Line #101 Headscratchers/DieHard


1	[[index]]
2	* ''Headscratchers/DieHard2''
3	* ''Headscratchers/DieHardWithAVengeance''
4	* ''Headscratchers/LiveFreeOrDieHard''
5	* ''Headscratchers/AGoodDayToDieHard''
6	[[/index]]
7	----
8	[[foldercontrol]]
9	[[folder:All Films]]
10	* The crimes that all of the villains commit in the entire Die Hard series are so much worse than the crime that they are trying to cover up.\
11	Let see: Armed robbery moderate to length sentence. \
12	Terrorism: The death penalty...extrajudicial murder...Guantanamo.\
13	And why do the amounts they are trying to steal have to be so ridiculously large? The majority of people on Earth will never make more than a few million dollars in their entire lives. So I can believe people would do anything to get a million or two. $640 million dollars (Die Hard #1) was (and is) completely ludicrous.
14	** Yes, but they're counting on ''not being caught''. Remember what Hans said? "If you steal 600 million, they will find you, unless they think you're already dead."\
15	And why ''shouldn't'' the money they're stealing be a huge amount? If you're going to risk the kind of things you just pointed out, there should be a significant payback given that, had they succeeded, they would have faked their own deaths (thus throwing the authorities off the scent) and would therefore need to keep their heads down for the rest of their lives. Also, keep in mind the $640 million was originally going to be split between the villains.
16	*** Of whom there are 13 in total -- Hans, Karl, Theo and ten others [[note]] some viewers may be thrown off this by the fact that John ''reports'' that there are 12 bad guys to Al, a figure Al repeats to Robinson; this error on John's part is forgivable, though, due to the stress of the situation he's in, plus the fact that he's going on what he can see and the names he hears via the walkie-talkie[[/note]]), so splitting $640 million between them would have netted each member of the group about $49.2 million. That would be about $89.5 million in 2011 dollars, more than enough money to live on for the rest of your life. Plus, Hans makes a quip at one point that the group will "be sitting on a beach, earning 20%". Not only are they getting a big payday, they'll be earning interest on it too! Yeah, well worth the "terrorist" label the media and police will pin on them.
17	*** And that's assuming an even split, which most jobs like this do not do. Hans and the computer expert would have likely taken the largest shares with the gunmen taking smaller shares.
18	** A million dollars doesn't make you rich nowadays anymore. Retiring with a million dollar in the bank is possible, but you'd have to watch your spending for the rest of your life. Then, any number of [=CEOs=] demonstrate that once you DO have enough so that you can never ever realistically spend it, acquiring even more obscene amounts of money becomes an end in itself.
19	*** Yes, a million dollars still makes you rich.
20	*** A million dollars may be life-changing money, and may make you rich compared to most of humanity, but it doesn't make you rich by Los Angeles standards (where I live). You can't even buy a rich person's house for that much money, you'd need a lot more than that to live like a king for the rest of your life.
21	*** Well, it's a good thing they weren't planning on staying in Los Angeles, then.
22	** Killing someone while committing a felony is a capital offense in most states, California included. So technically they were all at risk for the death penalty the moment the reception clerk was headshot. The point isn't to avoid the penalties. It's to throw the cops off. The authorities will approach the situation differently if they think it's terrorists than if they think it's a heist. Makes them easier to manipulate.
23	** And, you know, let's face it; RuleOfCool is in as much effect in these movies as they are in any action film. What's more a more exciting high-stakes premise for an action film; a lone cop having to fight terrorists single-handed through a multi-storey building as they try to conduct a heist worth hundreds of millions of dollars, or a cop dealing with a bunch of thugs knocking over a local liquor store for whatever's in the till?
24	[[/folder]]
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26	[[folder:Die Hard]]
27	* How on Earth does John manage to tape a handgun to his back without any help?
28	* How the hell did the police dispatch ''not'' urgently send a squad car (or two) down after John's warning about Hans, and '''''also''''' hearing [[spoiler:shots fired]], since they didn't hang up after dismissing John's call? [[RealityIsUnrealistic Unless, of course...]]
29	** Adding to that, why didn't John give his name, badge ID, and department? He likely ''knew'' Hans' men were listening, and that they wanted him dead. It wasn't like he was on a secure channel. And the way he was calling it in was ''far'' too police-like for Hans and his men to think it was a party-goer. And if John '''was''' on a secure channel? He wouldn't have to hide it. The biggest writing/plot slip-up of the film, even if it was required to both add tension and bring Al into the film.
30	** Giving the dispatcher his name, badge number, etc would have brought the LAPD into the fray more easily, but it would also have risked exposing Holly - watch close when Hans announces that he knows who John is, and that a "close, personal friend" wants to talk with him; John mouths, "Holly," fearing for her life. Up until that point, the closest that Hans gets is assuming that John is a security guard for the building.
31	** I always assumed the young police officer who was talking to him didn't have enough experience to know exactly what gunfire transmitted over a radio sounds like, so she couldn't be sure it wasn’t a prank. It could have been Kevin from ''Home Alone'' setting off fireworks in a pot. If it was true, then that would provoke a rather large response (as seen later), so she'd be understandably hesitant to bring that about without further proof. And sending a single car was smarter, actually, since it wouldn't necessarily tip the terrorists that the police knew about them and wouldn't be more targets for them to shoot at.
32	** In complete fairness to the police on this one, they ''do'' dispatch a squad car to the scene; the scene immediately after this is Al getting the call to investigate Nakatomi Plaza. While they don't instantly buy that there's a terrorist incident occurring, they do still follow up on the call.
