With the news this week that the next Die Hard movie will be about Young John McClane, we have even more unsettling evidence that any blockbuster action or adventure movie good enough to earn an enthusiastic audience will eventually inspire an expanding mythology that ultimately diminishes the power of the original.
With Joe Wright’s Pan turning out to be the travesty that I suspected it would be from the first evidence of its premise, and now the Die Hard franchise — within which all dignity and inspiration died a long time ago — being subjected to new extremes of abuse and absurdity, I asked my Facebook community to draw up a list of the origin stories we wish we’d never heard. They responded impressively.
Do you have any to add to this list? What origin stories have been worth imagining?
