I imagine around 2014 as that's when Bruce was probably forced to make Direct to Video from then on out. I bet his family noticed a sharp decline of his mental state and then plotted to make as much money as possible off the poor bastard.
2014 DTV: 1
2015 DTV: 3
2016 DTV: 1
2017 DTV: 2
2018 DTV: 3
2019 DTV: 2
2020 DTV: 3
2021 DTV: 6
2022 DTV: 9!
They "plotted?" Sounds like a stupid conspiracy theory.
shareMost likely it was just the wife that was plotting. His kids seem too stupid to realize their money train was about to run off the tracks... but a younger wife with an over the hill star... well it brings up the possibility that Bruce found his own Amber Turd and she didn't like the thought of running out of cash... I mean come on lets be real when a woman married a dude that is 20 years older than they are it only has a few plausible reason... they have serious daddy issues, they are trying to jump start their career, they are retarded, or they are going for the gold. She hasn't had any meaningful career to jump start, she doesn't seem like she has daddy issues and she doesn't seem retarded... I think that only leaves be a gold digger as the most plausible motive.
shareIt's not really stupid to presume that a family might take advantage of an older member as their cognition declines. This happens in real life. To non celebrity people.
shareStill a not nice allegation without proof. We know as a fact that he did a lot of DTV movies to make more money for his family. The question is, did Bruce Willis decided this on his own when he was still capable of doing it or was he already convinced by his family. We all can agree, that unlikely his last say 2 years he was still capable of really decide it for his own (at least all the time), but if Bruce Willis decided to make the money for his family and told this also to them, I don't see a problem. We just will never know except Willis made a handwritten contract early on (possible). But yes, it is possible they used him, I would just be more careful with claiming it.
The last year of Willis career was definitely an atrocity.
i agree with the timeline. i'd probably say around 2013-2014 too. i know he was really trigger happy to immediately start working on die hard 6 as soon as die hard 5 ended, but it would seem as if something stopped that from happening (apart from die hard 5 being a horrible movie). maybe that's when the symptoms began to arise, and he realized he probably couldn't do a big blockbuster like that again.
shareI wonder if he could have someone write a book about the whole Die Hard saga including what happened with 6 , fans would want to read it for sure. (not an autobiography just all on Die Hard, although I guess it would be more likely to be a full autobio like Arnold did with just the odd page on his various films)
shareI wonder if initially, people just assumed that Bruce was in a Nicolas Cage type of situation, where he had to accept virtually anything that came in his way as a means of paying off his debts.
shareI'm reminded of this BBC interview from almost a decade ago, but then again, he was most likely ill for that long:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MgCXAQQB-aQ
One of the ways to get it is through head injury. So this could have been getting progressively worse since 2002 when he got hit in the head with a projectile on one of his movie sets. And just little by little it just got worse and worse and since then. It's a possibility anyway.
shareThe brothers in the audience aren't having any of it!
shareOnly those working close with him would have really noticed early on... you can't base it off his movie choices because they have included real stinky piles of shit from early on.
shareMaybe around 2015. When he got fired from Café Society for not being able to remember his lines. When he did Misery the same year he wore a earpiece to feed him his lines.
shareI wonder if Bruce's blowup/falling out with Sylvester Stallone over The Expendables 3 was another indicator. I don't have all of the details right in front of me at the moment, but I think that Bruce basically demanded an exorbitant amount of money for what essentially amounted to a few days of work. And people at the time, naturally came to the conclusion that Bruce was being greedy and lazy.
shareI kinda got the sense watching 2000s Unbreakable that he was starting to have some issues. He stuttered noticeably during the scene where his son was threatening to shoot him, to "prove" that he couldn't die. And while some of that could conceivably be attributed to "the stress of the situation"... It felt a bit over the top to me. Like he shouldn't be having that much trouble talking. *shrugs*
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