33	** We also have to give John some slack for the situation. He's stressed out and terrified, is being hunted by machine-gun toting terrorist-robbers, is trying to keep his identity hidden to keep his wife out of danger, is in a situation where he has no actual authority (the LAPD would have needed to check his credentials with the NYPD, which would take time he doesn't know if he has) and is trying to report a serious offence only to get fobbed off about using a secure radio channel by some asshole on the other end. He snaps and flies off the handle. It's only "the biggest writing/plot slip-up of the film" if you expect John to react like a super-robot with razor-sharp perfect instincts, when the whole point of the film is that he's reacting like the ordinary man thrown completely out of his depth into a terrifying situation that he is.
34	** He later comments that the radio is a "party line" and refuses to give any personal information over the line for that reason. He didn't want to tell the terrorists anything they could use. By the time he ''does'' use his name, they already know it anyway.
35	* When it's clear that a police car is going to arrive at some point, Hans tells Karl and the others ''not'' to go hunting for John, as the sound of gunfire will alert the police. Yet when Al does show up, he's in the lobby while there's a gunfight going on in the boardroom, some thirty-four floors up. Can he not hear that?
36	** No. There's thirty-four floors of concrete, steel, glass, plasterboard, plumbing and any number of other building materials muffling the sounds.
37	* After Marco's body is thrown out of the window and onto Al's car, who's firing at Al out of the smashed window? The only likely candidate is ''John himself'', who needs to draw attention to the fact that this is a real emergency. None of the villains would have any reason to do so.
38	** Not only would John never risk a fellow officer's life by firing directly at them, the bad guy doing the shooting is clearly using an M-60E3 machine gun: a weapon John doesn't have in his possession. The one firing the weapon is Alexander: he's shooting at Powell to try and shut him up to buy his team a little extra time. Not a smart thing to do, but that's what a ruthless professional criminal would do in a situation like that.
39	** But it makes no sense why Alexander (or any of the other bad guys) would fire on Al, even though Hans has factored in that the police will get involved at some point (indeed, it's a key part of his plan for the whole thing to escalate to the point where the FBI takes over). Al has spoken with Eddie (who's pretending to be the security guard at the reception) and is on his way; no need to give him any reason to think something's amiss. The only broken window to fire out of (at that point) is the one damaged by the gunfight between John, Heinrich and Marco (which John has just thrown Marco’s body out of). The only person who could have fired out of that window is John, who has a very good reason to fire on Al (or at least, in his general direction), as he is trying to make the LAPD realise the seriousness of the situation.
40	** Watch the scene again. It was not John, who definitely would not risk a fellow officer's life like that. As said above, it was clearly a different type of gun and being fired out of a different window. You even see John say "Welcome to the party, pal" while not firing his gun. It was the terrorist Alexander. It probably wasn't what Hans would have wanted, but maybe he figured he might as well once a body hit the cop car.
41	** It makes ''perfect'' sense for Alexander or any of the other terrorists to fire on Al; the literal first instinct of even the dullest-witted police officer to having a literal dead body drop on the hood of their vehicle will be to radio in an immediate alert to headquarters. The terrorists want to keep the police from being notified about the situation until they are ready for them to be so. Ergo, the best possible way they have of solving the potential problem is to fire at the police car in the hopes that the bullets will hit the cop inside and kill him, thus preventing him from radioing in about the dead body. They were unsuccessful, but it was the best and only thing they could do at that point.
42	* Is it really FBI policy to cut the power to a building during a siege? The ''phone lines'' I can understand (though the 'terrorists' in ''Film/DieHard'' do that themselves) but cutting the electricity seems like an awful provocation in a volatile situation.
43	** It depends. The phone lines are always cut, but the power is something they would consider on a case-by-case basis.
44	*** Which begs the question : how did the 'terrorists' know that the FBI would do it in this case? They were ''relying'' on it. Their plan would have failed without it.
45	*** Whether it's standard policy in real life, it is in the movie. Several characters say it's a known part of the "anti-terrorist handbook."
46	*** Cutting the power means that the terrorists lose lighting, air conditioning, and possibly plumbing. The idea is to "sweat them out" as the FBI guy said; make them so uncomfortable that they give up. Also means that they lose the elevators, so they have less freedom of mobility within the building.
47	*** Its worth pointing out to younger tropers that the first ''Die Hard'' came out 7 years before Oklahoma City and 13 years before 9/11. Giving in to demands and/or trying to flush them out was still considered a decent way to a peaceful solution.
48	*** Remember also, these FBI agents are spoiling for a fight. It is always a good idea when going into a fight to get any advantages you can and by taking out the power it sows confusion among the enemy. It would cost hostage lives but they were already treating civilian deaths with a "meh". They just misunderstood their enemy's intentions and planning.
49	* Related to the above, how is it that when Nakatomi Plaza loses power, it's got enough ''backup'' power for emergency lighting, for ''withdrawing'' the maglocked door, and for audio-announcements and alarms, yet '''not''' enough backup power to keep their electromagnetic vault shut?
50	** It could be a safety backup. No power could trap someone in the vault. The designers probably figured that if the power was out, people would be wanting to get out of the building.
51	** Also, emergency lights and fire alarms generally run off of batteries. And with six other mechanical locking systems in place its likely that the electromagnetic component was designed to fail-open rather than fail-shut because they'd still want to be able to open the vault during a power failure, if need be.
52	** RealityIsUnrealistic. Electromagnets are power hogs. One capable of holding a giant steel vault door shut so tightly you'd need a crane to yank it open is probably the single biggest power drain in the building. It ''had'' to draw off the municipal power grid - y'know, the one supplying ''ten block of downtown Los Angeles with power?'' Even the vault being fail-open instead of fail-shut makes a kind of sense; the designers would justifiably assume that if ten city blocks lost power, L.A. had probably been hit with natural disaster like an earthquake or tsunami. After the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, it took three days to restore power and months for the area to recover; The vault was designed to secure ''very'' high value investments like the $640 million in bearer bonds Gruber and his men were there to steal, and if L.A. had been hit ''that'' hard, the shareholders would want to recover their property ''immediately.'' Though they probably changed that after the events of the movie; if two stupid FBI agents could shut down power to ten city blocks on a whim, then keeping the vault secure while pants-on-head idiots run around would be a good idea.
