After 25 years and five films in the Die Hard franchise, Bruce Willis just isn't ready to call it a day. Source: Supplied
THERE is something kind of sad about watching Sly Stallone trying to pull Rocky off the mat one more time, or Arnie trying to pretend the Governator years never happened and blast his way back to the top.
But Bruce Willis never stopped. He got older, sure, and took the mickey out of that fact, but he never did anything to cause us to stop believing he was that guy - the guy who could take on a German terrorist and his henchmen and single-handedly save the day.
So here he is, 25 years later, strapping on John McClane's guns and world-weary demeanour for a fifth go on the Die Hard merry-go-round.
Though some might think A Good Day To Die Hard marks a passing of the baton - introducing Aussie 26-year-old Jai Courtney as McClane's equally tough son Jack (featured in the above video) - Willis is not ready to give the franchise away. And who'd be game to take it from him?
"I never thought about stopping," he says. "I always think that there's one more to do."
Rewind to the mid-'80s and Willis was finding his fame feet with Moonlighting. He played a sarcastic private investigator in the TV hit and his chemistry with Cybill Shepherd was the water-cooler talk du jour.
That role, says Willis, wasn't far removed from reality: "That was just me and my sense of humour. I didn't really start thinking about going outside of who I am, to play characters, until later."
A couple of years later, he took the same approach with John McClane when Die Hard came his way after Stallone and Schwarzenegger both passed.
The basic story went: McClane is an off duty New York cop caught up in a hostage situation in the office tower where his estranged wife works. As the SWAT team messes up the operation outside, McClane picks off the bad guys on the inside.
Beyond that, McClane was an empty gun waiting for Willis to load it.
"There weren't any rules written down about the character, how he talked or what his attitude was. That attitude that you see (in the film) - that was just me. Cocky and thought I knew everything ... I kept being encouraged to be this smarta--- guy."
The encouragers were onto something - wise-cracking and butt-kicking Willis equalled hero gold. Released in 1988, Die Hard set a new benchmark for action films and grossed $135.7 million (Rambo III took $175.7 million the same year).
Die Hard 2 followed in 1990, Die Hard: With a Vengeance in 1995, and Die Hard 4.0 in 2007.
Willis was 33 when Die Hard was released. This week, as A Good Day To Die Hard opens in Australia, he turned 58.
Though he hadn't stopped with the action - from Red to Expendables and Looper - he took A Good Day To Die Hard as a physical challenge and says he found fewer limitations than he thought he might.
"I was thinking, 'Well I don't know if I can do that, if I can run as fast or fight as hard, or get up off the ground as fast as I used to', but I am all right.
"A couple of times I got up a little slower. But I don't think that's age, I just think I landed wrong," he says with a smirk.
That low husk of a talking voice Willis has in the movies? It's even lower and slower in real life. His super-chilled demeanour is surprising for a guy you expect to punch first and deliver a killer one-liner later.
"He's a better actor than you probably give him credit for," says John Moore, director of A Good Day To Die Hard.
"When you turn into a movie star, people start being surprised: 'Oh, he's a good actor!' Well, he was always a good actor, but he turned into a movie star."
Willis has in the past had a reputation for being difficult on set; Moore says anyone who had trouble probably just didn't make him laugh enough.
For Willis, making a Die Hard movie is play time: "There's so much about doing action films that reminds me of being a kid, of playing army or throwing rocks."
But it's not just a boy thing; taking a beating on an action movie is about proving one's manhood, says Willis. "It's a guy thing. It's the challenge of not complaining, of going 'I am all right, I am not cold'. Those kind of silly, guy contests with yourself.
"And that's the thing - as close as I could come to any explanation of how I got to hang out in Hollywood for so long and get to do so many fun movies, is that I was only competing with myself.
"I was only trying to do better than I did, to be more honest or more funny, or less funny, more serious, more of anything. Just try to do better."
In A Good Day To Die Hard, years of silence between the McClane men is broken when Junior winds up in a Russian jail. Senior flies to Moscow to bail his son out, but finds Jack is not as hopeless as he seems.
McClane worries in the film that Jack's failings are his fault: "I spent too much time working, I screwed the kid up."
In real life, Willis doesn't have such regrets. He has three girls with ex-wife Demi Moore (Rumer, 24; Scout, 21; Tallulah Belle, 19) and one with his model wife of four years, Emma Heming (baby Mabel turns one this month).
"I tried to balance it out," says Willis of his work versus home life with the older girls. "I would say, 'I am going to need to have these two weeks off and you have to go shoot with someone else'. I didn't know that that was an unusual thing, but it turned out it was."
Nowadays, his relationship with Rumer, Scout and Tallulah Belle is strong: "I am learning about what it's like for them to be young adults."
With Mabel: "I am just trying to make my little baby laugh."
And he's taken the time to savour fatherhood 2.0: "In the last few years I have chosen to work less. I used to work all the time; now I just like hanging out with my kids."
Movies still get a look-in of course. This year alone sees the release of A Good Day To Die Hard, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, Red 2 and the Sin City sequel A Dame To Kill For.
And a Die Hard 6.0 seems more a matter of when there's a good story than whether Willis's body can hack it.
"Bruce is the most avaricious guardian," says director Moore. "Think about it - 25 years, there's only been five movies. That's a pretty high standard."
"There is a certain amount of goodwill out there, people want to see you do well," Willis concludes. "I know that everyone is not into every one of these films, but we try."
SEE A Good Day To Die Hard opens today.
> How the same $*#^ happened to the same guy five times
DIE HARD (1988)
Gross: $135.7 million
Bruce Willis: "I was in that little airconditioning unit and we were stuck trying to come up with a line. It was about 10 o'clock at night and (writer) Steve De Souza had gone home. They called him up and gave me the phone - at the time, the phone was as big as an iPad - and Steve says three or four lines and one of them stuck: 'Come out to the coast, we'll get together and have a few laughs'. That was telephoned in to me."
Jai Courtney: "I love that scene between McClane and Hans Gruber on the roof, when Hans is pretending to be one of the hostages, doing the old switcheroo."
DIE HARD 2 (1990)
Gross: $232 million
Willis: "It was so cold. Remember that little T-shirt that I had on? I was running on an airport runway, no shoes on ... because someone - one person - said we should do Die Hard in the snow. It cost the studio an extra $7 million because they couldn't find any snow. We kept having to go farther and farther north to find snow."
DIE HARD: WITH A VENGEANCE (1995)
Gross: $353.8 million
Samuel L. Jackson: "My character was more or less an audience member hanging around with Bruce Willis in a Die Hard movie, reacting the way an audience member would react ... and every now and then, getting to do something exciting."
DIE HARD 4.0 (2007)
Gross: $370.7 million
Justin Long: "I was on the fence. Maybe Bruce found out. (He called and said) 'Justin Long, this is Bruce Goddamn Willis. How the hell are ya? I hear we're working together. Truly psyched ... ' I was like, 'I can't say no to that'. I tried saying, 'I'm Justin Goddamn Long' for a while, but it didn't quite have the same ring."
A GOOD DAY TO DIE HARD (2013)
Gross: $256.8 million (so far)
Courtney: "There's so many memorable, big action things (throughout the franchise). Hopefully we're staying true to that and creating some memorable moments in this one as well."
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