Movies - Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Home > Listing Index > Movies > Die Hard 2: Die Harder

	Movies - Die Hard 2: Die Harder

Die Hard 2: Die Harder, the second Die Hard
movie, directed by Renny Harlin, was released on Wednesday, July 4, 1990 starring Bruce Willis as cop John McClane, and also starred Bonnie Bedelia, William Sadler, William Atherton, Dennis Franz and Fred Dalton Thompson.

McClane is waiting for his wife to land at Washington's Dulles Airport when terrorists take over. He must stop the terrorists before his wife's plane, circling the airport, runs out of fuel and crashes.

The movie is based on a novel by Walter Wager entitled 58 minutes. The novel has the same premise: 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.

Die Hard 2 was followed by Die Hard: With a Vengeance
in 1995.

While lacking the huge impact of the original, the movie was a box-office success and received a reasonably positive critical reception. Roger Ebert, while noting the not insubstantial plot credibility problems with the movie, described it as "terrific entertainment".

Taglines:

"Die Harder."
"They say lightning never strikes twice... They were wrong"
"John McClane is back in the wrong place at the wrong time!"
"Last time, it blew you through the back wall of the theatre. This time, it will blow you sky high!"
"Yippee Ki Yay, All over again!"

Trivia

Die Hard 2 was the first movie to have a digitally-manipulated matte painting. It was used for the very last scene, which took place on a runway.

The movie was not filmed at Dulles, but at Denver's now-closed Stapleton International Airport. This was done mainly because the producers needed an area that had frequent and consistent snowfall, which Denver has.

Amongst other implausibilities, one key to the plot (that planes would continue to circle an airport waiting to land until they were unable to divert elsewhere) does not reflect reality. Under flight regulations, planes must always maintain enough fuel to divert to another airport and land there. In the densely-populated north-eastern United States, there are a considerable number of airfields with instrument landing facilities which would have been available for landing.

Another plot hole is the terrorists being the only ones able to communicate to airliners after the terrorists cripple the airport's communication systems. In real life, aviation AM band radios are quite common, and commercial airliners have numerous other communication systems to talk to their corporate headquarters, etc. Also, in the Washington D.C. area, there are several airports (Reagan National, Andrews Air Force Base, and Langley Air Force Base being just a few) within a few minutes flight time that could communicate with and land commercial airliners in an emergency.

Aside from John McClane, two characters from the first film makes an appearance. Al Powell, to whom McClane gives a phone call early in this film; and Richard Thornburg, who was fired some time after the first film and is on the same plane as Holly.
The way the villians crashed the plane by changing the glidepath is completly false. They would actually have to go to the glideslope shelters to move the glide path.They would also have to physically move the antennas and cut cables to specific lengths which would take considerable time.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Die Hard 2: Die Harder ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Die Hard 2: Die Harder; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay