The Hacker Movie Canon: Die Hard

Yeah, yeah, there was a lot of that. HBO was definitely like the prime pusher for this kind of stuff in the late 80s, early 90s. They would just, they didn't have that much inventory of movies, so they would just play something for like 6 months and you would see it like 4 times a day. You're like, oh OK, This is the part where he throws the chair down the elevator shaft. I'm going to sit here for a while and watch this. Yeah, maybe that's more what it was. I never saw it like beginning to end. The first four or five times I saw it, it was 20 minutes at the time.

It was. It was like Pulp Fiction. I didn't know what the timeline really was in this movie. Well, it is sort of like chapterized in that way, Pete, like not not specific, you know, intentionally, but there is like, you know, there's the the part that I always sort of like not forget, but I'm surprised by how long it is. It's like Mcclain's plane journey, the, you know, the hotel, all the airport, the thing the limo pick up with Argyle, that whole ride. There's a solid like 25 ish minutes before we ever get to Nocatomi Plaza, you know, and try and and figure out what this movie is actually about.

You're just like, oh, it's this fish out of water guy from New York who lands in California and it's like. Right. They have to establish how weird, how weird California is to him. It's incredible. It's like, although, you know, as an East Coast person who didn't, I guess I went to California when I was a kid, but when you go there as an adult, you're like, this really is a definitely a different planet. Like, you go to LA for the first time, you're like, I don't know what these people are about. But like the like the two times he said he like directly remarks about it being like California being weird is like somebody gets off the plane and kisses his girlfriend in the airport and he's like California.

I'm like just any PDA outside of New York. It's just like, whoa, too much. And then the guy at the party, they're like kisses him on the cheek. He's like fucking California. It is. It is like you have to have in a fantastic movie, you have to have the anchoring of like the normal beforehand. But it is this very weird kind of balancing act that it's establishing the normal that is very unnormal to this guy and then ratcheting that up about 1000°.

Yes, yeah. Even just his plane ride out there, you know, he's uncomfortable. You can tell he doesn't really like traveling. He's probably not been to a lot of places 'cause he's a New York City cop. He's a busy busting, you know, bad guys. He says that I got a long list of bad guys in New York. I got to take that. Yeah, that'll keep you busy. California nonsense out here making fists with your toes on the carpet or whatever. I do that every time I fly now. Just more homage than actual useful. I've done so many times, so many times in hotel rooms and things like that.

It's such a dorky thing. But yeah. And then it's one of those stupid things that you're like, OK, why did they, why didn't they cut that out? And then later on, obviously, they pay it off with like, the broken glass and the their bare feet or whatever. We'll get to that. But it does always strike me every time I watch this how perfectly constructed this movie is, just as like kind of a thrill ride. You know, once you actually get into the building, you know, things pop off right away. And then you're just with McClain, you know, trying to figure out this puzzle of how to get who these people are, how to get his wife and then how to get the hell out of there. He's not like originally not trying to kill these guys or like he doesn't really give a shit who they are. He just wants to go find Holly and find a way out of this, this building, you know, so it's just kind of a, a real like a classic action movie set up.

Like, here's the guy, here's the objective, here's the people he's trying to get away from. Now let's keep throwing some obstacles in his way. Well, and the thing and I I think I may have even said this previously, but it's like this is one of the handful of movies that like introduced a new guy like this is a new type of action hero. And I was thinking like, when was the last time? I like the last time I can think of that happening now is like John Wick, right? Is like the older actor who like throws himself so hard into training and then this stunt centric movie. But there was like a decade of Die Hard type movies. Dennis, I notice you say classic action movie, not style, not classic, say Christmas movie style in there. Just we're going to talk about that today. Is that?

Is that going to be? Is that on the list? Oh, that's on the agenda. I don't we did this, this movie podcast. I think Zoe, you said it was 2019. 2019. OK, so six years ago, I don't remember where both of you fell on the is this a Christmas movie argument. I'm on the it's a movie that takes place at Christmas but isn't about Christmas. It's not a hill I'm going to die on. Like I'm not getting in a bar fight about this like some people will. But it's not about Christmas, I guess, is what, where I land on it.

It's bringing families together, Dennis. That's true. There's. A lot of movies that do that. I'm I'm I'm a hard no, it is not a Christmas movie. Not not only because it's not there's it's not thematically Christmas, You know, it's not like you could argue McLean was not, you know, he he learned something about himself maybe, But no, like Christmas movies are about like something the discovery of oneself, you know, a new found like appreciation for life, for family or whatever. Like it's got there's got to be some Scrooge in there, you know, for it to be a Christmas movie.

This is just, this is just set at Christmas and this was not something I knew the last time we talked about this cynically. So Joel Silver, the producer of this movie, has admitted he deliberately said it at Christmas because he knew it would have replay value. Just like Mariah Carey and getting all those residuals for her Christmas songs. That's why every band does a Christmas song because they know it's going to get replay value. Die Hard and Lethal Weapon both said at Christmas. Because he knew they would be.

Oh yeah, shown over and over again. Forgot about that. Yeah, naked commercialism. Exactly which? Which, to be fair, is also maybe the best argument for it being a Christmas movie. Naked commercialism. Crass capitalism, so. True meaning of Christmas? Yeah, true meaning of Christmas. Residual checks, mailbox money, Yeah. Ever since I found out that Saul Rubeneck's character in True Romance was supposed to be a like parody of Joel Silver, every time I hear Joel Silver, I just imagine Saul Rubeneck 'cause I don't know what Joel Silver actually looks like.

