From 1987 to 1995, John McTiernan had the action genre in the palm of his hand...which is why it's so weird that, for over 20 years, McTiernan hasn't made a movie.
00:00From 1987 to 1995, John McTiernan had the action genre in the palm of his hand.
00:07Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for an October, Last Action Hero, Die Hard with a Vengeance,
00:13give or take a medicine man here or there, and you're left with one of the most impressive directorial runs in recent memory.
00:20Which is why it's so weird that, for over 20 years, McTiernan hasn't made a movie.
00:27So, what's up with that?
00:28How can the guy who directed two of the greatest action films of all time, if not the greatest, have simply disappeared like the Red October herself?
00:38Hello everyone, how are you all doing?
00:40Ewan for Wild Culture here, and as you may have gathered if you've spent much time with the channel over the last few years,
00:46you'll know that I'm a pretty huge fan of John McTiernan, a director who redefined a genre's landscape,
00:53and in the process, developed some truly immortal pieces of cinema.
00:58McTiernan was adept at crafting kinetic, tangible action set pieces, but perhaps even better was his ability to subvert genre convention.
01:08Die Hard quite rightly gets the credit for divesting from the muscle-bound 80s action lead and ushering in the era of the ass-kicky who can also kick ass.
01:18But these credentials were already on display on an arguably more subtle level with Predator, McTiernan's action debut,
01:24and a film devoted to assembling the biggest, coolest dudes of all time in Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Bill Duke,
01:32only to have them get their spines ripped out by an even bigger alien in Kevin Peter Hall.
01:39The same could also be said of The Hunt for Red October, McTiernan's adaptation of Tom Clancy's Cold War novel that focuses on the bookish Jack Ryan,
01:48a CIA analyst and naval historian played by a dashing but unsoldierly Alec Baldwin.
01:551993's last action hero, while heavily criticised at the time of its release, took McTiernan's genre introspection to another level,
02:03reuniting with Arnie to deconstruct the genre legacy the two had so rapidly erected in the previous decade.
02:10Oh, and by the way, if you want an in-depth video on why Last Action Hero is great, well, we've got you covered.
02:17But, despite the burgeoning reappraisal of Last Action Hero in the past decade, which I've dutifully taken part in,
02:24there's no ignoring that it was a huge critical and commercial disappointment when it premiered in 1993.
02:30Columbia Pictures put it up against a little old movie called Jurassic Park,
02:35and it was swiftly devoured just like that little goat snack the T-Rex got,
02:40with Arnie's dominance and a triple production both conspiring to turn the narrative against McTiernan's film,
02:45which the director has long ago confessed isn't one of his favourites.
02:49McTiernan would bounce back a couple of years later with Die Hard with a Vengeance, my personal favourite Die Hard,
02:55but, like Arnold, who likewise bounced back temporarily with Jim Cameron's ludicrously good True Lies in 1994,
03:03this wouldn't avert the lost momentum of Last Action Hero's failure.
03:07Theatrical gigs begin to slow down, until eventually we come to a pivotal year for McTiernan.
03:141999, the year of The Matrix, The Mummy, and The Phantom Menace.
03:19So, a big year for the letter M.
03:21McTiernan had two big theatrical films released in theatres that year,
03:26a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, starring Pierce Broughton in the role previously inhabited by Paul Newman,
03:32and, in an ironic twist of fate, an adaptation of Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead,
03:39a historical fantasy story based on the writings of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan,
03:44a Baghdad-born traveller who notably interacted with the Vikings.
03:48The movie was released as The Thirteenth Warrior, and it starred Antonio Banderas as Fadlan,
03:54who is enlisted on a mission with his new Viking acquaintances to vanquish an ancient evil lurking in Europe.
04:01I think you'll agree, it's an epic-sounding premise for an epic-sounding movie,
04:06but, unlike The Thomas Crown Affair, which earned mostly positive reviews and was a box office success,
04:12The Thirteenth Warrior turned out to be a huge disappointment.
04:15Troubled by yet another discordant production, in which Crichton himself came aboard to finish the film following poor test scores,
04:23The Thirteenth Warrior received mixed reviews and only grossed $61 million against a near $100 million budget.
04:31It became the biggest box office bomb of all time,
04:35which, when you already had a fairly infamous commercial dud a few years prior, wasn't exactly a great look.
04:43Also, for the record, The Thirteenth Warrior is a pretty fun movie.
04:47Not McTiernan's best, I'll give you, but good enough to not be the worst bomb of all time.
04:52From that point on, it was all downhill.
04:55McTiernan's final two films, which he referred to in a 2023 interview with The Guardian as quote-unquote Nightmares,
05:02came in 2002 and 2003.
