Die Hard/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Franchise in general

  • Adaptation Displacement: Occurs frequently due to Dolled-Up Installment.
    • The first movie was based on the novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp.
    • The second one was based on the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager.
    • The third one was originally an unrelated screenplay called Simon Says.
    • And the fourth movie was based on a magazine article written in Wired.
  • Awesome Music: Beethoven's 'Ode to Joy' from the first film. It's also featured in the trailers for all the sequels.
    • In terms of music actually written for the movies, Michael Kamen (the first three movies) and Marco Beltrami (who took over following Kamen's untimely demise) turn in some fine work such as Kamen's "The Battle" in the first one and "Shootout And Snowmobile Chase" from the second one, and Beltrami's "Truckzilla" in the fifth.
  • Complete Monster: Hans Gruber; see the YMMV for the original film below for details.
    • Colonel Stuart of Die Hard 2, who murders a plane full of innocent people just to make a point that his demands and threats are serious.
    • The only main villain to subvert this is the one from Die Hard with a Vengeance, Simon Gruber. He calls the NYPD to say that he's planted a time bomb in a New York City elementary school, but he leaves only a vague clue as to its location. He does this to divert police attention away from his actual target; once the bomb is found and revealed as a fake, he tells McClane, "I'm a soldier, not a monster. Even though I sometimes work for monsters."
    • Thomas Gabriel is willing to crash the entire nation (not to mention the planet considering how interconnected we all are) for both his revenge and his greed.
  • Crazy Awesome: McClane takes out choppers with cars, swings in via fire hoses and takes on a whole building of terrorists barefoot in a wifebeater. And destroys a multi-million dollar jet fighter, though that was mostly by accident.
  • Critical Research Failure: Die Hard 2: aviation doesn't work that way. At all. In fact, Airplane! is probably more accurate. The villains' plan involves shutting down air traffic control at Washington Dulles International Airport so as to prevent interference with their plot. This creates drama via the fact that a lot of planes are unable to be given instructions to land at the airport, so they're all circling the airport with dwindling fuel supplies. There's just one problem: FAA regulations state that all passenger airline flights must carry enough fuel to divert to another major airport close by in case of an emergency, like the one depicted in the film. The film takes place in Washington D.C. There is a second major airport in DC (Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport) and a third if you count Andrews Air Force Base, which is more than capable of landing civilian airliners, as it is the home base of the President's 747. Furthermore, Baltimore is close by and Newark, Philadelphia and New York City (two major airports in the city) aren't a terribly long distance away either. In short, the suspense of the movie never should have happened.
  • Evil Is Sexy:
    • This trope is pretty much a given when your villain is being played by Alan Rickman.
    • Or Jeremy Irons. In a tank top.
    • Katja in Die Hard with a Vengeance.
    • Maggie Q's character in Live Free or Die Hard, which McClane comments on.

"That girl of yours? Smokin' hot."

      • Her boyfriend, Thomas Gabriel (played by Timothy Olyphant), is quite easy on the eyes himself.
  • Friendly Fandoms: With the Lethal Weapon and Terminator fandoms.
  • Funny Aneurysm Moment: In Die Hard 2, the old lady sitting next to McClane's wife on the plane complains that she "should have taken the bus." Well, actually...
    • And then in Die Hard with a Vengeance, he has to stop a bomber from exploding a bomb on a subway. It would seem Speed is even more like Die Hard (On A Bus and Subway Train) than first supposed.
  • Harsher in Hindsight: Looking at the first three films: a tower gets blown up, a terrorist plot with airplanes, and New York City in danger.
    • In Live Free or Die Hard, the Big Bad's apparent motivation for messing with America's computer infrastructure is to teach them a lesson for ignoring him about the threats cyberterrorist can pose. In Real Life, Dr. Bruce Edward Ivins was suspected to have caused the 2001 Anthrax attacks for this same reason.
    • In Die Hard with a Vengeance, one of the cops makes an offhand comment to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and how darned inconvenient it was. Ouch.
  • Iron Woobie: McClane Sr. But he still soldiers on. See Determinator on the main page.
  • It Was His Sled: Most of the films. Yes, including the 4th. Yes, even on this very website, which makes it very difficult to watch the entire series unspoiled.
  • Magnificent Bastard: Simon Gruber. It runs in the family.
  • Memetic Mutation: The second movie's title has been popular for parodic snowclones on the formula "X Something 2: X Harder", such as Desert Bus for Hope 2: Bus Harder.
  • Moral Event Horizon: Stuart's murder of a plane of innocents in Die Hard 2.
  • The Scrappy: Matt in the fourth film.
  • Straw Man Has a Point: Gabriel did try to warn the government who hired him that their security was woefully inadequate... It still doesn't stop him from exploiting those weaknesses to get rich and kill people (and not in that particular order).
  • Weird Al Effect: Everybody knows McClane's catchphrase "Yippie-Kai-Yay, motherfucker!", but few now remember that the line (or at least the "Yippie-Kai-Yay" part) was derived from the western song "Git Along, Little Dogies".

