Yippee-ki-yay! Bruce Willis is back!

“Yippee-ki-yay!” Bruce Willis is back – in A Good Day To Die
Hard, 25 years since bad-ass John McClane was first introduced in Die Hard in
1988. To commemorate the anniversary of the blockbuster franchise, 20th Century
Fox has installed a giant mural of Willis as McClane on its studio lot in
Century City. The unveiling of the mural was celebrated with a special
screening of the new film and an after party at the high rise building infamous
as Nakatomi Plaza from the original Die Hard.

“I hadn’t seen it in advance,” says Willis the next day. “That
was really shocking. I mean, it’s very nice and it’s a great honor. They say
you can see it from outer space, from up in the space shuttle.”

But doesn’t it look a little like Mel Gibson?

“It does looks a little like Mel,” he laughs. “I thought the
same thing. Well, you know, Mel’s a handsome guy. I’m sure that he’ll go over
there and go hmm… It was the same year, you know, LETHAL WEAPON and the first
DIE HARD. When I did the first DIE HARD I had no idea what I was doing. I
relied completely on John McTiernan and what he was doing and most of the time
I had no idea what the shots were about. There is a certain novelty to being
able to play one character over 5 films over 25 years. You can never see that
from the beginning. You can only see it at the end of that time and you can
look back. I think there’s a great amount of goodwill that is shined upon DIE
HARD that people still enjoy the way we do it, that there are big car crashes
and things that are meant to scare you and things that are very familial and very
much based on relationships with family and how families get along – how a
father gets along or doesn’t get along with his son or doesn’t get along with
his daughter or his ex-wife and those things are all very understandable. And there’s
still a lot of the same things: not knowing what to do, fish out of water and
yet trying to do the right thing. It still it has the same kind of nobility to
it and we just we’ve expanded a little bit since then.”

The 35-foot mural was installed on the side of
Soundstage 8 by muralist Van Hecht-Nielsen and painter Fernando Cepeda. “If you look around the lot, there’s Star Wars, The Simpsons, The Sound of Music,
all classic properties that have defined the studio’s history,» Fox chairman Jim Gianopulos told the crowd gathered for the unveiling. «This is another iconic film with a
singular and enduring legacy. At the heart of it is a character who’s a
combination of Everyman and Superman. He’s the classic reluctant hero
who finds himself and rises to the occasion.”

What do YOU think – does it look like Mel Gibson, or Bruce Willis? 

Julio Vélez Colaborador en web y revista Cine PREMIERE desde 2006. Me especializo en anime/manga, comics, doblaje, tecnología y videojuegos. Mis sagas favoritas: Doctor Who, Star Trek, Dragon Ball y Star Wars. Batimaníaco, geek ochentero y hardcore gamer.