I don't actually either, but I picture him looking like Hart Bochner, the guy that's doing the cocaine in the office. Lenis or Lenis, Yeah. That's exactly. What I keep thinking just I was just going to say the same thing. Pretty sure he looks like that guy. I have no idea, but that's the way that, like all 80s producers and, you know, movie people look to me in in my head, yeah, Roberts and Mac is like everybody. It doesn't matter what they actually look like. He really is the like platonic ideal of coked up like business shithead in this movie.

I I was just Marvel at it during his little phone call. It's incredible because he talks about the Rolex. He's it's just, it's the grossest like 80s stereotype and it's so funny. This came out in 88, like right around the time of like, I think Wall Street came out the year before this, like 87 somewhere around there. But like in the middle of all that yuppie nonsense, like, you know, the screen writing team was like, we need one of these jerks in our movie to show like what we're what we're all fighting against here. And he's such a perfect archetype. He was.

He directed. He became a director after Die Hard too, that actor. Or Buckner. He directed PCU again, as you do. I haven't thought about that movie since seeing the credits the first time I saw PCU. Yeah, a movie that includes Jeremy Piven, George Clinton. George like what's his name directed? From Swinging Jon Favreau, Jon.

Favreau. Favreau yeah, where the phrase don't be that guy came from just. I mean, it's a lot of problems with that movie, but it's pretty funny. Like I mean. Bold move putting Jeremy Piven and Jon Favreau in the same movie. Literally, yeah. I mean, probably both of their first roles honestly. So another one that I watched recently that I never thought of as a Christmas movie and should at least count if Die Hard does, is Batman Returns that is entirely set at Christmas.

The Penguin. The stronger argument. For that. It's, I mean, it's got a lot going on Christmas related. The Penguin goes through a whole redemption arc like. Oh yeah. Like that's way more crazy. So if diehards a Christmas movie, then Batman Returns is too. Well, we've established it's not a Christmas movie, but we'll, we're for our purposes here, we're we're doing it around. Christmas. You just happen to be talking about it, you know? So people can avoid their families at the holidays and listen to our podcast instead.

I did see somebody tweeting about like, so if Die Hard's a if Die Hard's a Christmas movie, Home Alone's a Die Hard movie, and The Shining is a Home Alone movie. All right, that's. That's incredible. That's pretty great. I love that the the very thin hacker. I guess it's not as thin as some of the movies we've done. But the hacker sort of undercurrent on this movie is our man Theo, who's one of the terrorists who does get some of the best lines of dialogue in this in this movie and is one of the few terrorists or even characters outside of McLean and Hans that has any actual personality, like has any, you know, the terrorists.

Are and he's the one like American in the group. Yeah, the rest of them are, you know, German ex ex military and but they had to get the the wisecracking American hacker guy coming. Yeah, who's one of my favorite characters in this movie, and it took me year. I probably didn't even realize this till like 8 or 10 years ago that he was also in Top Gun, that he was, I forget what he was call sign. It was like Sundowner or something like that. He's only in like one or two scenes. Yeah.

Like in one of those background scenes with like Tim Robbins or something. But yeah. And then went on to a great career as Walker, Texas Rangers partner. You know, very odd career for Theo. Yeah, the, the, the hacking in this movie wasn't that like great as far as like film hacking goes. It was pretty much like a unsecured computer that he, you know, once they got past the front desk, like the computer was open and unlocked. But I did find like the fact that they basically knew the playbook that the FBI would go through.

That's what they were exploiting, right? It was just like predictable behavior. Like we get through these things that take a little bit of skill or brute forcing. We know what they're going to do next. And then they, you know, they did it to a tee. The last thing we need is power grid. What's it going to take to make that happen? Well, working backwards from we need the whole neighborhood to be cut off, we can provoke that by having the FBI order that being done. There's no other good way to best way to do that is to get the FBI to do it. Best way to get the FBI to do that is stage a terrorism attack.

Right. Yeah. Well, and they they skip past like the whole like, here's the plan that, you know, like a lesser action movie would do to show this whole mastermind thing. And I was thinking this time they they infer all of the planning that went into it when Gruber shows up and like does like ask for a password and then does like the whole rundown of this guy's life history. This communicates like no, everywhere from here on out. Like when he sees around the next corner, it's because he's like, researched this within an inch of his life. I think that's what really what gave, like, Diehard's legs as far as action movies go.

This, as far as I can tell, this was like the first savvy villain, right? It wasn't just like madman with a gun. It wasn't just like strapping A grenade to somebody. It was like a calculated, savvy, interesting, compelling villain. Not not just a bad guy, but like, you know, someone that I would watch a whole movie about, you know? Oh yeah. Absolutely. I'd love to know. Like the exceptional criminal, not just the blustering one.

Yeah. Right. He's sort of like a, you know, Michael Mann esque guy who did all of his research beforehand, planned everything meticulously, knew what was supposedly in that vault, knew what their security looked like with all, you know, the seven locks, how much time they would have, how the FBI would respond, all that kind of stuff. New, new. The suit on. You know, he's tattoo himself. Yeah, he's yeah. Sophisticated guy.

With and also with like a fake ideology, you know, and all the, the fake terrorists, they're brothers overseas. That they're I mean that really seemed to be how like movie villains were portrayed for like years after that like that. And that was Alan Rickman's first role that. Boggles my mind every time. I nailed it. Yeah, we've been on stage for years, but. It's, it's, it's Alan Rickmans first role and it's like, it is like I would say he probably has about as much screen time, like up there in terms of screen time.

And then Bruce Willis, this was, this was his first movie. Like he would have been on moonlighting. But there was the whole thing that like he had to like he was waiting for moonlighting. It was on, it was a strike, right? He was able to do it because like, the season was delayed or it ended early because of a strike. Yeah. And then they ended up he was shooting some moonlighting stuff at some point during this too, because they came back. It was sort of like the the Michael J Fox Back to the Future Family ties thing where he was like doing it at night or whatever and was like, yeah, absolutely wrecked by the end of it. But yeah, like the famous story of him saying, you know, demanding $5,000,000 upfront for this movie when he was just ATV actor and everybody was like, well, OK, I guess. And it worked out pretty well.

