Focus Features
Surely one of the great debates of our time is the fight between White House Down supporters and Olympus Has Fallen fans. Personally, I like both “Die Hard in the White House” films equally. The former is a fun and fast action/comedy that’s clearly the slicker of the two, while Olympus trades the laughs for hardcore action including mass casualties and an abundance of up close and personal kills. White House Down seemed to have the edge going into 2013 with its bigger names (Roland Emmerich, Channing Tatum, Jaime Foxx) and audience friendly PG-13 rating, but it was the scrappy, R-rated, Gerard Butler-starring underdog that took the box-office crown.
It was still only a modest success, but somehow it managed to earn a sequel. Butler returns as Stabby McHeadshot, a Secret Service agent tasked with protecting the American President (Aaron Eckhart) at home and abroad. The pair are in London along with several other world leaders when an attack leaves the city in ruins, the streets running red with blood, and the two men once again forced kick terrorist ass.
Check out the first trailer and official synopsis for London Has Fallen.
After the British Prime Minister passes away, his funeral becomes a target of a terrorist organization to destroy some of the world’s most powerful leaders, devastate the British capital, and unleash a terrifying vision of the future. The only hope of stopping it rests on the shoulders of the President of the United States (Aaron Eckhart) and his formidable Secret Service head (Gerard Butler), and an English MI-6 agent (Charlotte Riley) who rightly trusts no one. Morgan Freeman also stars as the Vice President of the United States.”
That MI-6 agent is nowhere to be seen in this trailer so it’s unclear how integral her role will be, but it’ll be great if Riley gets the opportunity to shine in the same way Rebecca Ferguson did in this summer’s Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation. We do see plenty of action though, and once again it looks to be a mix of gun fights, vehicle explosions, and sketchy CG destruction. Really, really sketchy CG.
You can argue that maybe the effects aren’t done yet — the movie doesn’t open for another four months after all — but Olympus went into theaters with dodgy CG and did fine. (Well enough to warrant a sequel anyway.) It is unclear at this point though whether or not the sequel will keep the action R-rated. The first film’s gleeful embrace of its bloody, visceral violence is part of its charm, so it’d be a shame to see a sequel get watered down for commercial reasons.
Butler’s been on something of a hiatus since Olympus (aside from voice-work in last year’s How to Train Your Dragon 2) but returns here alongside other cast members from the first film including Eckhart, Morgan Freeman, Angela Bassett, Radha Mitchell, Melissa Leo, and Robert Forster. Director Antoine Fuqua did not come back — he chose to make Southpaw instead — so the sequel was helmed by Babak Najafi (Easy Money II: Hard to Kill). We’ll find out next year if that’s a good pairing, but if it’s any indication (it’s not) the director of the first Easy Money made his Hollywood debut with the very solid Safe House.
London Has Fallen blows up the British capital on March 4th, 2016.
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