Here’s where the Die Hard fran­chise is head­ing after ​‘Year One’

Ear­li­er this week it was announced that the Die Hard fran­chise is to receive yet anoth­er adden­dum (because A Good Day to Die Hard was so damn good) in the shape of pre­quel titled Year One. As fate would have it, one of our most trust­ed indus­try insid­ers has just passed on a con­fi­den­tial doc­u­ment con­tain­ing ini­tial script ideas for the next five chap­ters in the series. This is what Hol­ly­wood has in store for poor old John McClane…

When his daugh­ter Lucy (played by a misc brunette TV sock pup­pet) gets engaged to the son of a tax-dodg­ing bil­lion­aire Mit­teleu­ro­pean financier (read: arms deal­er) played by Christoph Waltz, irony-heavy Irish moron John McClane – now work­ing as an HR Com­pli­ance Offi­cer for Chuck E Cheese – begrudg­ing­ly too­tles down to Bermu­da for the wed­ding. Sad­ly, the cer­e­mo­ny soon goes all Kill Bill / Novem­ber Rain and the bride-to-be is abduct­ed by a pla­toon of Nazi storm-troop­ers fresh­ly sprung from the time-dilat­ing nether­world of the Bermu­da Tri­an­gle. Duti­ful to a fault, Bruce man­ful­ly smears his semi-naked body with some pro­to­type ​‘anti-time gel’ and paraglides into the void with naught but a ​“Yippee-ki-yay” and some muf­fled asper­sions as to his agent’s parent­age. Cue mayhem.

The film opens with John McClane being hand­ed a gold watch and then ush­ered out to the green pas­tures of retire­ment. He makes the cal­cu­la­tions and realis­es he can afford to sell off his Brook­lyn shit­box and invest in a nice lit­tle beach­side con­do on an island resort in Thai­land. But when he arrives, dis­as­ter strikes, as the real­tor fails to men­tion that his prop­er­ty was slap bang next to an ​“organ­ic farm”/hippy com­mune pop­u­lat­ed by muslin-clad Earth­moth­ers, and John’s twi­light years are ruined by 5am muck spread­ing, wall-to-wall shaman­ic chant­i­ng and the thick fug of reefer smoke. It’s only when the leader of the com­mune – a strange­ly svelte Euro­trash wiseacre call­ing him­self Pierre (played by Christoph Waltz) – that McClane decides to join, but only with the inten­tion of tear­ing down this hemp-swad­dled edi­fice from the inside.

After acci­den­tal­ly lev­el­ling an orphan­age for exces­sive­ly cute chil­dren when try­ing to cuff an itin­er­ant and boor­ish car­jack­er, McClane is bust­ed down to rook­ie sta­tus and is post­ed as on-site secu­ri­ty for a low-bud­get exploita­tion hor­ror movie film­ing in Queens. The production’s strange­ly extro­vert Euro­trash direc­tor (played by Christoph Waltz) tries to coerce McClane into becom­ing a back­ground artist, but he resists. Their game of psy­cho­log­i­cal cat-and-mouse con­tin­ues, though McClane soon realis­es that as the days roll on, the crew appears to be thin­ning out. Only then does it tran­spire that Waltz is actu­al­ly orches­trat­ing a bizarre, City-wide gonzo snuff movie. And so McClane kills every­one involved.

It had to hap­pen. With John McClane involved in so many episodes of high-pro­file fes­tive car­nage, it was only a mat­ter of time before Hol­ly­wood came a‑wooing. After los­ing the rights to his life sto­ry in a back­room pok­er game to a man known only as ​‘Pad­dy the Greek’, John finds him­self at the whim of Tinsle­town, who pack­age the events of the orig­i­nal Die Hard as a post­mod­ern decon­struc­tion of the action movie, direct­ed by Spike Jonze and star­ring Christoph Waltz. Posters and TV ads bear­ing a fic­tion­al dop­pel­gänger begin to plague McClane, send­ing him to the brink of san­i­ty. The clos­ing shot wit­ness­es him ful­ly deranged, reliev­ing him­self over an image of Waltz plas­tered over the side of a bus, whilst repeat­ed­ly singing the theme tune from Frasi­er ad nauseum.

We return to LA’s Nakato­mi Plaza on the day after that fate­ful night. The min­ions are in the morgue, McClane’s patch­ing up his wounds and main­lin­ing nog with his mis­sus and Hans Gruber’s blood-black entrails paint the pave­ment below like some abstract expres­sion­ist night­mare. But what of the day labour­ers, the Mex­i­can bor­der jumpers or Russ­ian serfs who are employed by (the late) Mr Tak­a­gi to ensure the smooth run­ning of the build­ing? This som­bre new Die Hard off­shoot doc­u­ments the toil of those below stairs and the harsh real­i­ties of clean­ing up after a work­place mas­sacre. So painful and ardu­ous is the work­ers’ task of mop­ping up the oceans of blood that, in an iron­ic twist, they too (led by Christoph Waltz) decide to tool up and shoot up their own non­de­script sky scraper.