And apparently the like the Gruber like sophistication was Alan Rickman's idea. It was written for like a guy in tactical gear kind of just being a typical, typical mood. And he's like, I'm not doing an action movie and then insisted on like tailored suits and shit. So. Smart the the list of actors who were either, you know, sort of like rumoured to be up for his role and Maclean's role is like a who's who of 80s movie stuff. And there's a lot of like intriguing possibilities like Charles Grodin at one point was I guess was meant to be the village, like the Hans Gruber role, which could have been kind of interesting because I guess Bruce Willis had either turned down or not been picked for Midnight Run, which Charles Grodin was in.

So there was like a weird, you know, swap thing going on there, but. Yeah, I think it was Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, Harrison Ford, Clint Eastwood, Burt Reynolds. I do have notes. Burt Reynolds, Richard Gere, Mel Gibson, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and Kurt Russell. All. Of Frank Sinatra. Well, contractually obligated offering to Frank Sinatra because this was technically a sequel to a Sinatra movie. Right, which he owned the which he would have. Killed.

He would have killed. Yeah, like write a first refusal or something on this role for like decades or something like that. But no, he would have been. Some of the like the earliest promo where like the posters and stuff didn't even have Bruce Willis on it. They were That's why there's so much focused on the building because they had no confidence that Bruce Willis would like sell this movie. So like cool caper and a cool new building that was just built. It's crazy how much of it does kind of rest on Bruce Willis's personality, you know, just kind of is wise cracking, you know, smirking, sort of downtrodden. Not downtrodden but like I'm tired of this shit type attitude.

You know, this is right around the time of Lethal Weapon and like, I'm too old for this shit. Danny Glover, who was like 40 at the like in the movie. It's like wait a second, you can't be too old for this like. Yeah, he's he's like, he's too old for that shit in the first one. Now they're making Lethal Weapon. What is it 6? I don't even know. Yeah, it's crazy. He was getting ready to retire and he was like 42. Yeah. Danny, there's almost a like Looney Tunes kind of humor streak in this. Like we need to get more FBI guys. Like there's a couple of spots where it's just like. I just love that line.

We're gonna. Need some more FBI guys or no, It's Agent Johnson, know the other one. And it's just like, it's, it's these like little absurdist one liners. It's it is like they they were like, oh, we need to break the tension. Let's just throw one in there. And some of that stuff was improvised from what the the research shows is and including like a lot of the dialogue between John Mcclane and Hans Gruber, like in that first, you know, the meeting in the elevator shaft or whatever, that was all kind of improv.

Like they made it up on the day as they were shooting it and I guess they had kept them away from each other to make it a little more, you know, realistic or whatever. It was because Alan Rickman did his American accent. And they were like, oh, that's really good. And then, you know, literally. And they were like, oh, we need to figure out a way to, like, have a little moment. It is really good. Yeah, it's very good. It's great because Alan Rickman, to me, it was always just Hans Gruber. Like, I'm not a Harry Potter person. I never saw those movies.

I don't. That's none of my business. But like, I don't really even know what else I've seen him in. I'm sure there's a few other things, but to me, like when he died, I was like, shit, Hans Gruber, but everybody else was like whatever Harry Potter character he played. I don't know. It was, it was that Sheriff of Nottingham and. Galaxy Quest. And Galaxy Quest, Literally. Yep. I don't think I ever saw a Galaxy Quest is. Great. That's a solid.

It is one of my go to examples of to make a good satire, you have to love the thing that you're making fun of. Yeah, it was like Star Trek, but the actors behind Star Trek, like a Star Trek spoof called Galaxy Quest, and they're all cynical about having to go to the conferences and stuff, and then real aliens show up. It's it's great. Who have been seeing their and thinking their documentaries? Ellen Rickman was in an actual Christmas movie though. Love. Actually, he was pretty big in that one. Oh, he's in that, yeah.

OK. All right, him and Emma Thompson. Wow, high-powered British tap right there it. That movie is stacked. Yeah, it does have an absurd cast. Yeah. I've never seen that all the way through, but I've seen like chunks of it. And I'm like, who? This person's in that, This person's in that. Like the acting budget on that must have been outrageous. Well, they could afford it because it's going to get replayed every year because it's a Christmas movie. Capitalism coming through again? Yep, exactly. Speaking of which, here's you want to hear what the crazy box office top 10 for 1988?

Was this movie thing up? This is we used to make movies. This is wild. OK, Number one, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? That was number one, Yeah, by a mile, $156 million. Then coming to America. Good morning, Vietnam. Big Crocodile Dundee 2, three men and a baby, then Die hard, Moonstruck cocktail and Beetlejuice. Like a bunch of sequel?

One sequel and everything else I don't. Was Roger Rabbit like based on some kind of IP or was that like an original? It was a. Huge deal. Like it's impossible to explain like how big that was like animated with like real people in it. You're just like, Oh my God, what? What is happening? But that's such a weird top 10. I used to love watching movie magic and there was another one on Discovery and it was all about how they did the effects for movies.

Like for they did you know a bunch on Jurassic Park. They did a bunch on Who Framed Roger Rabbit and I had the thought a while ago, like what happened to those shows? I'm like, oh, it's like every episode is they did CGI. Don't. Break down right, You don't need it now. Now it would be like we didn't have to do CGI. Here's how we made how how we avoided it. That would be the magic. Yeah. All right, so, oh, beyond Beetlejuice, which was 10, Fish Called Wanda was next. I just had to throw that. In there. Oh, perfect. Incredible.