53	* Wow, I'm the only one who's thought of this? Okay, so John [=McClane=] kills so many people. But he's not wearing shoes. Why doesn't he just steal one of the dead guys' shoes and put them on? They're wearing socks, so he doesn't have to worry about fungal infections, and if he's ''really'' worried about it, he can douse them in alcohol (which should be abundant).
54	** When he was scavenging gear off of Heinrich (the guy carrying the detonators), he had enough time to wisecrack with Hans over the radio, so he could've just as well taken his shoes, unless they were very tightly tied.
55	** Maybe [=McClane=] has really big feet? After all, he is the hero :)
56	*** You're pretty much correct. If I remembered the respective scene correctly, [=McClane=] makes a remark wondering why terrorists have such small feet. It begs the question, is this innuendo / double entendre on body part size.
57	** He tries to steal the shoes of the first terrorist he kills (Tony), but they're too small. He doesn't have time to do this for the rest of the film. After offing Heinrich and Marco in the boardroom, his immediate priority is to alert Al to what's going on, which involves throwing Marco's body out of the window (shoes and all, presumably). He kills Alexander and James remotely (by way of a makeshift bomb thrown down the elevator shaft), following which Fritz and Franco die in the computer room gunfight in which John's subsequently under heavy fire from Hans and Karl. Karl himself left is hanging out of reach at the end of the big fight, and when John kills Uli, he's not got time to swipe his shoes as he has to get the hostages down from the roof.
58	*** He had time before jumping on the radio to chat with Hans and mock him to check whether or not Heinrich's shoes fit, yet it doesn't seem as if he actually tried to put them on.
59	** He could have just worn their SOCKS. Not hygienic, but better than having your feet get cut.
60	*** Except that would have increased the risk of slipping and falling if he walked over a tile or hardwood floor.
61	** I've considered the situation a lot, actually, and figured there was nothing he could do. He had to be GenreSavvy to suspect the terrorists would shoot the glass, and wrap his feet in some clothes before (or just so not to have other disadvantages, like stepping in stuff that could hurt you without shoes, if not necessarily glass). But at that tension, it's amazing he had the ProperlyParanoid idea to disguise his name and his reason for being there in the first place. Probably wrapping his feet in something would have made him too much of a {{Chessmaster}}, or Creator/BruceWillis with his feet in clothes would have been too {{Narm}}y. Take your pick. Also, yes, he tried the shoes of the first terrorist and they didn't fit, so he thought "[[WhatCouldPossiblyGoWrong What the hell, I'm fine barefoot]]".
62	*** He could have, y'know, '''moved the glass shards aside'''. Hell, drop on all fours and you can sweep it away with your arms.
63	*** A. That risks being, you know, shot by the guys who're shooting at him, and B. his arms are just as easily torn open by glass shards as his feet are.
64	*** It is worth pointing out that in the amount of time John would have been able to take to think "Hey, I could sweep this out of the way", he would have been dead. He had no time to think about it, period.
65	** He actually comments on it when he kills the first one. John (after trying to put on the shoes): "A million bad guys in the world, and I kill the one with feet smaller than my sister's".
66	** Okay, so the other terrorist's small shoes cannot fit his large feet. He needs shoes in his own shoe size, like his own shoes in his room that he ran out of when the terrorists, er, exceptional thieves attacked. True, at the time they were checking the rooms for people, but after checking the rooms and collecting the hostages, their attention would have been diverted to watching the hostages, and defending the building from breaches by the police. He could've sneaked in, grabbed the shoes, and sneaked out before anyone know he was there.
67	** Quite simply, getting shoes is not a priority -- certainly not enough of one to risk walking into the middle of Terrorist-Central to get them. Trying that first terrorist's shoes was a target of opportunity, not a main objective. Until the bit with the glass, he doesn't ''need'' the shoes.
68	** Wearing ill-fitting shoes is usually worse than just being bare-foot. It constrains your ability to move effectively either way. At least if you're barefoot you can sprint when you need to.
69	* I may be misunderstanding the explosives used, but why, when John gets the detonators and realises how important they are to Hans, doesn't he try and dispose of them like by throwing them out the window? I was under the impression that the explosive they were using doesn't blow up unless it's in direct contact with the detonator.
70	** I think he kept them as a bargaining chip, in case Hans ever figured out who his wife was.
71	** They're also a tool. "Now I have a block of C4. Ho ho ho."
72	*** No, he used that up long before he realised that Hans still needed the detonators. But I take the point about them being a bargaining chip.
73	** When John gets the detonators they are with a block of C4, which he presumably kept just because they it might come in handy later (which it does), after which he assumes the detonators are useless and he's still carrying them around because why not, where would he put them but in the bag he's carrying which might have other stuff like ammo? When Hans meets him on the roof floor demands the detonators later, he realises that there must be more C4, but he's immediately engaged in a shootout and gets his feet cut up, and in the process Hans gets the detonators back. So he never realised how important the detonators were to Hans until it was too late, and even then he doesn't understand why Hans wanted to blow the roof in the first place until Hans spelt it out that he was trying to cover his tracks.
74	* While I agree that John walking through shards of glass in Die Hard 1 makes a really strong scene that underlines his determination, it is hard to believe that in that whole blasted-to-pieces office was nothing he could have used to at least try and clear a path in front of himself.
