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I went to watch A Good Day To Die Hard yesterday; I didn't expect much, and it met my expectations (!). Don't get me wrong, it wasn't completely awful, and there's a great car chase scene which is almost (almost, not quite) worth the price of admission. However, for me it fails as a thriller.
While I was sitting wondering when it would end and if I could get some more popcorn without missing anything, I had some thoughts on why it didn't work and how those things could apply to those of us writing thrillers.
This will inevitably involve spoilers. You have been warned.
Point the first: I just didn't care
I found myself really not caring what happened to any of the characters, and in retrospect I think I know why. There was far too much reliance on audience sympathy having been established in the previous films.
Now, I watched all the Die Hard films in sequence between Christmas and now (Die Hard 1 is a great Christmas movie
) so I should have been well-placed to root for McClane. I have a good, fresh memory of everything he went through and how he did it.
A Good Day appears to operate on the assumption that we will get behind McClane simply because he is McClane; that he's the good guy and the others are bad guys. Problem is that McClane in the film just isn't that likeable, and nor is his son (played by Jai Courtney, who has a familiar face depsite me not having seen him in anything else). They're both crass and shouty, and operate only on a superficial level of emotion. That's in contrast to the first couple of movies, where John has deeper motives and desires beyond "kill the bad guys and escape". I think there's an attempt to craft this from his relationship with his son, but because neither character is likeable - or relateable in the way they react to things or approach situations - this falls flat.
Point the second - the bad guys were rubbish
The movie follows much the same basic plot as the earlier ones, with terrorist action concealing a heist at the heart of it, but, unlike the previous films, the motives for said heist were unclear. That, combined with a bait-and-switch approach to the bad guys - so many people turned out to be secretly working for a different side that the twist became a death spiral - meant that I had little sense of what the good guys were fighting against. I knew who they were fighting, but that was about it. Why seemed to be just "because they're there and I'm here", which again fell flat for me.
Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free Or Die Hard in the US, I think) isn't the best in the series, but there's an interesting conversation about heroic motives in there. McClane makes the point that a hero is someone who, when found in the wrong place at the wrong time, stands up for right "because there's nobody else to do it". This is repeated later in the film when the wimpy sidekick does a heroic act and understands that he did it for the same reason.
In A Good Day the heroic motive is reduced to "I kill scumbags. That's what we do", and, combined with a lack of a clear and compelling villainous motive, it means the film stumbles from one action sequence to the next instead of having a clear line of opposition and struggle drawn through it.
Point the third - there was no tension
Die Hard 1 works in part because the odds are stacked against McClane. He's on his own, increasingly stripped of resources against an opponent who grows in power. Hell, he even loses his shoes at one point. Even with the dramatic irony of us knowing he's the hero and he will inevitably prevail, the story does a good job of convincing us he might fail.
A Good Day does the opposite, providing John and his son with a trunk-full of weapons right before the finale, like a save point right before a boss battle in a video game. Sure, there are more bad guys than before, and they have a helicopter - but it's a transport, whereas earlier the McClanes had to survive an attack from a gunship. The bad guys have U-235 too... except there's some fancy phlebotinum gas that neutralises radiation to make that all better. The odds against them are actually less than earlier in the story.
This is a two-pronged problem, and comes back to the earlier points as well. One of the failings in characterisation is how unfazed the McClanes are by all the action. In the firm couple of films, John is bolstered by his cop training, but is still freaked out by people shooting at him. He finds time for a cocky one-liner, but that's as much a defence mechanism as anything.
By A Good Day, he's morphed into this unstoppable badass who doesn't even blink in the face of automatic fire. His son is even cooler, but he doesn't get such good lines, which means he comes across as arrogant. One character unflappable and wisecracking, the other arrogant, and the net result is that we never feel like the situation is more than they can handle. Take that with weak bad guys (as discussed above) and decreasing stakes and there's no tension whatsoever. It's a thriller, and it's not thrilling!
Whether you've seen the film or not, what do you think? What elements are essential to great thrillers, and are sometimes missed by writers (in all media)? What writers and stories do you think are examples of these things done well? And can anyone explain to a hapless Brit what on earth "yippie-ki-yay" means?!