Like, was that set at Christmas too? Probably, I don't even remember. We watched Gremlins the other day and that's that's a fully like Christmas themed 1. I don't know that the storyline really follows any like Christmas themes, but All about Christmas. That was a That was a good one too. Yeah, isn't the Grem the Gremlin is a Christmas present, right? Yeah, yeah. So I guess that counts. It's definitely more, you know, threaded in. I mean, Eyes Wide Shut was set at Christmas too.

We don't, we don't bring that one up in the classics of Christmas. Very. Normal movie. Extremely normal plot line I. Mean it's probably more of a Christmas movie than a lot of other ones, like ritual excess and indulgence and a lot of gritty transgressions. Come on, that's Christmas. Yeah, that movie scarred me for life. God, and I only saw it like. The orgy mansion had some very tasteful Christmas trees though. Such a weird movie.

God and the fact that we're so far afield here, but the fact that they made that when the two of them were married. Like. The psychology there is just. That was like some real Stanley Kubrick sabotage. You know what? I don't want you 2 to be together. Let's make. A Yeah. You think your relationship's good? I'll watch this that. Movie had one of the most expensive effects at the time. Shutting down Times Square for that scene where he's running, oh, running through Times Square.

No, that was vanilla Sky. Oh, that was vanilla Sky. Yeah, that mixed him up, yeah. Yeah, No, Eyes Wide Shut. Stanley Kubrick wouldn't leave. He wouldn't fly by then. So they had to make the movie in the UK. Yeah. And so the part where he's like walking around the, the New York block, which I assumed was just like an LA, you know, back studio that was a screen and Tom Cruise is walking on a, a oh. My God.

Treadmill. A treadmill, yeah. So the whole time when he's like, freaking out, kind of like walking like that, they have a projector behind him projecting on the screen. Yeah. Is that the one that Kubrick died like during the editing? Yeah, OK. All right, it all makes sense now. Another, you know, strong Christmas theme. Yeah, yeah, you got visited by 3 ghosts during the making. Yeah, everything ends and everything's terrible. Yeah. Merry Christmas everybody. Yeah, just one more last bit on Die Hard being a Christmas movie or not.

I I count this as a as a strong opinion. Macaulay Culkin says Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. He would know. Yeah, he would know, having been in both a Die Hard movie and a Christmas movie. Macaulay Culkin would know. Yeah, wait, what Die Hard movie was he in? Home Alone. They're the same movie, but you know. I thought you were going to come up with Live Free or Die Hard.

Yeah. He would have been better than what's his name, that Justin Son of a bitch that ruined that movie. Yeah, don't give me it started on we'll. Get there, we'll get we'll get there this summer. That's a July 4th movie. Right. Yeah, we'll do that one. I need a drink beforehand. And and you have to clear your afternoon, yeah. It stops for that one. Don't get me started if I got shit to do. That was a rough one for a good solid year.

After that episode you would like, I would open every episode asking you if you wanted to apologize to Justin Long, whatever you said to him. Still don't want to? I can't even remember what you said but I didn't even like introduce the episode before you just started yelling at Justin Long like how shitty his performance was it? Was so bad. It was so bad. You in this movie, I hate you so much. And and I hated you for making me watch it again like. You were really mad. That was so bad.

That was legitimately yeah. Oh man. Well, I mean it. It takes real talent to make a movie with Timothy Olyphant in it that I don't like. For real? Yeah, right. That's a fact. I always forget he's in that movie too because he's not in it for long but he playing a crazy. He was. He was bad in that too. Yeah, I mean, he was just, it was a nothing character. That's why you never remember. It's true. I think that might have been the start of Bruce Willis's like, you know, disassociation period. It's just like, I can't believe I'm doing this anymore. I'm just going to tuck, tuck my brain over here for a while. Well, let me do this.

Yeah. Where would where do you guys, what would be your rankings of all of the Die Hard movies? For me, I think we, we talked about this years ago, but for me it would be this one. First, Die Hard with a vengeance. Second probably Die Hard two third by default. Yeah. The. I, I actually the Russian one, I think I like Die Hard with a Vengeance the most. OK, yeah, it's great. It's just so I, I, I love that they took basically the everything from Die Hard One, but expanded it to the whole city.

You know, he's still trapped. He's still like trying to navigate this thing, but it's the entirety of Manhattan now. And it just made for such a cool sort of world building part of it. And seeing him in New York, being so New York was like, it was less fish out of water, but it was more, I don't know, it was just more, more die hard. Well, and it's one of the most New York movies to ever in New York of all time. Totally, but and also die hard has its one foot in being a buddy like a buddy cop movie but like only have. Like if he had been able to be in the building. Yeah.

Yeah. Samuel Jackson, like amazing buddy cop, right? Yeah. Well, that wasn't his first movie, but that I think that was like his first like big part because he was talking about they were shooting and somebody was like, you better get used to this, like you're going to be a movie star. And he's like, I don't know about all that. Yeah, I think he had mostly been in like Spike Lee. Yeah. Couple couple of those. But yeah, that was that was the first big one I remember Samuel Jackson from and he was so good in it.

He had a a really small part in Goodfellas, like right before that as the truck. Driver. The driver actually. Kills. Yeah. And then it was then it was that. And then he that it was Pulp Fiction and all bets were all right. Yeah. And I think Tarantino has said like, he saw him in this and it was like for this diamond with vengeance. And it was like, oh shit, that goes great. I think. I think that one's my my top narrowly. Die Hard one's great, but Die Hard with a Vengeance was just such a full movie. And Jeremy Irons is so good in it too. Like I didn't who's the villain in Die Hard 2? I forget the guy's name.

