Die Hard 2 (sometimes referred to as Die Hard 2: Die Harder)^[2] is a 1990 American action film and the second in the Die Hard film series. The film was directed by Renny Harlin, and stars Bruce Willis as John McClane. The film co-stars Bonnie Bedelia (reprising her role as Holly McClane), William Sadler, Art Evans, William Atherton (reprising his role as Richard "Dick" Thornburg), Franco Nero, Dennis Franz, Fred Thompson, John Amos, and Reginald VelJohnson, who makes a cameo appearance reprising his role as Sgt. Al Powell from the first film.

The screenplay was written by Steven E. de Souza and Doug Richardson, adapted from the novel 58 Minutes by Walter Wager. The novel has the same premise but differs slightly: A cop must stop terrorists who take an airport hostage while his wife's plane circles overhead. He has 58 minutes to do so before the plane crashes. Roderick Thorp, who wrote the novel Nothing Lasts Forever, upon which the first Die Hard film was based, receives credit for creating "certain original characters", although his name is misspelled onscreen as "Roderick Thorpe."

As with the first film, the action in Die Hard 2 takes place on Christmas Eve. McClane is waiting for his wife to land at Washington Dulles International Airport when terrorists take over the air traffic control system. He must stop the terrorists before his wife's plane and several other incoming flights that are circling the airport run out of fuel and crash. During the night, McClane must also contend with airport police, maintenance workers, and a military commander who does not want his assistance.

The film was followed by Die Hard with a Vengeance in 1995 and Live Free or Die Hard in 2007.

Plot[link]

On Christmas Eve, two years after the Nakatomi Tower Incident, LAPD detective John McClane is waiting at Washington Dulles International Airport for his wife Holly to arrive from Los Angeles. Reporter Richard Thornburg, who exposed McClane's identity to Hans Gruber in the first Die Hard, is assigned a seat across the aisle from Holly. While in the airport bar, McClane spots two men in army fatigues carrying a package; one of the men has a gun. Suspicious, he follows them into the baggage area. After a shootout, he kills one of the men while the other escapes. Learning the dead man is a mercenary thought to have been killed in action, McClane believes he's stumbled onto a nefarious plot. He relates his suspicions to airport police Captain Carmine Lorenzo, but Lorenzo refuses to listen and has McClane thrown out of his office.

Former U.S. Army Special Forces Colonel Stuart and other members of his unit set up a base in a church near Dulles after executing the church's custodian. They take over the air traffic control systems, cutting off communication to the planes, and seize control of the airport. Their goal is to rescue General Ramon Esperanza, a drug lord and the dictator of Val Verde, who is being extradited to the US to stand trial on drug trafficking charges. They demand a Boeing 747 so they can escape to another country, and warn the IAD controllers not to try to restore control. Upon learning of this, McClane realizes his wife is on one of the planes circling above Washington, D.C. with too little fuel to be redirected, and will likely crash if the terrorists remain in control. He prepares to fight the terrorists.

Dulles communications director Leslie Barnes heads to the unfinished Annex Skywalk with a SWAT team to re-establish communications with the planes. Stuart's henchmen, disguised as painters, maintenance employees, and airport staff, ambush them. In the resulting shootout, all the SWAT officers are killed, as is one of Stuart's men. Before they can shoot Barnes, McClane bursts in through an air vent. After a shootout, McClane kills the rest of Stuart's men. When Stuart learns of this, he responds by recalibrating the instrument landing system and then impersonating air traffic controllers to crash a jet, killing all 230 passengers and crew on board the aircraft. In response, a Special Forces team is called in, led by Major Grant. A two-way radio dropped by one of Stuart's henchmen tips McClane that Esperanza is landing. McClane gets there before Stuart's henchmen, but Stuart traps him in Esperanza's transport and throws grenades into the cockpit. McClane escapes via the ejection seat just as the aircraft explodes. Barnes is then able to help McClane locate the mercenaries' hideout and they tell Grant and his team to raid the location. However, the mercenaries escape on snowmobiles during a shootout between Grant's team and Stuart's team. McClane pursues them, killing two more mercenaries and taking a snowmobile, but the gun he picked up does not work. He realizes that the gun contained blanks and that the mercenaries and Special Forces are working together.

