Corrected entry: When John McClane fell down the ventilation shaft, that would have ended him. There is no way he could have caught and stopped himself like he did.
Corrected entry: Why does the blonde terrorist not understand Alan Rickman when he tells him to shoot the glass in German, but understands in English? Even assuming (as seems likely) that he just didn't hear him properly or else couldn't believe what he'd just heard, why would repeating himself in English make more sense, what with them being German?
Correction: It could be because when he says it in German, he says, "Shoot the window". The terrorist may have been confused and then he had to say glass to to him, but he chose to say it in English.
It could also be that he didn't understand the order. Honestly, under very few circumstances is an order to "shoot the window" or "shoot the glass" going to provide an advantage.
Question: Karl was hanging more than 5 yards off the ground for more than 6 seconds, and nothing indicated he was alive. So who removed him from the chain to the ground, and how did he not die?
Answer: Well the obvious answer to the first question is he simply unhooked himself from the chain. And the second, his neck simply didn't snap. So he was hanging in such a way that he was still able to breathe.
That I find hard to believe because with what was shown he was not moving and had the appearance that he's dead.
Answer: Don't forget, Hans blew the roof up so the chain mechanism probably got blown up as well, meaning Karl would have plummeted back down to the floor.
Character mistake: An unloaded automatic pistol is much lighter and balanced differently than a loaded one. When McClane hands "Bill Clay" (Gruber) the empty pistol, a terrorist of Gruber's credentials should pick up on the odd balance (I notice that difference, and I very rarely even pick up a gun).
Suggested correction: This presumes that a person can notice the difference between a fully-loaded pistol versus a pistol that is empty, which makes sense. However, it would be much more difficult for a person to tell that a gun is completely empty versus one that only has one or two bullets loaded. Since Gruber has no way of knowing his ruse didn't work, he doesn't believe McClane would have given him a completely empty gun. He obviously believes there is at the very least one bullet in the gun. He's not planning on getting into a shootout with McClane, he is just planning to threaten him and he certainly doesn't need a fully loaded gun to do that.
Suggested correction: It's easy to tell the different between the weight of a loaded vs. unloaded pistol, but given Hans had never held the pistol before, he had no way to compare the weight. Unless he regularly handled that particular model of pistol (unlikely, given his pistol is a completely different make and model) he would have no point of reference.
Question: As Al arrives, the terrorists run to a window and talk in German, laughing at him. What are they saying?
Answer: Based on the original film, it's almost impossible to say, as the actors could not actually speak German and were faking it. A search of the Die Hard script shows no specific German words or phrases, only vague notations such as "they speak briefly in German"; so, the German dialogue scenes were improvised outside of the script. Thus, most of the terrorists' "German" dialogue is incoherent gibberish with terrible pronunciation and grammar, such that it's incomprehensible. When they released this film in Germany, they even changed the terrorists' nationality from German to "European" (rather than insult German audiences with the garbled, nonsensical dialogue). Supposedly, when the movie was first released on VHS, they went back and dubbed in real German dialogue, but I've never seen or heard that version.
Answer: "nür einmal" - literally "only one"
"Nür ein mann" - literally "only one man".
Answer: I wonder why they didn't take the German subbed version for it where they say "Wieviele Bullen sind es?" to which the other one replies "Nur so ein Fettsack" which translates to "how many cops are there?" "Just one fat guy" and is grammatically correct.
Answer: I always thought that they were discussing the fact that it was just the one policeman responding. Something about einman meaning one man. But that's my broken gcse German from secondary school.
Answer: "Neuer ein man..." literally means 'One new man." But he says it more Anglicised so "neuer" sounds like English "newer."
Nür ein Mann is what's said - Only one man.
I believe it was 'nur ein man' - or 'only one man'.
Corrected entry: When Argyle rams his limo into Theo, the limo and ambulance are pinned so the front of the limo is well in front of the ambulance door. However, when Argyle gets out and punches Theo through the window, he's standing where the limo should be, and not standing on top of it.
Correction: When Argyle rams the ambulance, the limo's front left corner hits the front left corner of the van at about a 40 degree angle. The angle of the two vehicles leaves a wedge-shaped gap. Argyle over the limo's bumper, but you only see his body as he goes over, not the car.
There is no gap big enough for Argyle to stand as he is based on the previous scene.
Just watched this scene, the limo gets stuck on the ambulance's front tire, and covers at most half of the driver side door. While Argyle does seem to have more room than he should, he does stand at the rear of the door where he would be able to do so without standing on the limo.
Except we see him jump (over the limo) and lands a bit before where the mirror and the small triangle glass part of the window is, which is the front part of the door and sits over the wheel well where the limo is.
Corrected entry: When John is on the roof trying to radio for help he connects with a woman from an emergency help line, why does the woman not believe him when he tells her about the huge emergency? Not in a million years would a person from the emergency help line not believe you when you call them with an emergency, even if it sounded like a child making a prank call ordering a fire-truck to his friend's house and they could hear the child giggling while he's saying it, they would still have to send someone out. John is screaming at the woman for help and she still doesn't believe him.
Correction: As the other dispatcher stated at the beginning of the call, it came from the same building as the "false fire alarm." It got called off by the terrorists so the dispatchers believe it is a prank call. As far as they're concerned it's already been confirmed that there's no problem there.
There is another factor not being considered here: if memory serves, John is not on "911" but on the police band. Half of her stubbornness is telling this crazy civilian to get off this restricted channel.
I agree with the original poster. Prank or not, there was automatic weapon fire that caused her ears to ring, you would think that she would do something other than call for a 'black and white to do a drive-by'.
