I wouldn't go that far. Die Hard was a rarity in that John McClane was an every day person. He wasn't some special forces, goes to the gym 6 times a week, knows 5 fighting styles and cooks too, kind of character like you see anymore. You had Murtagh in Lethal Weapon, and a few others but we have since migrated away from them. One other thing that set them apart from modern action stars is that they got FUCKED up. Most action movie characters get some soot on them, maybe a bleeding lip and some scrapes and scratches but that's about it. I always liked Die Hard because John got absolutely fucked but still kept going. I miss when action stars could get wrecked honestly. It felt more realistic and honestly made the characters more likable and you rooted for them more because you saw they weren't these impossible beings. I hope action gets back to that some day.

He was actually cast against type. Before Die Hard he was know as a comedic romantic lead from Moonlighting. As for his appeal, for the time Willis was shluby everyman who literally fell into fighting terrorists.

no. there was a ton of "everyman' action before Die Hard. Burt Reynolds for one.

If you enjoyed "Die Hard", I think you might also enjoy "Three Days of the Condor" (1975).

Robert Redford plays an analyst who reads data and writes reports for the CIA. He has no super-spy training and has never done field work. Something goes horribly wrong.

No.

Charles Bronson did it in the 70s with Death Wish, and many others. Tough but regular guy.

80's came and Arnold and Stallone brought huge physiques and special training as the prototype action stars.

But we still had Beverly Hills Cop and other comedic action movies with regular guys.

Honestly, everyone makes too much of it and Bruce. It was funny and entertaining. A good heist movie.

Alan Rickman is the main reason it took off and kept flying.

I would argue that Harrison Ford was with Indian Jones

Yes. Audiences laughed at the previews.

Charles Bronson in Death Wish predates him. I feel like the “everyman” thing came out of the 1970s.

No, that would be Gary Cooper to Jimmy Stewart. Maybe someone even earlier.

I'll die on this hill, Die Hard is the greatest Action Movie of all time, and it's not even bc of the action. It's because of the bantering, the dialogue, and even the cursing. It's all so perfect, even more so when ad-libbed. Nothing forced. Incredible.

It'll never be beat, either.

Walkie Talkie Die Hard, Motherfucker!!!

Hard to ignore Raiders of the Lost Ark. Dude was a school teacher trying to sell stuff to museums

Not a U.S. action star initially. But Jacky Chan kind of always played scenes that constantly have him taking a beating to a comedic degree. And escaping the situation, not always winning, just escaping.

He shows pain shows some ineptitude, but maybe it's a different category?

No that actually didn’t happen until Jennifer Lawrence came along

Clint Eastwood did it first.

So I was 13 when Die Hard came out and being that age in the 80s raised on cable and VHS rentals put it square in my wheelhouse. But by summer 88 the idea of the One Man Army action star felt beyond stale.
It was just a tired idea. And while I was a big Moonlighting fan and liked Willis it just didn’t seem like a very original idea. Had little to no interest in seeing it.
But then it became a surprise late summer hit. Yes it came out mid-July but it was the definition of a word of mouth sleeper. It gained steam in august and that’s when it really opened up. In fact what I remember thinking at the time was that I learned that a plot concept doesn’t need to be totally original if all the components are well-made.
The “Everyman” thing only ever half landed for me since even at the time Bruce was a buff action star looking guy, if not a Sly or Arnold. And of course the franchise eventually wasted that goodwill turning him into an indestructible farce. Fortunately you can still enjoy the OG entry and not have to think about where it all went from there

Number one actor for me!!

I would say yes. John McClane was different than the action heroes of the time. He was buff but he was a normal cop who was good at thinking on his feet and improvising. He took a lot of wounds over the course of the movie, and apparently some audiences thought he would die at the end. I think the scene where he's dragging his bloody feet across the floor really exemplifies this difference. In the following scene, he is hurt and tired and starts thinking that maybe he won't make it out alive. It was a very different tone than contemporary action films.

No to OP. Cowboys and cops have been the Everyman action hero since films and television each began.

I'd say he definitely helped usher in the modern everyman. McClane was definitely an everyman from Die Hard 1-3....then...yeah Bruce Willis took over.

Die Hard was Rupert Murdoch's big entry splash after buying 21 st century Fox. His other big shake ups were Married with Children and the The Simpson's, which ushered in the modern TV era.

You all forgetting They Live? You all forgetting how two regular dudes in an alley can fight for five and a half minutes about sunglasses?

An 'everyman' as I understand it means some kind of guy who's just a typical regular guy, could be anyone. I always thought Bruce Willis was normally some jacked beast of a man who can take down waves of international criminals normally hailing from somewhere like Russian with a teaspoon

It was a weird to me, a kid at the time, as I loved Moonlighting (not that I got all the jokes) seeing David Addison shooting people. He’s still a cop in the movie so not quite an “everyman” but very capable.

North by Northwest has more like an “everyman” (even though Cary Grant is a big star) because he don’t know how to do shit.

I’ve certainly lusted after his rear end many a lonely night…and I’m a straight male! 🥰

Maybe not the first but Death Wish certainly predates it.

My criteria for this question: characters that aren't cops, characters that aren't in a Hitchock movie (North by Northwest isn't a typical or even prototypical action movie), no cowboys (since these are by definition not modern day "every man")

The funny thing about Death Wish is that Willis ended up starring in the remake that I heard was very bad.

What do you consider modern? The "Hero's Journey" coined by Joseph Campbell in 1949 speaks of: "A hero ventures forth from the world of common day."

In the call to adventure: "the hero or protagonist lives in the ordinary world." And this wasn't invented by Campbell. He was the one to break it down, but it can be traced back to mythology.

