Bruce Willis

Willis is only Classic for Moonlighting and Die Hard

So this Red movie.

might watch it in a few minutes... bad?

I had to watch Die Hard last night (my wife had never seen it and felt she needed to "get in touch with the zeitgeist")

and?

(i like to stay out of reach of the zeitgeist myself, esp from 1988)

this belongs to a subgenre of film that I like to call copaganda

on its own terms it succeeds v well and is expertly executed. my problem is I find the terms execrable.

Die Hard of the Will

a minor plot point centers around a cop who, consumed by guilt over his previous murder of an unarmed teen, has been unable to draw/fire his gun ever since that event, but in the closing minutes of the film finally manages to overcome this psychological block in order to shoot a bad guy in the face.

I mean, how am I supposed to care about that

prescient! i mean i had no idea a cop had ever killed an unarmed teen before

to yr objections, junk stans usu say "it's only a movie," dismissing the idea that ppl who see dozens of these are in fact influenced by them.

i don't think shakey needs you to tell him how a strawperson would respond

it's hard for me to say how many action movie cliches originated with this film vs. existing cliches it happily exploits but you can kind of guess them all without watching it - the top brass that do everything wrong, the underdog rogue protagonist, the helpless feminine totem (a barely written part representing female transgression against traditional gender roles and is thus punished/taught a lesson), the vaguely effete/european villain with an accent, the occasionally jarring bits of gore/uber-violence.

all in all I think I prefer Hong Kong's 80s action movies, maybe because I am more at a cultural remove from any baggage but man when it comes to the American stuff all the subtexts are nauseating.

that moment in the resolution is super fucked up jtbc, all the more for its gratuitousness

bits like that aside i still love die hard, but def wouldn't recommend it to anyone sick of american action film cliches

I once had a friend who insisted that Bruce Willis was the American Chow-Yun Fat but idk I can't think of any BW roles where he portrays the kind of sadsack/tragic figure the way Fat does. There's always the smirk or the suckerpunch with Willis.

xp

12 monkeys?

yeah that's kind of the closest I could think of - he's p much confusion/desperation the entire time, probably the least conventionally action-y of his action roles

also both his m night shyamalan movies

I think a few of his indie [sic] roles qualify on this score, eg Breakfast of Champions, Mooonrise Kingdom

as opposed to being sold because a couple of youtube commenters say so?

i have no idea what bruce willis’s mental state is. which is why i’ve made no pronouncements about it, let alone ones based on the size of his family

is that a euphemism

i did see willis at a taping of the daily show about 15 years ago; he was pretty clearly drunk

Did seem that someone implied a larger family would make that less likely.

Maybe he's in a secret Brando biopic and he's trying method acting

If the rumors are true - and I find them at least plausible, because something weird is happening here and this is as good an explanation as any - it's very sad, but I don't know that it sounds like elder abuse to me. It would be hard to point to where the harm to him is in making movies like this, assuming he wants to make them. If he is declining, and he wants to keep working, this would give him a way to do a familiar job in a familiar environment, with minimal expectations, lots of support, and a lot of people involved who have an interest in making him look as good and with-it and normal as possible. And a big paycheck, of course. It's hard to see who or what that would hurt, other than the Bruce Willis legacy and reputation. And that gets you into the question about which is of primary importance, the person's current wishes or the probable wishes of the person they were pre-dementia.

Also, there is a wide clinical range of what constitutes "dementia," especially early.

I learned from that video that I guess he has considerable hearing loss in his left ear from a gun in "Die Hard."

Did you know there's a Nic Cage movie where he beats up a ton of animatronic animal robots that have been possessed by Satan? And that he does not speak an entire word throughout the whole film? And that it just came out last year??

That movie is fascinatingly bad tho. Against the odds, Nic Cage has benefited from owning his straight-to-Redbox status as part of his brand since the mid 2010s (a lot of people liked Color Out Of Space too), whereas these Bruce movies all seem agonizingly boring and unfun.

I’ve always had a bad feeling about whatever “red letter media” is meant to be just from the context but this is the first time I’ve actually looked at one and wow it’s way worse than I expected

(The contexts in which they’re usually cited I mean)

they're awful

Total ripoff of on cinema at the cinema too

https://variety.com/2022/film/news/bruce-willis-retiring-acting-apashia-1235219017/

CBS News:

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine, aphasia is a language disorder that results from damage in the area of the brain that controls language expression and comprehension. The disorder "leaves a person unable to communicate effectively with others," Johns Hopkins said, noting that the severity of the disorder depends on which parts of the brain are impacted. An aphasia diagnosis does not necessarily mean cognitive abilities, like memory or executive functioning, are impacted, according to the American Speech-Language Hearing Association.

However, in this case, it is "affecting his cognitive abilities," according to the family announcement.

It's a weird statement, aphasia is a symptom, not a cause, as I understand it. So it's probably a stroke or dementia and they'd prefer not to say that.

:(

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/movies/story/2022-03-30/bruce-willis-aphasia-memory-loss-cognitive-disorder

^ just awful.

Sad news. And yeah the story about his recent burst of productivity in low-rent movies is kind of alarming. But maybe it was just him trying to do whatever he could while he could. (As opposed to him being exploited.)

I can believe he was being exploited but yes maybe a different story will emerge over time.

Sad news indeed. About the concerns of possible exploitation, I can't help but think of this Philomena Cunk clip from Weekly Wipe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxTPEd_Skfc
It seems like, at least as far back as 2013 with "A Good Day to Die Hard" (15% on Rotten Tomatoes), he knew they were crappy movies, and he couldn't muster up a single crumb of pride (despite *acting* being his job) for them.
Philomena Cunk (sarcastically): "He's managed to make the same film five times without dying on the inside or looking like he doesn't really have much enthusiasm for the whole fucking thing anymore and just wishes it would stop. That's NOT what he looks like."

