Did you ever browse around in a comic book store as a kid adn find the Marvel “What If…?” comic books? Books that were about reknown comicbook characters but “What if…?” something abotu them was different… Pat of their backstory, part of their powers, or results of one thing or another that has happened in their comic books…

I won’t go into the geekdom of the what if concept and the different stories that were based on this. Lets just say it as a venerable butterfly effect — the flapping of wings on a different continent were part of the reason why a typhoon formed in the Pacific Ocean.

One small happening causes a huge domino effect and results in something seemingly indirect and different to happen. That kind of thing.

Today I came across (by way of Dave Lowe) a joke observation from the Back To The Future saga and the original movie. It was composed as a (profane) letter from Doc Brown to Marty McFly regarding one of Marty’s choices on the eve of November 12th, 1955. It’s funny as hell but it leaves you wondering just how different the story would have turned out if Marty McFly had done things differently.

So I got me a “What if…?” like this regarding a movie that I love. It’s (the film’s) basis is pretty simple and was the framework for plenty of different action movies from the late 1980’s through the 1990’s.

The movie in this case is Die Hard.

What if…? What if…?

What if Lt. John McClane of the New York Police Department… had shoes on while dealing with the terrorists at Nakatomi Plaza?

Of course there is no definite answer to this with the HOW or WHY. I thought that is part of the magic of the “What If…?” Does John make sure to slip his shoes on instead of doing the stupid fists-with-your-toes thing? Does he grab his shoes when he hears gunshots and ducks out of the room? Shit, does John slip back onto the 30th floor, grab his shoes and socks and slip back out?

How does this change things? Does he employ different tactics, or is the only notable difference in the scene where John is pinned down on the computer floor and the henchman Karl shoots the glass around the office to smithereens?

What if…?

It’s so simple, it’s so stupid but it opens up a huge can of worms. Nothing might change and everything might change in just one minor action. Maybe McClane gets blown away because he has more confidence and takes on the terrorists head on? That’s the most cynical thought I have regarding this every time I think about it — we don’t get John-McClane from the first three Die Hard films, we get the Ah-nuld wanna Be from Die Hard 4 and see him suffer (and die) in the fashion that we saw John proved mortal in the first Die Hard film.

Maybe events fall a certain way so that Ellis doesn’t die — all because John McClane was wearing his stupid shoes instead of making fists with his toes! Maybe Al Powell doesn’t buy Twinkies at the gas station but opts for Ho-Hos instead? Holly doesn’t opt to restrain Joseph Takagi during Hans Gruber’s monologue — resulting in… Takagi giving up the password for the vault and living for another hour or more?

Humor me. What if John McClane tried to save the Nakatomi Hostages while he had shoes on? And would it have been worthy of a feature film?

Happy trails, Hans.

(Personal note — I haven’t written movie reviews on the Stonegauge in quite a while with thanks to participating at times in a forum discussion at Skyscraperpage.com about movies that were last seen. The following is an elaborated, blogified version of the post I made on the forum thread)

I had one question every time I saw positive reviews this summer for Live Free or Die Hard. It’s a rather basic question that no one would really answer — or would give aloof answers to: Does this film live up to the Die Hard franchise standard? I’ve posed this question directly to professional movie critics without an answer

Die Hard, in general, was built on an ultra simple principle: a situation at a location with a reluctant hero caught in the middle of whatever the hell was going down. It’s part of a generation of action movies where everything was “Die Hard on a…” Die Hard on a Bus, Die Hard on a Plane, Die Hard on a Train, Die Hard on a Battleship…

The original — 1988’s Die Hard — set the standard for the genre and began the franchise with out-of-place NYPD officer John McClane – barefoot, outmanned and outgunned, with the cops outside working against him. The second film (Die Harder) was Die Hard in the Airport: not as good but it was still the story of John McClane in the wrong place at the wrong time… Same character but with some graveness to his dialog which made the movie weird. Instead of a tower, it was Dulles Airport that was under siege.

Die Hard: With a Vengeance elaborated the setting. It wasn’t a fixed location but all of New York. It still worked if you ask me because you had John, you had a semi-fixed setting on Manhattan Island (and around New York)… You had deep links to the first movie with references to the past, and yet this time it wasn’t John out of his element, but thrust into things in his home. Oh and John McTeirnan directed (who filmed the first Die Hard). You can see the resemblance to the original with the cinematography employed, and McTiernan’s trademark directly-behind-the-actor light shots. Bruce Willis and Sam Jackson played well off each other to boot. It’s not as highly regarded as the first but it beats the hell out of the second film.

Then you have this… this… this piece of shit that they pushed on moviegoers this summer.

The balance of good-guy, bad-guy (on screen time) is too even — that’s the first sign this doesn’t stand up. Less is more. It’s also hard to feel intimidated by “ready the video uplink”, “start the download”, etc…

Then you have McClane himself — it’s not the fact he’s older or his head is shaved, he’s a caricature of himself while playing a minimalist role. John McClane is a rambling, sarcastic, insulting, sometimes arrogant, belligerent asshole that isn’t the character portrayed on screen by Bruce Willis this time. Oh, sure, he’s got his moments but this isn’t McClane. This doesn’t feel like McClane. This felt like The Terminator — especially with all the shit John is put through, where he’s tossed around like a rag doll, falling several floors and bouncing off blunt objects and he still gets up and keeps going with seemingly no damage. That’s not John either.

I mean, come on! The every-guy, mortality of John McClane was one of the things that made him great. Who can’t remember John running around barefoot in Nakatomi Tower? And what happened — he got shot, he got tons of glass put through his feet, and you saw him suffer that and doubt he’d survive. You had less of that in “Die Hard 2″, but you had more of it (except the jump-off-a-bridge absurdity near the end) in “With a Vengeance”. This time? No — he’s got some cuts but he’s too much like the energizer bunny (which he mocks in “With a Vengeance”) to be hurt. He wheels around Matt Farrell (the Mac guy, Justin Long) and who do you think of but Ah-nold playing the Terminator, wheeling around Eddie Furlong in Terminator 2: Judgement Day (all of this helped along by that minimalist dialog that I talked about).

Oh, and the location isn’t fixed. If the first three films can be directed at exact settings (“Die Hard. Die Hard at the Airport. Die Hard in New York”) this film can’t. (Die Hard America? Die Hard in Cyberspace with real world consequences? Die Hard avoiding Traffic?)

This might have been a great stand-alone movie but it sucks as part of one of the biggest action movie franchises in US history. It doesn’t fit. It’s odd that the original movie was conceived as a Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle… Because this film plays exactly like one.