Die Hard - Best Xmas Movie. ;)

[Lonemagpie]

That's pretty much how I feel. I liked 1 and 2, they were "Die Hard", but 3 and 4 felt like generic action movies with some action sequences strung together.

Die Hard is an accidental franchise. None of the movies, including the first one, started out as "Die Hard."

Die Hard was based on a book called Nothing Lasts Forever. The main character was Joe Leland, he was there to visit his daughter and she dies at the end. Wiki says the movie followed the book closely but I disagree. Aside from the basic plot there were significant differences.

It actually started out as a sequel to Commando, with Arnie rescuing his daughter again, who doesn't die. The stories were similar enough that Fox bought the rights to the book to cover themselves. Then Arnie dropped out, and it was no longer going to be a Commando sequel, so they started thinking about incorporating some bits and bobs from the book, and changing the lead character from invincible Arnie to a more vulnerable everyman.

On a scary note, the book is actually a sequel to The Detective, which was filmed in the late 60s with Frank Sinatra in the lead role - he's the original John McClane, in a way!

Die Hard 3 started out as a Brandon Lee action movie called Simon Says.

Which was originally optioned as Lethal Weapon 3 - hence the buddy dynamic in it...

 

[Holdfast]

I watched it again last night, with my buddy, and something jumped out at me that I never caught before. How did John know that it was Hans when Hans was pretending to be "Bill Clay?"

What tipped John off other than John just being awesome?

I think he was suspicious from the get-go. What would a civilian really have been doing crawling around in ducts, etc. And there was a definite pause when he challenged Hans, before Hans decided to fake the accent and turned around as "Clay". McClane's a good cop and the pattern recognition just didn't add up, so he figured something was wrong, but couldn't be sure, so he tests Hans. First with the name board, then by giving him the unloaded gun.

Die Hard is an accidental franchise. None of the movies, including the first one, started out as "Die Hard."

Die Hard was based on a book called Nothing Lasts Forever. The main character was Joe Leland, he was there to visit his daughter and she dies at the end. Wiki says the movie followed the book closely but I disagree. Aside from the basic plot there were significant differences.

It actually started out as a sequel to Commando, with Arnie rescuing his daughter again, who doesn't die. The stories were similar enough that Fox bought the rights to the book to cover themselves. Then Arnie dropped out, and it was no longer going to be a Commando sequel, so they started thinking about incorporating some bits and bobs from the book, and changing the lead character from invincible Arnie to a more vulnerable everyman.

On a scary note, the book is actually a sequel to The Detective, which was filmed in the late 60s with Frank Sinatra in the lead role - he's the original John McClane, in a way!

Die Hard 3 started out as a Brandon Lee action movie called Simon Says.

Which was originally optioned as Lethal Weapon 3 - hence the buddy dynamic in it...

This is just awesome information. Never knew any of this. Really puts the movies in a different light.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Damn you Lone Magpie for mentioning the Sinatra connection. I wanted to be the one to do that. But here's my tuppence of useless info:

The McClane of Nothing Lasts Forever is an older guy (IIRC, he's visiting his daughter in the building, not his wife) and at one stage in the early 1980s, it was mooted as a Clint Eastwood movie;

After the movie ceased to be Commando 2 (BTW, they share a writer in Steven DeSouza and the reference to 'enough explosives to level Arnold Schwarzenegger' is a nod to its origins), Richard Gere was the first choice to play McClean. Seriously.

The part was then offered to every leading man in Hollywood before Bruce Willis controversially landed himself $5m to play it, an unheard sum for 'a tv actor', unproven as a box office draw.

The original '58 Minutes' script landed on the desk of then-head of Fox Joe Roth, who thought it was a total rip-off of Die Hard. He suggested that they just rewrite it as a proper sequel to DH, which they of course did. Apparently minor miracles had to occur to get back so many players (Willis, Bedelia, Atherton, VelJohnson) etc and stick to the original shooting schedule. John McTiernan wasn't invited back, much to his chagrin

If DH is The Towering Inferno and DH2 is Airport, then everyone expected DH3 to be a variation on The Poseidon Adventure. A standalone script set on an ocean liner was being re-tooled for the adventures of Officer McClean, when Steven Seagal's Under Siege, set on a battleship became a hit and scuppered their plans. Settings such as a train, the subways, the space shuttle(!) were mooted, as was a script where McClean's daughter would be mistaken for an heiress and kidnapped. Back to the Commando roots?

As has been said, the original script for DHWAV was a spec script called Simon Says. However, the hero cop would have done something bad in his childhood to another boy called Simon, who was the vengeful bomber. The DH writers decided that they didn't want to reveal that McClane had done something so naughty in his youth, so someone came up with the idea that Simon was Hans' brother.

In the original script, the Samuel L Jackson character was a Korean grocer and this was the role Brandon Lee was to play. BTW, Jackson auditioned for the role of Al in the first movie but lost to Reginal Veljohnson, a friend of his.

