Die Hard 2 - Is dying soft an option?

A traitorous group of ex-military hatch a plan to hijack an airport so that they can move a pilot from one plane to another. They only thing they didn't account for was John McClane. Oh, and other airports, radios, emergency vehicles, electrical tape, power lines, and the media. But mostly, John McClane!

I mean...why is this so highly rated? Its sitting at a 7.1 on IMDB as of this writing. That's only 1 star lower than the first one. This movie is seriously only 1 star worse, super fans? Its like at least 3! Why?

Why Die Hard 2 is a 5 star movie

• The Plot
• The Effects
• The Writing
• Bruce Willis

So the plot is incredibly stupid as it purely doesn't need to exist. The terrorists (which they aren't really terrorists) have seized control of an airport (not the airport itself, just control) and are holding flying planes hostage unless an extradited criminal (that at some point they became besties with?) is permitted to hop a board a fully fueled 747 and they all fly to Bolivia or somewhere undeclared. Mid movie though, the criminal (Franco Nero) takes over control of the C130 he's flying on and flies it around. Why does he need these jokers at all? From Esperanza's view, the plan is to free himself and then stop at an airport to pick up some guys he has no business ever having met. Great, thrilling...

The effects have aged poorly. With the rear projection, matte working and green screens this looks about as Renny Harlin as Renny Harlin could do in 1990.

The writing is just a hodgepodge of "well this happened in Die Hard so we should do it here" including a ton of pointing out the obvious by John McClane such as, "Hey I'm in tunnels again" or "Hey this happens every Christmas to me". But also includes Holly punching out (or in this case tasing) Thornberg because he's a skeezy guy who doesn't really contribute to the plot in anyway. Its just so people can remember that this is a Die Hard movie, I guess, by seeing the same things again.

Lastly, Bruce Willis' contribution to the dialogue. He was giving free reign to ad-lib as much as he wanted to and he does so much of it that he had to come back after filming and add in more via ADR. But what we're giving is a 7-3 ratio of groan inducing one liners that leave you eye-rolling more than cheering John's everyman role.

Skip it. It ain't a Xmas movie and its barely a Renny Harlin movie.