75	** If you remember, that specific firefight was taking place in a datacentre. Generally, you do NOT want stuff you can trip on when lugging disk packs and magtapes around (I suppose it could have been the disaster recovery suite). The whole thing was on false floors...
76	** Just watched the scene again. There were plenty of desks, chairs and other stuff in the room. But I (same as above) now think the real issue was time. It wasn't visible on the screen, but he was looking over to a door with an exit sign and then at the glass on the floor while the bad guys were shooting at him. The next time we see him, his feet are cut up. So he most likely had no time to clear a path.
77	** Look, even for Headscratchers at some point this all just starts to look unnecessarily pedantic and nitpicky. The point of an action thriller like ''Die Hard'' is to place the protagonist in escalating situations of peril which he must find a way out of until he or she reaches the final climax, and in order to maintain tension this necessarily involves making his life harder, not easier. You set up a situation (the hero has no shoes), think of a problem (there's people shooting at him), create further complications to the problem (there's also broken glass on the floor) and offer a solution (there's an exit! He can escape the people shooting at him!), while also setting up the ''next'' problem the hero has to face (to do so, the hero has to run across broken glass, injuring his feet). Having John go back and get his shoes or piss about brushing glass off the floor defuses the tension and/or acts as an unnecessary distraction from the main plot; so in this case, in order that the plot moves forward and tension is maintained or escalated, John must walk around barefoot and must be given no choice but to run through the glass when the situation demands it. So you can point out possible alternate solutions till the cows come home and feel really really clever, but ultimately that just reflects worse on you than the writers in this case, because you're the one too busy complaining about the tree to notice the bigger forest.
78	* Also on the subject of the glass: when Hans gives the order to shoot the glass in German, the other terrorist doesn't understand him. Hans then has to repeat the order in English to be understood. Even though all the terrorists are German.
79	** I got the impression that the guy just couldn't hear him. It's easier to give the order in English quietly so it couldn't be heard by [=McClane=], than in German, maybe? Or maybe the guy's not German. It's not really clear that they're all German.
80	*** You are correct on not all the fake terrorist (mercenary / Bank Robbers) being German. At least two of them are Italian, Franco and Marco. This leaves the possibility of other nationalities as well, Uli and I believe James as well. On an interesting side note, in the German release, the German dialogue was converted to English and the German names were changed to English counterparts (i.e. Karl was changed to Charles). This was done because terrorism in then West Germany was too fresh in memory (i.e. Bader-Meinhoff).
81	** Or maybe Karl is thinking 'Huh? Why would he want to do that?'
82	** I always had the impression that the first film intended for Hans to only be pretending to be German, and the reason Karl couldn't understand him was because he didn't say it right.
83	*** That would have been a ''hilarious'' BilingualBonus if he had been saying "Scheiss die Fenster" instead of "Schiess die Fenster" (apologies in advance for any grammatical or spelling errors introduced. Been a long time since I've seen the scene or studied German.)
84	*** As clarification: Schiessen means 'to shoot'. Scheiss means [[spoiler:'shit']].
85	*** As funny as that would be, it's quite clear Hans really is German.
86	** I don't speak German, but I once watched the film with a friend who does. He translated the first command Hans gives as, "He's not wearing shoes." Karl gives Hans a look of confusion, then Hans clarifies with (in English), "Shoot the glass." Karl wasn't confused by the language, but by the relevance of the statement.
87	*** Bad news: your friend doesn't speak German either. Hans very clearly says "Schiess dem fenster," which translates as "shoot the window." The only room for confusion from that really is that they appear to be in an internal room that doesn't technically have windows.
88	** It's part of [[Creator/JohnMcTiernan John McTiernan's]] SignatureStyle. He never uses subtitles, because he'd rather the audience pay attention to the actor's performance rather than read the bottom of the screen.
89	** Look, this is just TranslationConvention. Hans and Karl speak German, but ''most of the audience probably don't''. And since they're the ones who matter, at some point it has to be made clear to ''them'', not just Hans and Karl, what is happening. Hans barks an order in German for purposes of character and world-building (establishing / reinforcing the fact that he's German) then switches to English for the benefit of the audience (oh, he wants him to shoot the glass). At some point, you're supposed to just politely overlook the slight contrivance and let the filmmakers do their thing, not nitpick it.
90	** Maybe Karl didn't hear him the first time, as Hans gives the German order quietly. He then has the idea to repeat it loudly in English not just for Karl and the audience's benefit, but because he ''wants'' [=McClane=] to hear. If [=McClane=] knows what's about to happen, he'll either a) break cover and try and run before Karl can do it, making himself an easier target; b) break cover in an attempt to kill Karl before Karl can do it, making himself an easier target; c) be trapped where he is, making him an easier target. If he somehow manages to escape, he'll likely be crippled from running barefoot over glass and much less of a threat. Whichever he picks, it gives Hans a definite advantage.
91	* [=McClane=] jumps off the exploding roof, swings through a window, and then runs into the lobby, just in time for the elevator to explode. What on earth made the elevator explode?
92	** Presumably the blast from the roof travelled down the liftshaft.
93	** The better question is "why did the 'elevator has arrived' chime go off first?"
94	** The chime went off due to RuleOfFunny.
95	* How are Hans & co planning to exchange all the 100 000 $ papers without people noticing? Let alone one?
96	** Bearer bonds have no record of ownership or change of ownership. The ownership is competely anonymous, which makes them an ideal target for thieves of this nature, and have also been used extensively for criminal activity which resulted in the issuance of new ones being outlawed in the USA around the time of the film's release(bonds issued prior to the ban can still be cashed in if the issuer still exists). Put simply, whoever holds, or "bears," the paper can cash it in without question, thus the name "bearer bond." All the group would have had to do is have any of their number save Hans(since he was publicly identified) do the transactions.
