The fifth installment of Bruce Willis’ career-making ‘Die Hard’ franchise, ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’, hit theaters February 14, 2013. Unfortunately, seasoned moviegoers know February is the dumping ground for lazy, unimaginative, sloppy action flicks. ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’ is without a doubt the final nail in the coffin for Detective John McClane, and Toonari is here to explain why the franchise needs to bite the dust for good. Mild spoilers ahead.

John McClane has nothing left to offer the audience

The original ‘Die Hard’ was a hit: the snarky New York officer ran around kicking butt, getting beaten up, and generally pissing off one of the greatest film villains of all time. John McClane is a household name because of his lack of respect for authority, his foul mouth, and his easy trigger finger. By the fifth film, McClane is no longer an honest, lucky guy in the wrong place at the wrong time. He comes across as boorish and arrogant in the Moscow setting. His character works so much better in the previous films, even in the lukewarm ‘Live Free or Die Hard,’ that in the fifth movie he seems like a hollow shell of himself.

The writers keep giving him annoying sidekicks

One of the reasons why ‘Die Hard’ was so awesome is because it was one guy hopelessly outnumbered by bigger, stronger, badder German mercenaries. Adding a foil to John McClane is unnecessary (with the exception of Zeus (Samuel L. Jackson) in ‘Die Hard 3’ because he was funny, useful, and a great character). Jack McClane (Jai Courtney) is nothing more than a younger, less interesting shadow of his father and served absolutely no purpose other than to bounce dialogue off of his much cooler predecessor.

The villains cannot hold their mud compared to Hans Gruber

By far, this new villain is the weakest threat of the bunch. The first ‘Die Hard’ characterized Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) so well that he is almost as much of a household name as McClane. He was vicious, articulate, and cunning. The new villain is dull, has weak motivations, and is stuffed full of clichés. Even worse, the villain in the trailer is not the true villain and dies in the third act with no build up. The real villain is revealed in the last thirty minutes of the film,but it does not add anything to the story.

The films are almost entirely independent of each other after the third movie

The first two ‘Die Hard’ sequels worked because they made references to the original and tied back into the story relatively well. However, the fourth and fifth films barely string anything from the previous flicks together, aside from a brief cameo by McClane’s daughter (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). Jack McClane’s continuous digs at his dad for not caring about national security make no sense when John McClane stops cyber-terrorist Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant) from stealing millions of dollars that would have collapsed the U.S. government. Additionally, McClane’s previous cohorts are forgotten. The audience never finds out what happened to Al (Reginald VelJohnson), Zeus, Matthew (Justin Long) or any other characters who made it out of the earlier movies alive. It is foolish to continue making movies without referencing the characters who helped make them worthwhile.

The filmmakers seem to misunderstand why we love the ‘Die Hard’ series

There are a plethora of reasons why the first ‘Die Hard’ is an American classic. The action is relatively realistic and superb, the stakes are high, and the dialogue is wonderfully irreverent. It is an incredibly memorable film because it presented a great character with plenty of flaws, a nasty villain, an engrossing heist, and a metric ton of violence and profanity. By the fifth film, it is impossible to see any of the enjoyable aspects of the franchise any longer; it has been bogged down with sickening clichés and an invincible main character with no involvement in the story. McClane has no motivation to hunt down the villain in ‘Good Day’, and that is one of the movie’s worst flaws.

With any luck, this ‘Die Hard’ will be the last, as many reviews reflect our aforementioned issues with the flick. It is safe to say that McClane should lay down his gun and retire before he starts making the audience wish they would die. Hard.

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‘Wrath of the Titans’, the action-heavy sequel to ‘Clash of the Titans’ (2010), hit theaters March 30, 2012. The trailer boasted more monsters, more fighting, and more special effects and while it delivers on those areas, it fails in every other category that would qualify for a good film.

Spoiler alert!

‘Wrath of the Titans’ begins with a common mistake of most bad films: revealing a major character’s death off screen in the first five minutes. Roughly a decade has passed and the demi-god Io, who fell in love with Perseus (Sam Worthington) in the first film, has died after having a son named Helius (John Bell).

