Skyscraper Is A Forgettable & Generic Die Hard Knock-Off

Skyscraper is very obviously being made in the mold of the iconic 1988 movie Die Hard and who can blame writer/director Rawson Marshall Thurber for wanting to make a film in that mold considering both how good Die Hard is and how there's a surprisingly large number of Die Hard emulators that have turned out to be awesome, most notably Roland Emmerich's criminally underappreciated 2013 gem White House Down. Unfortunately, Skyscraper will go down in history as one of the more middling Die Hard knock-off's, one that's shockingly bland considering its central premise is all about the leading man from Faster trying to break into a massive skyscraper that's on fire.

Please Give Some More Love To The Thrilling And Endearing White House Down

Back in 2013, Roland Emmerich returned to the White House, the location that served him quite well when he blew it to pieces in the first Independence Day movie. But just like returning to the world of Independence Day itself didn't yield any box office results comparable to that 1996 movie, Emmerich's 2013 return to the White House was similarly DOA financially. That's a shame because White House Down might just be the best movie Roland Emmerich's done, one that leans heavily on charismatic actors, over-the-top characters and constantly escalating in absurdity action to deliver the right kind of bombastic blockbuster filmmaking.