67-year-old Hollywood tough guy Bruce Willis bids farewell to the film industry

“Die Hard‎”,”Pulp Fiction‎”,”The Fifth Element‎”,”The Sixth Sense‎”,”Twelve Monkeys‎”,”Sin City‎”,”Armageddon‎”,”The Expendables””Red‎ “……These classic titles all point to a familiar face: Bruce Willis.

However, this old friend recently announced his retirement in an unexpected way.

Not long ago, the family of Bruce Willis released a statement that the legendary 67-year-old action star has decided to withdraw from the film industry after suffering from aphasia.

Related Post: Bruce Willis reveals his latest photos for the first time since announcing his retirement .

Aphasia is a brain tissue disease related to language function. The patient’s speaking, reading, writing and language comprehension will be severely impaired, which will undoubtedly have a huge impact on Bruce Willis’ career and daily life.

As soon as the news came out, there was an uproar in the film industry, and fans all over the world expressed their reluctance.

This action star who rose in the late 1980s and has dominated Hollywood for more than 20 years has brought us too many memories and deserves our goodbye.

Next, I will take you to review him together.

Comedy Star

Bruce was born on a U.S. military base in West Germany in 1955. His father was an American soldier stationed in West Germany and his mother was German.

At the age of 2, he and his parents returned to New Jersey, where he spent his childhood.

From the age of 9 to 17, he suffered from severe stuttering. But strangely, as soon as he said his lines, the stuttering would magically disappear, as if he was destined to eat a bowl of performance.

Although Bruce has been involved in school drama since middle school, he is not a graduate.

His road to schooling was extremely twists and turns. After dropping out of middle school, he entered the society and worked odd jobs while looking for performance opportunities. He worked as a hotel guard, restaurant waiter, factory worker, and harmonica accompaniment for a band.

Later, he returned to college, and resolutely dropped out to participate in the performance of the stage play “Heaven and Earth” on Broadway.

During this period, he has been lost and frustrated, but he has always been consistent in his performance. His approachable audience relationship is mainly due to the blue-collar temperament he has acquired through his own experience.

At the age of 30, Bruce stood out among 3,000 competitors and became famous on the popular American drama “Moonlighting”.

This is a detective romantic comedy, in which Bruce created the image of a suave detective in a suit and leather shoes, and formed a very interesting CP with his female boss.

The series is very popular, pushing 5 seasons and 66 episodes in total. It was introduced to China by CCTV. Bruce also won the Emmy Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor in a Musical Comedy Series for this drama.

Next, he moved on to the big screen, co-starring with Kim Basinger in the well-received romantic comedy “Blind Date‎”, playing a workaholic who is emotionally empty and engrossed in his work.

If you follow this path, Bruce will probably become a comedy star like Jim Carrey. But the appearance of “Die Hard‎” allowed him to successfully transform and become the “third tough guy” after Stallone and Schwarzenegger.

Tough Guy Debut

Bruce’s most out-of-the-circle character is undoubtedly the cop John McClane in “Die Hard‎”.

This role has benefited him a lot. John McClane topped the list of the “20 Best Cops in Film History” by British authoritative magazine Total Film.

In US Weekly’s “25 Greatest Action Heroes in Movie History”, John McClane also ranked first.

That year, “Die Hard‎” grossed $140 million at the worldwide box office with a $28 million production cost, placing it seventh at the Northern America box office in 1988.

Since the film is set on Christmas, “Die Hard‎” is still the most popular Christmas movie besides “Love Actually‎” until now.

The film tells the story of John McClane, who flew from New York to Los Angeles to meet his wife and was invited to a Christmas party in a high-rise building.

The scene of the party was invaded by gangsters. At a critical moment, McClane had to fight back and eventually destroy the enemy’s lair.

“Die Hard‎” created an action film mode in which grassroots heroes fight against villains in a confined space, which is not only different from traditional action films, but also gives the audience a refreshing feeling, and provides an effective reference for later Hollywood counter-terrorism action films. .

This civilian hero image created by Bruce Willis is also very different from the muscular men created by Stallone and Schwarzenegger before.

As director John McTiernan said: “I want the McClane character to be an anti-hero. The heroes in the previous action films “First Blood” and “The Predator” are very powerful and somewhat superhero-like. So, I hope In “Die Hard‎,” he was more of a normal person.”

The John McClane in the movie is just an ordinary person who has hit the big luck – he is not very conscious, he is a bit greedy for life, he will curl his toes when he is nervous, and he will gag when facing gangsters, always referring to “Yippee-Ki-Yay motherf”. **ker” on his lips.

Relying on this anti-hero, unconventional innovation, the “Die Hard‎” series has become an important symbol in American popular culture.

The series has launched 5 works, most of which have achieved good box office and reputation, and established Bruce Willis’ unshakable tough guy status.