Perseus has retired from the hero business to raise his son as a fisherman. One night, his father Zeus (Liam Neeson) comes to his home to tell him that since mankind has stopped praying to the gods, they have all lost their powers and have begun dying off. In addition, Tartarus, the Underworld, is falling apart and so Zeus and Hades’ evil father Kronos will be able to break free from his prison and wreak havoc on the world.

Zeus wants Perseus to come with him and his half-brother, Ares (Edgar Ramirez), the God of War, to bargain with Hades (Ralph Fiennes) to help keep Kronos imprisoned. Perseus refuses on the grounds that he will not leave his son and so Zeus travels with his brother Poseidon (Danny Huston), God of the Seas, to Tartarus.

When they arrive, they are ambushed by Hades and Ares, who want to release Kronos to rule over the earth in exchange for keeping their immortality. Poseidon manages to escape and tells Perseus to find his son, Agenor (Toby Kebbell), who can lead them to Hephaestus (Bill Nighy) who can help them find their way into Tartarus to save Zeus.

The overcomplicated plot is the first flaw of the movie. In both this film and its predecessor, the audience is told that the gods run on prayer and worship. However, no one thinks to start praying to Zeus in order to increase his powers. Furthermore, the entire conflict is caused by Perseus’ refusal to come with Zeus, Ares, and Poseidon to bargain with Hades.

It made perfect sense for him to go, but he didn’t on the grounds that he didn’t want to leave his son. However, moments later Perseus leaves his son to go fishing and a Chimera attacks their village, almost killing the both of them. Furthermore, Zeus is a god. If Perseus had asked him to place his son somewhere safe while he went on the journey, the conflict could have been avoided.

There are plotholes the size of canyons in this film and they get bigger by the minute. The first film, while not good, at least had the decency to explain everything to avoid confusion. ‘Wrath’ does no such thing and it prevents any enjoyment of the movie.

The second biggest flaw of the movie is the lack of character establishment. There is little to no attempt to humanize, develop, or explore these characters. They are basically paper cutouts running around in a well-rendered environment with nothing interesting to say or do.

The worst offender is Andromeda (Rosamund Pike), whose entire presence is useless. First of all, she bears the same name of the princess from the first film whom Perseus rescued from the Kraken, but in the sequel she is blonde and played by a different actress. This is never referenced or explained in the film.

Is it the same character? Is the first princess considered non-canonical? Second of all, she goes on the journey to Tartarus with Perseus and Agenor, thus abandoning her post as Queen of the Grecian armies, and does absolutely nothing but get rescued by Perseus. Any feminists in the audience will immediately be angered by the lack of strong female characters in the film.

At least in the first film, Io was helpful and Medusa not only managed to be a legitimate threat, but she kills nearly all of the heroes on their quest. Andromeda’s character is pathetic and bears no relevance to the plot at all other than to add an x-chromosome to the cast and to moon over Perseus in a half-hearted attempt at a romance.

The third biggest flaw is the script. The characters have the absolute worst dialogue I’ve seen in a film this year so far. Most of the dialogue is either anachronistic, pointing out obvious things, or poor attempts at sarcasm.

The only person with amusing dialogue is the talented Mr. Bill Nighy, whose slightly insane character and hammy acting at least puts a smile on your face for the twenty minutes he appears in the film. Liam Neeson is at the very least trying to emote, but he has little to work with other than Ralph Fiennes.

However, the worst actor by far is Edgar Ramirez as Ares, the God of War. He looks like a homeless man who stumbled onto the set and was given the script.

Throughout the history of movies, video games, and literature, Ares is supposed to be an intimidating force of power but in this film, he is nothing more than a whiny adult child who is jealous of Perseus and spends every waking moment complaining about how he is the least favorite son. This is made worse by the fact that we are never shown these relationships, so there is no emotional weight between Zeus, Ares, and Perseus.

The only thing of merit in this mess of a film is the special effects, which are well done and create great environments for fight scenes. Everything else about ‘Wrath’ will inspire you to take out your own anger on the filmmakers for making such a poor recreation of Greek mythology. Save your money and sit this one out unless you want to really understand what wrath is all about.

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