In a way – in the smallest, saddest way imaginable – we should probably be quite grateful to Bruce Willis. Because in a year packed beyond words with inexplicable disappointments, he has somehow managed to put them all into perspective.

First, let’s get the stragglers up to speed. This weekend, Willis’s daughter Rumer tweeted a video accompanied by the hashtag #DieHardisBack. In the video, John McClane strolls through the darkness while someone whistles Ode to Joy. Some guns reload. He turns to see a gang of armed men. He removes his jacket. Some text reads: “As one story ends, a new one begins.” The video ends.

Now, clearly, this had to be a trailer for a new Die Hard movie. Maybe even the long-mooted Die Hard: Year One, the John McClane origin story told both in the present day and flashback. Either way, it was probably something worth getting excited over.

Except, no. Because yesterday Rumer Willis posted an extended version of the video, and it turns out that it wasn’t a new Die Hard film at all. It was a commercial. A commercial for car batteries. John McClane has made a new commercial for car batteries.

Admittedly, it’s a relatively action-heavy commercial for car batteries. In it, McClane needs to buy a car battery, gets thrown through the window of a car battery shop, carries a car battery through an air vent, replaces a car battery and then blows up an out-of-control excavator with a grenade. And, true, the Die Hard franchise has been so abjectly spotty that this technically counts as the third-best Die Hard film ever made. Nevertheless, it is still a commercial. For car batteries.

And this is what really stings. Sure, iconic movie characters have appeared in adverts before. Fred Astaire danced with a Dirt Devil once, but only after he was dead. And Morpheus from The Matrix appeared in a commercial in 2014, but that was for a car. An entire car. Not just the most boring individual component of a car.

You can forgive Willis for this. He has form in this area, remember. He has appeared in adverts for Seagrams wine coolers and energy drinks called Hell. He has sipped beer in Germany and flown around with a propeller on his head in Japan. In 2008 he even appeared in a Die Hard-related advert for Aviva, where he (as Bruce Willis) rode next to himself (in archive footage of John McClane) and complained about his driving skills.

But to full-on reprise John McClane – and for such a dreary product – is absolutely miserable. The thing about the Die Hard films is that nothing could quite extinguish your hope for them. When Die Hard 2 became an orgy of murder and genuinely gratuitous swearwords, it still skated by on the charisma of Bruce Willis. Although Die Hard 4 wobbled around without a point, it was still intermittently fun to watch. Even Die Hard 5, as truly depressing as it undoubtedly was, still gave you enough to hope that there would one day be life in the old dog yet.

Now, though? Now that John McClane has become a stooge for Big Battery, exhaustedly quipping non sequiturs to half-forgotten co-stars in exchange for what almost definitely wasn’t enough money, it might be time to put him to bed for ever.

We’ve struggled through Covid and Brexit and God knows what else over these last few months, but seeing John McClane become a salesman for car parts has pushed this stupid year over the edge. If anyone needs me, I’ll be quivering under my duvet for the next two months.