Variety superstar

In addition to the “Die Hard‎” series, Bruce Willis also frequently brushes his face and starred in countless classic films.

When Stallone, Schwarzenegger, Dwayne Johnson made a lot of money with action movies, Bruce has tried all kinds of genres: comedy, sci-fi, thriller, disaster, literature…

In the early 1990s, Bruce fell into a brief career slump due to starring in “The Bonfire of the Vanities‎” and “Hudson Hawk‎”.

During this time, he began to adjust the rhythm and received some slightly unpopular literary films.

In 1994, he starred in three new theatrical films of different genres: the erotic suspense film “Color of Night”, the literary sketch “Nobody’s Fool‎” in Berlin, and the film “Nobody’s Fool‎”, which was famous in history and won the Palme d’Or in Cannes. Pulp Fiction‎”.

The great success of “Pulp Fiction‎” has injected new impetus into his career. This absurdly hilarious story is a good mix of comedy and action in Bruce. 

In the mid to late 1990s, Bruce ushered in another career peak. Most of the classic works in his performance resume were born in this period.

In 1995, he starred in the sci-fi thriller “Twelve Monkeys‎”, one of the best sci-fi films of the 1990s.

In the film, he played a neurotic prisoner, adding to the confusion of the film with a frenzied performance state.

Looking at Bruce’s entire career, this is a very special movie. Bruce was cast in the film simply because he wanted to work with director Terry Gilliam.

In this cooperation, Bruce played almost the whole process for free. It is because of this kind of old-fashioned enthusiasm that we are fortunate to see a different Bruce Willis. 

From 1997 to 1999, Bruce cooperated with big directors and starred in three classic works successively.

They are “The Fifth Element‎” with Luc Besson in 1997, “Armageddon‎” with Michael Bay in 1998, and “The Sixth Sense‎” with Nate Shyamalan in 1999.

Among them, Bruce’s performance is the best in “The Sixth Sense‎”, which many people regard as the best work of his acting career.

In the film, he changed the image of a muscular tough guy who saved the world, played a gentle psychologist, and started a healing journey like a father and a son with a small patient.

At the end, after learning that he was dead, the affectionate confession he told his wife, who was separated from yin and yang, made countless people cry.

After entering the millennium, Bruce Willis starred in many movies without stopping.

Although there are many classics in these films, Bruce’s role in the film has never made a bigger breakthrough, but is confined to the tough guy’s mold to replicate himself again and again.

The “Red‎” series and “The Expendables” series, which came out in 2010, can be regarded as Bruce’s last highlight moments.

Both series have one thing in common – nostalgia. They all nested a group of old drama bones and old action stars into the narrative of the hero’s twilight, thereby triggering the audience’s collective nostalgia for their “great past”.

It can be said that as long as the group of people in “The Expendables” stand together, it can basically represent an era – an era of tough guys who pursue lone heroes.

Hero is Old

In recent years, Bruce Willis has hardly acted in a few outstanding works. He began to frantically receive bad movies and bad money, and became the most competitive “king of bad movies” after Nicolas Cage.

In 2021 alone, he starred in 7 bad movies. These rotten films not only have a very low sense of existence, but also worry about the quality.

Bruce has become a frequent visitor to the Golden Raspberry because of his crazily receiving bad movies. From 2019 to 2021, he was nominated for the Golden Raspberry “Worst Performance Award” for three consecutive years.

This year, in recognition of Bruce’s tremendous contribution to the bad film, Golden Raspberry simply set up a special, ironic award for him – the Bruce Willis Award for Worst Performance (“Cosmic Sin‎” ).

Although there have been many bad movies over the years, Bruce actually has his own unspeakable difficulties – on the one hand, his body is not enough to support him to make good movies, on the other hand, he hopes to leave some savings for himself and his family in this way.

Some media revealed that Bruce’s illness is no longer a secret in the circle. As early as when Shyamalan’s “Glass” was filmed in 2019, people found that his health was not as good as before, and he had serious line problems, and the post-production staff did a lot of editing work. , so that Bruce’s lines are linked together.

It’s no wonder that in most of the scenes, he can’t see his face with his hat on, and these shots are often done by doubles.

Following the news, Raspberry withdrew the award for worst performance that had been awarded to Bruce Willis, stating: “If a person’s health is a factor in the decision they make or the performance they give, we recognize the award. It’s inappropriate to give them.”

When the turmoil of the golden raspberry awards and withdrawals passed, we only sighed for Bruce Willis.

It’s a pity that he wants to bid farewell to the colorful life of light and shadow in this way, and bid farewell to the superstar career of Xuanhe.

Nowadays, it is no longer a set that heroes are twilight and tough guys. I only wish him to be stable and healthy in his later years, to stay away from illness and to spend the rest of his life peacefully.

Related Post: Bruce Willis sold his portrait rights to a face-swapping company to shoot ads, saying it was an interesting experience.