97	* In the first film, the criminals are pretending to be terrorists to hide the fact that they are actually trying to break into an electromagnetically sealed vault, and their plan specifically requires the FBI to believe their ruse and cut the power. They are communicating with CB Radios, and it's fairly important at several points in the movie that this communication is not anonymous; when John, the police, or the crooks speaks on the radio everyone can hear it. Yet in one scene Hans goes right from demanding terrorists around the world are released, to asking Theo how he's coming on those locks. Isn't he worried the cops heard that?
98	** He changed frequencies when he went to talk to Theo.
99	** Also, even if they ''did'' eavesdrop on his remarks about the vault locks, Hans probably expected the FBI to jump to the same conclusion Takagi did: that the terrorists were after blackmail material, not money.
100	* Pretty trivial question, but... why did John bring just ''one'' giant teddy bear to LA instead of two smaller ones? He's got two kids of teddy-bear-loving age at the time, and asking kids that young to "share" the same cuddly toy is a recipe for sibling rivalry at bedtime.
101	** He's buying gifts on a cop's salary, and giant teddy bears presumably do not come cheap; he might only have been able to afford one and decided that the squabbles would be worth putting up with.
102	** What makes you think his son even ''wanted'' a giant teddy bear?
103	** Or his daughter, for that matter? Heck, maybe the bear was for Holly and the kids were getting video games.
104	** What do you mean by "teddy-bear-loving age"?! Teddy bears are great regardless of age.
105	* How did Hans know so much about Mr. Takagi (e.g. where and when he was born, the camp he was interred in during WWII, the universities he attended, etc.) but not know what he looks like?
106	** RacialFaceBlindness? Either that or he was just putting on a show for the hostages, showing them that he was an intelligent man who had done his research, and not some thug who could be easily outsmarted or manipulated.
107	*** Hans 100% knew what Takagi looked like; he was just increasing the tension to prove a point.
108	** He may not have had an up-to-date picture. This was in the 1980s, where even getting a picture of a CEO was not that easy a task, where the most recent publicity release may have been a few years old. That and when people fancy themselves up for a party, even guys, they may not look quite the same as that publicity photo in the lobby. Hans wants to make sure he gets the right guy, and he doesn't want to look bad by either getting the wrong guy or by admitting he isn't sure who he is.
109	** Alternately, Hans ''does'' know which person in the crowd of hostages is Mr. Takagi, but he goes through the motions of "searching" for him as a psychological ploy. It's a way to test the nerve of his various captives - Do the employees sell out their boss by pointing him out? Does Takagi reveal himself voluntarily rather than let his workers be intimidated? - so that he can get a clear idea of how they'll respond to their captors' coercive methods. If anyone's going to get defiant, panic outright, or otherwise cause trouble, better to find that out sooner when his accomplices have total control than later, once they've split their forces between the upper office and the vault.
110	* Shouldn't a hardened professional criminal and gunman like Hans feel the difference in weight between a loaded and an unloaded gun?
111	** This feels like a weak excuse, but maybe he wasn't used to the weight of a police-issue Beretta and couldn't be sure? And he didn't want to seem too familiar with guns, so he wouldn't be able to check by ejecting the magazine and examining it.
112	** Is Hans a gunman? He uses them a couple of times, but he's the brains of the operation rather than the muscle. He may barely know the first thing about operating one.
113	** I don't know much about guns, but would the bullets add a lot of weight to the overall amount? There's presumably a magazine in there, so that would add some weight; it's just empty.
114	*** As someone who owns an actual Beretta M9 pistol, I can answer this one. If someone has held and used the Beretta a lot, then yes, it would be very easy to notice the weight difference between loaded and unloaded one. The difference is quite significant. However, it's different for every pistol, and there is good reason to think Hans has never held a Beretta before. The Beretta M9 was a relatively new pistol in 1988 when the movie was made, having just gone into manufacture in 1985. So it would make sense that Hans has never held one before. And if he's never held one before, then it makes sense he wouldn't know the weight difference between an unloaded and a loaded one. That combined with the stress of dealing with the potentially deadly situation he was in, standing right next to a man who could kill him at any moment, makes his mistake even more understandable.
115	** Telling the difference between a ''fully'' loaded gun and an empty one shouldn't be hard, but with a gun that's already fired most of its rounds, it may not be so easy to tell. It makes sense that John would give "Bill Clay", who's presumably not as accurate a marksman as a cop, the weapon that had fewer shots left.
116	* When John drops a dead mook on the squad car to grab the cop's attention (so far so good), he opens fire at it for a good measure. And keeps shooting. At a moving target, from considerable distance, and his weapon wasn't exactly a sniper rife. How the hell could he be sure he wasn't going to hit, and kill, the perfectly innocent policeman behind the wheel?
117	** John did not shoot at Al, it was one of the terrorists opening up with a M-60 now that their ploy to make everything seem normal for now had been undone and sought to kill him before he could radio for help. You even see John watching the shooting and snarkily say "Welcome to the party, pal.".
118	** Specifically, when John says this, you can hear the machine gun fire in the background, and he's clearly not firing at all. Also, they show an angle that has the gunfire coming from a much lower floor.
119	* For that matter, how the hell did John throw the mook onto the cop car? I presume he didn’t shoot out the glass first, which would mean that John had strength enough to lift a grown man, throw him through some shatterproof glass, and still have force enough to travel at least another 20 feet (Powell didn’t park that close to the building). I don’t think it’s humanly possible. And he didn’t have to hit the car, a human body plopping anywhere into a cop’s field of vision would have gotten his attention. Adrenaline surge from Hell, maybe?
