Die Hard (1988)

2 commented-on entries since 18 Nov '25, 20:04

★★★★☆

Starring: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia, Paul Gleason, Reginald VelJohnson

Corrected entry: Towards the beginning of the film, John enters Nakatomi Plaza and finds Holly's name on the computer so the guard can tell him where she's located in the building. After John does this, the guard tells him that she's on the 30th floor and that there's no one else left in the building. Now, why couldn't he have just told him that the party was on the 30th floor and saved him the trouble of playing with the computer?

Correction: This is a list of people who are currently checked into the building, so obviously the guard is having him check if Holly is actually there at all, not to see where she is.

The guard also gives off vibes of 'check out this cool new feature of ours', as he could easily just have checked for Holly himself at his computer.

Corrected entry: What the hell happened to the cut on Al's head? He is seen being tended for a nasty head gash by an ambulance man, but this is the first and last time he is seen wounded. No cut, no bandage, nothing from that point onwards. (01:01:30)

Correction: There is no cut, it is the blood from the terrorist that fell on Al's car. And also the guy who wipes the blood asks if it is his own and Al says no.

At no point do the cops say to Al if it's his blood, and Al says no.

Joey221995

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Mistakes

Other mistake: Powell says he has a desk job, but he is driving a cruiser. Cruisers are for cops on patrol. A cruiser would not be issued for a cop at a desk, especially not one who's on his way home, as Al says he is.

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Quotes

John McClane: Oh, you're in charge. Well, I got news for you, Dwayne. From up here, it doesn't look like you're in charge of jack shit.
Dwayne Robinson: You listen to me, you little asshole.
John McClane: Asshole"? I'm not the one who just got butt-fucked on national TV, *Dwayne*.

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Trivia

Trivia: Nakatomi Plaza, the setting of the film, is actually Fox Headquarters in Los Angeles.

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Questions

Question: Why didn't Hans Gruber simply place 5 hostages in a room and threaten to blow their brains out if John McClane doesn't hand himself in? John McClane is the good guy with a conscience and Hans Gruber is the ruthless killer that kills 2 people in a heartbeat, John would have been forced to hand himself in or be responsible for their deaths. Even if Hans didn't want to kill anyone, he could have pretended to shoot people one by one. John wouldn't know any better.

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

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

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.

Answer: Hans Gruber needed the last vault lock to open by cutting off the electricity; he didn't want to escalate it further so that the FBI would start getting more aggressive. He needed them to play ball so he could make it seem like he's just a terrorist who martyrs himself and the hostages, and by the time they figured out he and his men aren't among the remains, they'll already have left in the basement with the ambulance. Shooting 5 people would have escalated it to the point that the FBI wouldn't play ball with him.