Bruce Willis on 'Die Hard'

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: You did Die Hard 2 pretty quickly after the first one...
BRUCE WILLIS: At the time, the sequel business wasn't what it is today. They were still kind of finding their way. So Die Hard 2 kind of suffered a little bit in the effort to get it out there quickly and capitalize on the success of the first one.

I dig the second one...totally underrated.
I do too. I just think that it's difficult to compete with the components of the first film. Even the new one, Live Free or Die Hard — if I was going to make an action movie today and I hadn't done Die Hard, I would totally rip it off. The claustrophobic building, the good guys, the bad guys, the hostages, everybody's trapped in this building, you put John McClane in all of these tight little spaces, you have him kill or beat the s--- out of everybody else, and save his wife — it's really hard to compete with that first film. All the Die Hards will be judged against the first one.

Speaking of the new film, what is it about this character that keeps pulling you back?
It's not so much the character as much as, with the luxury of hindsight, I can look back at all three films and say, What did I like about this one or that one...the first one was always my favorite, and I always wanted to go back and make a movie that tried to live up to the first one — to make an old-school Die Hard with old-school stunts that had also been brought into the 21st century, and that was able to talk about terrorism in a post-9/11 time and not be afraid to say the word ''terrorist,'' and at the same time not dishonor the memory of the people who lost their lives on 9/11. In the first three films, we say ''they're terrorists!''...but it didn't hit that inflamed nerve people have when it comes to terrorism now.

How has McClane changed from the first one?
He's older. He bounces off the concrete with a little less zing. He's like a tennis ball that you've had for too long. But he's still got that same South Jersey attitude. I think the world of technology has kind of passed him by — that was what got me to say yes to this film, the story of an analog cop in a digital world. I thought that would be an interesting arena to put John McClane into and see what he can do with it.

Any chance of a Die Hard 5?
Yeah! I think we already did it but it was called 16 Blocks. Yeah, I'd do another one as long as they come up with a good story — that was why I waited so long to do this one. I'd seen so many scripts that were knockoffs of the original Die Hard and they even got made and you've seen them and you know the ones I'm talking about. It got to the point where someone once pitched me the idea 'It's Die Hard in a building!'...Uhhh, I think we did that already.

Almost 20 years later, what goes through your mind when you drive past Nakatomi Tower [a Fox office building]?
Lots and lots of money [laughs].