Yippee-Kai-Yay, We Finally Have a Real Trailer

The CGI car bouncing neatly over the heads of McClane and his young tag-along still looks horribly fake. It's a textbook example of how poorly conceived CGI effects can detract from, not add to the action quotient of a movie. And the whole 'driving a car into a helicopter' thing still doesn't really do it for me, either. The only possible reaction I could have to that is 'Wow, 20th Century Fox has a lot of money to burn.' Also, this trailer sort of confirms that sinking feeling I've had that Justin Long would have no other role than to be a constant, annoying sounding board for McClane's quips. Nevertheless, I did find a few things that I, as a McClane fan, could like in this brand new, fairly long, plot-heavy trailer for Live Free or Die Hard.

First of all, its villain-centric and gives us our first-ever look at Timothy Olyphant in bad-ass mode. He's even sporting a little grey hair, which gives him the look of a 40-year old math genius professor at Harvard or something. Also, there's a rock version of Beethoven's 9th thrown in there as a bone to fans (that was sort of Hans Gruber's victory theme in the first time.) Also, it looks like Mary Elizabeth Winstead was telling us the truth when she said that her character would be involved in action scenes -- the trailer gives away enough to show us that she gets kidnapped by Olyphant's terrorist character. Now, about the yippee-kai-yay. McClane says about three-quarters of the line in the trailer, and if I had to guess, I'd say we'll probably hear the whole thing, but that reminds me of the big rumor that's been floating around about Die Hard 4 for a while now -- that Fox wants to sneak it in as PG-13. Who knows. We'll find out.