Does ‘Olympus Has Fallen’ Out Die Hard ‘Die Hard’?

Beyond the wave of sequels, prequels, reboots and remakes that take over the multiplexes every Thursday, you need only look at this week’s release of Olympus Has Fallen for further proof of Hollywood’s dwindling idea pool. The film places Gerard Butler in the role of Mike Banning, a Secret Service agent and the lone man standing a chance of saving kidnapped President Aaron Eckhart from nefarious, White House-hijacking terrorists. It’s a pretty bankable premise with potential for blockbustery explosions, baddies and histrionics, but it’s also a familiar one. As Banning, Butler walks a path beaten and battered by Bruce Willis’s iconic solo slugger, John McClane from the Die Hard series.

Debuting in the original Die Hard in 1988, Willis’s McClane fired off quips and ammo with equal impact as a one man wrecking crew against yuppie terrorists heisting the Nakatomi Plaza building, setting the tone for a generation of actioners duking it out in confined quarters (see: Under Siege, Passenger 57, Air Force One, etc). Willis has reprised McClane in another four Die Hard films across the ensuing two decades, including a recent romp across Russia in A Good Day To Die Hard just the other month. Any franchise would lose a bit of its magic nearly 25 years and countless kicked arses later, but the fifth Die Hard somehow managed to crawl under the basest of expectations (McClane’s latest outing has been awarded an anaemic ‘15% rating’ on Rotten Tomatoes at time of publication).

With Olympus Has Fallen now in cinemas and competing for tickets and DVD nights with A Good Day To Die Hard, there’s at last a significant challenge for McClane’s own crud-stained white singlet. Here’s how it shakes out…

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The Heroes

Olympus Has Fallen nails its lead actor Butler as the President’s (America’s? The World’s?) last hope in ‘Banning’, a tough ex-special forces operative (thank you, expository dialogue) who’s tormented by First Lady Ashley Judd’s death. Butler has done a stretch of dreadful films (The Ugly Truth, Playing For Keeps), but gets a free pass from action film fans for gloriously screeching “This is Sparta!” in Zack Snyder’s 300.

Still, Butler’s up against Bruce Willis in his most recognisable film role in a franchise that’s not completely fallen from ‘beloved’ status to ‘barely tolerable’ just yet. What clouds McClane’s potency in 2013 though is Willis’s schedule: he’s over-exposed, or at least this version of him is. Within twelve months of A Good Day To Die Hard, we’ve seen the same shiny dome, sneering grimace and cold stare in action movies like The Expendables 2, Looper and G.I. Joe: Retaliation (which is also competing in theatre screens right now). Get ready for the same interchangeable performance once again when Willis returns as retired CIA agent Frank Moses in the upcoming RED 2.

Verdict: Tie

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The Cast

It’s tradition for Die Hard films to have solid supporting casts ranging from scene-nibbling bit parts like Dennis Franz in Die Hard 2: Die Harder and Kevin Smith in Die Hard 4.0 to accomplished actors sharing the spotlight like Alan Rickman (Die Hard), Samuel L. Jackson and Jeremy Irons (Die Hard With A Vengeance) and Timothy Olyphant (Die Hard 4.0). The latest film in the series dispenses with ‘names’ in large roles, bar up-and-coming Aussie Jai Courtney as McClane Jnr.

On the flip side, Olympus Has Fallen boasts an impressive cast, seemingly stacking the deck with talent to distract from any overriding schlock. Alongside Harvey Dent Aaron Eckhart as President Benjamin Asher, Olympus bulks out its cast with Melissa Leo, Radha Mitchell, Angela Bassett, Dylan McDermott, the aforementioned Ashley Judd and Lucius Fox Morgan Freeman for some bonus gravitas.

Verdict: Olympus Has Fallen

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The Villains

A Good Day To Die Hard sees most of the former USSR as a battleground for the father and son McClane to duke it out with Russian terrorists. While still a uranium-charged threat, McClane’s latest foe doesn’t pose the immediate personal threat of the first two films or the baggage of the Gruber brothers from films one and three.

Meanwhile, Olympus Has Fallen shows that not just any ol’ evil-doer can waltz up and knock-off the White House, y’know, with the frequently shady Dylan McDermott as an inside-man in cahoots with Rick Yune, an inadvertently topical North Korean extremist. Perhaps I’m being nostalgic for the classic feel of the early Die Hard films with our hero wedged in a seemingly insurmountable situation, but I’ll say Olympus Has Fallen tops A Good Day To Die Hard again here. The film uses the tropes established by Die Hard better than that series’ fifth incarnation, upping the stakes once again by setting the action in such a fortified landmark as the White House and in the context of an uncertain global climate.

Verdict: Olympus Has Fallen

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So, who wins?

Much like the many jibes at John McClane’s expense, A Good Day To Die Hard finds the series lumbering with the weight of age behind it. You’ll hear no arguments for Olympus Has Fallen being a perfect film, but at the very least it manages to do Die Hard better than Bruce Willis himself. So who wins?

Well, they both do. And so does Hollywood. Together the two films have squeezed out nearly $400 million at the global box office (Die Hard with the lion’s share as Olympus still awaits release in additional territories), showing there’s still a great thirst for grizzled, backs-against-the-wall McClane types fucking up baddies and growling glib lines between sprays of gun fire. The loser in this? Well, anyone who’s sick of just that. If you’d like to see someone other than Butler have a go at saving a Commander-in-Chief, Channing Tatum will give it all another shot later this year in the near identical White House Down. Yippe-ki-yay.

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Olympus Has Fallen is in cinemas now.