There were no exploding helicopters, freefalling elevators or crunching car-crashes, but this was still unmistakeably a Die Hard premiere — on the red carpet, a smirking Bruce Willis; on the other side of the fence, hordes of screaming fans, some of whom had come dressed for the occasion in grubby white vests.
Die Hard 4.0 may well be the last hurrah for NYPD flatfoot John McClane, and Willis, dressed up in smart jacket and shades, was in reflective mood about his most beloved character. “I’ve put a hell of a lot of myself into McClane. He’s older now and so am I — and that was part of the fun of returning to the character. There is a benefit to getting older. You pay attention, and you acquire some wisdom.” And is there a Die Hard 5 on the cards? Willis chuckles: “There was one point when someone suggested doing a Die Hard prequel, John McClane: The Early Years. But I think I've missed that window now — unless they come up with some new technology that smooths out these wrinkles on my face.”
Then Maggie Q slinked down the red carpet and up to us, setting straight a rumour about her on-screen brawl with Willis, which left him with 40 stitches. “No, I didn’t kick Bruce in the head — that was my stuntwoman! I don’t know if Bruce would agree, but I think it was worth it: the fight is really special. It bothers me when a woman fights in a movie and it’s stylised and pretty. So this is pretty exceptional — really rough, down and dirty.”
Empire was then accosted by a rather desperate British actor, who had nothing to do with Die Hard but didn’t take the total lack of questions from the press as a deterrent to recounting his life story, and two members of McFly, which was almost as bad. Neither Justin Long or Timothy Olyphant (the latter with his head shorn for the Hitman movie) had time to stop, but director Len Wiseman came right over to us for his last interview before the movie began.
“I’m nervous as hell, man,” Wiseman confides. “I mean, this is Die Hard, it doesn’t get any bigger than this. But I think I’ve met the challenge. It’s tougher than you think to get action people have never seen before on the screen — there’s only so many vehicles and kinds of explosion in the world.” And his favourite scene to shoot? “It has to be the elevator sequence, the fight between Bruce and Maggie. That’s just raw and crazy, a great, old-fashioned fight between a martial artist and a scrappy cop.”
Inside the cinema, the screening was introduced by the stars, with Willis riffing on the film’s much-maligned teen-friendly rating (“It fucking rocks. That right there is more swearing than you’ll hear in the movie — if you came here to hear me cuss, you better leave now”). Then, after two hours and loose change of mayhem and old-school heroics, it was over to the Hippodrome for the ridiculously over-the-top after-party. Breakdancers in dirty vests and NYPD dogtags, wrecked cars hanging over the dancefloor, and a guest list that included Kate Beckinsale, Keira Knightley and Amy Winehouse. Typically, the only people we spotted were bloody McFly.