Continuity mistake: After he climbs out of the air duct, John McClane's shirt goes from white to green. The dirt and grime from the air duct would cause discolouration only where the shirt comes in contact with the duct. However, his shirt is uniformly green including places that wouldn't make contact and it is impossible for all surfaces to make contact even in small areas. (00:23:05 - 00:56:30)
Continuity mistake: When the terrorists launch the rocket at the RV, they break the same window of the building twice. (01:11:55)
Continuity mistake: When Hans takes Holly hostage, as she is sitting on the floor talking to Hans, as the camera goes from him to her, each time Holly's shirt is unbuttoned and open more so her bra and boobs are revealed.
Continuity mistake: When the terrorists enter the building, they stream out of the rental truck. You don't see the large ambulance that emerges for their getaway at the end of the film. This is because the ambulance was a late addition to the script - the terrorists leaving the truck was originally a longer shot, but had to be cut down as short as possible to hide the lack of ambulance. More info in the trivia section. (00:18:00)
Continuity mistake: When Bruce Willis shoots Alan Rickman, Rickman falls through the window and grabs Bonnie Bedelia's arm to pull her with him. He has a good grasp on her arm because of her watch. When Bruce Willis is trying to release the clasp on her watch, you see blood on her face from his arm. The shot then cuts to Alan Rickman, and when the camera goes back to Bedelia and Willis, there is no longer any blood on her face. (01:57:15)
Continuity mistake: After the terrorists blow the roof and Willis jumps off with the fire hose, he hits the window. After kicking the window for a while, he decides to shoot it. As he pushes off the window you can see that his gun is out and pointed at the window yet in the next scene he pulls the gun from his side and then starts shooting at the window. (01:52:00)
Continuity mistake: When Bruce Willis breaks through the window (as the roof is blown), he lands on his back, head pointing towards the window. However the next moment we see him catching his breath, lying on his stomach and feet aimed at the window as the firehose hanger falls past the window. (01:52:10)
Continuity mistake: Takagi is sitting on the chair facing the door of the room when he is shot. In the next scene, the same door is splattered with blood, yet the glass structure which should be splattered with blood should be the glass window behind Takagi, not the door which he is facing. (00:30:15)
Continuity mistake: When he's climbing down the vents, the strap unties, and Bruce Willis falls. He misses the vent he was reaching for, and falls past the next one, so we assume he catches the third one down. However, after he flicks off his lighter, the camera pans up from the lit vent to Karl, and we can see that he somehow grabbed and climbed into the vent he definitely fell right past in the shot from above. (00:48:30)
Continuity mistake: At the start in the limo, when Argyle is listing all the features of the car, the bear is dead centre of the back seats. The very next shot is in the rear view mirror, and the bear's now over by the window. (00:06:00)
Continuity mistake: When the terrorist Karl is about to kill the man in the front desk, his fringe changes from neat and combed to slightly messy from one frame to the other.
Continuity mistake: When Powell's police cruiser is first fired on, he accelerates in reverse quickly. The first obstacle he hits completely destroys the right-hand side tail light assembly. Subsequnt shots of the car show the tail-light to be totally intact again. (00:55:05)
Continuity mistake: When Powell is driving his cruiser in reverse to get away from the bad guys shooting at him, several shots show a full roll-cage in the car which is not there in any other scene or close-up of the interior. (00:55:10)
Continuity mistake: In the scene where Al asks John if he has any kids of his own, John pulls out his wallet with a picture of his family. He is holding the radio and the wallet, but when it cuts to John's "Jungle Gym" comment, both his hands are on the wallet. It then cuts to John again holding the radio and the wallet. (01:16:35)
Continuity mistake: When McClane has killed the first terrorist and sends him down the lift, McClane is hidden in the lift shaft. During the ensuing conversation McClane writes the names "Hans" and "Karl" on his wrist in permanent marker. This disappears in the next scene.
Continuity mistake: When Takagi explains to the terrorists that, "he doesn't have that code," the trees outside the window are clearly swaying in the wind. The next shot is a panoramic view of the room, but now, the trees outside are still. (00:27:50)
Continuity mistake: The scene after John jumps from the roof and enters the building, he jumps in a pond of water to evade the helicopter blast and comes out completely drenched, but in the next scene he is completely dry.
Continuity mistake: After John has crawled through the vents and enters the room where Hans shot Takagi, the amount of blood on the window is a lot more than was thereafter Takagi got shot.
Continuity mistake: The headlights on Al's cop car are off in McClane's view from above but back on from ground level.
