Visible crew/equipment: In the first scene of the Christmas party when Takagi steps out of one the offices and greets a couple of his guests, the camera pans left to show the orchestra and other guests. A huge shadow of the camera and its operator is being shown on the back wall, then the stage light gets moved to light a different area and the shadow is gone. (00:02:20)
Visible crew/equipment: When one of the terrorists enters an abandoned floor, logically the floor should be empty, but you can see the casting crew in the reflection of the windows. (00:35:00)
Visible crew/equipment: When Al goes into the lobby of the building, he walks over to a large reflective marble counter. If you look at this counter you can very plainly see the reflection of a large metal stage lamp hanging right over the actors' heads. (00:52:25)
Visible crew/equipment: Everyone is surprised when Karl is alive at the end of the movie because he appeared to be dead when hanging by the chain that McClane had wrapped around his neck. However, if you look at the back of Karl's head during the entire scene, you can see the safety wire coming out of the back of his shirt that holds him up. No wonder he survived. (01:48:45)
Visible crew/equipment: When McClane is crawling under the long table to get closer to hear the terrorists' conversation, you can see the reflection of the camera operator's legs following along with him on the table base. (00:29:15)
Visible crew/equipment: In scene on the top floor after John hits the fire alarm, as he is seeing the fire trucks coming and then turns away, once the lights are turned on, you can see the reflection of a number of crew people in the window during/after the cut away. One dude in a green shirt, another in a white shirt are prominent. (00:41:00)
Visible crew/equipment: Just after John has shot Hans, he falls and smashes the glass window. Look behind him: you can see a wire in two shots. It's meant to hold the stunt double for either Holly or Hans. No slow-mo required.
Visible crew/equipment: When John gets out of the limo at Nakatomi Plaza, a stage light is reflected clear as day in his door. (00:08:10)
Visible crew/equipment: The shadow of the camera is visible right of screen when John is wrapping himself with the fire hose and asking himself why he's doing it. It lingers for some time. It looks to be a steadycam with a monitor.
Visible crew/equipment: McClane runs up the stairs and looks on floor 31. He goes up another floor as the camera follows. The camera operator's shadow is blatantly visible left screen.
Visible crew/equipment: As the terrorists arrive, there is a shot of two vehicles pulling up. The camera is tracking along with the vehicles. At the very end of the shot its shadow and a crewmember's shadow are visible on the concrete.
Visible crew/equipment: When McClane steps out of the Limo at Nakatomi, a large film light is reflected in the door.
Visible crew/equipment: At the end when all of the papers are falling from the building, there is a wide shot. On the right hand side of the shot looks to be some kind of blower machine making the papers come out.
Visible crew/equipment: When the car and truck drive upto the building, the truck goes down a ramp - another moving shadow can be seen cast over the car, from the camera crew.
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.