Chiasmus cult cinema trailers - "Die Hard 2" (1990). *These will be ongoing posts, courtesy of the A.Glass DVD collection. As I offer via Chiasmus Cult trailers, my summarized overviews*

As the 1980s ended, so did the1970s and most of the 1980s of baby boomer inspired sexual innuendos, nudity and adult humour, to be replaced with mass body counts, lots of blood, gun battles and bigger explosions.  And "Die Hard 2" (1990) certainly heralded in that violent excess of 90s action movies, as Hollywood was hungry for novel-to-screenplay adaptations, to which the first "Die Hard" (1988) as based off the 1979 book "Nothing Lasts Forever", and "Die Hard 2" gained the bulk of its ideas from the 1987 novel, a year before the first Die Hard was released, "58 minutes".  Utilizing the plot of an airport held up for ransom, by some lone nut hijacking the landing equipment (amidst a snowstorm), so the planes will run out of fuel and crash, unless his demands are met.  Reworked by screenwriters Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson, both 1980s and 1990s blockbusters action flick aficionados, rather than some crazy man on some vendetta, like the 1987 novel, it is a well polished, ex-U.S. special forces unit, who are siding with a deposed South America General (and dictator) "Ramon Esperanza" played by Italian actor Franco Nero, as a sort of reverse of the U.S./Manuel Noriega (Panama) controversy of 1988.  Decide to take over Washington Dulles, International Airport, so that their hero, anti-Communist, cocaine dealing General can be rescued from the Left leaning government of Washington.  Who have in on a one way ticket to the Federal Court, via a military aircraft (from a fictional South American country) which is about to land, to be put on trial for cocaine smuggling.

Bruce Willis returns to the role of New York City Cop, now a Los Angeles law enforcement officer "John McClain", following on from the 1st Die Hard, when he decides to stay with his wife, "Holly Gennero McClane" (Bonnie Bedelia) in  L.A., after saving his wife and the hostages trapped in a skyscraper, from terrorist/thieves (who were disgruntled ex-East German soldiers.  You haven't seen this first Die Hard?).  This time, his wife and a plane full of passengers, in fact a lot of planes, are trapped over the skies of Washington, while a full blown blizzard hits Washington Dulles, all the while a crazed and, yes, disgruntled looking "Colonel William Stuart"  played by William Sadler and his merry band of all American mercenaries, takes over the airport, and hacks its landing systems.  As a desperate, and slowly getting more and more bloodied, John McClain, begins to kill off each of the terrorists, in a frantic attempt at rescuing his wife's plane, which is running out of fuel.   

"Die Hard 2", with its up the ante of violence and high death counts, watch for Colonel Stuart, crash a plane, killing a 100 plus passengers to prove his resolve to have Esperanza's plane safely land, and a fully fueled 747 ready for his men to board when their mission is completed.  Of course, McClane, disrupts the whole thing, and by the end of the movie, a very blooded and physically beaten looking Bruce Willis, kills off all the terrorists, and I mean all of them, by blowing up the 747 they try to escape on, including the maniacal Colonial Stuart and his South American crackpot General, thus creating and array of default landing lights for the trapped planes overhead.  Saving his wife and the passengers, as one by one they begin to land.

The sequel to Die Hard is now 35 years old, and holds up well as the prelude to 1990s action blockbusters.  As Hollywood tried to find new villains after the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989), and collapse of Communism, so did, as mentioned, the higher kill counts.  And Die Hard 2 holds a very high score.

___

(A.Glass 2025)

All CHIAMUS Cult Cinema trailers/commentary to date: chiasmusmagazine.blogspot.com/search/label/Chiasmus%20cult%20cinema