In the three decades since Die Hard hit theaters, it’s been followed by four sequels. Naturally, none of the sequels have topped the original, which has been praised as one of the greatest action movies ever made — a bona fide classic of Hollywood cinema — but some of those sequels have been better than others.
Since Die Hard 2 pretty much remade the first one in an airport, Live Free or Die Hard took huge leaps in plot logic, and A Good Day to Die Hard was just a genuinely awful movie, Die Hard with a Vengeance is easily the franchise’s best sequel.
It’s True To The McClane Character
This is a biggie. Staying true to the John McClane character is the key to a Die Hard movie’s success. When he was working on the first movie, John McTiernan defined the McClane character as a flawed man who doesn’t like himself very much and is simply doing his best. He’s just a regular guy, in stark contrast with the musclebound supermen played by Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
But as Michael Scott pointed out, the later sequels made McClane invincible. Die Hard with a Vengeance stays true to the character’s roots. It even brought back the old trope of McClane talking to himself to cope with stressful situations.
Bruce Willis Cares
Bruce Willis has arguably phoned in the last couple of Die Hard movies, despite the fact that he owes his career to John McClane.
But in Die Hard with a Vengeance, he really cared. He did some real acting in the scenes where he talks about his relationship with Holly and humbly identifies his own flaws. Fans miss the Bruce Willis who cared.
John McTiernan Returned To The Director’s Chair
The first Die Hard movie was directed by John McTiernan — one of the greatest action directors of all time, also responsible for Predator and The Hunt for Red October — but all the sequels were helmed by other filmmakers, except one. McTiernan returned to the director’s chair for Die Hard with a Vengeance.
Whenever McTiernan talks about his time working on Die Hard, it’s clear that he truly understands the John McClane character, and his direction was almost as responsible for bringing the character to life as Bruce Willis’ everyman performance. By returning to direct the threequel, he did the franchise a huge favor.
The Second Act Is Compelling
In most movies, the second act is boring — or, at least, it gets boring somewhere along the way. The first act is intriguing in setting up the characters, then the third act pays off the story threads with an action-packed climax. The second act is usually just the weird bit in the middle.
But in Die Hard with a Vengeance, just like in the 1988 original, the second act is compelling. McClane and Zeus’ city-wide search for bombs moves seamlessly from scene to scene, gripping the audience at every turn.
Samuel L. Jackson Was The Perfect Foil For McClane
In every Die Hard movie, McClane has a comic foil; the one person he knows he can trust when all the mayhem is going down. In the first and second movies, it’s Powell; in the fourth movie, it’s hacker Matt Farrell; and in the fifth movie, it’s his son.
In the third movie, which was initially developed as a Lethal Weapon sequel before becoming a Die Hard movie, McClane is paired with convenience store clerk Zeus Carver, played hysterically by Bruce Willis’ Pulp Fiction co-star Samuel L. Jackson. He’s another guy in the wrong place at the wrong time, with plenty of conflict arising from their personal differences.
It Builds On McClane’s Conflicts
A lot of sequels will just reset the conflicts from their predecessors and go through the same changes all over again, or just ignore the conflicts entirely. The last couple of Die Hard movies have focused on McClane’s strained relationship with his kids, but it didn’t really resonate.
Die Hard with a Vengeance feels like a natural progression of McClane’s conflicts from the earlier movies, where fans see that — as expected — McClane’s commitment to his job and his city won out in his marital conflicts and he hasn’t spoken to Holly in months, but he still wants to fix things.
McClane Is Finally In New York
McClane’s New York residence has always been a big part of the character. In the first movie, he’s a fish out of water in L.A., and his refusal to leave New York is the source of his problems at home.
In Die Hard with a Vengeance, fans of the franchise finally got to see McClane in his element in the Big Apple. This gave director John McTiernan a huge playground to explore as opposed to the first two movies’ single-location restrictions.
The Action Sequences Are Large-Scale With Personal Stakes
The action set pieces are what make a Die Hard movie tick. They’re action movies, after all. In the second movie, McClane was put back into vents and elevators in meta callbacks to the original. In the fourth and fifth movies, the action went way too big for us to be able to focus on McClane.
The action in Die Hard with a Vengeance is large-scale enough to have exciting stakes, but the focus is still on McClane, like when he’s trying to find a bomb on a subway train or when he shoots a helicopter with a rocket launcher.
Simon Gruber Is The Franchise’s Second-Best Villain
The best villain in the Die Hard franchise is, hands down, Hans Gruber from the first movie. In fact, he might just be the greatest villain in action cinema, period.
His brother, Simon Gruber, who plots the heist and the accompanying sadistic “Simon Says…” game at the center of Die Hard with a Vengeance, is a close second. He has a relatable motivation for wanting to kill John McClane, and Jeremy Irons clearly relished the chance to play a mustache-twirling baddie.
It Retooled The Die Hard Formula Without Losing Its Spirit
The whole conflict of Die Hard is that John McClane finds himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, as terrorists hijack his estranged wife’s office Christmas party while his shoes are off. Die Hard 2 copied this formula pretty blatantly, with terrorists taking over an airport where McClane is picking up Holly. The fourth and fifth Die Hard movies had generic action movie plots with entire countries at stake.
The third one found the sweet spot, with McClane again finding himself displaced — indulging in a terrorist’s mind games while recovering from a terrible hangover on what was supposed to be a day off — but with an entirely original storyline with personal stakes.
