OK, I have a new rule for sequels: if you're gonna have a sequel to a movie, it's GOT to follow alphabetically. What the hell am I supposed to do with Live Free or Die Hard when I buy it on DVD to complete the Die Hard set? Put a movie that starts with an L over in the D section??? Bullshit! From now on, sequels must follow alphabetically (no more of this Next Friday, Friday After Next bullshit either; anally-retentive DVD buyers are taking a stand!). Since the last movie was Die Hard With A Vengeance, this movie needed to be called Die Hard With A (some word after Vengeance).
You know when you go to the movies - like, one of the more major multi-plexes where they have the super-big screens and lotsa rows going up? Well, you know on that main row where you first walk into the room where the movie is being shown and they've got like one or two or three seats followed by a big gap where people in wheel chairs sit? That's what we call in the biz "Handicapped Seating."
Anyway, like here, and on buses and wherever else they have handicapped seating (or elderly seating, or whathaveyou), if you choose to sit there you always run the risk of actually having an elderly or a handicapped person come in and take that seat from you (with an usher's/bus-driver's insistence, of course).
This is all prelude to the fact that I went and saw Live Free or Die Hard today.
Now, I DID sit in this handicapped row (one seat on one end, big gap, three seats, big gap, one seat on the other end) in the single seat furthest to the left. There were already three people in that 3-seat handicapped section. Anyway, it DID occur to me that a handicapped person might happen along, and with the theater being full to the gills, I'd be stuck sitting in the very first row.
Well, wouldn't you know it, an old bag in a wheelchair gets pushed into the room along with a man and a woman (presumably, husband and wife with her or his mother in the chair). Now, if it was just the man or the wife, I most likely would've been screwed because why would you make the 3-person group move when only one needs a seat? However, since there were two able-bodied patrons with the 'capper - and since the man went out to complain to the usher to get the 3-person group to move - I was safe and sound.
And then there was almost a brawl.
Well, not really, but one of the dudes in the 3-person group was hopping mad, let me tell you. He said some shit - all of this happening during the previews, mind you - and that riled up the husband that had them moved. Usherman got in the middle and I'm assuming the 3-person group left and got their money back.
As for the movie, it ranks a solid 4th as far as the lexicon of Die Hards goes. Here's the order:
Die Hard
Die Hard With A Vengeance
Die Harder
Live Free Or Die Hard
That being said, there are some things that MUST be seen on the big screen. Of course, they'll translate poorly once watched on regular televisions because some of these CGI-created stunts just drag on and on and on.
There's something to be said for the simplicity of a man inside a building fighting off terrorists. You give John McClane a whole fucking time zone to run around in and things start getting redundant. He's got a hot daughter though.