Correction: There HAVE been cases of emergency service operators not believing callers. There was one infamous case in NYC where a woman who had fallen ill died because the operator didn't believe her young son who called. And another when a kid called 911 from the school bus because the driver smelled of alcohol, was speeding, and blowing through several red lights while cursing the kids, who were begging her to stop. During the entire call, the operator seemed extremely skeptical of the report, and when the police finally caught up with the bus and arrested the driver, the operator was surprised and told the officer on the scene that she had "really hoped the kid was lying." So, while unprofessional, it happens. The wouldn't blow off the call the entirely, but they might assign it a lower priority. The most egregious cases have resulted in disciplinary action, including firing, and lawsuits.
I have personally called 911 and the operator didn't believe me and kept mocking me and then told me to get on my way, so I'm not even sure services were dispatched.
Corrected entry: There are actually 13 terrorists, though at more than one point it's said that there are 12.
Correction: But one of them's the computer expert, who's never seen by any other of the principal good guys.
Actually, the limo driver sees the computer expert in the parking garage, where he's disguised as a paramedic and is preparing an ambulance for the terrorists' getaway.
The limo driver isn't one of the principal good guys.
Corrected entry: Hans and most of his men arrive on the 30th floor party and begin firing. Upon hearing the shots, McClane grabs his gun and is able to sneak into the nearest stairwell and climb up a few flights of stairs (he checks and passes the 31st floor, where a few more of Hans' men are spotted wheeling supplies) before finally arriving at the 32nd floor to begin seeking help. For essentially the remainder of the movie, McClane remains "above the danger zone", so to speak. However, it is fair to theorize that when McClane initially reached the stairwell undetected, he could have also descended to any number of other floors to then seek help. Even if many of the lower floors may not have been open (locked, not finished, etc.), McClane could have simply descended as far down as the main lobby (and out the front doors). Remember, Hans and his men were not aware of a straggler at first, and in theory all McClane would have had to do is descend the stairs to the main floor and get past the lone terrorist acting as the "security guard" at the desk.
Correction: To what point though? That would work if McClane is trying to escape. But he's not. He's trying to stop the terrorist and talking to the police on the radio. His wife is in the building. He's not wanting to get out, he's wanting to save her and stop the terrorist.
That is correct, but you were thinking too far ahead. For the first few moments, John is simply trying to summon help (which is evidenced by him pulling the fire alarm and hoping that proper authorities arrive), and take care of it from there. He only started doing that after he found that he could not get past Hans and his men - because they were already aware of his existence. In one frame of thinking, it may have been easier to get the help needed for both his wife and everybody else if he just could escape the building all together, which he may have had a good chance of doing if he went down the stairs toward the first floor.
So the character made, in your opinion, a poor choice. This does not constitute a mistake.
It would have been a pretty pointless movie though wouldn't it?
Corrected entry: The C-4 explosive would need an electrical charge to cause the explosion. The chair and computer monitor or fall wouldn't cause the C-4 to detonate.
Correction: The Computer CRT on the chair has a vacuum tube and "cathode-ray" projection system that provides the television picture. These are known to explode when ruptured. I was also in the military in the 1976-1983. (USAF Security Police) Just for grins and giggles, a buddy of mine got hold of some detonators. We took them and an old CRT out on the range and tied them together. We shot the CRT, it exploded and detonated all of the blasting caps.
Correction: McClane pushes in detonators/ blasting caps to the C4 before lashing it on the computer monitor and office chair. Detonators have 'primary-explosives' within them that are much more sensitive than 'secondary' explosives 'like C4, which are less sensitive and rely on a 'shock wave' from a primary explosive to initiate or set it off. Primary explosives are susceptible to detonation by physical shock also. When the monitor and chair crashed onto the lift below, the weight of the monitor acted onto the detonator much like a hammer of a firearm will onto the firing cap of a bullet, setting it off and providing the shock impulse to detonate the main charge, that is the C4.
I would agree with this and also add that the CRT monitor attached to the chair was previously plugged in. This means that the tube in the monitor and the capacitors would still hold a charge. The amount of blasting caps put into the C4, combined with the electrical charge still contained in the now-smashed monitor, would give a chance of at least one of the blasting caps detonating.
No. The blasting caps won't initiate from being dropped like that. Even though it's a primary explosive, it's not that sensitive. If it were, it would be incredibly difficult to transport, but yet it's not. Regardless, the detonators aren't that sensitive, neither is the C4. The explosion would NOT happen.
Question: When John is first on the construction floor, he looks across and the shot lingers on a woman in another building. There doesn't seem to be any real point to that shot - am I missing something?
Answer: When Hans and the gang enter the floor and take everyone hostage, that's when John's phone gets cut out while talking to Argyle in the garage. He then escapes up to the unfinished floors and sees the construction foreman's phone and runs over to try that phone and of course the same thing; the phone is dead. He looks out the window and sees the woman talking on her phone in the adjacent building and it confirms to John that the Nakatomi Towers phone lines have been cut since it's not affecting the building next door.
Answer: He's waiting to see if she looks in his direction, so he can try to signal her. She doesn't, so he moves on.
If you look closely, she is talking on the phone, which confirms to John that the phone lines had been cut.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Correction: Why would that have "ended" him? I don't see any issue with the scene as shown that would lead to it being a mistake. Sure, the scene might require a slight bit of suspension of disbelief that he'd have the reflexes to catch the shaft as he fell and not break his fingers, but not enough that it'd constitute a mistake.
TedStixon
Another example generally is good guys getting shot and just carrying on. Yeah it requires a bit of fantasy but it's not an actual mistake.
Ssiscool ★
The problem is that Hollywood has people believing if you fall you can just grab onto something and live. Not true. The force exerted on your arms, even if it were possible to hang on, would rip them off your body. It has happened in real life to too many people. : (.