"But Karl's up there!"" But we can't forget that while he's running, climbing, and hurling through Nakatomi Plaza, Hans is also on a bit of a quest himself. Tower-ing Fiction #9: Glass Tower, The Towering Inferno (1974), Tower-ing Fiction #6: The Pearl, Skyscraper (2018), The #WalkingBedWeek Roundtable at the #WelcomeToSlumberland Social Media Research Project, The Animated Legacy of Little Nemo's Walking Bed, Scale and Formal Presention of Little Nemo's Walking Bed, The (Illusion of) Safety in Little Nemo's Walking Bed, The Endless Media Adaptations of Little Nemo's Walking Bed, Trippin' on a Prayer: Masonic and Anticlerical Readings of Little Nemo's Walking Bed, NST #444: Saturday Night Live, "Voters for Trump" ad (2016), NST #441: Tom Clancy's The Division 2 (2019). In the film, NYPD detective John McClane (Bruce Willis) must fight a group of well equipped terrorists led by former Volksfrei radical Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman), all of whom have seized the Nakatomi Plaza on Christmas Eve to rob a corporate vault containing 640 million dollars in bearer bonds. In Russia the film was named Крепкий Орешек (A Hard Nut to Crack). Kristoff runs with one bag before he is knocked out by John McClane, and Hans and Eddie stop packing their bags of bearer bonds to deal with McClane. Uli and Eddie fire at the team as they try to break in the front door so the police department sends in an RV to rescue the men. As Theo left to get the ambulance ready to use as the escape vehicle, Hans, Eddie and Kristoff continue to load the bearer bonds into their bags. The guard could have simply told him that Holly would be at the party on the thirtieth floor and he would have saved McClane the trouble of looking her up. According to commentary from the movie's DVD release, Alan Rickman's surprise when Gruber is dropped from the building is genuine: the director chose to release Rickman a full second before he expected it in order to get genuine surprise, a move which angered Rickman. As Kristoff runs a stack of bonds down the hallway, John realizes that he only has enough rounds in his pistol to kill Hans and Eddie, and uses the butt of Uli's empty MP5 to knock Kristoff unconscious. When Die Hard was released, it was considered one of the best action films of its era. The Vault of Nakatomi Plaza is the locked, highly-secured vault carrying $640 million of bearer bonds in the 30th floor of the Nakatomi Plaza. The Davenport Homestead in Assassin’s Creed: Rogue (Ubisoft, 2014) contains a nice wall in one of the second-floor rooms. The Glass Tower is the site of the titular inferno in The Towering Inferno (dir. Robinson believes Harry would still be alive if John turned himself if, but John radios back with his own opinion on the matter. It was a huge critical and commercial success and propelled the careers of many of the stars. An NYPD officer tries to save his wife and several others taken hostage by German terrorists during a Christmas party at the Nakatomi Plaza in Los Angeles. Zachary J.A. Bearer bonds, because they are unregistered, are technically owned by whoever is holding them. But Takagi refused to give him the code, Hans executes him and has his computer expert Theo work on the vault. They use a flash grenade but John has vanished by the time the smoke has cleared. Thornburg orders his assistant to research the name "John McClane" they overheard. In the fifth and #WalkingBedWeek entry, Zachary J.A. On the roof, John evades the gunfire and makes his way into a dead-end closet with a large ventilation fan. It has seven locks, which includes a code, five mechanical locks and an electromagnetic seal, which is controlled by the downtown Los Angeles power grid. Die Hard is obviously John McClane's movie. Whenever Gruber fires his weapon, the scene cuts away. He then signs off by saying "Yippie-ki-yay, motherfucker!". He uses his machine gun and its strap to climb down the ventilation shaft, but the strap slips free from the gun and he falls a couple of floors. Trying to warn the helicopter not to land and to get the hostages away from the explosives, John begins firing Uli's machine gun in the air. On the way, they are stopped by Thornburg for an interview. In Romania, it was renamed Greu de ucis (Hard To Kill, like the Latin American title). The bearer bonds inside the vault were a target of Hans Gruber and his men when they took over the building. Takagi insists that he doesn't have them, and even if he did they couldn't steal any information that would hurt the company. Back in the foyer, Harry is getting antsy so he snorts more cocaine and gets up to talk to Hans. It differs from the more common types of debt securities in that it is unregistered – no records are kept of the owner (i.e. Furthermore, whomever Nakatomi Corp received these funds from would not need to have been recorded in any type of tax ledger. The lobby scene near the beginning of the film doesn't really make sense. So it makes sense that even though Gruber achieves his objective—he gets into the vault and packs up his bearer bonds—he's thwarted in the end. Holly enters, and the two jilted lovers give each other a subtle greeting across the room. Tony dies in the fall. Joe Takagi), or the transactions involving ownership. A string wall briefly shows up in this eerily prescient Saturday Night Live “Voters for Trump” ad from March 2016. In the garage, Hans Gruber and the rest of the team of terrorists exit from the back of the courier truck. Hans frightens the party by telling them that Mr. Takagi has been killed, but is interrupted by the arrival of Tony's body. Die Hard (1988) - Open-ended Trailer (e11737). https://diehard.fandom.com/wiki/Nakatomi_Vault?oldid=24823. Chris Butler & Sam Fell, 2012). Thornburg's assistant brings good news to Thornburg, telling him that she