Yesterday I was really in the mood for a bad action movie, so I saw A Good Day To Die Hard. I haven’t seen a movie in the theater since November (I think). But I really wanted some explosions, car chases, and a plot that made almost no sense whatsoever. Die Hard delivered. John McClane (MacClain? I dunno how they spell it and I don’t really care either) heads to Russia where his son he hasn’t seen in years is about to go on trial for some sort of drug charge. Total white knight. But John McClaine Jr. is actually C.I.A. and being in jail is part of their complicated plan to bring down the incoming Russian defense minister. Sr. screws that up by distracting Jr. and then they have to start killing bad guys. Sadly, there’s only one car chase, which occurs near the beginning of the film. Lots of explosions and dodging bullets though, including dodging being shot at by a giant gun on a helicopter that shoots lit up bullets. Very satisfying.
Mind you, it’s really nothing like the original Die Hard, which was a different kind of action movie. A Good Day To Die Hard is really the same old action movie.
Today I went and saw The Hobbit. Bleah. Awful movie. I don’t really remember a lot of the book, but there’s a lot of stuff added in the movie. Most of the added stuff I didn’t like. Where the hell did the pale orc nemesis come from? I don’t remember that in the book. Did the movie really need a nemesis in order to make the show palatable? I don’t think so.
Unlike Die Hard, I wanted these things to make sense, and they just didn’t. Why were the dwarves fighting the orcs, other than the set up the nemesis relationship? No reason. Oh yeah, and the son of the dwarf king goes and fights orc who have nothing to do with Smaug the dragon who took over the dwarf redoubt. Why had the pale orc sworn to end the dwarf king’s line in particular? Why does he care? Just dumb. That’s merely one example.
And oh my god was this movie slow. I don’t mind the flashbacks. That didn’t seem to slow things down. But there were interminable talking and speechifying scenes that added nothing. And unnecessarily long scenic shots. And C.G.I. chase scenes that were just too damn long.
Needless to say, I am extremely unlikely to be catching in the theaters the last 6 fucking hours of this story that will comprise the second and third movies of a series that really shouldn’t have been a series.