Like they were fine. I don't even remember. He played. He's the the dad from coming to America. Yeah, yeah, but he's even like the secondary. Yeah. And then there's the other guy. But they're both just like American military Gruber over Jeremy Irons character. But they were both like 2 peas in the pod, right? I think they were even brothers in the movie or cousins or something. I think.

Or maybe that was like the fake line to motivate that or something. But they were both playing the same kind of role and it was just. It's such the perfect foil to John Mcclane. Yeah, Jeremy Irons character is supposed to be Hans Gruber's like, grieving brother, I think, which is funny. Like I think Jeremy Irons might be older than Hans Gruber. I don't know. But. Well, and it's like, and, and they obviously Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons like very, very kind of comparable screen presences. But then with Jeremy Irons, they made him more of a foil for McClain.

Like he's more willing to get his hands drunk. Yeah, yes, very much so. It's also hard to remember how much of an effect or how original Die Hard was not just in sort of like the you're trapped in a specific location, you know, like that led to speed and all these other like Die Hard on a blank type movies. But the the action movie that had like a sense of humor because the the early to mid 80s were so full of like those Schwarzenegger and Stallone movies that were so self serious.

They'd have like a throwaway funny line like I'll be back or stick around or something dumb like that. Which? Were not meant to be funny, no they. Weren't unintentional humor, but like, they were so like, we have to save America from, you know, the outside forces or whatever it was. But this one had like that sense of humor built in. And, you know, obviously you're rooting for McClain, but you know, Hans Gruber's got plenty of humor in his lines too.

And like, there's funny side characters like the Hart Buckner character before he gets waxed and, you know, Theo and Argyle and all those other sort of, you know, smaller characters that add like a a real sense of place. It's not just like, oh, we dropped a hero in the jungle in unnamed South American country and there's a predator trying to kill him. Yeah, I think I I feel like some of that's because it was also sort of a heist movie.

So like the tone of the villains could be a little more interesting than just it's an army, Like Rambo is just always fighting an army or like, you know, mercenaries or something. Schwarzenegger was fighting an alien. Like there was no interest in the villains and this one there were. And that interplay like so you were saying with Jeremy Irons, like Hans and Bruton McLean, like talking to each other was so much of the fun of the movie. And you would never do that if if Hans group was like an alien predator or a faceless gang of army guys or something.

Right. Well, and then you have like Hans Gruber, who's you know, knows everything about everyone has figured out all of the like schedules and routines. And then you have McClain who is like writing down dudes names on his arm. So it's like they they are like they're both trying to out think their enemy, but it's like Mcclain's always playing catch up because he's, you know, like from the very beginning he's on the off foot. Yeah, and I mean, all the other action stars of the time just always felt invincible. Like, they get hurt, but they were so like beefcake that you couldn't really, like, sympathize that much. And so much of McClain was just getting his ass kicked. One of the bloodiest shots of the film is just showing his feet after he runs through the hallway with the glass. Like they wanted to make sure that like you, you feel it. Oh yeah, that's we talked about it earlier, but that scene still every time I just kind of have

to like look away, I'm just like, this is like man, because having. Stepped on my fair share of nails. That scene gets me every time. Absolutely. And I think that's the point where you're like, all right, you know what, I'm just going to lose. Like they're going to kill me because I'm going to sit down right here. This is over. Like you guys got me with this shooting glass. That was a good move. But that was, I mean, the hacking was not a huge part of this movie, but I think that did add another sort of plot point that let the kind of Arc of the whole thing change.

It wasn't just like military tactics or typical sort of burglar heisting kind of stuff. There was a you got to buy me time to hack this password. It's like, all right, well, let's come up, you know, with something to delay. And even just the the hacker personality, you know, Theo being kind of the most jokey of all of them is another like, I don't know, there there's it's kind of the new archetype in the late 80s of like we're getting the computer people involved.

And that requires a different level of like, they're not going to be the strong ones. It's it can't be the army. It's going to be happening in the basement. But they don't make Theo, you know, he doesn't have like a fully fleshed out character, but they don't make him into like a super nerdy computer dork Like he's there when they he's not. Justin Long. He's not Justin Long. No, he's a real man. He you know. A good actor. Yeah, a legit actor, like he's, he knows what he's doing and obviously like he's the one techie guy that they have. The other guys are sort of the brute force of the of the group. But yeah, I mean, there is that one line, Pete. You sort of mention it where Gruber's like, you know, don't waste my time and Theo's like you didn't bring me along for my sparkling personality.

Yeah, I'm here to do this computer shit. Let me do my computer shit. Yeah, yeah. That nobody else can do. Almost every other role on their team could have been interchangeable other than mastermind Hans Gruber, but there's only one Theo and IF like and they got to protect him too. Like if he got, if he got off to like their whole plan is screwed. Yeah, it's true. And a lot of what McClain has to do, and I guess even Gruber to some extent, is kind of the improvisation and, you know, kind of the hacker mindset that we see in a lot of, you know, real world hackers that we all know of.

Like, OK, here's my objective Now I've got to figure out how to get there using whatever tools and means I have at my disposal. It might not be the things that I'm used to using or there might be, you know, impediments in my way, but I've got to figure out a way to do this, you know, wrap a fire hose around me and jump out a window or whatever it happens to be. Technically speaking though, I imagine a vault of that complexity would probably have a battery backup. Yeah.

Yes, or or at least wouldn't like fail open power, Power goes off for a minute. It's like, OK, open it all up, open session. We don't, we don't know what's going on here. Just open everything, right? Exact word quotes for my 2019 notes. What good is a safe without an emergency backup? This is why we don't fail open. Nailed it. But it is, I mean, like it's you can't, you can't watch it.