120	** This is an action movie, in a franchise of five which are not particularly realistic, so "shatterproof glass" is not really in effect. They didn't show how the glass was broken, but if they had they probably would have given a handwave that he broke through it (or at least softened it up first before throwing the body through) with the butt of his [=HK94=], like when he bashed off the vent so he could go down the air duct. Furthermore, it's not like he could be expected to accurately aim the body through the glass onto a target; landing on the cop car was in-universe just a happy mistake and out-of-universe made for great dramatic effect.
121	** John had already started to crack the glass by swinging a chair at it, which is what attracts the terrorists in the first place. He then finished the job by throwing a body through it. Picking up the body of a grown man and throwing it can possibly be explained by adrenaline. It actually hitting Al's car was either very good aim, or excellent luck. Even if the body didn't hit Al's car, he'd probably stop to see what it was.
122	* If Sgt. Al Powell is assigned to a desk job, why is he driving around in a patrol vehicle and responding to calls?
123	** The impression I got was he was on his way home at the end of the shift, happened to be in the area for what was pitched to him as a milk-run, and decided to check it out real quick and head home.
124	*** Powell says that this is ''exactly'' what happens. Did you watch the movie?
125	** Although the question has to be asked : why is he driving home at the end of his shift in a marked police car? Doesn't he have his own vehicle?
126	*** Limited space in the precinct parking lots? Or maybe a colleague knows Al's wife is expecting very soon and let him borrow a patrol car while off duty, so he can rush her to the hospital with sirens blaring when the time comes.
127	*** As I understand it, depending on the jurisdiction police patrol cars can operate in a similar fashion to, say, a company car; as long as there's a vehicle available, the officer signs it in and out and obeys the department's rules and regulations for using it on top of the street laws (presumably, such not misusing the emergency lights and siren for personal convenience outside of an emergency situation), they're allowed to use it as a personal vehicle. Apparently doing so even has certain advantages (it enables the officer to act more efficiently if they come across an emergency situation when off-duty or commuting, local neighbours are reassured by the presence of a patrol car in their area, a supervising officer like a sergeant has a vehicle on hand if they need to monitor a situation outside the station, etc.). I imagine the LAPD is not exactly short on patrol cars, so presumably Al filled in the paperwork and was assigned a vehicle for personal as well as professional use.
128	* Why does the electromagnetic lock from the first movie open when the power is cut? It would make a lot more sense to design it to remain closed unless power is applied to it.
129	** Electromagnets are only magnetic ''because'' of electricity, so if you cut off the power, then there ''is'' nothing to keep the electromagnet sealed.
130	** The electromagnetic lock was the only lock that was still working. Theo had gotten through or past all the rest of them. So when the power stops going to the electromagnetic lock, that means ''all'' the locks are open, so they can get through.
131	** I think the original poster's question is more, why did it ''withdraw'' when the power was cut? Nobody was pushing it aside, it slid open on its own. Which ought to require power for whatever motor normally moves the thing. If there's enough backup power for that motor (not to mention the alarms and flashing lights), the vault's designers really should've directed it to keeping the electromagnets ''on'' during a blackout.
132	*** Could be a safety backup. If there was no power, someone could get trapped in it.
133	*** The door itself is probably weighted to swivel open when the magnets are deactivated. Again, safety feature, to make sure anyone who's inside the vault when the power fails doesn't have to manually shove a few hundred pounds of metal aside to escape.
134	* If Hans is able to effortlessly speak English with a perfect American accent, why does he bother speaking in a German accent at all? No one I know prefers to sound accented in any non-native language.
135	** Speaking in an American accent takes effort, speaking with his normal accent does not.
136	** He's also posing as a political terrorist, and in that time period, many of them were Marxist, including East Germans and sympathetic West Germans. The accent is part of the 'sell.'
137	** Why didn't they get Alan Rickman to do a German accent properly anyhow (he's obviously good with accents?) It's really distracting to have Hans Gruber sound so British, even if it is handwaved with him going to school in England.
138	*** He actually sounds a lot like most Germans who learn to speak English well without much of a German accent do.
139	** Hans criticizes American culture and society numerous times throughout the movie. Why would he use the accent of a country he clearly doesn't like too much?
140	*** That's an easy one - when he speaks in his American accent, it is for the sole purpose of trying to make [=McClane=] think he works there.
141	*** You don't have to like a country to find yourself in a situation where you may have to pretend to be from there.
142	*** Hans has probably used all sorts of accents in schemes before. It's probably not the first time he's had to cosplay an American.
143	* How are Hans & co planning to exchange all the (let alone one) 100,000 $ papers without people noticing?
144	** Easy, Hans stated in the movie the true "treasure" they are looking behind Nakatomi´s safe is not money in regular paper, they are after the $640 millions in '''bearer''' bonds. This is an economic issue: bearer bonds are different from "normal" (registered) bonds since no records are kept of the buyer/owner, or the transactions made with them (like if you sell one of them to another private investor, even in a dark back alley), and they must be honored (paid) by the issuer with up-front cash with no further questions. A smart move from Hans... and this is why now bearer bonds are prohibited in most countries in the world, and all transactions with bonds and similar papers need to be registered, also as an anti-money laundering measure.
145	** To add to this, bearer bonds were only issued in sums of $10,000 or less.
146	*** As brought up by WebVideo/CinemaSins, this actually implies a different form of FridgeLogic - the film is set after America's Fiscal Responsibility Act came into enforcement. So what sort of shady dealings was Nakatomi involved in to be carrying that much untraceable currency?
147	*** They could conceivably have bought the bonds from multiple entities (federal, municipal, corporate, etc)and come up with the total $640M. Not necessarily shady, though pretty unusual.
148	*** The movie was also based on a novel written in 1979, three years before the act in question came into law. Presumably it's just a residual artefact that no one noticed or thought was worth changing.
