We’ve all probably heard the sad news about the health of the action movie legend. Bruce Willis suffers from frontotemporal dementia. At the end of March 2022, the actor announced his retirement. However, he leaves us with his unique output, as well as, as a farewell, as many as 25 films that he made in … less than 4 years.
Bruce Willis – we will remember him forever from these roles.
I know that I can live in a film bubble, but honestly I can’t imagine that any person living within Western civilization would not know at least one role of Bruce Willis. He belongs to one of the last generations of stars whose films have been watched by almost everyone. Even before the era of streaming and viewers broke into smaller subgroups and bubbles first in cinemas, then on videotapes / DVDs, and then on television, hundreds of millions of people had contact with the achievements of Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Robert De Niro, Sylvester Stallone’ and just e.g. Bruce Willis. Not only my parents, but also my grandmother watched “Die Hard” at least a few times in her life. Today’s movie stars are not able to “wring out” such broad demographic results.
Even before Willis made a splash in Hollywood as a movie star, he became a popular figure on television, starring in the now cult series “On crazy papers“. Then came Die Hard and in the 1990s Bruce Willis was already entering the global megastar. Just when everyone thought his career would stop at Die Hard sequels, he gave audiences great performances in such high-profile productions as Death Becomes Her, Pulp Fiction, 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, Armageddon “, “Sixth Sense”. Each of these films became box office hits and entered the annals of pop culture.
In the 21st century, his achievements did not arouse such great emotions, but Willis remained a major star-legend of the industry.
Bruce Willis – you have to know when to leave the stage
Although Bruce Willis was clearly not looking for ambitious farewell projects for himself, he did something that will make his last years in the film industry remembered forever. Unfortunately, not because of quality, but because of quantity. However, it is not just any amount. Willis appeared in 25 films in less than 4 years! It’s an amazing result.
Almost all of these last 25 movies are of poor quality, except for the curious fact, the Detective Knight trilogy, which is surprisingly solid.
All of these movies are aimed squarely at the video/streaming market, all with tiny budgets. In all of them, Willis appeared either in minor roles or in the background (although the posters and trailers seem to advertise him in the lead role). He produced the lion’s share of these films Randall Emmettwho invented a way to make films for the least possible money, circumventing all regulations and acceptable practices in the film industry. Emmett is known to take money from almost anyone willing to put it into production, and then use that pool to pay aging stars for very little work to sell the film to studios. He is also accused of bypassing unions and shooting in the cheapest possible locations. The example of Bruce Willis is in fact Emmett’s role model – the actor appears at the very beginning of the film, then occasionally in the middle, and maybe even in the finale. For example, in one of his recent films, “HardKillBruce Willis appears on screen for a total of seven minutes.
In a large part of these 25 productions from the last 4 years, we see him for an average of 10 minutes on screen. The actor’s representatives at the CAA agency limited Willis’ work on the set of these films to just 2 days, with contracts stating that he could not work more than 8 hours. Sources said Los Angeles Timesthat he often disappeared after 4 hours on the sets of films, for which he often earned up to $ 2 million. Shooting days began to be shortened to such an extent that there was no possibility to make a good film. And the blame is, or will be, on the director and star, in this case Bruce Willis. Anyway, we had proof of this last year, when Golden Raspberry tried to make fun of this state of affairs, not knowing that Willis was struggling with the disease.
Also read: Dwayne Johnson celebrates 20 years of film career, and we choose the best productions with his participation.
So his farewell to the fans is bittersweet. On the one hand, no matter how you look at it, he appeared in 25 films in less than four years. On the other hand, he leaves marked by a terrible disease and his final achievements are poor films produced in conditions far from civilized film production. If you would like to check out some of the recent films in which Bruce Willis starred, some are available in streaming in Poland. Canal+ online has in its library “Paradise City” and “In the wrong place“. In April, the film will appear on this site “Killer” with his last role in his career.
Also here you can see that the actor appears in at least one scene, and the main plot revolves around completely different characters. The end of a career is always sad, but in the case of Bruce Willis, the feeling is doubled due to the circumstances of his retirement. All we can do is wish him peace and rest, as long as the disease he is struggling with allows him to do so. The world will surely remember him as John McClaine, and let it stay that way. Take care Bruce!
