The Dumbest Things About Die Hard (1988)

1) The Christmas Eve office party. No company has an office party on Christmas Eve.

2) The executive offices. So Bonnie Bedelia has a complete bathroom and vanity in her corner office? And James Shigeta's office is as big as a penthouse condo, complete with a magic vault? I've been in my share of executive offices and have never seen a bathroom in one, let alone a vault.

3) Doing cocaine in front of the company president. Tell me what company - even in 1988 - that would tolerate the open snorting of coke on premises.

4) The sudden bond between Bruce Willis and the cop. The whole part where the cop confesses to Bruce over the walkie talkie about why he's no longer on the beat, while Bruce gently empathizes, all in the midst of the cacophony around them, was ridiculous. Then there's the, "Hey, tell me wife I'm sorry..." soliloquy.

5) Bonnie Bedelia telling Alan Rickman the people of the office are looking to her for leadership after Rickman shot the company's president, when there's absolutely no evidence anyone in the office gives a shit about Bonnie Bedelia.

6) Alan Rickman's accent that comes and goes. Sometimes he's British, sometimes he's German-ish. Where the hell is Hans Gruber from, anyway?

1) Bonnie Bedelia's hairstyle

2) The name "Bonnie Bedelia"

[quote] I've been in my share of executive offices and have never seen a bathroom in one, let alone a vault.

LOTS of executive floors, especially in the financial services and legal industries have large offices for the senior executives and partners, each with their own washroom. Executive dining rooms and catering are still common today too.

[quote] Doing cocaine in front of the company president. Tell me what company - even in 1988 - that would tolerate the open snorting of coke on premises.

It wouldn’t have been, but in the movie he wasn’t exactly “openly” snorting it, he was clearly trying (and failing) to do it on the DL. Of course Nakatomi is a an investment bank of sorts and every investment bank was fueled by cocaine in the 80s and probably still are today.

R3 Washrooms and dining rooms for executives collectively, yes.

Individual bathrooms, complete the vanities, in individual offices?

Not so much.

The lesson I learned as a kid in the 80's: never travel on the same plane as Bonnie Bedelia around Christmas!

The part where Alexander Godunov goes nuts and starts smashing things and Bonne Bedelia says, "He's still alive. Only John could drive someone that crazy" was really dumb.

The fact that he tipped his hand by taunting them with the dead body in the elevator

Holly tipping off the office shit weasel that John was the threat

The absurd limo driver who hears and sees nothing even after the cops roll up

The ready to pop preggo, as if that somehow raises the stakes

The women's hairstyles on the bad guys

The horribly miscast FBI agent who looked like a mafioso

The fact that John never caught a bullet or stole a pair of shoes off one of the bad guys

The sociopathic newscaster who revealed Holly's identity on TV (the cops would obv told them to stay mum on that, knowing she could be used as leverage, but...details shmetails)

Another vote for Rickman's inconsistent accent

Holly's cleavage towards the end (why?)

The fact that Hans didn't fire at the end as he was falling

I miss the 80s so much. This is one of my silly favourites.

Bonnie Bedelia is Macauley Culkin's aunt.

R7 John did grab shoes off the first guy he killed, then complained that they were too small for his feet. Next thing you know, he's barefoot for the rest of the movie.

Ah yes, I forgot abt that, r9!

I'm still trying to figure out why Bruce Willis strapped a detonator to an office chair, then dropped it down the elevator shaft, blowing up the entire first floor of the building. What was the purpose of that?

Why would he do something so stupid? Did he not think that maybe that would be a good way for his wife and the other people to exit? Did he not think that dropping an explosive down an elevator shaft might blow up the entire freaking building?

Details shmetails, r11!

The semiautomatic weapons firing nonstop around Bruce Willis, but miraculously never hitting him.

The two-gotcha, jump from your seat moments toward the end are kind of stupid. Hans grabbing Holly as he's about to fall off the building and that one guy, seemingly dead, returning alive only to be shot by the dad from Family Matters.

Why didn't Hans just kill John immediately when he found him? He had no trouble immediately knocking off the president of Nakatumi and the office cokehead. It's not like John had anything Hans needed.

The dad from Family Matters *had* to kill Alexander Godunov at the end so his confidence about firing guns could be restored.

The fact that Hans starts out only wanting the bonds in the vault, then halfway through the movie, he wants terrorists released from prison, too.

R7 The actor who played the FBI agent usually did play thugs and mafioso types in other movies. He wasn't convincing as a "good guy."

It's on IFC right now, ladies!

R17, the terrorist release plot was just a ploy to buy time. Hans even says, "I read about them in Time magazine," implying he's making shit up to stall.

The first guy Bruce Willis killed was hot. I was sad he got eliminated so early on.

Bonnie Bedelia really bugged me in this movie, walking around acting all smug and becoming the self-appointed leader of all the employees being held hostage.

I bet all the employees talked about her behind her back.

Watched it last night with mother and she insisted she had never seen it before.

OP, wait...are you saying Die Hard wasn't a documentary?

OMG all these years I thought it was :(

Earlier this year the writers of “Rick & Morty” tried to do a typically arch and self-aware riff on Die Hard. It fell flat because Die Hard itself is so arch and self-aware there was nowhere to go with the idea.

OP, I had a Manhattan office job in the 1980s that was absolutely wild. I walked in on my boss about to do a line of coke on his desk once and he offered me some. (I declined). I miss that time in NYC (besides the AIDS crisis of course.)

To me the best thing about Die Hard was the hot blond German henchman played by Andreas Wisniewski

I know it's easy to pick apart Die Hard, but it’s just a fun, engaging action movie which mirrored how absolutely insane the ‘80s were. You’d understand if you were an adult during that time.

I had a job in film warehouse (35mm straight porn) for a short time in the mid-‘80s with various characters including a heroin addict recently released from prison for bank robbery. The boss’s girlfriend would sit on an elevated workbench, spread her legs while wearing gold lamé spandex (I can’t get the image out of my head) and make sexually vile comments about her pussy. She and the boss would also openly snort cocaine. Once, they used the payroll to buy drugs and the boss’s father had to come down and pay us out of his own pocket. The ‘80s were crazy.

It's stupid how John was allowed to bring his loaded Beretta on a cross-country flight just because he happened to be a cop in NYC.

That was a full two years ago and the Die Hard stuff was the B plot, r25. Remember all the stuff that took place in the simulated reality?

R31, no I do not, because it was not a good episode.

Agreed, r32. It was still two years ago.

R27 Yes! See R21.

[quote] Individual bathrooms, complete the vanities, in individual offices?

[quote]Not so much.

Not to be pedantic R4 but individual washrooms for senior executives was and still is a thing.

[quote] "Of the 200 or so CEOs I know personally at major corporations, every single one has an executive bathroom," said Andy Sherwood, chairman of Goodrich & Sherwood, a Manhattan-based executive recruitment firm. Most Fortune 500 companies, Sherwood added, also provide private washrooms for executive vice presidents, group vice presidents and divisional heads. And architectural designers note that many smaller companies are still installing them.