First movie

  • And You Thought It Would Fail: Apparently, before Bruce Willis was approached to play John McClane, the job had already been turned down by Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson, who didn't believe in the script, and John McTiernan, who would later direct it, even turned down several offers. When his agent delivered the news to Willis, he immediately advised him not to do it, thinking he'd make a complete fool of himself. However, due to the payment being simply too good to turn down, Willis accepted to play McClane, kicking off his career as one of Hollywood's most popular and well paid actors. Not to mention how the movie became influential in formula and protagonist type of later movies. It is now virtually impossible to find a Best Action Movies list that does not contain it, more often than not, at the top of the pile.
  • Award Snub: Alan Rickman deserved a lot of Oscar nominations, but never more so than for this (and in his theatrical debut, no less). His Hans Gruber has stood the test of time as one of the silver screen's most iconic villains. Empire even named Gruber the 17th greatest film character in 2006.
  • Complete Monster: Hans Gruber is definitely a Complete Monster. While he seems to be accommodating towards the needs of the hostages after they're addressed to him (providing a sofa for a 9-months pregnant woman, for instance), he actually is intending to kill every single one of them to cover his escape by herding them onto the roof, then blowing it up with a massive amount of C4 when the helicopters get near.
  • Crosses the Line Twice: Sure, sending Tony's corpse down the elevator was meant as a intimidation tactic, but tucking a Santa's hat on him?
  • First Installment Wins: Every Die Hard movie has been a hit, but only the first is a landmark in popular culture. Bruce Willis himself was quoted as saying that the only good Die Hard movie was the first.
  • Harsher in Hindsight:
    • Take a look at the cover. What does this remind you of? It kind of looks like...you know...yeah... (it shows Nakatomi Plaza, which was filmed at Fox Plaza in Los Angeles, with an explosion on the top; the dark stripe down the middle makes it look at first glance like two skyscrapers of a similar look to the World Trade Center).
    • Sgt. Al Powell is ashamed of himself after he shot a kid because he mistakenly believed he had a gun. In 2012, after the shooting of teenager Trayvon Martin, it was initially believed that George Zimmerman, his shooter, shot him because he mistook his Skittles bag for a gun.
  • It Was His Sled: Two.
    • The villains' plan to commit mass murder by blowing up the hostages on the roof.
    • Hans' Disney Villain Death, which is one of the most iconic shots in the film.
  • Jerkass Woobie: Karl. He shows real grief and rage when Tony becomes the first baddie McClane kills, and loses all interest in the robbery for the rest of the film, so bent is he on avenging his brother, and who wouldn't be furious if their sibling was killed?
  • Magnificent Bastard: Hans Gruber, especially when he gets caught at gunpoint by McClane and almost gets away with simply using an American accent to pretend to be a civilian. And even then, after his henchmen turn up, he manages to do some serious damage to McClane by taking advantage of his bare feet and shooting the glass.
  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Moral Event Horizon: Hans Gruber's attempt to blow all the hostages away on the roof would have been this.
  • "Seinfeld" Is Unfunny: Though the action itself holds up, the movie's basic premise and elements being copied so much can often lead to people forgetting just how completely unlike anything else it was at the time. Compare it to Commando, which Schwarzenegger turned down the film to do and a more typical film of the era: a thickly-muscular Invincible Hero globetrotting the world and wiping out an entire terrorist organization singlehandedly in a hail of near-bloodless gunfire as everybody misses him, and realize just how revelatory a film with a protagonist who's just a somewhat-skilled cop whose feats are mostly realistic, who gets injured and grows tired over the course of the film, with the action kept to a single confined space where every hit is brutal and made to count, would be by comparison.
  • Sequel Displacement: The original Die Hard was based off of the 1979 thriller novel Nothing Lasts Forever by Roderick Thorp which was a sequel to the 1966 novel The Detective, which was adapted into the movie of the same name in 1968. So technically, Die Hard is actually a sequel to the 1968 film The Detective, but it is rarely acknowledged as such.
  • Sequelitis: All of the following movies have suffered varying degrees of this; firmly cemented, however, with A Good Day to Die Hard, which is almost universally considered the weakest in the series.
  • Too Cool to Live: Hans. None of the other films in the series have had a Big Bad as iconic as him.
  • Tough Act to Follow: While some of the sequels have their fans, none of them have come even close to matching the original in either acclaim or cultural impact.
  • What an Idiot!:
    • Dwayne Robinson, who chooses to act on random theories rather than heeding the warnings passed on to him by Al and John, refusing to believe the latter is on their side even after he's confirmed to be a fellow cop.
    • The police operators, who sound absolutely disinterested in John's pleas for help even after overhearing gunfire on the receiver.
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