be killers, fighters and soldiers at the top of their craft and usually during times of extreme conflict.
The film, as written by the two brothers John and Jim Thomas, actually works like a slasher horror film in the beginning as Dutch and his team of elite commandos trek through the Central American jungle on a rescue mission. A mission that lands the team in finding the grisly remains of another American special forces team. Questions come up as to whether their CIA liaison (played by Carl Weathers of Rocky and Rocky II fame) knows more about the true nature of their supposed rescue mission than he’s willing to let on.
It’s once the team, still being stalked through the jungle by an unseen predator, finally find the people they’re suppose to rescue that all hell breaks loose in more ways than one. The action is loud, messy and exquisitely choreographed and filmed. Unlike some of the action films of the last ten years, Predator succeeds with it’s action scenes for having a director who uses very long takes and little to no hand-held to keep the action geography easy to follow and the action choreography unencumbered by too many edits and cuts.
Even once the team realizes that they were now being hunted and that whoever, or whatever is hunting them, the film still continues to stay on a creative track. When I mentioned that the film plays out like slasher film, it does in way in that the titular character behaves and moves like slasher killers. It seems to be everywhere and nowhere. The very victims it’s hunting only see it when it’s too late and death’s upon them.
The film’s dialogue has been quoted by so many fans that memes have been created around them. Yet, this doesn’t mean that the film is hilarious. What it does have was that masculine, brother’s-in-arms banter and quips that’s become a sort of signature for screenwriter and director Shane Black who was hired to do some uncredited rewrites on the Thomas Brother’s original script. Black would also end up playing one of the commandos in the film.
Outside of Arnold himself, Predator would be best-known for the effects work by the late and great Stan Winston, who would come in to help redesign the title character (with some help from his buddy James Cameron) and the rest as they would say was film history. It would be difficult to go anywhere around the world, show the Predator to some random person and they not know what it is.
Predator was one of those films that people, at first, thought was just a mindless, popcorn flick. The type of cinema that was to be seen then forgotten for better fare. Yet, in the end, Predator ended up becoming not just a classic of its genre, but a perfect example of a film that transcends it’s genre roots to become just a great film, in general.
Fresh off the success of his two previous films, The Predator and Die Hard, John McTiernan was now tasked with adapting one of the 1980’s most popular novels with Tom Clancy’s debut techno-thriller, The Hunt for Red October.
By 1990, the year the film was released, Gorbachev had thawed the Cold War that existed between East and West. The Berlin Wall was months away from being torn down and glasnost became the word of the day for most people who knew nothing but the spectre of nuclear annihilation hanging over their heads since before born.
It was during the final years of the Cold War that an insurance salesman with a penchant for military and spy thrillers tried his hand in writing one. this first attempt became a worldwide sensation and was quickly put up in a bidding war by all the major studios. It would be Paramount Pictures who would win to adapt The Hunt for Red October for the big-screen and John McTiernan would be hired to steer the film.
While Sean Connery would ultimately be cast in the main role of Soviet submarine Marko Ramius, he wasn’t the first choice. German actor Klaus Maria Brandauer was originally cast but ended up leaving production a coupe weeks into production due to prior commitments. So, in comes Connery and the rest, as they would say, is history.
The thing about film adaptations of popular novels has been how much of the novel could the filmmakers, especially the screenwriter, be able to fit into a film that would run around 2 hours or so. Some cutting of scenes that fans loves would have to be done and depending on the scenes in the novel, a backlash could begin against the film even before filming was completed.
Fortunately, this was Hollywood in the late 1980’s and there was no such thing as the internet as we know of it today. There were no blogs dedicated to reporting on every minute detail of a film production. No amateur film newshound bringing up unsubstantiated rumors of the going’s on during a film’s production. This was still a Hollywood who controlled how news of their activities were going to be reported and what they decided to tell and show reporters.
This would be a boon for McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October since the film had some major help from not just the U.S. Navy, but from the Department of Defense in trying to make sure the film was as realistic as possible in portraying the life of American submariners, Naval personnel and how the intelligence community in the West operated. Again, this was also with the film portraying all these groups in a much more positive light in return for their assistance.
