Die Hard. Already Dead?

Who needs a hero like John McClane? A man who is motivated by...

• Absolute standards of good and evil
• An irrational sense of loyalty
• A loose grasp on the purpose and value of the justice system
• Emotions that are both intense and inexpressible
• An unquestioned sense of personal power

He may be a high-functioning psychopath with a blind if admirable love for his wife. A man like that begins to sound familiar to another everyman who, after failing at other endeavors, succeeded by taking on "evil men." That man looks like an international buffoon.

If the zeitgeist is always rendering the hero in a new form - the cowboy, captain of industry, cop, astronaut, the judge, the rapper - then I think it's time the Die Hard franchise died, hard or otherwise. I don't wish them ill. I just think we need a hero. McClane is no longer my man, or our man, or everyman.

I love this character. For years, even when talking with film snobs, I said Die Hard was my favorite movie: fantastic, entertaining, with a hero I could admire. In fact, McClane is a hero who gives dramatic vent to the frustrations of everyman in the face of bureaucracy and big institutions. But that was back in 1988. And Inside Man seemed to be the last word on him. Or some people say he karmically became Jack Bauer. But now he's back and he's got gray hair on his back like the Geico Neanderthals.

Jack Bauer may be a response to 9/11. John McClane was a response to America under Ronald Regan. Bauer: unfailingly earnest. McClane: dripping irony. Bauer: willing to do almost anything for country. McClane: Willing to do almost anything to get his estranged wife back.

Our next heros:

• First, assume that they fought in Iraq and then,
  
• Went to Harvard Business School
• Started a socially-conscious business
• Went into a business that's based on selling responsibility to low- to moderate-income families
• Refuse to battle institutions, "What's that?"
• Use pot recreationally
• Get angry at people who litter
  

If you draw a line from John McClane in Die Hard (1988) through all the knockoffs and the real progeny of that fresh take on the everyman hero - NYPD Blue, The Shield, The Long Kiss Goodbye, House, 24's Jack Bauer to name a few - and draw it back to McClane in Live Free or Die Hard (DH4), you have to ask yourself, who needs a hero like McClane today?