pre-9/11 depictions of terrorism in media are so funny to me. like, the action-movie 'terrorist' lineage of counter-strike is such a rich vein of hilarious imagery. these guys are generally completely disconnected from any political motives or even sources of funding and are seemingly just what happens when you get posessed by a balaclava
it's great. these guys are like a naturally occuring species endemic to the 1990s
every 20c. action movie where generic terrorists hijack a plane or a skyscraper or something so they can blow it up for the sake of terrorism is like a nature documentary to me. its their lifecycle
aside from being done for the purposes of goofy generic villains it's like. very emblematic of the whole 'end of history' era where it was kinda assumed the only conflict thereonout would be unmotivated malcontents causing chaos in paradise, which is also very funny. I propose this species be named Terroristi fukuyama.
The entire twist of Die Hard was that the bad guys weren't terrorists, they were thieves. They openly stated it.
The bad guys in Die Hard 2 were (essentially) a rogue military unit supporting the Contras, which is hardly generic. If anything, it's nakedly political.
The bad guys in Die Hard 3 were, again, thieves.
The closest to generic terrorists would probably be the bad guys in Die Hard 4, who were also thieves, but were also trying to demonstrate weaknesses in US cybersecurity.
We don't talk about Die Hard 5. But evil non-Communist Eastern Europeans is way closer to a generic adversary than terrorists (for instance, they're the bad guys in Air Force One, The Saint, The World Is Not Enough).
If you're trying to bullshit a point, at least use something obscure, not a movie that's been seen by every heterosexual man in America.
