The Big Picture
Die Hard 2
is a worthy follow-up to the original, maintaining high-stakes action and interactions with a new villain.
The film features a shocking scene where a plane crashes, killing all passengers, causing controversy among executives.
Despite pushback from the studio, the decision to keep the intense scene added stakes and tension, resonating with audiences.
It would be difficult to follow in the footsteps of 1988’s Die Hard, aka one of the greatest Christmas movies of all time, but Die Hard 2 is a worthy follow-up. It isn’t exactly reinventing the wheel, as it were, but it has the same high-stakes, non-stop action, and the added benefit of seeing Bruce Willis’ John McClane interact with others (read “telling others they’re stupid for not listening to him in the first place”). Like in the first movie, there are lots of deaths, but one scene had Fox executives squirming in their seats… and it isn’t the one you’re probably thinking of.
Die Hard 2: Die Harder
John McClane attempts to avert disaster as rogue military operatives seize control of Dulles International Airport in Washington, D.C.
Release Date July 2, 1990
Director Renny Harlin
Runtime 124
Writers Walter Wager , Steven E. de Souza , Doug Richardson
‘Die Hard 2’ Sets the Stage for Violence
To put the scene in question into context, let’s briefly revisit the events leading up to it in Die Hard 2. John McClane is waiting for Holly’s (Bonnie Bedelia) plane to land at Dulles International Airport. At the same time, another plane is en route to Dulles, one that carries corrupt foreign military leader General Ramon Esperanza (Franco Nero), under extradition for having used U.S. funds to buy drugs. Esperanza, too, has a party awaiting his arrival in the form of a disgraced former U.S. military leader, Colonel William Stuart (William Sadler), and a group of ex-military personnel that had supported Esperanza’s actions.
McClane happens to witness two of Stuart’s men in the airport, whose actions arouse his suspicions. He follows them into a restricted baggage area where his suspicions are confirmed when a gun fight is instigated, with McClane killing one while the other makes an escape. McClane gets the dead man’s fingerprints and learns that he is an American soldier who “died” in a helicopter accident two years prior. McClane, knowing Esperanza is en route, puts two and two together and tries to warn airport police chief Carmine Lorenzo (Dennis Franz) and Ed Trudeau (Fred Thompson), air traffic control director. They do not put two and two together, and dismiss McClane’s concerns outright.
Oh, you crazy kids. When will you ever learn to listen to McClane? Stuart and his men hack the air control systems, cut all communications with incoming airplanes, and turn off all the runway lighting from their base on the outskirts of the airport. Stuart calls up Dulles and makes his demands: Esperanza’s plane is to land on a runway of his choosing, without interference, with a fully-fueled Boeing 747 cargo plane nearby, so they can escape to another country. No other planes can land until Esperanza’s plane has arrived, and they have left the area. The demands come with the explicit warning that any attempts to regain control of the airport systems will result in dire consequences. The aircraft in the area are instructed to hold in the air, a little problematic as fuel starts to run low, as it does with the airplane Holly is on. Go figure.
‘Die Hard 2’ Eclipses ‘Die Hard’s Body Count
How dire can dire consequences really be? Well, rather than let Colonel Stuart do his thing, chief airport engineer Leslie Barnes (Art Evans) comes up with the idea of using an unfinished antenna array to circumvent Stuart’s plans and re-establish communications with the planes. Trudeau okays the plan, because there is no way that Stuart knows about the area, and so Barnes heads off accompanied by a SWAT team. Not only does Colonel Stuart know about the unfinished antenna array, he already has men there. Oops. The bloodbath that ensues takes out the entire SWAT team and the antenna, with Barnes only alive thanks to McClane’s arrival.
Caught up? Now we’re at the scene. Stuart warned everyone what would happen if they tried such a stunt, but they did it anyway. It’s dire consequence time. Stuart, under the guise of air traffic control, opens communication with a nearby British Airways plane and gives them clearance to land. Relieved, the pilot shares the news with the passengers and begins his descent. Only Stuart has taken control of their altimeter, and fakes the reading by recalibrating sea level. The pilot realizes too late that the ground isn’t where the altimeter says it is. No, it’s much closer than that, and unable to pull up in time, the plane crashes hard into the runway, exploding into pieces and killing all 230 passengers on board. And you thought it was McClane stabbing one of Stuart’s men in the eyeball with an icicle that had Fox execs all worked up.
Related The Paul Newman Disaster Movie With a Surprising Connection to ‘Die Hard’ A top-tier disaster film with a star-studded cast.
Fox Executives Pushed for Alternate Scene in ‘Die Hard 2’
Yes, the scene that Fox executives found too grotesque didn’t really show anyone dying on-screen up close, but the human mind can fill in the horror of what’s happening far more vividly than what can be shown, much like how Steven Spielbergupped the horror by keeping the shark out of view in Jaws. Steven E. de Souza, the Die Hard 2 writer, insisted that the deaths of innocent people were necessary, something that absolutely guts John McClane with his failure to prevent it from happening. The movie studio didn’t see it that way. As de Souza recounts, they said, “You can’t kill all those people, we’ll lose the audience!” Their solution? Switch the British Airways passenger plane out for a UPS cargo plane. No innocent passengers, just a crap ton of packages and the pilot. The studio even spent money to film a model UPS plane crashing, in the event that test audiences would walk out of the theater after seeing the existing scene.
They needn’t have worried. The test screening audience didn’t bolt for the doors at the sight of hundreds of lives lost. In the same interview, de Souza states that, “the audience loved the movie at the test screening, and we kept it in.” Looking at the film now, it was the right choice. There’s no stakes involved if packages are destroyed. Stuart’s warning of dire consequences rings hollow if the worst that happens is UPS is out one guy and a plane, and little Billy doesn’t get the toy he asked Santa for Christmas Day. By keeping the scene as is, it adds to the tension of the film and makes McClane’s efforts to stop Stuart that much more personal, because it just as easily could have been Holly’s plane.
On the lighter side, that scene leads to an amusing anecdote from William Sadler, who, in an interview with 1428 Elm about his role as Death in Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, said, “In Hard to Kill, I killed six people… in Die Hard 2, I killed 130 people or something, and now, as the Reaper, I’ve claimed everybody that ever died.” Which probably includes the dude with the icicle to the eye.
Die Hard 2 is available to rent or buy in the U.S. on Amazon Prime.
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