Hey there! Bruce Willis! Everyone’s heard of Bruce Willis.
Die Hard! …. other films!
May I present …. the Willisography.
Bruce Willis was a big star. Sure, he’s had flops and times when he’s been pretty obviously miscast, but his hits – THEY were BIG. From memory (I refuse to Google!) Willis started on ‘Night Court’ or something like that, on TV of course. He went stratospheric quicksmart via McTiernan and Die Hard, which remains a great film to my mind, or at least my memory. (PS: John McTiernan had a killer run of action movies in the late 80s, early 90s. I don’t know the details or background of his subsequent tax and legal/prison problems but I don’t think we can count on the man reproducing his success)
The miscast Bruce Willis:
Have you seen or heard of ‘Death Becomes Her’ with Goldie Hawn and Meryl Streep? I think Robert Zemeckis directed. If I recall, the studio pressured Zemeckis to hire Willis based on his recent Die Hard success. Didn’t work.
Of course many serious name-brand actors have been miscast. One of the worst miscasts I’ve seen recently was in the epic, opulent, weird, strangely-beautiful-yet-lacklustre ‘Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets’. Based on a French series of comics/stories depicting the adventures of the titular space-adventure hero, casting Dane DeHaan seemed positively suicidal for the otherwise delightfully-odd Luc Besson. DeHaan isn’t a bad actor by any stretch – I thought he was dark, menacing and portrayed a dark descent convincingly in the breakout hit ‘Chronicle’, but ‘Valerian’ was calling for an actor with a physicality, a swagger or way of carrying themselves that DeHaan just doesn’t have.
If I was to summarize at this point, I’d say that Bruce Willis had had, by all measures, a stellar acting career that only very few actors get a chance to achieve and to enjoy. He had made movies that were massive hits. He’d played a variety of characters. He’d had enough of those films be both enduring and financially successful that his legacy ought to have been secure.
That brings us to the final section in the Willisography.
The New Bruce Willis Era:
I don’t know when the rot set in with Willis and making movies. Maybe the process of making a film is so soul-destroying that one can only ever do it with 100% focus for a limited time before age, a fickle public or Hollywood powerbrokers decide your time has ended. Looking back at Willis’ filmography, while there is a gradual tendency towards crappier fare, the fact that it’s punctuated by genuine hits makes for drawing a straight line difficult. For my money, Willis seemed to care less about the art of making movies around the time of Armageddon, but hey I don’t know the guy and I could be way off.
Like most folk interested in movies and movie stars, I can’t help but noticing that Willis had starred in large numbers of seemingly ‘direct-to-video’ releases in recent years – almost all featuring him on the cover in some variation on ‘Willis-holding-a-gun’ pose, adjacent some B or B- actor with only vague name-recognition. (aka ‘Jai Courtney’) We accept that even A-name actors will take some crap films occasionally – maybe they’re being asked to call in a favour to someone, maybe a family member is a fan of the material and persuaded ‘Uncle Bruce’ to accept, maybe the actor is simply seeking a quick payday due to an expensive divorce proceedings – maybe the actor overspent, Nicolas Cage-style and subsequently takes on roles to pay off tax debts?
Even allowing for all that, the sheer volume of crap that Willis has been starring in and the rate at which these films come out is surprising.
To learn more about this fascinating career turn of Bruce Willis (and other former-famous guys), read the excellent piece at Vulture by Joshua Hunt and then devote an hour to digest the hilarious guys at RedLetterMedia!
The Ruminations of a Frail Human 