In today’s world, such a compromise from the filmmakers to gain the help from the military-intelligence apparatus would be akin to some as perpetuating warmongering and glorifying the military. I could see blogs shouting for boycotts if such a thing happened nowadays.
But returning to the film The Hunt for Red October, for a straight-by-the-numbers thriller it still brings a certain surprise and inventiveness in the action-thriller genre that other filmmakers decades later would try to emulate (Crimson Tide and the many Jack Ryan-based films). Despite a Russian accent that really was cringe-worthy even when first heard, Sean Connery made for a charismatic and sympathetic Marko Ramius whose reasoning for defecting with the titular submarine Red October went beyond just the politics of the era.
Backing him up was a strong ensemble cast with a very young Alec Baldwin in the role of Jack Ryan, James Earl Jones as his boss CIA director Adm. James Greer and Sam Neill and Scott Glenn as Cmdr. Borodin and Capt. Mancuso. The film goes in heavily into Clancy’s love for technobabble and military jargon, yet the actors involved seemed very game and convincing in acting out the dialogue that would sound ridiculous is just read without context and understanding.
While the film does sacrifice some of the more political maneuverings in the book, which meant less scenes with Richard Jordan as National Security Advisor Dr. Pelt, it does streamline the film to be more action-oriented. It was a shame they went that way in which parts of the novel to cut out since Jordan’s performance as Dr. Pelt was one of the highlights of the film, despite his limited screentime.
In terms of action, The Hunt for Red October proved once again that McTiernan knew how to handle both tension and action in equal measure. He makes the cat-and-mouse battle between the Soviet and American subs seem as thrilling as any fast-paced dogfight scenes that thrilled filmgoers when Top Gun premiered on the bigscreen.
Even the film’s orchestral score from the late and great composer Basil Poledouris would lend the film a certain level of martial prowess that Poledouris’ compositions were known for. Even after many viewings it’s still difficult not to hum the film’s Soviet national hymn-inspired theme.
While The Hunt for Red October was one of the last films of the Cold War-era that still showed the tug-of-war between the East and West, it was a fitting end to a part of Hollywood’s cinematic history that portrayed Communism, especially that of the Soviet Union, as the big go-to Enemy that made action movies of the 80’s so popular with the Reaganite crowd.
The success of this film would begin a cottage industry of sequels featuring the character of Jack Ryan who would be portrayed in subsequent films by none other than Everyman himself Harrison Ford then in a miscasting in a later sequel by Ben Affleck.
For the past week, we’ve been sharing some of our favorite holiday scenes! Myself, I shared two scenes from It’s A Wonderful Life and Miracle on 34th Street. However, I just recently realized that we hadn’t shared any scenes from a film that has, particularly in this year, emerged as a holiday favorite!
So, without further ado, enjoy this scene from Die Hard!
4 Shots From 4 Films is just what it says it is, 4 shots from 4 of our favorite films. As opposed to the reviews and recaps that we usually post, 4 Shots From 4 Films is all about letting the visuals do the talking.
4 Shots From 4 Holiday Films
A Christmas Story (1983, dir by Bob Clark)
Brazil (1985, dir by Terry Gilliam)
Die Hard (1988, dir by John McTiernan)
National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation (1989, dir by Jeremiah Chechik)
Yesterday, Arleigh spotlighted Everybody Wants To Rule The World by Tears for Fears. I grew up listening to the song all the time because it was featured in one of my all-time favorite movies: Real Genius (1985). At the heart of the movie is a slimy embezzling college professor who is taking advantage of smart kids to build a special laser for the government to assassinate people from space. However, this wasn’t the first, or last time that Atherton was cast as a scumbag in the 1980s. I thought it would be fun to spotlight four of them, including his turn as Professor Hathaway in Real Genius.
Ghostbusters (1984, dir. Ivan Reitman)
Real Genius (1985, dir. Martha Coolidge)
Die Hard (1988, dir. John McTiernan)
Die Hard 2 (1990, dir. Renny Harlin)
Through the Shattered Lens 