McClane contacts Lorenzo to send out officers to intercept the Boeing 747 in which the mercenaries are planning to escape, proving his story by firing at Lorenzo with the blank gun. Thornburg, after learning about the situation through a radio transmission from Barnes, barricades himself in the airplane lavatory and phones in a sensational and exaggerated take on what is happening at Dulles, leading to panic in the airport and preventing the officers from reaching the plane. After learning of this, Holly enters the lavatory and subdues Thornburg with a taser.

McClane hitches a ride on a news helicopter that drops him off on the left wing of the mercenary plane and he blocks the ailerons with his jacket, preventing the plane from taking off. Grant emerges and fights McClane, but is sucked into the jet engine and killed. Stuart comes out to fight next, and succeeds in knocking McClane off the plane, but not before McClane knocks open the fuel hatch. After landing, McClane uses his cigarette lighter to ignite the trail of leaking fuel, which races down the runway to the wing, ignites the rest of the fuel and destroys the jet, killing all on board. The passenger planes, circling in the air, use the lighted trail to land, and McClane and his wife are reunited.

Cast[link]

• Bruce Willis as Lieutenant John McClane
• Bonnie Bedelia as Holly Gennero-McClane
• Art Evans as Leslie Barnes, IAD's director of communications
• Dennis Franz as Captain Carmine Lorenzo, the head of the Dulles Airport Police
• Reginald VelJohnson as Sergeant Al Powell
• William Atherton as Richard "Dick" Thornburg
• Fred Thompson as Trudeau, Chief of IAD's operations
• Tom Bower as Marvin, the janitor
• Sheila McCarthy as Samantha "Sam" Coleman, a reporter
• Colm Meaney as Pilot of Windsor Airlines plane
• Robert Costanzo as Sergeant Vito Lorenzo, Carmine's brother

The terrorists[link]

• Franco Nero as General Ramon Esperanza, the ruthless drug lord and dictator of the fictional country Val Verde
• William Sadler as Colonel Stuart, a rogue U.S. Colonel who leads the Mercenaries.
• John Costelloe as Sergeant Oswald Cochrane, a mercenary
• Mark Boone Junior as Shockley, a mercenary
• Robert Patrick as O'Reilly, a mercenary
• Mick Cunningham as Sheldon, a mercenary
• Ken Baldwin as Mulkey, a mercenary
• Peter Nelson as Thompson, a mercenary
• Tony Ganios as Baker, a mercenary
• John Leguizamo as Burke, a mercenary
• Don Harvey as Garber, Colonel Stuart's second in command
• Tom Verica as Kahn, a mercenary
• Vondie Curtis-Hall as Miller, a mercenary
• John Amos as Major Grant, the head of Army Special Forces

Reception[link]

The film exceeded all expectations by actually outdoing the massive box office success of the original.^[3] The film also received a reasonably positive critical reception; it garnered a 64% 'Fresh' rating, based on 45 film critic reviews, at the aggregate site Rotten Tomatoes.^[4] Roger Ebert, while noting the substantial credibility problems with the plot, described the film as "terrific entertainment."^[5]

The film had a budget of $70 million and had a wide release in 2,507 theaters, making $21.7 million its opening weekend. Die Hard 2 has domestically made $117.5 million and $239.5 million worldwide, almost doubling that of the first film.^[1]

Maxim magazine named the plane crash as #2 on its list of "Greatest Movie Plane Crashes".^[6]

Production and promotion[link]

Die Hard 2 was the first film to use digitally composited live-action footage with a traditional matte painting that had been photographed and scanned into a computer. It was used for the last scene, which took place on a runway.^[7]

Soundtrack[link]

Michael Kamen, the composer for the first film, also composed the score for Die Hard 2. Kamen reprises several music cues from his Die Hard score (most notably during the action sequences), as well as adapting Jean Sibelius's "Finlandia" (in a similar fashion to his incorporation of Beethoven's 9th Symphony into the score of the first Die Hard). The end credits of the film begin with the Christmas song "Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!" (performed by Vaughn Monroe), as they did in Die Hard.

Unlike the previous film, a soundtrack album was released by Varese Sarabande.