Continuity mistake: When the box truck (carrying the thief gang) drives down the ramp and the grey Mercedes continues on, you can see that the driver of the Mercedes is a white male without glasses. A minute later, the grey Mercedes pulls up to the front of Nakatomi Plaza. Alexander Gudunov gets out on the passenger side, and the driver gets out: he's now a black male with glasses.
Answer: We don't know what John would have done in that circumstance. Obviously Hans was planning to kill everyone with the explosives anyway at the end. Perhaps John would have suspected that. Also, doing that would invite more police incursions.
Greg Dwyer
The fact that we don't know how John McClane would have acted doesn't remove the fact that it would most likely have been a good way to coax him out. Also, depending on when Hans Gruber would have decided do implement this strategy, John probably wouldn't have known about the explosives on the roof as he only finds out about them at the 3rd act break. As for the "more police incursions" part, I couldn't disagree more; Hans already killed two hostages - one on speaker with the police -, all the cops in LA seem to be there already, and don't forget that the involvement of the FBI is part of their plan anyway. This is definitely the one major plot hole of this otherwise perfect film.
It would have been, but plenty of movie plots don't pan out the "perfect" way without it being a plot hole. Killing Ellis is a reasonable first step, it doesn't work, and then the events of the plot pick up pace - Gruber goes to check the detonators, as that's a priority. He's hoping/assuming they can get through the rest of their plan by isolating McClane, or at least prevent him causing more chaos. They want the power shut off - they don't want to cause such massive carnage that the building is stormed before then. They need to get helicopters, blow the roof, and escape as planned. Hans doesn't want to derail things any more than they already have been.
Jon Sandys ★
Seems to me like they have all their bases covered; the police isn't even able to get in with a tank as he blows them up so I don't think the police "storming the building" is even a possibility in the reality of the film. Also, after blowing up that tank, that's two hostages and a bunch of cops dead so I would say the situation is pretty derailed. Everything is going as planned for Hans and his team, except for McClane, so he should be in damage control mode and this is an obvious solution. He doesn't even have to change his plans, just tell McClane he's gonna kill one hostage every 10 minutes until he shows up unarmed and tell one of his henchmen guarding the hostages to do it while they go along with the plan and maybe even try to find McClane at the same time. I think this is something Hans should have at least considered, but the screenwriters just didn't think about it/didn't want to address because they couldn't think of a good reason for him not to do it.
There are no cops dead, Hans says "Just wound them" and despite the awesome explosion, the APC isn't actually penetrated or destroyed. But Hans needed this to turn into a standoff, a show of force would prevent a SWAT raid from expediting the deadline, he needed to get all of the hostages up on the roof to make his getaway downstairs, and executing a bunch of them would bring suspicion onto how cooperative he is (His plan to blow up the roof relies heavily on the police sending in choppers) they cooperate with him, which they won't do if they think Hans is a crazed lunatic who's only interested in more and more carnage, if he wounds the cops and only shows he can defend himself, and that he was being reasonable. The cops would play ball, and they would believe he's willing to spare the hostages lives, plus he always planned on taking one hostage as a contingency, if they thought they were gonna be killed they'd become a liability. Patton Oswalt talks of a real plothole though lol.
John McClane would know they'd kill him as soon as he shows up, as soon as he heard "We'll have to tell Karl that his brother is dead" he knew that all bets were off, he lost his chance to end it civil, if they had no personal connection to the first terrorist John kills then maybe putting 5 people into a room and doing an Air Force One on them would work, but not when John knows he'll be body number 6. Al says it best "If he gave himself up they'd both be dead" with Ellis execution, John watched them take control of the hostages, watched them execute the Takagi, and when the first Terrorist thinks he's found John he shoots first after saying "I promise I won't hurt you" and then taking his bag and realizing how well financed and equipped, these guys weren't domestic terrorists, they used serious money, serious contacts, and serious planning to get themselves into this building on this night. He knew the only way to play ball with them was fists and elbows.
Just because a character doesn't do a thing I doesn't make it a plot hole. The plot was that he didn't do it. You may consider a different approach "better" but that's irrelevant. You may as well try to argue that any character choice that doesn't fit with a perceived meta is a plot hole. It isn't, it's just the plot.
Hans thought Ellis was a good friend of John's and John still didn't give up when he was going to shoot him. If John wouldn't save his friend, why would he care about others. Plus Hans told Karl earlier he could stall the police but not if they heard gun shots. The police would have absolutely stormed the building if he started killing the hostages.
Zorz