When making a sequel to a good movie, there are many which fall entirely flat of their predecessors. They do so by making a list of the things which they think to have made the original good, assigning knobs on a metaphorical sound-board to those things, and turning them all up until they won't turn any farther. Die Hard 2 could have altered the formula. It could have explored the John McClane character, or it could have explained his success in the first. But Die Hard 2 cut-and-pasted the formula of the former onto a new set of terrorists, increased the "badass factor", and let 'er rip. It wasn't a complete disaster-- There were more Die Hard films to come that would fulfill its potential for sheer awfulness-- But there is a measure of disappointment when a sequel is simply a dilution of its predecessor. Die Hard 2 could be filed in Dewey notation next to Aliens, Terminator 2, and Back II the Future, each one pleasing its fans enough, but accomplishing nothing on its own.
Shout by A Cloudspotter, SupineBlockedParent2015-10-09T03:46:12Z
When making a sequel to a good movie, there are many which fall entirely flat of their predecessors. They do so by making a list of the things which they think to have made the original good, assigning knobs on a metaphorical sound-board to those things, and turning them all up until they won't turn any farther. Die Hard 2 could have altered the formula. It could have explored the John McClane character, or it could have explained his success in the first. But Die Hard 2 cut-and-pasted the formula of the former onto a new set of terrorists, increased the "badass factor", and let 'er rip. It wasn't a complete disaster-- There were more Die Hard films to come that would fulfill its potential for sheer awfulness-- But there is a measure of disappointment when a sequel is simply a dilution of its predecessor. Die Hard 2 could be filed in Dewey notation next to Aliens, Terminator 2, and Back II the Future, each one pleasing its fans enough, but accomplishing nothing on its own.