Die Hard 2 (1990) - 56 mistakes
Directed by Renny Harlin, starring Bonnie Bedelia, Bruce Willis, John Amos, William Sadler
Please note: A few people have said that if the plane was running on fumes it couldn't explode into a huge fireball - yes it could, because fumes are just as explosive, if not more so.
Continuity: Bruce Willis is emerging from an underground air-vent when the plane with General Esperanza is landing. Initially the plane is coming on a direct course for him and he struggles to get out. In fact the front wheel is on course with and knocks the vent cover. But in the very next scene, the tire marks clearly show the front wheel passed to the right of the vent and so completely missed it.
Factual error: The terrorists some how raise the elevation of the airport in relation to the ILS (instrument landing system). This causes one of the jets to crash. The ILS glide slope is broadcast from a fixed antenna beside the runway, 1000 feet from the approach end. The glide slope is fixed at (usually) 3 degrees. Even if someone changed the slope (ie, degrees of slant), it would still terminate on the runway at the touchdown zone. Besides, the pilots have charts that give all pertinent information about the ILS and also have altimeters, radar altimeters, ground proximity warning systems (GPWS), and brains (duh). They would not have descended into the ground even if the terrorists had tampered with the ILS.
Factual error: When McClane (Bruce Willis) is brought into Capt. Lorenzo's (Dennis Franz) office at Dulles Airport for the first time, Lorenzo mentions that McClane was in violation of several District of Columbia laws. Dulles Airport is in Virginia, not DC, therefore any DC laws would not apply to Dulles. (Although VA may very well have similar laws about airport misconduct.)
Deliberate "mistake": I find it hard to believe that every officer in the police station managed to pull their guns on John McClane and yet not a single one of them opened fire on him, even though he was apparently firing an automatic weapon at their captain. They couldn't have automatically known they were blanks.
Factual error: Near the beginning of the film when John McClane goes to the pay phone and calls his wife Holly on the airplane, that is impossible. Those phones you see on the seats on the plane can only be used from the air to the ground not the other way around. Holly does answer on the plane phone and not on any cell phone she had in her purse.
Revealing: Throughout the whole movie, you can see bits of 'snow' stuck to various things in close up view (i.e. guns, hair, faces, clothing). Look closely at the snow, its painfully obvious that they are little thin scraps of white plastic. Most evident is in McClane's hair when the platoon is about to move in on the church, the shot of him saying "You're not such an asshole, after all."
Continuity: In the beginning of the movie when John is sitting at a table in the airport smoking a cigarette, you see him notice the table with the 3 (2 white and 1 black) guys that are acting suspicious. When the black guy gets up to leave, he leans down and you see a hand grab a package. If you notice, the hand that grabs the package is white. Later when the two white guys leave, one of them leans down to grab the package and it's the same shot that was used when the black guy grabbed his package.
Continuity: After McClane gets the car towed away, notice that it is night and snowstorming all over the place. When he enters the airport, you can see that outside it is daytime and sunny, yet McClane shakes off snow whereas other people in the airport don't have snow on them at all. The airport scenes were filmed at LAX's Bradley International Terminal during the month of February, so this explains the sunny day.
Continuity: Two guys dressed in red go to the church and are let in by the old man. One of the men then says something like "You were right about that," and the scene shows him shoot his gun with his arm outstretched (obviously). The next scene though of the old man falling backwards shows the shooter's arm down by his side, however in the next scene where it cuts back to the shooter his arm is outstretched with the gun again.
You may also like: Die Hard | Die Hard: With a Vengeance | Live Free or Die Hard | Terminator 2: Judgment Day | Iron Man
