What is John McClane saving us from, exactly?

In a July 3 story in The New York Times, Caryn James makes the excellent point that in “Live Free or Die Hard,” the fourth installment in the resilient action movie brand, good guy John McClane (Bruce Willis) is guarding us from people who would deny us access to technology. The central villain–Thomas (Timothy Olyphant), a computer whiz who used to be highly ranked in the American government–wreaks havoc on the country by annihilating everything that is run by computers. First he takes out the internet, the cell phone towers, and the TV satellites, and then he obliterates the computers that control water, electricity, and gas. “The loss of our information fix,” James writes, “hits a very raw nerve.”

But while it is an excellent starting place, James? story only hints at the film’s central anxiety. In her closing paragraph, she cites its “blend of old-school action and new-school technology,” and her phrasing points at the question running beneath every frame: Now that technology is undeniably in control, how is the classic image of the American man–the one who shoots first and asks questions later–going to survive?

The film’s assumption, of course, is that many Americans are worried about the emasculation of the archetypal cowboy, and as it addresses and ultimately coddles this fear, “Live Free or Die Hard” becomes a template for how the most conservative (and often reductive) American ideas about gender and power can remain firmly in place.

WARNING: I’m about to give away almost every plot point of the movie. Don’t read further if you want to see it later and still be surprised.

To begin, there?s the way John McClane gets constructed. At the beginning of the film, he’s like a lame duck president. He may be a senior detective in the NYPD, but we only see him getting disrespected by his juniors. For instance, in one of the first scenes–and this will become important later–McClane is spying on his college-aged daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) as she hooks up with a boy in her car. The little punk goes a bit too far, and just as Lucy is smacking his hand off her breast, McClane yanks open the car door and pulls the twerp out of his seat.

But is Lucy happy about Dad’s intervention? No! She berates him and insists she could have taken care of herself. The movie suggests otherwise–the boy did get his hands on her–but she disavows her father?s heroics. She doesn’t want him coming to the rescue, and what’s more, she doesn’t even want his name. Just like McClane’s wife Holly in the first movie, Lucy is calling herself Gennero, which is Holly’s maiden name.

Uh-oh! The male patriarchal figure has swooped in to perform his time-honored duty of protecting the chalice of female sexuality, and she’s rejected him! A bruising blow to phallic power! McClane ends this scene dumbfounded and frustrated, as though he can’t conceive why he shouldn’t step in to play his obvious role of guardian. You know… the role that has been given to knights and cops and white-hatted cowboys since forever.

In the very next scene, McClane is emasculated again. He?s told he has to escort a twentysomething computer hacker (Matt, played by Justin Long) to Washington, D.C.: a rookie?s job. McClane is not the protector. He’s just chauffeur to the geeks.

Throughout the film, our hero?s usefulness keeps getting called into question. The primary problem, which James hints at in her story, is that he’s become too old-fashioned to guard the country. “You’re a Timex watch in a digital world,” Thomas sneers at him, and there are constant jokes about McClane not understanding these new-fangled gizmos like computers and video games.

And yes, this displacement appears in every “Die Hard” movie–remember Part One, when McClane can’t fathom Los Angeles?–but it goes deeper here. For the first time, he simply cannot stop the bad guys by beating them senseless. His brawn certainly helps, since there are plenty of scenes where he drives cars through walls and slugs people in the face and what have you, but this time, he has to have a partner. And I’m not talking about the way Reginald VelJohnson’s character, policeman Al Powell, is his partner in “Die Hard 1,” just calling up on the CB radio every now to offer helpful information.

This time, there are things that only Matt can accomplish. In an unusual move for an action franchise so closely associated with one character, we sometimes see the hacker doing all the work. He types on his keyboard, averting one disaster or another, and McClane isn’t even in the room.

This is not a tension the film resolves. It can’t. Baby Boomers are getting older, and the generations below them are about to move into more prominent positions of power. Eventually, even McClane is going to be too old to save the day.

But take heart! Though it knows he can’t go on forever, “Live Free or Die Hard’s” major dramatic arc is about the transference of McClane’s masculine archetype into Matt’s lanky body.

Consider this: When we first meet him, Matt conspicuously stands against everything McClane believes in. He hates classic rock. He loathes the cops, and he distrusts the mainstream media that the old guy uses to get information. The hacker, just by his very work, is a symbol of anarchy against the established order embodied McClane embodies.

