Trailer vs. Movie: A Good Day to Die Hard

Time for a new installment of Trailer vs. Movie, this time with A Good Day to Die Hard, a movie which really disappointed me. As a reminder of the idea behind Trailer vs. Movie:

As you know trailers I don’t watch trailers at all. The reason I do so is because I think they give away too much information and therefore you run the risk of having expectations which are too high and of not being surprised when specific events happen. In “Trailer vs. Movie” I check out the trailer of a movie after I’ve watched the movie to find out how much the trailer gave away.

Obviously this will mean I will go into spoilers, so if you have not seen the movie don’t read any further.

First of all, the trailer:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2Y2PpY6fNo]

Going into the movie the only things I knew about this movie were: It’s a new Die Hard movie, which is set in Russia and where he works with his son.

The trailer opens with showing Russia and the obsession with this woman on a motorcycle undressing in the middle of a parking garage (which doesn’t make much sense) and doesn’t really spoil anything. It sets the scene and looks very slick and sexy.

Jack McClane
Just before the logo appears we see John McClane’s son shooting a gun and being taken down and it is clear he’s caught and arrested. It’s a small spoiler, but not that important if you look at the movie.
What the trailer does spoil is the fact that Jack is an undercover agent. As you watch the movie you don’t know anything about him and as you see that he is arrested and since John McClane gets to hear his son is in a lot of trouble again you will assume that Jack is a criminal. So this will take away that surprise element.

The bad guy
The trailer suggests that the carrot eating, American hating thug is the villain of the movie and that he is dangerous because he has uranium and nukes. If you have seen the movie you know that he isn’t, so nothing is spoilt by the trailer.

Blowing up BMW’s
In the movie it was clear that these cars would be blown up, but not initally as they were checked for bombs. The trailer shows them blowing up, which takes out a little bit of the surprise.

Action
The rest of the trailer shows lots of footage from the action scenes, a lot of spectacular things. Although it shows some of the best looking moments I don’t think they give too much away. These moments are only very short and don’t make you piece together what will happen.

Conclusion

Had I seen this trailer prior to the movie I would have been extremely hyped to see it, so it did its job. Looking at the amount of spoilers, of which there aren’t that many I could actually say that you would be able to watch this trailer before the movie still don’t know a lot about what will happen. Well, except for the fact that the movie itself isn’t very good/as good as the trailer.

6 thoughts on “Trailer vs. Movie: A Good Day to Die Hard

  1. I’ve not seen the film, and probably won’t due to the epically bad reviews it’s been getting all around, but the trailer just gives it all away. For an action film with a fairly simple plot, you’d think they’d not show the best set pieces in the trailer, right?

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