If someone wants to pay me $2 million for a morning's work, I'm happy to be exploited

Jordan it could be a diagnosis of primary progressive aphasia - it is indeed a symptom not a cause, but there is a diagnosis of the pattern (absent knowledge of the cause).

If someone wants to pay me $2 million for a morning's work, I'm happy to be exploited

Have you considered you might feel differently if your brain is in a place where you can't tell what's actually happening?

Or what if you had some other organ where things weren't right, like the heart?

My god, if this has been a known thing for years (as that article strongly suggests), I'm horrified to wonder what the inciting incident might've been that prompted his handlers to finally announce his retirement.

Or if he had injured someone else too, perhaps fatally?

I think they were trying to get ahead of the LA Times story.

It seems like, at least as far back as 2013 with "A Good Day to Die Hard" (15% on Rotten Tomatoes), he knew they were crappy movies, and he couldn't muster up a single crumb of pride (despite *acting* being his job) for them.

Moonrise Kingdom was right before that, and a few years later he was fired (and replaced by Steve Carell) after a couple days work on Woody Allen's Cafe Society. So he at least was trying re: better/more prestigious projects.

Looper was 2012...I wouldn't think he was declining then

He was increasingly super checked out/disinterested going back at least a decade mainly in shit like expendables & dh5 but the clips that were going around recently were p clearly a different thing entirely

nobody really brought their A-game to Expendables. besides maybe Terry Crews

Dolph Lundgren!

He was increasingly super checked out/disinterested going back at least a decade mainly in shit like expendables & dh5 but the clips that were going around recently were p clearly a different thing entirely

― wins, Friday, April 1, 2022 7:54 AM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I was watching some dorky youtuber going through all the zero budget terrible films willis has been in recently and the youtuber was mentioning that it seemed like he had dementia and having known people with dementia I had to agree, it really seemed quite shocking. it was obvious that they were probably doing everything in one take and bruce didn't care but it was quite beyond that

(this was a couple of weeks ago, before the announcement)

Tinseltown is usually very good at paying tribute to its bygone stars. But it seems entirely likely that Willis will miss the entire Hollywood lionization machine in the final years or decades of his life: no career achievement awards, no late-life Oscar nomination for a surprising indie, no wave from the balcony at the Kennedy Center. From 1988 to the end of the millennium, no one made bigger hits, flopped bigger flops, and grinned more shit-eating grins. He used to be one of the coolest movie stars around. It feels painfully unfair to watch his work end with this kind of whimper.

Willis is barely in Wire Room, whose actual star is the Entourage meathead Kevin Dillon.
But behind him he leaves a fascinating cinematic record. To look back at Bruce Willis’ career is to see a man who became a megastar in an instant and spent the following decades torn: searching for ways to complicate his persona, retreating to what was familiar. There’s nothing to see in a movie like Wire Room, no hint of the Willis who commanded $20 million per movie and, ever so briefly, deserved every penny. But you don’t need to watch Wire Room when you can watch so many other movies.

No mention of 12 Monkeys, weirdly.

yeah, 12 Monkeys is probably his best film

Well, besides Die Hard.

Bruce Willis made some really good choices to balance out his terrible choices.

Also: The Sixth Sense.

Jesus, I hadn't seen anything from the cognitive decline/aphasia movies

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gUTjfOkVu7E

Kevin Dillon! I remember liking Heaven Help Us as a youth, now sure how it holds up now

https://collider.com/bruce-willis-sells-rights-to-deepfake-firm-deepcake/

https://variety.com/2023/film/news/bruce-willis-dementia-aphasia-retire-1235525599/

I’ve been re-appreciating Bruce since “Moonlighting” went up on Hulu

also Blank Check podcast is winding up their McTiernan series and I’ve recently rewatched Die Hard & Die Hard With A Vengeance

Moonlighting is really the key to a lot of what made/makes him so great

It was his second acting job, first big role and if you watch the pilot, his character is fully formed, right out of the gate. There’s no “wait a season” or “in season four he really starts to pop”

No. Everything that we associate with the Bruce that hit in the back half of the 80’s is all right here.

Die Hard in a weird way is, character-wise like a slightly wearier David Addison walked off the set of Moonlighting and straight into Nakitomi plaza. It’s all there.

And McTiernan is great at giving Willis some character bears to carry some emotional weight & show the melancholy touches he’s so good at.

Willis is also one of the rare 80’s action heroes who shows you the cumulative weight of all those shootouts and falls by the end of a movie, like you get to see the very human, wearying effect it has on him

I guess I have also been reappraising because of the dementia, personally taking stock of what we had while we had it and how good it truly was, because when he was at his most affable, he made it look so easy

I was wondering to myself where we the cutoff of his filmography is, time-wise, with regard to his dementia?

*character beats … not bears lol

(all that’s not to say he didn’t make some bad movies too - i paid actual human dollars to see Color of Night in a movie theater in 1994)

He's in (and good in) at least a half dozen movies that I love, I like him in some stuff I don't love, but boy was he in a lot of stinkers. Even from the very beginning. But "Moonrise Kingdom" and "Looper" are outliers in his late career cavalcade of garbage, right? So my guess is it maybe started before then? He's later in "Motherless Brooklyn," I (and also nobody) saw that, is he acting in it?

If you’re a teenager in the early 90s with aspirations towards sassiness and an underdeveloped sense of taste, The Last Boy Scout is basically the greatest movie ever made.