1. Colonel Stuart (1:28)
2. Baggage Handling (3:45)
3. General Esperanza (2:11)
4. The Annex Skywalk
5. The Church (1:12)
6. The Doll (3:48)
7. The Runway (3:55)
8. In The Plane (1:37)
9. Icicle (2:53)
10. Snowmobiles (2:40)
11. The Terminal (6:08)
12. Finlandia - Jean Sibelius (7:29)

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Film portal

• Die Hard 2 at the Internet Movie Database
• Die Hard 2 at AllRovi
• Die Hard 2 at Box Office Mojo
• Die Hard 2 at Rotten Tomatoes
• Die Hard 2 on Wikia

Look up diehard or die hard in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

Die hard may refer to:

• die hard (phrase), one not easily swayed from a belief
• DieHard (type of battery), a brand of batteries marketed by Sears
• Diehard tests, a battery of statistical tests
• Diehard is also a pattern in the Game of Life
• Die Hard, a song by Venom
• Die-Hards, nickname of the Middlesex Regiment of the British Army
• Die Hard, an upcoming song from Detox (Dr. Dre album)

• The Die Hard film franchise including:
  • Die Hard
  • Die Hard 2 (Die Harder)
  • Die Hard with a Vengeance
  • Live Free or Die Hard (Die Hard 4.0)
  • A Good Day to Die Hard
  • Die Hard video games, based on the films:
    • Die Hard (video game) for Nintendo Entertainment System
    • Die Hard Arcade for arcade and Sega Saturn
    • Die Hard Trilogy for PC, Sony PlayStation, and Saturn
    • Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas for PC and PlayStation
    • Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza for PC
    • Die Hard: Vendetta for Nintendo GameCube, Microsoft Xbox, and Sony PlayStation 2

This disambiguation page lists articles associated with the same title. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (November 2011)

John McClane (Born 1954) is a fictional character and the protagonist of the Die Hard film series. He is portrayed by Bruce Willis.

Development and description[link]

John McClane was originally based on the fictional character Detective Joe Leland from Roderick Thorp's novel, Nothing Lasts Forever, along with another character, Frank Malone from Walter Wager's novel 58 Minutes (later adapted as Die Hard 2) and is somewhat based on and inspired by Dirty Harry. Die Hard villain Hans Gruber describes him as "just another American... who thinks he's John Wayne,"^[1] to which McClane replies that he "was always partial to Roy Rogers."^[2] He is described as being a foul-mouthed, wisecracking, no-nonsense New York cop with an itchy trigger finger and a never-say-die maverick spirit.^[3]

McClane's marriage is in a constant state of crisis, his vigilantism and disregard for authority have put him in danger of losing his job more than once, and he is a chain-smoker who is described as "two steps away from becoming a full blown alcoholic", which McClane jokingly upgrades to only "one step".^[4]

The trailer for the first Die Hard film states, "The last thing McClane wants is to be a hero, but he doesn't have a choice." In the second film, he is told "You're the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time", to which he replies, "The story of my life." In the fourth film, he says he gets involved in dangerous situations "because there is nobody else to do it."^[5]

Depiction[link]

In the first Die Hard film in 1988, John McClane is an Irish American detective with the New York City Police Department and has been an officer for 11 years. At the beginning of the first film, he is recently separated from his wife Holly Gennero (Bonnie Bedelia), who is using her maiden name. Holly moved to Los Angeles several months earlier to pursue a career, leading to their separation when McClane stayed behind (to officially cope with some open cases but unofficially because he didn't expect her to last). They have two children, Lucy and John. On Christmas Eve, McClane visits his wife at her workplace at the Nakatomi Plaza. Simultaneously, Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) initiates his plan to steal $640 million in bearer bonds and takes the Nakatomi Company employees, including Holly, hostage, posing as terrorists to draw attention away from the theft, their final plan being to blow up the building and make it appear as though they died with the hostages in the explosion. McClane escapes detection and manages to hide throughout the building, killing the terrorists one by one. When McClane meets the terrorist's leader, Hans Gruber, a climactic battle ensues and McClane throws Gruber out the window.

After the events of Die Hard, McClane moves to Los Angeles, is promoted to lieutenant and is transferred to the Los Angeles Police Department. During this time, McClane appears to have become a national hero. Dialogue in the second film reveals that he was featured in People Magazine, did a spot on Nightline, and was referred to (by Colonel Stuart) as "the policeman hero who saved the Nakatomi hostages" along with a local news crew. In the second film Die Hard 2, which takes place on Christmas Eve, McClane discovers that mercenaries have seized control of Washington Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C. They take control of the airport's communications and threaten to cause plane crashes unless their demands are met. Holly is traveling on one of the planes and is stranded as her plane circles overhead. McClane discovers a conspiracy between the mercenaries and an active military unit to rescue a notorious dictator from being imprisoned for crimes against humanity. He foils their plans and provides a visual landing signal for the circling aircraft by exploding the plane the villains were using for their exit strategy.