I mean, that's part of the reason for the podcast, right? It's like you can't watch the movies and not think about these things. Yeah. And probably the most like true to true to form, true to life like realistic aspect of all the hacking is Takagi's password was just stored in one of the files on the computer, right? Plain text database thing, yes. So that's legit. That's fully legit even now, 37 years later or whatever it is, but. Also, his password was his last name -1 letter, which was a different word, Akagi.

It's like an aircraft carrier in Japanese, but his name is Takagi. His password was five of the six letters in his name. It's not ideal. Also legit. Also very realistic. Very realistic, yeah. But they're they did have in, you know, it's still like relatively clever right now that it they essentially had one time passwords for because they were asking for his daily key for one of the the locks, right.

So it's like this changes everyday sort of the way that like military codes do or or you know, radio codes, things like that, which, you know, at that point in computer history was relatively advanced, you know, security thinking as opposed to, you know, admin, admin as username, password. So they had that level of advancement on the password generation, but they didn't require people to, like, lock their computers when they walked away. That's correct. Or get shot in the chest.

Yeah. Otherwise, yeah. Oh, you remember cloud to butt. I do. I do. I remember cloud. Not the comedy, whatever the company is in, they they could have really used a couple people going around installing cloud to butt on unlocked computers. Dennis, have you heard this way back story? Very short version, yeah. We had a company that we all used to work at, people would get lightly shamed for leaving their computers unlocked. Just someone would go into Slack and like type something from that person or something. And then that got a little, you know, frowned upon. So instead people would install a Chrome extension called Cloud to, but it would change like any instance of the word cloud on whatever website you're visiting and change it to. But but that also got injected into any text fields as you were writing.

And one of them that it got installed on was writing a job description for a back end cloud engineer. And when that got submitted, it got syndicated across like 30 job posting sites. And so for a good, you know, 36 hours, Duo was advertising cloud back end, but engineer job perfect everywhere it could. It was, it was delightful. Oh, this is what the labs guys were doing with their.

Yeah. It was. It was truly as though it was written in a lab to be a presentation opener like. Yeah, honestly. Yeah, it was the best worst case scenario that you could ask for. And when it was found out, like someone came running it like how do we shut it off? And someone was like, what the Internet like it's it's out there. It's. Done. Let me introduce you to Barbra Streisand. Do you know? Yeah. Do you know how this works? There's a whole. Effect. Clearly this company could have used somebody injecting a little bit of light.

Shame. Yeah, yeah. Who is your I think I I said Theo's my favorite of the the terrorists. There's some other like interesting guys. The the most interesting to me, like as an actual person, not his character in this movie is the guy who was like a world class ballet dancer. But is that Carl? The Yeah, he's. The brother of the the long haired guy who is the world class cello player in Ghostbusters. Insane. Yeah.

Yeah, not an actor. He was actually a bit of a hacker. He was the one that had to do the phone lines and stuff, so he was up there with the wires before his brother comes in with the chainsaw. He's like sweating getting the alligator clips on. Yeah, he's probably he. Had some skills. Yeah. Yeah, I, I, I love the, the his brother, the the long haired dude that, you know, 1 ends up at the end. He's the only one left alive and he's just going to use that last moment to exact revenge.

Like he could have gotten away with the whole thing. Yeah. But Oh yeah, no, no. Held that machine gun under that blanket for a while and took his shot. I was looking at some of the There's so much trivia about this movie's production. A lot of it has to do with the building itself, which, you know, famously was under construction. It was the 20th Century Fox, their new headquarters in. Is it Century City or studio? I think Century City, yeah.

And the Reagan Reagan's office. Yeah, I've never seen that before. So after he was out of office, Ronald Reagan took an office in this building on one of the floors that they used for production in before he moved in. The Secret Service was up there doing, you know, a security sweep or whatever, and they found a bunch of belt casings. Oh my. God. I don't know about this, Sir. And then they somebody realized that it was the Die Hard movie set. Yup, pretty great, America.

America. You never know. Yeah, he was up there. He was like in the past 34th floor for years. Ronnie Wonder what Ronnie was doing up there. You'd think just falling asleep. Forgetting where he was. Yeah. Wondering. Where he was Nance, what am I doing up here? How did I get here? Yeah, that and in the sort of like casting department, George Takei was originally considered to be Takagi, but his agent screwed it up. Like somehow got the wires crossed. Like he, he and Takei found out later that the part had been offered to him and his agent somehow screwed the whole thing up.

Yeah. He was like super mad. He had been great. He would have been great. Yeah. I did find there, there have been a lot of polls done on Christmas movie or not, and the majority in this poll just from this month say Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. But if you just slice it across millennials, millennial generation, it goes up to 59%.

So I think the the influence of everyone debating about it for so long and all of us who saw it the first time around saying it's not, they're just countering that with, well, yeah, it is. You're wrong, old man. That sounds right. So yeah, millennials. I mean Fox, Fox did a trailer for some anniversary and said it's the greatest Christmas story ever told. So we know where they fall on the side of the. Debate how? Dare. Come on. Yeah, what are we doing?

I mean, it's one of the greatest action movies ever made, but not certainly not a Christmas movie. Yeah, maybe next to Eyes Wide Shut. Yeah. Incredible Batman Returns. That's the order. Favorite Christmas movies ever. Eyes Wide Shut. Batman Returns. And one flew over. What was that? Oh, The Shining. Yeah, Shining's a Home Alone movie. Yeah. What was it Pete, when we did the The War Games pod, you mentioned the video you did of.