Rumour has it that the producers wanted David Thewlis, who had gotten great acclaim around this time for Naked, to play Simon, but Willis vetoed him as not being starry enough. Thewlis looks a lot more like Rickman than Irons does, if you ask me.

Proposed settings for DH4 over the years included underwater, an island and the South American jungle. This was a script called Tears of the Sun, the title of which (but not the plot) eventually did become a Willis movie.

 

[Holdfast]

Thanks for the great trivia; I enjoyed reading that.

PS. this thread inspired me to watch Die Hard earlier this evening. I did get the hidden meaning behind Arnie reference, for the first time, thanks to the info earlier in the thread.

Almost every other line is quotable, mind you. A couple of great lines that stood out on this particular rewatching...

"I could talk about industrialisation and men's fashion all day, but I'm afraid work must intrude..." (I'm SO going to try to work that one into real life)

And in the unintentionally funny category: "Schiesse die fenster!" (Hans is ignored) "Shoot the glass!" (as if saying it in English would be the natural thing to do to emphasise a point in an argument between two native German speakers )

 

[Trekker4747]

"I could talk about industrialisation and men's fashion all day, but I'm afraid work must intrude..." (I'm SO going to try to work that one into real life)

It's funny, when I watched it the other day that line did make me think of you. I think you'd be forgiven if you substituted "industrializaion" for a more appropriate word in your situation.


"Glass?! Who gives a shit about glass?"

After all was said and done, you'd think at the very least the FCC would've handed John some fines for cussing on the radio.

It's also funny to me when the ladies at the call-center tell John over the CB to use a phone to call the police, not taking his call very seriously. Geeze, that's nice lady. You're monitoring an emergency channel, someone calls in with an emergency, and you tell them to fuck-off and to use a phone?

I also love the two FBI agents named Johnson one is white and the other is black, when he introduces himself to the LAPD captain he finds it necessary to add "No relation" after introducing themselves. And then later he's on the phone with someone at their office, "This is Agent Johnson.... No the other one."

I guess the guy on the phone said, "The black one?"



This is just an awesome movie.

 

[Data Holmes]

I love that it's really nothing more than circumstances that made these into Die Hard movies. I don't know if there's any other franchise out there that came about in a similar way.

It is fitting, considering the franchise hero...

"Glass?! Who gives a shit about glass?"

After all was said and done, you'd think at the very least the FCC would've handed John some fines for cussing on the radio.

It's funny because later he gets the glass in his feet...

I also love the two FBI agents named Johnson one is white and the other is black, when he introduces himself to the LAPD captain he finds it necessary to add "No relation" after introducing themselves. And then later he's on the phone with someone at their office, "This is Agent Johnson.... No the other one."

I guess the guy on the phone said, "The black one?"

That connects to the great joke in die hard 4 when he shows up at the FBI command center and the agent says "I'm agent Johnson" and he just gives him a look.

This is just an awesome movie.

Indeed.

 

[Trekker4747]

I love that it's really nothing more than circumstances that made these into Die Hard movies. I don't know if there's any other franchise out there that came about in a similar way.

It is fitting, considering the franchise hero...

"Glass?! Who gives a shit about glass?"

After all was said and done, you'd think at the very least the FCC would've handed John some fines for cussing on the radio.

It's funny because later he gets the glass in his feet...

I also love the two FBI agents named Johnson one is white and the other is black, when he introduces himself to the LAPD captain he finds it necessary to add "No relation" after introducing themselves. And then later he's on the phone with someone at their office, "This is Agent Johnson.... No the other one."

I guess the guy on the phone said, "The black one?"

That connects to the great joke in die hard 4 when he shows up at the FBI command center and the agent says "I'm agent Johnson" and he just gives him a look.

This is just an awesome movie.

Indeed.

I'll have to watch 4 here soon to catch that joke.

 

[Aragorn]

The special edition DVD of Die Hard (the second release) had a special feature that showed people what the difference was between widescreen and pan & scan. And to think that explanation is still needed today.

 

[Trekker4747]

The special edition DVD of Die Hard (the second release) had a special feature that showed people what the difference was between widescreen and pan & scan. And to think that explanation is still needed today.

Yeah, I think that's one of the best demonstrations of the difference and I used it many times in trying to convert friends and family to how great Widescreen/OAR is.

 

[Starkers]

Thanks for the great trivia; I enjoyed reading that.

PS. this thread inspired me to watch Die Hard earlier this evening. I did get the hidden meaning behind Arnie reference, for the first time, thanks to the info earlier in the thread.

Almost every other line is quotable, mind you. A couple of great lines that stood out on this particular rewatching...

"I could talk about industrialisation and men's fashion all day, but I'm afraid work must intrude..." (I'm SO going to try to work that one into real life)

And in the unintentionally funny category: "Schiesse die fenster!" (Hans is ignored) "Shoot the glass!" (as if saying it in English would be the natural thing to do to emphasise a point in an argument between two native German speakers )

I once really impressed a couple of people by standing on a hill and saying "And when he saw the bredth of his domain alexander wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer." Of course I then ruined it by telling them where I got it from!