While I was sitting wondering when it would end and if I could get some more popcorn without missing anything, I had some thoughts on why it didn't work and how those things could apply to those of us writing thrillers.
This will inevitably involve spoilers. You have been warned.
Point the first: I just didn't care
I found myself really not caring what happened to any of the characters, and in retrospect I think I know why. There was far too much reliance on audience sympathy having been established in the previous films.
Now, I watched all the Die Hard films in sequence between Christmas and now (Die Hard 1 is a great Christmas movie
) so I should have been well-placed to root for McClane. I have a good, fresh memory of everything he went through and how he did it.A Good Day appears to operate on the assumption that we will get behind McClane simply because he is McClane; that he's the good guy and the others are bad guys. Problem is that McClane in the film just isn't that likeable, and nor is his son (played by Jai Courtney, who has a familiar face depsite me not having seen him in anything else). They're both crass and shouty, and operate only on a superficial level of emotion. That's in contrast to the first couple of movies, where John has deeper motives and desires beyond "kill the bad guys and escape". I think there's an attempt to craft this from his relationship with his son, but because neither character is likeable - or relateable in the way they react to things or approach situations - this falls flat.
Point the second - the bad guys were rubbish
The movie follows much the same basic plot as the earlier ones, with terrorist action concealing a heist at the heart of it, but, unlike the previous films, the motives for said heist were unclear. That, combined with a bait-and-switch approach to the bad guys - so many people turned out to be secretly working for a different side that the twist became a death spiral - meant that I had little sense of what the good guys were fighting against. I knew who they were fighting, but that was about it. Why seemed to be just "because they're there and I'm here", which again fell flat for me.
Die Hard 4.0 (Live Free Or Die Hard in the US, I think) isn't the best in the series, but there's an interesting conversation about heroic motives in there. McClane makes the point that a hero is someone who, when found in the wrong place at the wrong time, stands up for right "because there's nobody else to do it". This is repeated later in the film when the wimpy sidekick does a heroic act and understands that he did it for the same reason.
In A Good Day the heroic motive is reduced to "I kill scumbags. That's what we do", and, combined with a lack of a clear and compelling villainous motive, it means the film stumbles from one action sequence to the next instead of having a clear line of opposition and struggle drawn through it.
Point the third - there was no tension
Die Hard 1 works in part because the odds are stacked against McClane. He's on his own, increasingly stripped of resources against an opponent who grows in power. Hell, he even loses his shoes at one point. Even with the dramatic irony of us knowing he's the hero and he will inevitably prevail, the story does a good job of convincing us he might fail.
A Good Day does the opposite, providing John and his son with a trunk-full of weapons right before the finale, like a save point right before a boss battle in a video game. Sure, there are more bad guys than before, and they have a helicopter - but it's a transport, whereas earlier the McClanes had to survive an attack from a gunship. The bad guys have U-235 too... except there's some fancy phlebotinum gas that neutralises radiation to make that all better. The odds against them are actually less than earlier in the story.
This is a two-pronged problem, and comes back to the earlier points as well. One of the failings in characterisation is how unfazed the McClanes are by all the action. In the firm couple of films, John is bolstered by his cop training, but is still freaked out by people shooting at him. He finds time for a cocky one-liner, but that's as much a defence mechanism as anything.
By A Good Day, he's morphed into this unstoppable badass who doesn't even blink in the face of automatic fire. His son is even cooler, but he doesn't get such good lines, which means he comes across as arrogant. One character unflappable and wisecracking, the other arrogant, and the net result is that we never feel like the situation is more than they can handle. Take that with weak bad guys (as discussed above) and decreasing stakes and there's no tension whatsoever. It's a thriller, and it's not thrilling!
Whether you've seen the film or not, what do you think? What elements are essential to great thrillers, and are sometimes missed by writers (in all media)? What writers and stories do you think are examples of these things done well? And can anyone explain to a hapless Brit what on earth "yippie-ki-yay" means?!