In the third film Die Hard with a Vengeance, McClane is back in New York. He is now separated from his wife, suspended from the police force, and a borderline alcoholic. A terrorist who goes only by the name "Simon" (Jeremy Irons) threatens to blow up various locations in the city unless McClane will play his twisted version of Simon says. McClane must solve a number of riddles and challenges in order to keep the bombs from going off. He receives the reluctant help of Zeus Carver (Samuel L. Jackson), a shopkeeper from Harlem who had saved McClane after the first challenge "Simon" had put him through, when Simon forces Carver to continue assisting McClane. The FBI finally reveals that "Simon" is in fact Simon Peter Gruber, the brother of Hans Gruber, who is attempting to kill McClane in revenge for his brother's death in the first film. In a subsequent revelation, McClane discovers that revenge is only a timely and clever cover story to conceal the true purpose behind his terrorist activities: the forced depletion of New York's Federal Reserve, having gained access to the bank during the game by setting off a bomb in a location that damaged the underground vault. With the help of Carver, McClane tracks Simon to the Canadian border. There, in a decisive final confrontation with the latter in a helicopter, McClane puts an end to Simon's plan with a handgun and a power line.

In the fourth film Live Free or Die Hard, which takes place on Independence Day,^[6] McClane is assigned to take hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long) into FBI custody (McClane is mentioned as having been on the force for 30 years at the time of this film). In this film his rank, besides being a senior detective, is detective lieutenant. They soon discover that a group of terrorists, led by Thomas Gabriel (Timothy Olyphant), are conducting a fire sale and are systematically taking out the nation's infrastructure (including power plants, traffic lights, transportation, and financial markets). McClane and his wife are divorced and McClane is not on speaking terms with his daughter, Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead). During the course of the film Lucy is kidnapped by the terrorists as leverage against McClane. McClane's previous actions seem mostly forgotten, as Farrell was unaware of his past and McClane is somewhat cynical about what he did. With help from Farrell, McClane manages to yet again thwart a disaster, Farrell countering Gabriel's hacks while McClane eliminates his men, culminating in McClane shooting through his own shoulder to kill Gabriel. His actions also seem to restore his relationship with his daughter or at least help restore it as the two are back on speaking terms again and Lucy introduces herself as Lucy McClane to Farrell when in the past she introduced herself as Lucy Gennero and apparently told guys her father was dead.

Family[link]

Holly Gennero[link]

Holly Gennero (formerly Holly Gennero-McClane) is the wife of John McClane. Over the course of the series, their relationship becomes more and more strained. They have two children together, Jack and Lucy. Holly is portrayed by actress Bonnie Bedelia in the first two films (Die Hard and Die Hard 2).

In Die Hard, Holly works at the skyscraper Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles, which is home to a Japanese corporation. Her marriage to John has been estranged ever since she took up her new job and he refused to relocate with her from New York. Holly lives in L.A. with their children. They quickly get into an argument over why Holly chooses to use Gennero (her maiden name) at work and are separated for most of the first film while John fights Hans Gruber's terrorists. However in Die Hard 2, they seem to be on better terms.

Although Holly does not appear in Die Hard with a Vengeance, she is mentioned in conversation and McClane makes an attempt to telephone her and her voice is heard briefly on the phone. She still resides in Los Angeles and is still married to McClane.

In Live Free or Die Hard, cyber-terrorist Thomas Gabriel pulls up a picture of Holly's driver's license and notes that McClane and Holly are divorced.

Lucy Gennero-McClane[link]

Lucy Gennero-McClane (also known as Lucy Gennero) is John's daughter whose born in 1982. She is played as a child by Taylor Fry in the first Die Hard film and as an adult by Mary Elizabeth Winstead in the fourth film Live Free or Die Hard.

