First Time Watching DIE HARD (1988) - Movie Reaction & Commentary, MERRY CHRISTMAS, COWBOYS!! 

Fun fact. When they filmed dropping Alan Rickman at the end of the film. They told him they would drop him after three seconds. They then dropped him after only ONE second, so they would capture his 'Genuine' look of terror.

I laughed out loud about how concerned you were for the Twinkies.

Yes, in 1988 they had touchscreens; even earlier. The HP150 computer, for example, had a touchscreen based on infra-red beams. It was very very high tech and very very expensive to have a touchscreen... which is the point of having him use the touchscreen directory; this is a very wealthy, high-tech company Holly works for.

To answer some of your questions: 1.)FBI cuts power to the building to put terrorists in the dark. However, unlike the Nakatomi Tower, MOST buildings dont have a backup generator, so the terrorists would have to work in pitch dark. Security cameras wouldnt work. Police can now safely sneak in without being seen. AND terrorists would have to use flashlights and candles to do the simplest things, like not bump into each other or trip over furniture. In America, a group of whatever-you-want-to-call-them took over 7 blocks in Seattle. IF the FBI had cut the power, these people wouldnt be able to charge their phones and communicate, wifi goes down, food in refrigerators would spoil, extra cold or extra hot weather would make them unable to sleep or move around comfortably. Cutting the power would blind, starve, isolate, and freeze them out in ONE move. 2.)The bank vault opening during a power loss is a SAFETY feature. IF this 32-floor building is on fire and loses power, an employee could get locked inside in a burning building that's filling with smoke which may even collapse if load bearing supports melt. The vault opens automatically to let them out. I used to work inside a credit card company vault in my 20s and we had to CONSTANTLY be retrained or reminded about security AND fire protocol while in the vault. If my job had me in the vault for more than a few minutes to find something, then they lock it behind me and I use an intercom to let them know I'm done. (BUT, they also had a manual old-school buzzer, (like 100 year old design) that didnt require power, in case the intercom failed.) In America, fire safety trumps nearly every other kind of security measure. I think it started back during the days of Chicago Fire, which ended up TRAPPING and killing hundreds and burning down blocks and blocks of city. A failed safety inspection from a Fire Marshal could shut down almost any facility at any time.

Roy Rodgers was a very famous TV cowboy from the 1950s. Hans called Bruce "cowboy," so Bruce told the cop his name was Roy for Roy Rodgers.

the first blonde guy is Alexander Goodenov famous Russian Ballet dancer and he died of acute alcoholism

“You’re either Dying hard or Hardly Diying.” -Santa Claus

It's a movie about family and forgiveness, and it is set at Christmas, with Christmas music.

There were touch screens back then but they were kinda different. They had this plastic tactile screen on them. There were touch screens like we have now but they were way too expensive to mass produce.

The way you say "Twinkies" is just adorable. And that you sere so worried about the Twinkies is even more adorable.

"Why would it be programmed that way?" I used to work with magnetic locks. There are two ways to set them up "Fail Safe" so that in the event of a fire or power loss they unlock, and "Fail Secure" where in the event of those things they remain locked on battery power located inside the room being locked. To set anything up as fail secure you need a special permit with justification approved by the city/county whatever and emergency responders representative usually the fire marshal. Emergency responders hate fail secure because it can get between them and saving a life. They see fail secure as just protecting property which is trumped by saving lives. Did one fail secure on a vault once, they had all the permits, and when the fire marshal showed up to do the occupancy inspection he had the permits revoked. Not a big deal for me as it's just swapping some jumpers, but the property owner was irate. Good rule of thumb: if the thing being locked is large enough to have a person inside it you will not be allowed to make it fail secure.