149	*** It definitely wasn't worth changing for the movie - while the issuance of new such bearer bonds was outlawed, ones issued before the act can still be cashed in even today, so it wasn't exactly foolish of Nakatomi to keep them on hand but locked away.
150	* As pointed out by ''WebVideo/CinemaSins'': "Nakatomi has $640 MILLION in bearer bonds? After the [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_Equity_and_Fiscal_Responsibility_Act_of_1982 Fiscal Responsibility Act]] was passed in 1982? After this revelation I'm not sure John [=McClane=] is killing the right people in this movie. I mean sure, Hans Gruber and his crew are a bunch of murderous thieves, but what kind of shit is Nakatomi involved with?"
151	** If you listen to Gruber when he is talking to Takagi, he mentions that the amount represents only 3 or 4 ''days'' working capital for the corporation. Why they would keep it in bearer bonds, which is as good as cash, is what's a ''really'' bad decision.
152	*** Hans never said the bearer bonds ''were'' the company's operating cash, only that the ''value'' of the bonds was comparable to a few days' capital. Hence, not something Nakatomi would miss much, ergo Takagi may as well give up the code.
153	** The bearer bonds are probably a holdover from the original novel the film is based on, where the terrorists are sincere rather than just pretending to be terrorists, and the corporation involved was profiting from arms dealing. In the movie itself the only hints that anything isn't on the up-and-up with Nakatomi are the scene where Hans admires the model, which is apparently a model of a Nakatomi facility being built somewhere in the world that Takagi is possibly a little too quick to protest is all being built legally and without exploitation, and the bearer bonds themselves. At best, it hints at some sort of corporate tax dodging or embezzlement of some kind. At worst, it's trying to hide some kind of ill gotten profits by using an untraceable currency.
154	** Possibly the bearer bonds ''are'' legal in Indonesia, which is the location of the building project Takagi mentions. If you have $640 million in shady assets to convert to untraceable paper, and you need to stash it someplace away from government scrutiny, stashing it in a country where such bonds aren't even salable until you're ready to transfer the lot isn't ''that'' stupid of an idea.
155	** Since bonds are good for terms of years or decades, there were still numerous bearer bonds on the market at the time of the film which had been issued prior to 1982. The last bearer bonds issued by the US Treasury expired in 2016! Given the fact that Hans states the bonds would earn them 20% a year, they were probably either issued during the inflation crisis of the late 1970s/early 1980s or by a non-US entity (with a higher default premium, and were entirely legal when issued.
156	* Why on EARTH did Joe Takagi tell Hans that he would just have to kill him?! The guy is (or was, I should say) married with five, FIVE, kids!!! He had a damn family to look after! Not to mention he was the most important person in his company!! Why on Earth would he tell impatient terrorists with fully loaded guns that they would have to kill him?!
157	** HonourBeforeReason. Basically. Despite being an émigré to America he may still have had an ingrained sense of Japanese honour, especially if he had a lot of dealings with Japanese firms as part of his job. It is likely that Hans had put him in a ''No Win Scenario''. It is possible that him giving up the information would lead to him being shamed, shunned, and unable to do business in Japan (or at least he thought that, anyway) and that shame being transferred to his family too. The only way to save his family from that sense of disgrace and to allow them to keep doing business in Japan was to sacrifice himself. It is a mindset that is still present in Japan, although to a much lesser degree, even today.
158	*** ''Or'', Takagi was a very smart man, as such senior executives usually are, and he knew how to read the room: he knew Hans was going to kill him no matter what. Hans had gone to so much effort to sell the whole incident as terrorism to everyone else in Nakatomi Towers, and he couldn't risk blowing that secret by taking Takagi back to rejoin the hostages. (Remember, Takagi didn't know about the whole "Hans is gonna blow up the building" scam.) Ergo, Takagi was never getting out of that room alive, regardless of whether he gave Hans the access code. And if he's dead either way, he might as well cling to the (transparent) lie, both to spite the man who's about to murder him and to die with his honour intact.
159	*** And of course the Doyleist reason being the script needed him to so [=McClane=] and the audience could see just what lengths Hans would go to and to keep the tension going.
160	** In the original screenplay, it's clear that Takagi doesn't actually ''know'' the code Hans was asking for, and is simply being honest and resigned when he says they'll have to kill him. Two of Hans's buddies even make a bet on whether Takagi would have the information or not.
161	** Takagi was trying to call Hans' bluff. By saying "you'll just have to kill me", he's trying to get Hans to believe that he really doesn't know the information (and it's ambiguous if he's lying or not), in which case if Hans kills him it would be for no reason whatsoever. Unfortunately for Takagi, Hans was planning on killing everyone in the building anyway, plus killing Takagi DID serve one purpose- it lets the rest of the party know that he is absolutely willing to kill all of them too if they step out of line.
162	* Why the hell didn't John just run back to the office he was in to get his shoes?
163	** Let's see: one hand full of police-issue Beretta 92F, the other full of his holster with spare clips, keeping a close eye out the door to spot what was going on and whether there were terrorists about to come shoot him -- yup, the first thing to do is definitely to run 15 feet across the room to fumble with shoes and socks, while you're most likely going to be indoors for a while and while armed terrorists could be kicking in the door any second to take you hostage or shoot you.
164	*** Then why didn't he take them and bring them to a more secure location before putting them on, or come back for them later?
165	*** The building is being taken over by terrorists. By definition, it is no longer secure; they could be ''everywhere''. If he takes his shoes, he could be lugging them around unnecessarily all night trying to find a secure place to put them on. As for coming back for them, again, the building is being taken over by terrorists -- he simply didn't have an opportunity to come back. He made a split-second decision.
166	** Initially, John was more concerned with being ''quiet'' than with avoiding broken glass. Even if he ''had'' had the time to think about it, he'd probably have abandoned his shoes anyway under the circumstances, because bare feet are a lot quieter than shod ones.
