As the director of such well-known and beloved titles as Predator, Die Hard, The Hunt for Red October, Last Action Hero, Die Hard with a Vengeance, and The Thomas Crown Affair remake, it’s worth listening when John McTiernan decides to weigh in on the current state of the action genre.

On the other side of the coin, he hasn’t helmed a feature in 20 years since the turgid Basic, and his legal misdeeds saw him imprisoned for lying to the FBI, which ultimately ended in a stint behind bars and a declaration of bankruptcy. It’s probably not a coincidence that nobody is throwing money at him to return behind the camera and return to the medium he mastered in the 1980s and 1990s, but that’s not the way McTiernan tells it.

In an interview with French outlet Le Matin, the former titan of cinematic running and gunning claimed that he simply isn’t interested in getting back into the studio business to lower himself to what he believes to be the dwindling standards of the artform.

“Today’s action movies are filled with hate. People keep sending me scripts over and over again, and I keep sending them back. It’s just awful. I don’t want to work for the studios, and I’m not interested in remaking a movie I’ve already done. I have a few projects I’m working on. I was about to start filming again when the COVID hit and destroyed everything. I have continued to write and I believe I have strength, years left. I am just as angry now as when I was 19.”

Not only that, but Tom Cruise came in for particular criticism, with McTiernan revealing he turned down the first Mission: Impossible because he knew he’d be forced to take the knee before its A-list figurehead.

“I was asked to direct the first Mission: Impossible. And I had a meeting with Tom Cruise. By this time, he had already started to become Mr. Cool. He was the head of the mission. And for me, you couldn’t develop anything from that. I’m really going to have problems with Tom Cruise. But what can I do? Listen: his movies are all about his cool side. These are not movies, but advertisements for the Tom Cruise brand.”

An element of sour grapes, sure, but McTiernan did at least manage to secure himself a long-lasting legacy before things went so south in spectacular fashion, regardless of whether or not he returns to direct anything ever again.

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