knows John McClane's records and his LA address. When she arrives at her office, she excuses her pregnant secretary Ginny to go join the party and shows Harry the door as well. Hans gets a status report from his men, and learns that Theo is making good progress on the vault, but that Heinrich's bag of detonators has been taken by John. In Die Hard, Hans Gruber's reasoning for taking over Nakatomi in the first place was to steal $640 million in bearer bonds from the vault. Hans reveals Holly and forces McClane to drop the MP5. John celebrates the approaching fire trucks but gets angry when they turn off their sirens and turn around. Die Hard star Bruce Willis as John McLane in a commercial for Advanced Auto Parts. Kristoff arrived in the Pacific Courier truck and was helping Heinrich load the equipment to the vault on the 30th floor of the Nakatomi building. Then McClane confronts Hans and Eddie. It was released on July 15, 1988 and was written by Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza and directed by John McTiernan. Die Hard [edit | edit source] After Hans and his men took over the building, they tried to make Nakatomi head executive Joe Takagi reveal the code. The scene where Hans and John meet face to face wasn't originally in the script, and was added in during production. When McClane asks the guard at the desk where he can find Holly McClane, the guard replies by telling him that he can find her by using the database computer mounted in front of the desk. Hans watches a small TV and recognizes the children Thornburg is interviewing. He gives Hans John's name and occupation and uses Hans' radio to talk to John. John asks Al to tell his wife goodbye should anything happen to him, but Al tells him to pull through it. Hans gives Uli the detonators and Karl smashes some decorations at the Christmas party. Marco then traps John under the conference table by standing on top and shooting toward the ground. It was later changed to its original name. Throughout the climactic fight he has with McClane, Karl suffers from several life threatening injuries, and at the end of the fight, McClane even hangs him by the neck with an industrial chain. Uli and Eddie usher all the hostages to the roof, and John kills Uli as he chases the hostages, searching for Holly. Hans finally addresses the police and begins to list the names of "fellow freedom fighters he wants released from prisons around the world. Die Hard The bearer bonds are physically shown near the end of the film. And there are a whole lot of obstacles and tests along the way (which Theo handily takes care of—for the most part). He announces that day was one of the most successful days in the company's history. In a news equipment room, journalist Richard Thornburg overhears the call for help on a police scanner. He decides to pretend to be an escaped hostage and John believes it. View All Videos (1) Die Hard Quotes. He fires the gun into the air, orders all the hostages to the roof, and takes Holly with him to the vault. John holds his hands behind his head and starts laughing, and Hans and Eddie join in, knowing his situation is futile. Holly punches him in the face for giving her identity to the terrorists and the couple kisses as Argyle drives them away from a damaged and burning Nakatomi Plaza. One could easily question the Nakatomi Corpration's motives for holding and/or using bearer bonds during the course of regular business. Even some characters in the movie make this mistake. Both John and Holly thought the other would bend and move to join the other, but they are both too hard headed. He's the hero of the story. The police and Thornburg look on in amazement. He stresses that he can complete the first six, but that the seventh lock, a electromagnetic system, can not be cut locally. When McClane distracts Hans and Eddie with laughing, he lets out his Beretta 92 pistol that he taped on his back, wounds Hans and kills Eddie. Special Agent Johnson instructs a power company worker to turn off the power for a ten block radius around Nakatomi. Outside, a Pacific Courier Truck pulls into the garage. As she walks down a hallway, her obnoxious co-worker Harry Ellis flirts with her. Because they were produced in denominations higher than common currency ($640,000,000 issues in the Nakatomi vault), they were often used to more easily transfer exorbitant sums of money. Hans holds his Heckler and Koch P7M13 to Holly's head and orders John to drop his machine gun. Die Hard is a perk in Fallout Tactics and Van Buren. In Israel, the title was translated to מת לחיות (Dying to Live). The operator decides to send a sole officer to investigate. The elevator is affected by the blast and blows out the wall of the 30th floor. A number of video games based on the Die Hard series of films have been made, including Die Hard Trilogy, Die Hard Trilogy 2: Viva Las Vegas, Die Hard Arcade, Die Hard: Vendetta, and Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza. Hans slowly aims his gun at John and Holly, but John manages to unclasp the watch before Hans can shoot, sending Hans plummeting to his death on the ground, 30 stories below. John waddles back to the machinery room and finds the large amount of C4 wired to blow up the roof. John attempts to break the window with a chair but is spotted from the roof, so Marco and Heinrich run to stop him. Hans orders James and Alexander to take down the tank with a rocket launcher. Even if Karl managed to survive that, he was still stuck on the floor where the explosives had been planted, and Kristoff even confirms this when Gruber tells him to detonate the roof (saying. John refuses to respond to Harry's friendly requests to give back the detonators so Hans shoots Harry. Theo and Hans walk to the vault while Theo explains the vault's seven layers of security.