Welcome back. I really enjoy your reactions. Sadly, we recently lost Clarence Gilyard, the actor who played Theo, just about a month ago. He was such a great actor. Feliz Navidad to you and your family. I hope you have a great Christmas.

hi amanda , the reason why the building in this movie was able to withstand all of the explosions is beccause it was built to withstand earthquakes since the build is in california

Welcome to the party, pal

The safe is programmed to open in a power failure, to prevent people from being trapped inside the safe accidentally. In case there was someone in the safe, because they can't operate electronic locks with no power. The system doesn't know it's an attack, only that the power is off. It's a safety feature.

"Well, I got some bad news for you, D'Wayne" lives in my head rent free 😂

The idea of the final electrical lock is based on two things - one the fbi doesn’t know the terrorists want to rob the building and two they don’t know that they’ve gone through the other locks. The idea of the last lock opening based on power is a safety issue with manual access for the other locks. So ideally the last lock opening isn’t a problem if the other locks were engaged.

Thx for bringing my childhood back in style. :) It remains a great movie for what it is.

Missed you. Glad that you are back with us posting! Hope you got everything taken care of that you wanted to while you were away from us. Set at Christmas, so this will always be a Holiday film to me. ❤ your reaction to this 'classic'. Happy Holidays and cya soon. 🎄🎅☃❄🎁

the last Lock was electromagnetic holding bars in place,so they couldnt do it unless they cut the Power to the Entire Block,because of the way they connected the 7th lock to the power system

Thank you Amanda for reacting this amazing classic Die Hard starring by Bruce Willis. Next time reacts the sequels Die Hard 2, Die Hard with a Vengeance, Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard.

Since you're the cool Rick & Morty girl I've been hanging out with for a year and a half, here's a bit of ultra-rare Die Hard trivia as a Christmas gift from 1988: In the scene where Ellis is talking on the walkie-talkie, you'll notice Hans' group is preparing a soda for him ...because Ellis obviously asked if they had any Coke. Feliz Navidad lady 🎅🍿❤

I’d say McBain from Simpsons is more of a reference to Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, but it’s a parody of action movies like this one too

28:29 Ellis was high on coke, which tends to affect people’s judgment, as well as make them jumpy and impulsive. He was also a walking ego. He’d convinced himself that everybody would be just fine if John just let the “terrorists” do their thing.

OMG Queen!...you've got such a beautiful singing voice!

“All the twinkies!!!l”. 😂 lol

6:57 we had those type of touch screens in the 80's. I remember the first time I saw one, I was a kid and it blew my mind!!! XD

Your selection of shows/movies is impeccable

You did this movie justice. Thank you!

So, love this movie. It stays tense all the way through by setting up the characters so you invest in them quickly from the beginning, and then as the story plays out, it continues to build them emotionally, so that your attachment for them grows too. Also, there is something very specific the screenplay does, that a lot of other movies also do, and I happened noticed it for the first time with this movie. Once John finds himself in the middle of the situation (trapped in a building with terrorists), his plan is to get word to the Los Angeles police, so they can come and deal with it. That's it. But his plan proves to not be enough to solve the situation. John does eventually alert the police, but unfortunately they are not competent, due to the incompetence of the depute chief. From that point on, John has to come up with new solutions to the problem he's in. This occurs at about the mid point of the movie. And it turns out, many other films also have a similar structure, wherein the main character's initial plan/idea/attempt to solve the problem is proven to be not enough to work. And from the mid point until the end of the movie, the main character has to try other, usually difficult tactics to reach an outcome. Another way of thinking of it is that the main character only ever plans to make it halfway through the movie. If John's plan had worked, if he had alerted the police and they came and arrested the terrorists, he wouldn't have needed to be put though the ringer for the second half of the movie. He also probably might not have been taken so low emotionally to realize he needed to apologize to his wife in order to save their marriage, so there's a nice little correlation between the plot and the character's emotional arc that the movie takes us through. But yeah, main character only ever wants to get halfway through the movie. But once they get halfway, and realize they're not done yet, they have the whole second half of the movie to get through, that's when they have to test themselves, and raise the stakes, and the audience gets super emotionally invested. Btw, I do know that these are common aspects of mainstream screenplay structure. I just feel like it's done exceptionally well in Die Hard. And I appreciate that it connects organically with the character's emotional arc, as some movies only keep it as a plot point, or if the movie does connect it with the character's emotional arc, it's clunky and it feels shoehorned in.

