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
00:18in recent memory.
00:20Which is why it's so weird that, for over 20 years, McTiernan hasn't made a movie.
00:26So, 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
00:35simply 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
00:45the 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
01:06convention.
01:07Die Hard quite rightly gets the credit for divesting from the muscle-bound 80s action lead and ushering in the
01:13era of the ass-kicky who can also kick ass.
01:17But these credentials were already on display on an arguably more subtle level with Predator, McTiernan's action debut,
01:25and a film devoted to assembling the biggest, coolest dudes of all time in Arnold Schwarzenegger, Carl Weathers, and Bill
01:31Duke,
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,
01:42McTiernan'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,
02:04reuniting with Arnie to deconstruct the genre legacy the two had so rapidly erected in the previous decade.
02:11Oh, and by the way, if you want an in-depth video on why Last Action Hero is great, we've
02:16got 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.
02:31Columbia 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, so a big year for the letter M.
03:21McTiernan had two big theatrical films released in theatres that year, a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair,
03:28starring Pierce Broughton in the role previously inhabited by Paul Newman, and in an ironic twist of
03:34fate, an adaptation of Jurassic Park novelist Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead, a historical fantasy
03:40story based on the writings of Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, a Baghdad-born traveller who notably interacted with
03:47the Vikings. The 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
04:00Europe. I think you'll agree it's an epic-sounding premise for an epic-sounding movie, but unlike the
04:07Thomas Crown Affair, which earned mostly positive reviews and was a box office success, The Thirteenth
04:12Warrior turned out to be a huge disappointment. Troubled by yet another discordant production in
04:18which Crichton himself came aboard to finish the film following poor test scores, The Thirteenth
04:24Warrior received mixed reviews and only grossed $61 million against a near $100 million budget. It became
04:32the biggest box office bomb of all time, which when you already had a fairly infamous commercial dud
04:38a few years prior, wasn't exactly a great look. Also, for the record, The Thirteenth Warrior is a
04:46pretty fun movie. Not McTiernan's best, I'll give you, but good enough to not be the worst bomb of all
04:52time. From that point on, it was all downhill. McTiernan's final two films, which he referred to in a
04:582023 interview with The Guardian as quote unquote nightmares, came in 2002 and 2003. A terrible
05:06remake of Rollerball, and then a military thriller called Basic, which reunited the director with
05:13Samuel Jackson and starred John Travolta as a DEA agent investigating the death of a military officer.
05:19Both movies bombed, both were more black critics, and that's all she wrote for McTiernan's career.
05:24Not because he had a string of bombs, no. The real reason is a bit more wild.
05:31You see, in the great Nixonian tradition, or Hooverian, whichever tyrannical US figure is your favorite,
05:38in 2006, John McTiernan was arrested and charged of providing a false statement to an FBI agent in
05:45the course of an investigation into illegal wiretapping. It transpired that McTiernan had enlisted a
05:51private investigator to spy on Charles Roven, a producer on Rollerball he'd been having disagreements
05:57with. A lengthy series of court arraignments ensued, involving plenty of appeals, eventually
06:03culminating 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. McTiernan filed for
06:15bankruptcy during the sentence, struggling with a lawsuit from his ex-wife as well as other debts,
06:20and he struggled to re-enter the movie industry ever since, which, regardless of being out of the
06:26game for as long as he has, as well as the retro shadiness of allegedly having a PI wiretap someone
06:32you have beef with, is kind of mad. He'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
06:44they actually are. He moulded an entire genre aesthetic, created myths and tore them down.
06:50He is, without doubt, one of the great American directors of the post-New Hollywood era, and
06:56regardless of all that baggage we've gone over, surely that should give him enough credit in the bank
07:02to make something new. Like, who hasn't dabbled in a bit of wiretapping in their time? Who's to say?
07:09Obviously not downplaying any offences that may have been committed, McTiernan himself the record
07:15says he was simply quote unquote roadkill in the case, but it's worth delving into why the director
07:20hasn't been busy since resolving his financial issues, and 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
07:32Seti IV, which that aforementioned Guardian interview mentioned McTiernan was working away
07:37on as recently as 2023, but those irons have been in the fire for a while now,
07:43and we're still no closer to it being a reality. Several projects, in fact, have come to McTiernan's
07:49way over the course of the last decade, but 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, during a film festival in Finland
08:06dedicated to his movies, and man am I annoyed I missed out on that. Speaking to Finnish outlet
08:11Helsingin Samomat, and paraphrased by World of Real, McTiernan seemed to allude to the shifting
08:17tides of the industry, and also that, while he has received offers to direct, none of them have been
08:23for films that have piqued his interest. He did direct a live action trailer for the Tom Clancy
08:29video game Ghost Recon Wildlands though, so that's nice? All this doesn't mean he's out for the count
08:37though. In 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, but hey,
08:50maybe this time's the moment? Now, personally, I'd be really curious to see what a McTiernan movie would
08:56look like in this day and age. His approach to action, while highly influential, is still one of
09:02a kind, and seeing those dynamics alive and well in a new film, whether that be in the action genre,
09:08or a thriller, or a drama, would be such a relief. Not that we're a star for quality offerings in
09:14that
09:14area or anything, but come on. The box office misses the kind of movie McTiernan used to provide.
09:21Tangible, exciting, intelligent, and human offerings that few have ever really come close to matching
09:27since his decline. If Hollywood has moved on from the kind of projects that would entice a director
09:33like that, then all I have to say is boo. Here's hoping that, sooner rather than later, McTiernan will
09:43come back. So 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? Once you've done
09:52that,
09:52it would be yippee-kai-tastic of you to like the video and subscribe so you don't miss another upload.
09:58Either way, thank you all so much for watching. I've been Ewan, this was WhatCulture,
10:03and I'll hopefully catch you next time. Bye!
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