Other great lines...

"9 million terrorists in the world and I gotta find one with feet smaller than my sister"

"I am going to count to three, there will not be a four."

"I'm not the one who just got butt fucked on national TV"

I could go on.

I think the greatest thing about Die Hard was that it was a surprise. I was a big fan of Willis because of Moonlighting, but even I did a double take at the thought of David Addison running around with a gun.

I still have a postcard I got at the time with, I presume, the US poster and tag line.

12 terrorists, 1 cop. The odds are against John McClane...and that's just the way he likes them.

 

[Captaindemotion]

Perhaps uniquely, Die Hard has also spawned its own sub-genre, the 'Die Hard on a ...' movie. The concept of one man up against a gang of terrorists or criminals, set in a confined setting. It became quite common in the 1990s for movies to be pitched in this way. For example:

Die Hard on a Bus - Speed

Die Hard on a Plane - Pasenger 57, Executive Decision

Die Hard on a Battleship - Under Siege

Die Hard on Train - Under Siege 2, Derailed (a Jean Claude Van Damme movie)

Die Hard on an Ocean Liner - Speed 2

Die Hard on The USS Enterprise - TNG's Starship Mine and First Contact

Die Hard on Air Force One - er, Air Force One

Die Hard on Alcatraz - The Rock

Die Hard on a Prison Plane - Con Air

Die Hard in a Hockey Arena - Sudden Death (also a JCVD effort)

Die Hard on a Mountain - Cliffhanger

Die Hard in a Ski Resort - Cracker Jack (martial artist Thomas Ian Griffith)

Can anyone think of any others?

 

[Trekker4747]

John makes disgusted sounds over the CB.

All: "John? John? You ok?"
John: "Just fire down a thousand-year-old Twinkie... What do they put in these things?"
Al: "Sugar enriched flour, partialy hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, yellow dye #5. Everything a growing boy needs."

 

[Lonemagpie]

Perhaps uniquely, Die Hard has also spawned its own sub-genre, the 'Die Hard on a ...' movie. The concept of one man up against a gang of terrorists or criminals, set in a confined setting. It became quite common in the 1990s for movies to be pitched in this way.

I saw an interview on one of the DVDs with one of the studio-appointed producers, who said that that behaviour got to the point where they actually had someone come in who's pitch was "It's like, Die Hard, but in a building!"

 

[Lonemagpie]

The McClane of Nothing Lasts Forever is an older guy (IIRC, he's visiting his daughter in the building, not his wife)

That's right - it's an oil company HQ, IIRC

After the movie ceased to be Commando 2 (BTW, they share a writer in Steven DeSouza and the reference to 'enough explosives to level Arnold Schwarzenegger' is a nod to its origins),

I've got a copy of the Commando 2 script- it's quite amusing, but it wouldn't have been the unexpected-comedy-gold that the first one was... It only really works as a standalone.

The original '58 Minutes' script landed on the desk of then-head of Fox Joe Roth, who thought it was a total rip-off of Die Hard.

Actually it was the novel - apparently Roth was unaware it was written and published a year before Die Hard...

 

[Kelthaz]

Perhaps uniquely, Die Hard has also spawned its own sub-genre, the 'Die Hard on a ...' movie. The concept of one man up against a gang of terrorists or criminals, set in a confined setting. It became quite common in the 1990s for movies to be pitched in this way. For example:

Can anyone think of any others?

Die Hard on an X

Oh, I can think of quite a few.

 

[Aragorn]

Perhaps uniquely, Die Hard has also spawned its own sub-genre, the 'Die Hard on a ...' movie. The concept of one man up against a gang of terrorists or criminals, set in a confined setting. It became quite common in the 1990s for movies to be pitched in this way.

Icebreaker is also Die Hard on a ski resort, only with Sean Astin and Bruce Campbell.

The Taking of Beverly Hills is well... obvious... but it's a Ken Wahl vehicle, so what do you expect?

 

[Data Holmes]

The Taking of Beverly Hills is well... obvious... but it's a Ken Wahl vehicle, so what do you expect?

That's a fun knockoff. I still watch it when it is on late night tv to this day.

 

[Aragorn]

There was this novel they were trying to make into a movie -- Vertical Run -- which is Die Hard in, um, a building. Maybe that's why it still hasn't been made.

 

[Aragorn]

Oh, the banner ad on this very site! The Marine 2 is Die Hard on a tropical resort!

 

[Canadave]

Perhaps uniquely, Die Hard has also spawned its own sub-genre, the 'Die Hard on a ...' movie. The concept of one man up against a gang of terrorists or criminals, set in a confined setting. It became quite common in the 1990s for movies to be pitched in this way. For example:

Can anyone think of any others?

Die Hard on an X

Damn you. Now I can't stop reading TV Tropes.