Equally important? Matt is shown as physically weak. There are jokes about how he’s too out of shape to climb stairs that McClane can bound with ease. And because this is McClane’s movie, we’re invited to laugh at the youngster’s fatigue. Similarly, we’re asked to sympathize with the hero?s horror that the kid doesn’t like Creedence Clearwater Revival. Who is this other? This kid? This anti-man?

Slowly but surely, though, Matt goes from hating McClane’s patriarchal authority to admiring it. When McClane saves his life, the kid gives this big speech about how McClane is “that guy… that hero” that Matt himself will never be. McClane counters by saying he’s lost his family’s respect in the process of being “that guy,” but the seeds of Matt’s transformation have been planted.

The next step comes when Evil Thomas starts destroying the country’s computer systems. Matt admits he once fantasized about wiping everything out and starting fresh, but now he sees the cost of such a maneuver. Looking at the car wrecks and chaos all around him, he rejects the hacker’s dream for the first time.

In response, McClane talks about how hackers and the like never remember the “good, scared, honest people” (something like that) who are at home with their families, huddled in the dark. Whatever the wording, the message is clear: Rebelling against the authority of the government (and, by extension, McClane) equals disaster, and the people who rebel (like Evil Thomas) are… well… evil.

And here’s the most important part: At the end of the movie, it’s Matt who kills the last bad guy. He picks up a gun and shoots, thereby saving the day. In the last scene, McClane tells Matt he has become “that guy.” The hero. All because he killed the villain, which is the ultimate cowboy action.

In other words, McClane?s violent, aggressive masculine power has now fully transfered to the hacker kid. He’s become the prototype of a new patriarchal model. He’s got the geeky smarts one needs to dominate the future, but he’s also got the brute force that makes McClane so unstoppable. After learning to honor the protector, Matt becomes him.

My roommate shrewdly points out that this ending echoes that of “Die Hard 1.” Al The Cop is shown throughout the movie as a frustrated failure, having gone to a desk job after shooting a kid by mistake. Al spends the movie proving he’s smarter than the other cops who are trying to help McClane out of that hijacked office building, but he doesn’t have the authority to act on his wits. Instead, he has to sneak behind his superiors in order to give McClane information. At the end, though, as McClane walks out of the building with his wife, now back to using her husband’s last name, it’s Al who picks up a gun and kills the final baddie. McClane’s masculine power has transferred to Al, and in “Die Hard 2,” the desk cop has been promoted to Sergeant. Again, if you behave like the patriarch, you get his privileges.

But there’s an even more important wrinkle in “Live Free or Die Hard.” Not only does Matt get McClane’s authority, he also gets his responsibility for young female sexuality.

The second half of the film’s plot hinges on Evil Thomas capturing Lucy, and it’s no small detail that McClane’s daughter is the one in trouble. He has a son in the first film, but the kid is not even mentioned here. That?s because the archetypal role of the son (the inheritor) is fulfilled by Matt, and now the boys just need something to protect.

It’s clear in Matt’s heroism-with-a-gun scene that’s he saving Lucy’s life as much as McClane’s. Unsurprisingly, the kids have crushes on each other by the end of the movie.

Also unsurprisingly, McClane is having none of it. It’s that reaction that could permanently send the character into obsolescence. Now that the Knight (McClane) has found a new Protector (Matt) for his chalice (Lucy), he doesn’t have to be a knight anymore. In the final moments, when McClane is threatening to beat Matt up if he puts the moves on his little girl and is groaning when she asks about this new boy, he is acting like a figure from ancient comedy. He’s the old fool–the blocking character who stands in the way of two lovers who will eventually get together.

But it’s okay. We’ve got Matt to be our new hero. And Lucy makes a point in the final scene of saying her last name is McClane. Despite her sassmouth, she has stepped back into the patriarchy. So even if McClane totters around forever as a comic buffoon, his legacy will live on.

However, do we really want the legacy McClane is leaving behind? Do we want a world in which the men kill and grunt as a means of proving themselves? Do we want a world in which the women talk about being independent, but really just want to be saved by a man whose name they can assume as their own?

I guess a lot of us do, because the story of “Live Free Or Die Hard” is as old as the hills. And just watch: I bet it’ll get great word of mouth from people who say it’s a good, old-fashioned movie. And that’s true: It’s old-fashioned in all the ways that keep power in the hands of the most predictable people.