In Live Free or Die Hard, Lucy tells her boyfriend that McClane is dead and styles herself using "Gennero" (her mother's maiden name). Later, villain Thomas Gabriel kidnaps her and uses her as leverage against John as McClane closes in on Gabriel. While being held hostage, she forgives her father over the course of the movie and displays great courage and faith in her father. As the movie goes on, she switches her last name back to "McClane" and even helps her father out: when Gabriel tells her to talk her father down, she uses the opportunity to tell him there are five bad guys left and later insists he will save her, which he does. During the climactic scene, she grabs a gun and shoots the person who is holding her and attempts to slide a gun to her father but is foiled by Gabriel at the last second. After its all over, she expresses romantic interest in Matt Farrell (McClane's sidekick).

Before Mary Elizabeth Winstead was chosen as Lucy McClane, there were other rumors as to who would play the role of McClane's daughter. It was speculated that Rumer Willis (Bruce Willis' real life daughter), who was born the same year that the original Die Hard was released, was a prime candidate for the part of Lucy McClane.^[7] Also, Jessica Simpson,^[8] Britney Spears,^[9] and Taylor Fry (who played Lucy in the original Die Hard),^[10] had all previously auditioned for the role.

Prior to Live Free and Die Hard, Lucy was featured in the video game Die Hard: Vendetta where she is a member of the Los Angeles Police Department.

John McClane Jr. (Jack McClane)[link]

John "Jack" McClane Jr. is John's son whose born in 1984. He briefly appears as a child by Noah Land in the first Die Hard movie.

In Live Free or Die Hard, cyber terrorist Thomas Gabriel refers to him by the name "Jack". In early drafts of the script of Live Free or Die Hard, John Jr. was set to be in the film.^[11]

On February 22, 2012, it was announced that Jai Courtney would play on the role of Jack (John Jr.) in the fifth film A Good Day to Die Hard.^[12][13]

Catchphrase[link]

Throughout the films, John McClane delivers his catchphrase "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" usually when he is about to or has just defeated the main antagonists.

Uses[link]

McClane adopts the phrase in the first film, Die Hard, when the main antagonist, Hans Gruber, says "Do you really think you have a chance against us, Mr. Cowboy?" to which McClane replies, "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker". At the end of the film, before his death at the hands of McClane, Gruber echoes the phrase in response to McClane saying "You made a pretty good cowboy yourself, Hans".

McClane repeats the phrase in the two following films. In Die Hard 2, he delivers it before lighting a trail of fuel to destroy the airplane that the antagonists are in, and in Die Hard with a Vengeance, he says it in a low voice after shooting down the helicopter which the main antagonist, Simon Peter Gruber, is flying.

In the fourth film, Live Free or Die Hard, when the main antagonist, Thomas Gabriel, is holding McClane captive with a gun to his shoulder, he says "Your tombstone should read 'always in the wrong place in the wrong time'", to which McClane replies, "How about 'yippee-ki-yay, motherfu****'?" (the last two syllables are drowned out in the gun shot since there was a significant absence of use of the word "fuck" in the film, the only film in the series to receive a PG-13 rating) before pulling the trigger, shooting himself in the shoulder and Gabriel in the heart in the process. In the Unrated version, the "Yippee-ki-yay, motherfucker" line was left uncensored before McClane shot and killed Gabriel through his shoulder.

Reception[link]

Empire ranked him number 12 on their list of the 100 Greatest Movie Characters of All Time.^[3] In a survey by MTV, "accomplished" filmmakers, actors and fans voted on the "Greatest Movie Badass of All Time". McClane came in third, behind only Ellen Ripley and Dirty Harry.^[14] In April 2009, Entertainment Weekly ranked John McClane sixth in list of the top twenty "All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture", describing "Bruce Willis' wisecracking, terrorist-foiling New York cop" character as "the anti-Bond". The magazine called the characters portrayed by Keanu Reeves in Speed, Wesley Snipes in Passenger 57, and Jean-Claude Van Damme in Sudden Death as "copycat descendants" of John McClane.^[15]

Bruce Willis was called "an excellent casting choice as a sardonic action hero."^[16]

Future[link]

On May 5, 2010 it was announced that X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The A-Team writer, Skip Woods was in negotiations to script a fifth Die Hard movie and the film will be produced by Alex Young. Bruce Willis will again return as John McClane and Willis said that he would like to see Live Free or Die Hard director, Len Wiseman return and would also like to see the story take place outside of the United States with a tentative title of Die Hard 24/7.^[17][18] On October 12, 2011, the official title of the fifth Die Hard is called A Good Day to Die Hard.^[19]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: John McClane

• John McClane at the Internet Movie Database