War games if there was 2 factor authentication, yeah. I was trying to think if there was. 45 seconds long. Yeah, if there was some sort of analog for this movie. If if their computer's auto locked after like a minute, none of this would have happened. Yeah. Or if there was a like a car battery hooked up to the vault, none of this would have happened. Yeah, just the back. There's a lot. There's a lot more gaps in this one I think than than even War Games. It's true, Yeah.

We haven't spoken about the the FBI goofballs outside too much or or Reginald Bell Johnson, the. They were the classic 80s villain type. Yeah, yeah. Cooled up like shooting from the helicopter. Who cares about the casualties? Like they were the real bad guys. Yes, It's like 9. It was 7, Dick. I was in middle school. Yes, so good. Yeah, they do. They do function, as you know.

Yeah, the 80s villain sort of foils, like bumbling goofballs, like overly pleased with themselves and overly officious, trying to just like, come in and Bigfoot everybody and, like, take over the scene. You know, to disastrous effect, obviously. I mean, that was before the FBI got, you know, willing to bring the computer people along, too. They were. They were just. That's actually very true, yeah. They were. They were. They were just federal cops at that point. They weren't old savvy detectives yet. If they had some, you know, hackers for hire, that they could have just rolled in there to mess with Theo with a whole different story.

Oh, the other sleeper cameo in this the the guy in the sewer is cutting the power. Bill Murray's brother or cousin or something. The one from burbs. Is it really? I think it's Bill Murray's a cousin. Huh. The guy who's like I need you to shut down grid. As well, I got a real problem here. Yeah, the FBI is. I'm like, oh wow, the Murray feels. Like, I mean, he was Tom Hanks's boy in the burbs. In the burbs.

Yeah. What is his name? He was. I mean, oh, it's not Bill Murray's Rick de Common, but he was in some of Second City with Bill Murray. Oh, OK. Yeah, Second City rolls deep. They're they're all over the place. That Chicago group was. Everywhere Art. Art and the burbs. Art, I haven't seen that movie in a million years. It's not. It's not one of the like cable classics. That's on all the time, unfortunately. Lost Tom Hanks movie.

Yeah. Speaking so, he was in Groundhog Day too. That's why I was associated with Murray. Groundhog Day is more of a Christmas movie than Die Hard, and it's about a different holiday, but the arc, the redemption story of it is way more, you know, like he comes out the other end. He's not, he's not as much of A, you know, Scrooge anymore like. There's much more self, yeah, self realization in that movie, yeah. Yeah.

There's there's a lot of learning. There's there's more to life than just your success and your achievement, your ego and all that stuff. We didn't get any of that from Die. Hard. That's a real social engineering masterpiece right there, Zoe. Groundhog Day, where, you know, Bill Murray is just trying to figure out how to get with Andy McDowell for like 12 days in a row. He's like, oh, see, like this kind of book, this kind of like this drink or whatever it was. It's also a bit of brute force. I was going to say brute force, David.

We'll just keep running it until we figure out the right one, right? Yeah. Don't worry, it'll reset in like 4 hours. Yeah, we'll get another try at it. We talked about the other potential John Mcclane's Linda Hamilton was originally going to be Holly Gennaro. Really. That would have been like a few years after the Terminator. Wow shit, she could have been so. That would have been, yeah, I know that would have been way more of a role.

Yeah, I mean, Bonnie Badalia is great, but she's, you know, playing it as much, even though she's sort of like the high-powered executive doing. Well, she named Holly because it's a Christmas with God. Yeah. Well, yeah, OK, that's bothered me for years and years. Yeah, I don't, I don't care for that. Linda Hamilton would have been great. I I don't think I've ever really seen her in a non like bad ass type. Role.

She's in Stranger Things now, too. She is. She's in. Bad ass. Yes, not they're not giving her a lot to do in there, but. No, not really. She looks bad ass though. Yeah, she's Linda Hamilton. I always had a lot of questions about like the John Mcclane, Holly Gennaro relationship. Like, so she moved to LA to take this job, I guess. And then he stayed because he's a cop. He stays in New York City and but she's got their kid. He also didn't think she was going to make it out there right?

As Argyle. As Argyle. Figured out like immediately. Yeah, Argyle's got like, you know, ESP. That dude knows what's going on. And then, yeah. I'd like to know I'd a prequel to Die Hard would probably be a pretty boring movie, but it would be interesting to see like yeah, how'd how'd you guys even? Meet, I mean, women can have it all, I think is the answer. You know, they can have a career and well, not John Mcclane, but.

You know, I think that was part of her having it all was like, yeah, I'm getting away from John. Not with him anymore. The recurring bit of like just showing her watching everything and kind of just being able to pick up on what's happening because she is uniquely suited to understand the ways that this man can drive you insane I'm. Like it's really good. Yeah, yeah. She had all the confidence in the world. She's like, Oh my God, he's going to drive you nuts. There is the one line. I forget what he had done, but you see one of the terrorists, like, getting super mad and throwing his radio or something. And she's like, only John can make somebody that angry. Yeah, You know, that shows you how well she knows, you know, what a good one, what a jerk he can be or whatever. But.

All right, well, what should we do? Lindsay and I are going to do Home alone, the actual home alone. Nice for next week. Nice. But it's. A good Die hard movie. Yeah, a great time movie. Now my brain's all kinds of fried with that. This is like when we were doing war games and Zoe detailed the Ferris Bueller universe video games operates in. I think. I think Macaulay Culkin is actually John Mcclane's long lost son.

And part of why they forgot him was because he's adopted. He's not even one of their kids and that's why they left. And they're like, oh, forgot about that kid that we adopted. Macaulay Culkin had a bad enough childhood, he doesn't need John Mcclane as is. True. Did you? Did you do Tron yet? No. Do you mean the new one or the the real? Original. I was just watching the original. I haven't seen that in so, so long. I would love to somebody suggested that one of our one of our listeners like suggested that is something we do.