An "everyman" becoming a hero is about as classic a plot as you can get. Luke was an everyman moisture farmer. There are many other examples in this thread.

Even if you want to narrow it down to real-world plausible situations, there are plenty of action movies where "everyman" characters have to be heroic. Personally, I'd give Indiana Jones the nod before John McClane. After all, McClane isn't truly an everyman. He's a trained police officer who may be off duty, but it's basically his job. Indiana Jones is a professor with realistic flaws ("I don't know. I'm making this up as I go.") who ends up fighting Nazis.

It just makes sense that the protagonist who we're rooting for is kinda like us. It makes us wonder what we'd do in a similar situation. It makes us like the main character more.

An Everyman caught in extraordinary circumstances is a trope as old as Dog Day Afternoon

Yes

Most people would consider that is the point the “Every man hero”. I like to think it was Clint Eastwood in the Dirty Harry series.

Die Hard was the most influential film in ushering in the every-man action hero, but the Indiana Jones trilogy came first. What separates John McClain from the other every-man action heroes that came before him such as Indiana Jones is that John McClain was involved in the action by coincidence, where Indiana Jones actively perused action by chasing treasures.

I think Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China is an earlier example, in it he is a truck driver.

Was he the first non-canonical action hero? By which I mean was he the first action hero who didn't look like the image "action hero" and/or movie star conjured up? I've certainly heard that thesis before.

I would have to agree. Their progenitors Stallone and Arnie had action figure physiques. John McClean walked so Bryan Mills (Taken) and John Creasy (Man On Fire) could run.

No.

I’m old enough to remember when Die Hard came out in theaters. It was nuts. Bruce Willis was a goofy funny guy from Moonlighting. He wasn’t a massive action star like Arnold or Sly or a martial arts guy like Bruce Lee. He was just a regular dude and people saw the trailers and were like… what? But it kind of prepared us for a few years later when they said Michael Keaton was going to be Batman.

There are lots of examples of the every man action hero (low status action hero) the thing I think that sets Die Hard apart is how much of a wise cracking smart ass he was.

Absolutely. Netflix has a solid episode of their “behind your favorite movie” anthology or whatever the show is called that focuses on die hard. Willis was like their last choice and casting him was a huge risk. They were so concerned men wouldn’t believe him to be a hero as opposed to a tv rom com star, they removed him from the posters and other promotional materials.

And for anyone throwing out Bronson in death wish or Eastwood in westerns, we need to consider context. Bronson killing a bunch of street thugs at his leisure isn’t the same as Willis taking down a terrorist organization without weapons or shoes. And to your point OP, Eastwood was a certified badass back then. An ‘Everyman’ wouldn’t be an Everyman if every man was just as capable as every other man (I don’t even know if that makes sense). Eastwood wasn’t an Everyman in those flicks, he was generally the baddest dude around. Swap him out for Schwarzenegger and I don’t know that Arnold is more intimidating on a horse with a poncho and a pistol.

In terms of him being a cop, he’s been on the force for just 7 years and is afraid of flying. He’s not a navy seal. I mean carl Winslow is far more seasoned and about to retire, but he’s not shimmying through an air duct.

Fun fact: the first choice for john McClane was frank Sinatra as he played the character in the movie’s “prequel”

Nah - there were lots of anti-hero's in the 70's. Vanishing Point comes to mind

Part of it for me is his characters actually get beat up in movies.

Gene Hackman in Poseidon Adventure. Roy Scheider in Jaws.

I think that's a flawed analysis. Action stars like Arnold and Stallone stood out because they were the exception, not the norm. Almost every other action movie had an everyman star.

Yes, definitely that was the appeal. An everyman going up bad guys instead of buffed out Arnolds and Stallones. If I recall I think he made big money for it back then because he was coming off the hit tv show Moonlighting but the studio was unsure about having a comedy guy be an action hero. You should check out the really good making of it on the Netflix show "The Movies That Made Us" Die Hard episode and there is also a cool book out about the making of all the films.

You should watch “The Movies That Made Us” on Netflix. There’s a whole episode for Die Hard.

He was actually kind of a throwback to the Bogart, Ralph Meeker type 50’s leading man, where he’s kind of a working class mug. But that was perfect for John McClane.

The Die Hard episode of the movies that made us discusses this point also

Don't believe anybody but me here - Die Hard was so unlike every previous action movie in its intensity, fun, and spectacle that seeing it was like seeing your very first action movie. And action movies were practically our entire movie diet at the time. I saw it in the early weeks of its release in a packed theater, and the audience erupted in rapturous applause at its end. I have never experienced that before or since.

He spends half the movie shoeless, then walks over glass, and gets some shoes 3 sizes smaller than his. Also has a wild sense of humor to deal with the amount of shit thrown at him.

1. He was not really an “everyman”, he’s a New York police detective.

2. The earliest I can think of an “everyman” being put into an action movie is Cary Grant in North By Northwest, but there are probably earlier examples.

No, the everyman action hero predates the roid-machines by decades.

Dirty Harry.

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Rambo first blood, 48 hours, Terminator

You’re getting pushback. The answer is yes, but people forget about Moonlighting.

I would say Clint Eastwood. He is the first Everyman tough guy I remember seeing. You could also say Paul Newman, but he is widely regarded as a very handsome man in his prime. Might take him out of the Everyman category.

Netflix has documentaries about old movies and it’s pretty much what they allude to.

Casting Bruce Willis was literally a big risk because he didn’t fit the mold of ridiculous bodybuilding action stars.

Anyone writing that title knows the answer as yes.

No, Rambo First Blood was. Then Red Dawn, Then Dudikoff in American Ninja. Die Hard was second wave action movie.

I feel like Sylvester Stallone and Arnold paved the way for Bruce

Nop.

Arnie or Stalone