Die Hard: With a Vengeance

John McTiernan’s film opens with a bomber forcing McClane to solve riddles across New York, but the screenplay was not written for Die Hard. Jonathan Hensleigh’s spec, Simon Says, followed an NYPD officer named Alex Bradshaw and was first lined up for Brandon Lee. After Lee died it was converted: Bradshaw became McClane, the bomber the first villain’s brother. The heist was grafted on then, which is why the first half riddles stop mattering in the second: the game was a screen throughout. People who call the film scattered are pointing at that seam. Zeus was written as a Black woman in the spec, with Angela Bassett attached. Rewritten as a man the part went to Laurence Fishburne, who hesitated, and Samuel L. Jackson took it; Fishburne sued and settled. No interiors were allowed inside the Federal Reserve, so an empty Wall Street bank stood in, and one park was built on a vacant lot, then removed. A good fit if you treat the riddles turning out to be a decoy as design, not a fault. Not for anyone who wants the ending to harden the hero: a finale in which McClane executes Simon with a rocket launcher was shot, shelved, and left on the special edition disc. The released film ends with a helicopter and a cable.