Bruce Campbell thinks Die Hard suffers from one major error

Die Hard may be one of the greatest action movies of all time, but according to Bruce Campbell, it suffers from one major mistake in its premise — John McClane is just too capable.

“You want to put weird s— in the hands of someone who can’t handle it,” Campbell told Entertainment Weekly. “Like with Ash [from Evil Dead], he has no formal training whatsoever. He’s not military, he’s not CIA; he’s like a garage mechanic that’s out to save the world. That interests me! The premise of Die Hard is wrong. The guy in the air vent shouldn’t be Bruce Willis. He’s an ex-L.A. cop. The writers just took the easy train. They took the freight train to easy town.“

Campbell has a simple fix: “You put an accountant in the air vent who’s never fired a gun in his life, but ‘Oh my God, he’s smart!’ Now I’m interested.” I mean… he’s not wrong, but when Die Hard was first released, it was praised precisely because McClane was seen as a vulnerable protagonist. Audiences had been used to the Schwarzeneggers and Stallones, muscle-bound characters who could mow through dozens of baddies without breaking a sweat. McClane was something different; sure, he was a cop and knew how to handle himself, but at his heart, he was an everyman. Not everything went according to plan, and every hit he took hurt like a ton of bricks.

As for the Evil Dead franchise, there are actually two new movies in development. “The future is two more damn movies,” Campbell told EW. “We’ve got two new fabulous directors that have two new scripts in the shoot, and we think we’ve suckered a studio into coughing up the dough for both, since they seem to still make money.” It was announced earlier this year that Sébastien Vaniček (Vermin) had been tapped to direct the next installment of the franchise, but just two months later, it was revealed that Francis Galluppi (The Last Stop In Yuma County) would be writing and directing his own Evil Dead movie. Both movies will be moving forward, but it remains to be seen which will be released first.

What do you think of Bruce Campbell’s statement about Die Hard?