I like my memory of that is so vague, but it's like Jeff Bridges is is he a programmer that gets somehow sucked into the computer? Yeah, so he was a games programmer who gets screwed over, and the guy that screws him over becomes like the head of the business. And so he's trying to hack his way back in to prove that his games got stolen, and he's messing with the plans of the AI that they've been training, who zaps him into their virtual world. Oh, OK.

All I really remember is like the light cycles, like going, you know, along the circuit boards, I guess, or whatever they were doing. That's all I can really conjure in my mind from that movie. It reminds me a little bit of the Colossus projects one that it's, it's less about computers and more about how people feel about computers. Yeah. It was really. Interesting. Yeah, it was really interesting in that sense. Tron felt like they figured out a new special effect technique and they're like, what can we make? What movie can we make with this? Yes, yeah, yeah.

A solution ended into. A Tron in search of a movie. Yeah. And but that's like from the early 80s, right? Isn't that like 8384 somewhere in there? Yeah, we should definitely do that. I I have not seen that forever and ever, probably since I was a teenager. But it came out they remastered the the film scans and did it on 4K and it looks awesome. That was a really like well done compositing job. I have a. Memory I worked at a a local video store in high school and I remember when laser discs first came out, like the original, like big platter laser disc Tron was like the the one that everybody wanted. Like, I guess be, I don't know, but that was like, yeah. Colors would be wild.

Right. Yeah, I think that was it. But yeah, we should do that. I I haven't seen that forever. That would be fun. I've heard the new one is real bad. I heard that the new the new new one is real bad that the one that was like 10 years ago is a lot of fun. I thought that one was good. Tron Tron Legacy. Or is that the new one? No, the new one's like Tron Aries or something, yeah. Oh, right. OK. Yeah, Tron Legacy was was good because it was like direct sequel. Now they're doing sort of, I mean, I, I think it's a sequel, but it's like so far removed from any of the originals. I mean, it's 40 plus years, Yeah. I mean it's just a reboot, but it looked really stupid. Jeff Bridges was on like a round table with a bunch of other actors.

And I forget who it was. It was talking about just they were talking about video games. And he's like, yeah, not Jeff Bridges. The other one from Mandalorian. He was talking about like, I just get, oh, he was on Last of Us. What's? Oh, patriot hassle. Yeah. And they were like, have you ever played it? And he's like, yeah, I played it a little bit. I just get so, you know, so like caught up in these movies and I get kind of or these games and I get kind of obsessed with them. And then Jeff Bridge was like, you know, I got sucked into a game once, and they're all like, what, Tron?

That's such a good dad. Job, none of them got it and he was just so good. He was like, you know, I got sucked into a video game once. Which one? Tron. That's so good. And I can fully hear that in a Jeff Bridges. Voice that's so great in Oh my God. Another great thing about Tron before is like young Jeff Bridges is so weird to look at like because you're so used to like the Lebowski True Grit, like whatever, but young Jeff. Bridges. King Kong Tron or King Kong Jeff Bridges? Yeah.

First of all, it was like incredibly handsome, like one of the best looking dudes in Hollywood. You're like, God, look at that dude. But it's so incongruous to see him now. You're just like, good Lord, he's not wearing a bathrobe and like, you know, you know, a shaggy beard or whatever. Yeah, seeing him without a beard young is like Robert Redford. Just like, damn. Oh man, yeah, it's crazy. I was trying to. He's a good photographer too. He shoots with that Hasselblad X Pan, like one of the crazy panoramic ones. He's all he shoots behind the scenes on all his movies. Oh damn.

Yeah, really good. Also. Had one of the early like website as art. His personal website. It was a early example of like there's no clear navigation, like you just click on a thing, it would just take you to a whole. That's his photography portfolio, his site, jeffbridges.com. That's where all his photos are. And it's like all the navigation is just drawn words that got scanned and and put on there. There's no.

Hierarchy no navigation is just shit piling up on the website. That's crazy. It sounds like he got super high and just like designed that and was like, check it out. Yeah. Well, I was thinking we're sadly, we're recording this the day that we all found out that Rob Reiner has died. And I was trying to like, I was looking through his filmography to see if there was any like possible movie that we could pick that might.

Looking for an excuse? Yeah, I did even like stretching the the definition of hacker movie really, really thin. I I couldn't see anything but some of those movies. If you look at his filmography for the first, like the beginning of his career, it's insane. Yeah. Never missed like. Yeah, he had a that that stretch between Final Spinal Tap and Few Good Men was pretty absurd. Well, stand by me. Stand By Me is one of my favorite all time movies. Princess Bride, Harry Mess Sally, Misery.

Few good men like crazy. Incredible. Yeah, yeah, Total bee. Had to end on a down note, but yeah, you know, I was trying to find something, but it's not going to work. I don't think so. Anyway, great to see you both. We will be. I don't know if when we'll all be together again for one of these. Maybe. It sounds like Tron. Maybe we should do Tron after a year. That could be fun. Would be fun. Yeah, but. You have to watch the new one. Hell no. God, no, no, no. No reason to pollute our minds, Pete. Just that sounds.

Justin Long's great. I was just gonna say. Sounds like you'd be super pissed, Justin. Long level anger out of you Tron Aries. Yeah. All right. Great to see. Deserves a redemption story too, but I haven't seen it yet. I guess, I guess I don't know. And we'll get to die hard with a vengeance. Do that this summer. Yeah, that's a good one. It's you do have to do that one in the summer. It is such a summer movie. It is. Yep. All right, guys, Great to see you. Thanks for coming on here.

Always take care. See you, Merry. Christmas.