05:06A terrible remake of Rollerball, and then a military thriller called Basic,
05:11which reunited the director with Samuel Jackson and starred John Travolta as a DEA agent investigating the death of a military officer.
05:19Both movies bombed, both of them all black critics, and that's all she wrote for McTiernan's career.
05:25Not because he had a string of bombs, no.
05:28The real reason is a bit more wild.
05:31You see, in the great Nixonian tradition, or Hooverian, whichever tyrannical US figure is your favourite,
05:38in 2006, John McTiernan was arrested and charged for providing a false statement to an FBI agent
05:45in the course of an investigation into illegal wiretapping.
05:48It transpired that McTiernan had enlisted a private investigator to spy on Charles Roven,
05:54a producer on Rollerball he'd been having disagreements with.
05:58A lengthy series of court arraignments ensued, involving plenty of appeals,
06:02eventually culminating in McTiernan entering a plea agreement and being sentenced to 12 months in federal prison,
06:0810 of which he served while incarcerated in Yankton between 2013 and 2014.
06:13McTiernan filed for bankruptcy during the sentence,
06:16struggling with a lawsuit from his ex-wife, as well as other debts,
06:20and he struggled to re-enter the movie industry ever since,
06:24which, regardless of being out of the game for as long as he has,
06:28as well as the retro shadiness of allegedly having a P.I. wiretap someone you have beef with,
06:33is kind of mad.
06:35He's one of the most influential action movie directors of all time,
06:38and if you revisit a McTiernan movie today, you're going to be struck by just how pioneering and unique they actually are.
06:46He moulded an entire genre aesthetic, created myths and tore them down.
06:51He is, without doubt, one of the great American directors of the post-New Hollywood era,
06:56and regardless of all that baggage we've gone over,
06:59surely that should give him enough credit in the bank to make something new.
07:04Like, who hasn't dabbled in a bit of wiretapping in their time?
07:08Who's to say?
07:09Obviously not downplaying any offences that may have been committed,
07:13McTiernan himself, the record, says he was simply quote-unquote roadkill in the case,
07:18but it's worth delving into why the director hasn't been busy since resolving his financial issues,
07:23and obviously making it out of prison.
07:25For a while, it looked as if his big comeback film would be a sci-fi extravaganza called Tau Ceti 4,
07:33which that aforementioned Guardian interview mentioned McTiernan was working away on as recently as 2023,
07:39but those irons have been in the fire for a while now,
07:43and we're still no closer to it being a reality.
07:46Several projects, in fact, have come to McTiernan's way over the course of the last decade,
07:51but all fizzled out at various stages of pre-production,
07:55among them a movie about the Doolittle Raid from World War II, so what gives?
08:00Well, McTiernan actually spoke about this earlier this year,
08:04during a film festival in Finland dedicated to his movies,
08:08and man am I annoyed I missed out on that.
08:10Speaking to Finnish outlet Helsingin Samamat, and paraphrased by World of Real,
08:15McTiernan seemed to allude to the shifting tides of the industry,
08:19and also that, while he has received offers to direct,
08:22none of them have been for films that have piqued his interest.
08:26He did direct a live-action trailer for the Tom Clancy video game Ghost Recon Wildlands, though,
08:32so...
08:34that's nice?
08:35All this doesn't mean he's out for the count, though.
08:38In fact, McTiernan still has plans to direct multiple projects before he has to retire.
08:43That's frustratingly vague, and we've been talking about a McTiernan comeback for so long now,
08:49but hey, maybe this time's the moment?
08:52Now, personally, I'd be really curious to see what a McTiernan movie would look like in this day and age.
08:58His approach to action, while highly influential, is still one-of-a-kind,
09:02and seeing those dynamics alive and well in a new film,
09:06whether that be in the action genre, or a thriller, or a drama, would be such a relief.
09:12Not that we're a star for quality offerings in that area or anything, but come on!
09:17The box office misses the kind of movie McTiernan used to provide.
09:21Tangible, exciting, intelligent, and human offerings
09:24that few have ever really come close to matching since his decline.
09:29If Hollywood has moved on from the kind of projects that would entice a director like that,
09:34then all I have to say is boo!
09:37Here's hoping that, sooner rather than later,
09:40McTiernan will make his grand return to the big screen.
09:43But I want to know what all of you think of John McTiernan down in the comments below.
09:48Are you a fan of his films, and would you like to see him make a comeback?
09:52Once you've done that, it would be yippee-kai-tastic of you to like the video
09:55and subscribe so you don't miss another upload.
09:58Either way, thank you all so much for watching.
10:01I've been Ewan, this was WhatCulture, and I'll hopefully catch you next time.
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