The outro is so cute! Feliz Navidad! 🎅

**best Hans voice** That's a very nice hat, Miss Miquilena

"I forgot his name...Legolas?"😂😂😂 Als' twinkies are the real tragedy. Good to see you back, Amanda.

Touch screens did exist in the 80's. But in industrial use. My dad worked at an oil refinery here in Finland and he said they had touch screens to operate some things.

Hans called McClane "cowboy". Roy Rogers was king of the cowboys back in the 1950s (westerns were _very_ popular in the US in the 1950s), and McClane joked back sarcastically at Hans that he was always fond of Roy Rogers... so when Powell needs a name for McClane, McClane chooses "Roy" for "Roy Rogers"

We had touch screen technology in 1988. It just wasn't very common, and I'm it was wildly expensive (which is a tool here by the film to try and show how wealthy this company is).

You're back! [dancing] Good thing you're watching the second one while it's Christmas. The third movie (the best according to me and many others) isn't a winter/Christmas movie, so you don't have to wait a year to watch it. :D (It's a hot summer movie.) Now, if you react to anything beyond the third movie I'm still going to watch it, but I can't recommend you doing it. The quality of the series took a deep plunge after the 90s.

Merry Christmas Amanda... thank u for all the reaction videos...

@13:20 The answer to your question about why he wanted Takagi to give him the code is pretty simple: time. Cracking a code, especially in the late 80s, was a lot more time-consuming and difficult than it would be today. Regardless of how good of a hacker you are, unless you get lucky and can find an exploit where the code is shown in background computer code in plaintext or something, then it's no easy or quick feat to break into a system. Probably the only reason it's even possible for him is because he did research and gathered intel ahead of time in case the guy wouldn't give them the code. Simple answer: It's much easier and faster to get the code from someone who knows it. Quick edit: And of course the movie and all media that isn't Mr. Robot makes it look easy because how boring would it be to see someone actually going through all the trouble of cracking the real code? Though of course anyone's who has seen Mr. Robot all the way through knows that realism actually IS extremely interesting, but that show transcends all media and, though I'd love to be proven wrong, no media in history or the future will ever come close to its quality standards. And yes, I've seen Breaking Bad, which I will say was the best show made up until that point in history. Shows these days are better than they've ever been, but then you see Mr. Robot and you're like "oh, obviously nothing ever has or ever will compare to this." Long digression over. Oh, and you also mentioned earlier something like "isn't this in the 80s? They wouldn't have had touchscreens back then this must be fiction." You may want to learn a bit of history. 1965 was when the first finger-driven touchscreen was developed. Though the technology was constantly evolving and it wasn't put into use in many places until the 80s. And having used shitty touchscreens like the one in the movie, it's quite accurate to what would have been reasonably cutting-edge at the time. I'm not being condescending to you in particular. Really just everyone should have basic grasp on history, and from watching RU-vid channels it's clear that very few people do. Recording history is the most valuable trait we have as human beings and gives us the ability to learn and evolve (in a non-biological sense) very quickly. As if history isn't learned, it's repeated. Not that touchscreen technology is particularly vital to know about, but asserting things about what did or didn't happen in a particular point in history means know your shit or you mislead people. That's just my petpeeve though, I can't stand when the truth isn't told or is obscured in any way. As we've all seen, incorrect knowledge spreads like wildfire, and it's best to snuff it out as soon as possible.

Cool trivia... there were 2 robbers left alive.. Theo in the ambulance (which everyone remembers), and the guy that was knocked out, who was carrying the bonds up on the 30th floor (just before John shot Huey Lewis and Hans).

Merry Christmas. Stay weird.