167	* In the first film, Karl is angry when he fails to catch John on the 33rd floor. Why didn’t he just follow the trail of blood to the bathroom where John is pulling glass shards out of his feet? It’s not like John’s moving that fast, he dragged himself to the bathroom on his back.
168	** They would've risked being shot at when he heard them coming.
169	* Sgt. Powell starts reversing after the body hits the car, but before he starts getting shot at.
170	** Yes, and? What's the headscratcher here?
171	** He was already in reverse when the body hits the car (shifted into gear a second or two before). The shock of a body flying through his windshield probably got him to push the gas pedal down. Once his car started to get shot, then he definitely floored it on purpose because he's not in a safe position and needs to get out of the line of fire.
172	** Since the headscratcher seems to be "why does Sgt Powell start reversing before he gets shot at", to clarify; when Powell first rolls up, he drives along what appears to be a kind of looping circular portico (not sure if that's the right word) before finally parking his squad car in a position where it's facing the main building. It doesn't look like there's technically blocking him, but he's also quite close to the main entrance, so it looks like it would be a bit of an awkward turn if he was just to keep going straight if he didn't want to risk getting stuck or hitting anything, so he presumably reverses initially simply because it's easier for him to do so in order to get away from the building; he's presumably about to do a three-point turn or something similar. He then ''continues'' reversing, as noted, because of body, gunshots, general panicked flight-response, etc.
173	* Why did John have to send Karl's brother's dead body down the elevator to let the bad guys know that there is someone they missed that is armed and has the ability to kill them? True, he used it to learn some of their names, but wouldn't it have made sense to hide the body? Once they found the body, the terrorists went to a defensive mode and started hunting him. If he didn't send them the dead body, they would've had no clue John was there and would've continued like the plan was working. True, it wouldn't worked for long as someone would've noticed that Karl's brother wasn't around or answering his radio, but that extra time would've given John a chance to find shoes, possibly pick off more terrorists, or maybe find a way to get help.
174	** They already knew there was somebody around thanks to the fire alarm he set off. That's the whole reason he ran into Karl's brother in the first place. At that point, there's no reason not to send the body back. It's intimidating, it damages morale (Karl abandoning the job in favor of killing [=McClane=]), and as you said, it allowed him to get some intel on his enemies. Even if they didn't know he was there, they certainly would've after he went to the roof to broadcast his mayday, which he did immediately after sending Karl's brother down.
175	* Okay, so Deputy Chief Dwayne T. Robinson is a bureaucratic jerkass, we all agree. My question, why does it have to be when he points out that Powell has no idea who's on the other line and not when he sends in the SWAT team too hard? In this situation I can understand why he would question who Powell is talking to given that Hans' crew are already pretty much manipulating everyone.
176	** Probably because he wasn't the one who had the radio conversation with [=McClane=]. Anyone may doubt what seems to them like anedoctal evidence and conjecture, but Powell had a strong hunch that [=McClane=] a) was on the level and b) was a "Badge" and as it turned out, his gut instinct was right on the money. Furthermore, even if he wanted to question what Powell said (a reasonable impulse, like you say), he could have done so without putting their relationship onto an immediate confrontational footing by dousing his questions in heavy snark and rhetoric.
177	* At the beginning of the first movie, Karl's brother is cutting phone lines and is angrily shouting at Karl when the older brother chainsaws the wires. Was he redirecting the lines and Karl just started cutting too soon, or was there something else at play?
178	** [[SiblingRivalry Brothers screw with each other]], all the time. This is a quality that neither age, maturity nor professionalism can ever fully douse. Karl was confident in his brother's ability to reroute the lines in time, so he decided to {{Troll}} him.
179	* Why did Ellis suddenly turn traitor? What was he trying to pull off with all that "white knight" and negotiation doubletalk?
180	** Dude had just gotten done doing a few quick finger bumps of coke. He was extremely overconfident as a result and thought he knew the situation better than John did, so he thought that by making John stop and give up, then Hans and his goons would just be on their way even faster and let the hostages live.
181	* "...by the time they figure out what went wrong, we'll be sitting on a beach, earning twenty percent." Who is giving Hans a return of 20% on his ill-gotten gains?!
182	** Likely no one in particular. Hans just plans on investing his money so he can live off of it for the rest of his life without the risks of running out or losing buying power to inflation.
183	** Many bearer bonds had coupons attached which give the bearer of the bond (hence the name) a periodic payment, no questions asked. Presumably these bonds were issued during the inflationary crisis of the late 1970s early 1980s at 20% per annum.
184	* Powell says "I shot a kid." Okay, that's rough, but I always wondered if the kid died from that gunshot. Like depending on what the bullet does, it could really go either way, and I don't think any other part of the film shed slight on if the kid lived or not.
185	** The movie never confirms. Draw your own conclusion. Mine was that the kid did die, and that's why he was so shaken up.
186	** And mine was that the kid ''must've'' survived, because if Powell had killed a child ''and'' wasn't up to drawing his weapon anymore, he probably wouldn't have remained with the police force at all. He'd either have resigned out of guilt or been dismissed to avoid public controversy or lawsuits.
187	** It's ultimately left up to the viewer's imagination, but Al's grief and guilt would likely have far more emotional effect and power if we are intended to believe that the kid died, as would his willingness to again take up his weapon to save John and Holly's lives at the end. As for why Al remains a cop, remember that he has been assigned to desk duty (presumably for a reason); he is presumably at that point balancing the complicated feelings caused by his guilt with the practical necessity of supporting a family with a child on the way. For all we know, prior to the events of the move Al has been having some long sleepless nights and intense conversations with his bosses over the very question of whether he can continue to be a cop.
188	[[/folder]]

Context Headscratchers / DieHard