By Fred Topel | Image property of 20th Century Fox.
Live Free or Die Hard
The trailers for Live Free or Die Hard show an insane action scene where John McClane ducks flying cars in a tunnel and launches another vehicle into a helicopter. This setpiece from the film certainly topped anything director Len Wiseman had done in the Underworld films.
Wiseman Talks Live Free or Die Hard
“First unit was in there for maybe, it was pretty short, just about a week,” Wiseman said. “It feels like 10 days. They were in there for a long time. We were doing the helicopter with the police car going in and the helicopter business. That was all at that location. Actually we did that stunt twice and hit it on the second one.”
All that work didn’t phase Wiseman. “The scale of it wasn’t so much the problem. I found that it was honestly more fun to have the ability and the toys to use to do the action the proper way and all that so that was fun for me.”
A fan of the original Die Hard, Wiseman just wanted to outdo his own favorite stunts. “It comes down to a shot in Die Hard 1 that I had never seen before in any kind of action film. When [McClane is] down on the ground and shooting at the guy running at you and it pops the guy in the knees. He gets popped in the kneecap and then he falls forward, he doesn't go through the glass, just his head goes through the glass.”
Satisfying fans like himself was the priority for Wiseman. “I guess the most challenging would be because it is part of a trilogy and one that I’m very close to and the biggest challenge I would say is that I kind of have two responsibilities, I thought. One is to direct the film, the other is to watch it as the fan that I am. So I’d always look at it that way as that’s my biggest challenge when I’m in meetings, when I’m talking about the script, in every aspect of it, is this going to be the movie that I want to see because I’m only doing it because I’m a fan. Honestly, that was the biggest challenge. The other stuff was just, there can be headaches and they can be challenging but for the most part it’s fun to blow sh** up. It’s the most fun. It really is fun. That’s fun. So that was the biggest challenge for me.”
Live Free or Die Hard opens to theatres on June 29th.
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