Missed you, glad you're back

Regarding the Vault. First, the code. If Takagi had given them the code, it would have saved quite a bit of time. He didn't, so they had to do it the hard way. Remember that this is 1988, so remote hacking that computer was quite a ways off. Theo had to get there in person. Theo spent the next several hours physically breaking into the 5 mechanical locks, disabling them. This left the Electromagnetic lock as the only one he couldn't bypass. Then the FBI cut the power. With the rest of the locks already disabled, the Vault opened when the power was cut. Also, Touch Screen technology did exist in the 1980s. But it was nowhere near what it is today.

The safe would be programed to cut all electronic locks when the electricity fails in case people are inside when the power goes out.

13:20 He couldn't crack the code from anywhere, this is pre-internet.

You're back! Yay! And BE WEIRD! ♥

Thank you for your reaction, it was really wonderful. I hope you had a merry Christmas, and wishes for a wonderful new year to you as well!

Welcome back and Merry Christmas 🎅

The Simpsons character you’re talking about is a parody of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and maybe a combination with Sylvester Stallone. Been a long time since I’ve watched that show.

Awesome to see you back. Merry Christmas 🎄.

Thank you Amanda. The time when Al's Car got shot up...I knew you would be concerned about the twinkies! LOL I have deeply missed your presence on the internet but I wish you and your family a Merry Christmas

nice to have you back! merry christmas, happy new year! 😊 (the outtro was HILARIOUS! 😅🤣😂)

Thanks for the content! I’m thoroughly enjoying.

" Oh the Twinkies ! " 😆

Appreciate you, too, Amanda.

John's nick name "Roy" is a reference to the famous actor/singer cowboy "Roy Rogers"

that type of "touch screen" existed but it worked based on infrared beams, that detected where in the grid your finger was pushing the hard glass. they werent widely used because they were extremely expensive and because the display was often miscalibrated, so where the "button" shows and where the sensors recognizes where your touch should be, were not exactly right. this movie though probably faked it, cus its alot cheaper.

You are a joy to watch. Merry Christmas!

I love that you did not recognize the actor playing Hans Gruber. Alan Rickman was cast as the villain opposite Bruce Willis in his first feature film. He was cast in dozens of films in the decades after, including the Harry Potter series (2001-2011), Sense and Sensibility (1995), and Love Actually (2003). But the one that informs Rick and Morty the most would be the cult classic sci-fi parody Galaxy Quest (1999). Gruber's demand that various terrorists be released from prison is fake -- he's stalling for time -- but the trope fit a number of high profile terrorist acts in the seventies that became a caricature in the eighties. So it seemed perfectly in character for a terrorist leader ditching principle in search of pay out to throw such demands about even if insincerely. The gang's hacker could not hack the systems in the building remotely through the internet because the internet did not exist in 1988. The hacker needed to get his hands on the system to hack it. Sadly, the actor who played the hacker passed away suddenly last month. He was professor of drama at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.

Welcome back...hope you have a Merry Christmas 🎄🎄

FYI, living in California, so many of the blue collars folks are Hispanic, that it’s hard not to hire Hispanic folks as help. Literally, the first maid service, the first plumber, and the first landscapers I have had to call were all Hispanic.

Your thumbnail won RU-vid. 🤣❤️

The toe-fists thing is to clench your bare feet and calves, to exercise the muscles and ligaments in your feet and legs, to keep the blood from pooling in your lower legs and contributing to a possible blood clot, from sitting so long on the plane. It's a good idea to do it on the plane as well, if it's a long flight.

Touch screen technology did actually exist at this point, but it was in a very early, experimental stage and much more of a gimmick than having actual practical applications.

I love that you were concerned about the Twinkies!

As short as that lasted I always liked the little reprieve of how Ellis drew some heat to himself to shield Holly. Shows even someone like him has some humanity.

i love your reactions... always funny and great

"...she never heard me say, 'I'm sorry' " "never?" "Never apologize; it's a sign of weakness" - Captain Nathan Brittles, "She Wore A Yellow Ribbon" (another, very good, western)

I like your hat exactly as much as I like Jayne's hat in Firefly. ;)

Merry Christmas Amanda!

