The naked tai chi scene is not the opening scene in Die Hard 2 (which is not actually subtitled Die Harder though that's how I remember it), it’s the second scene, maybe five minutes in, blond-haired blue-eyed Aryan-archetype Colonel Stuart, played by William Sadler, who would a year later play the Grim Reaper/Death Personified in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (another sequel) best remembered for the scene in which he plays Twister with Bill and Ted for the fate of their souls (also for his rap You might be a king or a little street sweeper, but sooner or later you dance with the reaper) but here five minutes in to the movie practicing naked slow motion martial arts in the mirror of his hotel room while watching the news, such a sculpted ass, chest, lats, bi’s, every curve on his perfect hairless Aryan body, everything Hitler was hard up for in a species but couldn’t be himself–this is Renny Harlin’s vision after all (not that Renny Harlin, hailing from Finland, was pro-Nazi, just an appreciator of the male form, as would be further cemented from his close-up shots of Sylvester Stalone’s chiseled rock-climber physique in Cliffhanger), Finnish Renny taking over from All-American John McTiernan (not that gratuitous male nudity is necessarily connected to love for country) but the question remained: how can we top the blockbuster phenomenon that was Die Hard 1? How can Renny put his own Finnish vision to this potential franchise? The answer is: naked slow-motion tai chi. No bullshit xenophobic British accent to lean into on this go-round, just the tiniest shadow of William Sadler’s balls if you look closely, so yeah, sure, Bruce might not sign off for a shot of his own beautifully sculpted hairless ass and sure, we don’t get John McClane making sweet sweet love with Bonnie Bedelia, so sure, okay, but that will get some goddamn good old fashioned American gratuitous male nudity, it’s Chekov’s gun: if we’re going to have naked martial arts in the (almost but not quite) first scene then we need to have a martial arts fight to the death on the wing of a 747 on the runway, unable to take off until a certain plucky New York-turned-LA cop gets dealt with: Who will win? Obviously not the Aryan martial arts communist sympathizer disavowed special ops army colonel, no, but also kinda yeah, too, Bruce Willis actually really almost literally getting his ass kicked off that plane, Colonel Stuart/William Sadler claiming victory for his convoluted plot of rescuing an imprisoned corrupt druglord/dictator of a fictional South American country, thinking he’s had the last laugh–his finishing maneuver as it were–only to find out a minute later wheels up that–yippie kayyay motherfucker!–John McClane has managed to open the fuel tank on his fall down from getting his ass kicked and surviving the impact onto the frozen tarmac while still having time to grab his patented Zippo lighter, make a badass facial expression as he flicks his Zippo, ignites the spilling stream of jetfuel all the way up to blow up Colonel Stuart’s big getaway thus setting up William Sadler to come back from hell and play Death as previously discussed re: Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, which at least wasn’t titled Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure 2, whereas it took Die Hard two more movies to get creative with Die Hard 4: Live Free or Die Hard and Die Hard 5: A Good Day to Die Hard, but will never make up for the missed opportunity of Die Hard 3: Die Hardest, in which there’s not even any goddamn gratuitous male nudity/martial arts in Die Hard 3–not Bruce Willis, not Jeremy Irons, and definitely not Samuel L. Jackson who famously refuses to do nude scenes because he worries his dick isn't big enough to fill my aura, which is a real loss for the rest of us, especially for Renny Harlin who could not shoot Jackson's beautiful sculpted hairless black ass in his movie The Long Kiss Goodnight and prove once and for all that he’s not a Nazi sympathizer (though to be clear: there is not one iota nor miniscule nor shred of evidence that Finnish director Renny Harlin is a Nazi sympathizer; there’s only his mutual appreciation with Hitler for William Sadler’s Aryan male form, so much so that he decided to open the movie with it, even if studio ended up not making him not use it for the actual opening scene of the movie, which is John McClane getting towed by an extra-stereotypically hairy but also balding boisterous Italian goomba cop named Vito who we never get to see naked–though we would eventually get to see Dennis Franz’s ass in NYPD Blue who plays Vito’s brother Carmine in Die Hard 2, which is not named Die Harder).
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