Touch screen has been around for quite sometime. I remember it being relatively common in the early 90s, so it wouldn't have uncommon for a new development to include it in the late 80s.

Merry Christmas!

Handle yo bidniss, but glad to have you back! Your humor is always welcome in this house.

Glorious. Fun fact, everyone in canada dresses like that.

16:59 The price of gas

Merry Christmas, I love your hat.

6:06. This is a shakespearean technique. All the questions are to give the viewer context, which otherwise would never be known. There are a lot of Shakespearean aspects to this movie.

Happy Holidays! =D That building is called Fox Plaza. They called it Nakatomi Plaza in the movie though. =)

Great reaction. Thanks.

McBain is a parody of Arnold Swartzenegger, between his huge size & strong Austrian accent.

35:11 cutting the power resets electronic clocks, the time lock on the safe would think it's noon again; the next day! Just like your devices at home blink '12:00' when the power goes out. Also: 42:44 who built the building? '...Scott Johnson, Bill Fain, and William L. Pereira.[7] Fox Plaza is the last building that Pereira designed...'

Merry Christmas Amanda. Have a good one

Merry Chrismas & Happy Holidays, Amanda!!!🎄🎄🎅🏽🎅🏽🎁🎁🎉🎉You look very cute!♥You have definitely been missed on RU-vid. Pass along Merry Christmas to your mom as well.🎄🎄🎅🏽🎅🏽🎁🎁"Die Hard 2" is another great film. I hope you are reacting to it, too. Great reactions to the original Die Hard, Amanda!!!🎄🎬👏🏽👏🏽👏🏽

McBain is a Schwartzenegger reference, with a little Dirty Harry. The name's the only thing Die Hardy.

Merry Christmas

There were touch screens in the 80s but they weren't like modern screens - they were expensive and only handled touches as presses. When you touched the screen the touch only got a fairly large region of the screen, not anything refined. (I used a touch screen in the 7s, but it was very limited.)

No, sweetie, its not pretend tech. My mind wasn't blown when iPhones came out. We did have touch screens. Their applications were much more limited.

"I.... Kill him." Classic.

I'm sorry that yt is stressful. Don't change! You're awesome! Ok, Bbye

Legolas the limo driver 🤣

"This guy, I forgot his name......Legolas?" Ha! I think you're having a flashback to a previously viewed movie. Anyways, here's wishing you a Merry Christmas from Canada. * nice t-shirt - it speaks the truth

Alan Rickman's Film Debut is WOW!!!! I'm glad you're back again!😊

Thumbnail par excellence 😅

Die Hard has such a "Policemen shouldn't be held back by rules or supervisions" vibe, with this whole message about Policemen only being held back by the inability to kill people. It's honestly hard to mistake these days. But it's also fun, and iconic af, and I don't think it shouldn't be enjoyed anymore or anything like that. The second one honestly scares me so much tho, as in how McClain starts killing people. He feels almost like a horror slasher Hunting down terrorist to kill them in creative ways. Also yes, it's a Christmas Movie.

part 3 might be the best of the franchise

Are you okay? I thought this channel half die! Good to see you back tho

In the Cold War in America we didn't worry about terrorism so much, this film was made during the Cold War and yes authorities would be skeptical of somebody calling in a terrorist attack. Some people worried about all-out Thermo nuclear war, but where I live so many bombs would be dropped on my city that we would die instantly, terrorism we didn't worry about so much. And as for the local police authorities making the situation 10 times worse, in my city we once dropped a bomb on a row house and burned down a whole city block to evict one black family. Look the movie is complete fiction but some of the bonehead decisions that were made would have not been that far-fetched 40 years ago. Thank you and thumbs up, have a nice day.

Thanks!

Awesome amazing coolest reaction 👍✨😇🌟😎👍

If i don't see a dead body smashing through a cruiser windshield while Carl Winslow is singing let it snow,that is just a year without christmass for me!