Spoiler Alert Podcast: The Five Things That Actually Cause John McClane Grief In Life

Anyone who has a passing relationship with SpoilerAlert Podcast knows how I feel about the Die Hard series. Actually, anyone who’s around me for more than five minutes can deduce that one:

Actual Author Photo

However, in honor of Brando’s favorite holiday film, I thought I’d ruminate on poor John McClane’s lot in life. It is imperative that you understand that I am not pointing out plot holes, merely illustrating a surprising fact of his existence. You see dear readers, if you think that McClane’s world would be all sunshine and farts if only it weren’t for all those pesky terrorists, well you got another thing comin!

So sit back and enjoy the real pains in McClane’s ass:

1) THE FBI IS CONSTANTLY SCREWING HIM OVER.

McClane is a cop from New York who worked in LA for a spell, but he is NYPD through and through. But if there is one thing that his experience should have taught him its this: never trust the FBI! In the original Die Hard, a major plot point of the film is that the FBI’s incompetence actually makes the bad guy’s plan work. Hans “Bubby” Gruber even refers to them as his Christmas miracle, and at one point (granted it’s a case of mistaken identity) they actually open fire on McClane while he’s trying to get hostages to safety.

Interagency Cooperation

Bad first impression you say? Ok, how about in Die Hard With A Vengeance when they reward McClane’s saving of hundreds of lives in a New York subway explosion with an interrogation and slyly insinuate that he could be in on the plot? That’s Bureau procedure if ever I’ve seen it. At this point in his career, McClane should be able to threaten the President and still get the benefit of the doubt, but the FBI still isn’t too sure about him. Of course, the best moment comes in Live Free Or Die Hard when we find out that the FBI is basically responsible for the entire freakin’ plot of the film, as they hired the villain to protect America’s computer-automated systems (www.runseverything.gov), fired him, and proceeded not to change one damn thing that he left in place. I’m serious, they don’t even change his login password after he basically tells them the cyber version of, “I’ll get you my pretties!!” To make matters worse, to cover their asses, they keep all of this a secret until they admit it to the only FBI Agent that thinks McClane is worth a damn, and his only response is a sneer so intense that it completely conveys the words “Senate Judiciary Review”.”

Way to go boys, J. Edgar would be proud!

2) NO ONE EVER BELIEVES HIM.

Maybe its never been said that John McClane never told a lie, but for some reason, anytime he says anything remotely insightful he is immediately met with criticism and disbelief.

After risking life and limb to kill a terrorist and steal a radio in the original Die Hard, McClane gets to the roof of the Nakatomi building and begins to broadcast a desperate plea for help on the emergency band using clear and cohesive language. The immediate response from a trained 911 operator? He’s a crank caller. After he tells the LADP not to breach the building because of the terrorists’ superior firepower, they can’t wait to blow him off to go get killed by the very rocket launcher that he warned them about. In Die Hard 2, after half the movie goes by and McClane has been right about EVERY FREAKING PLOT POINT, Capt. Lorenzo actually threatens to arrest him for being out of his mind once McClane spoon-feeds him the bad guys’ entire plan. Only after McClane unloads on Lorenzo with an automatic weapon loaded with blanks (that the terrorists were using) does McClane’s theory start getting some play.

Proper Police Procedure

By the time Die Hard With A Vengeance happens, McClane takes the time to call Inspector Cobb and reveal the terrorists’ plan, all the while dodging an exploding Manhattan. The Inspector’s response to McClane, the officer that he sent on the mission to literally figure out the terrorists’ plan and report back, is to question whether or not he has been drinking. And of course, once the beloved FBI shows up in Live Free Or Die Hard to get McClane’s take on things, their only response is to tell him that the scenario that they are actually experiencing is simply not possible. At what point does someone say, “You know, he might just have a knack for this stuff”?

3) NO ONE REMEMBERS WHAT HE DID AT THE AIRPORT BACK IN 1990.

John McClane fought his way into our hearts by using his wits, a Beretta, and the only cool wife-beater ever to overcome thirty terrorists in the Nakatomi Building in LA. We all loved the movie, and in the Die Hard universe, this is what he’s known for. He’s constantly getting ragged about it in the second film and the entire plot of Die Hard With A Vengeance seems to be a revenge driven rampage because the bad guy is Hans Gruber’s older brother.

Nepotism

When Zeus asks him if he’s famous or something, McClane off-handedly mentions the skyscraper incident depicted in the original film. The problem? In Die Hard 2, he basically wins the country’s war on drugs, takes out Manuel Noriega, and quells a ridiculously high level military special ops mutiny, not to mention that he also solves the biggest FAA crisis in history and saves the lives of literally THOUSANDS of people. This would be SUCH a bigger deal than the Nakatomi Building incident!! That was thirty terrorists stealing money; this is the Cocaine Kingpin of Panama and TWO (count ‘em!) Green Beret quality rouge Army platoons. Yet from the moment its over, everyone he meets is like, “John McClane? Right, that building in LA.” That would be like meeting Aaron Rodgers and only remembering that he worked at the food court.

Welcome to Mr. Smileys!!!

The fact that no one can recall this incident leads me to believe that McClane’s awesomeness caused every other person on the planet’s brain to immediately erase the memory or face total protonic reversal (yeah, it’s a real thing).

4) HIS WIFE IS A TOTAL BITCH.

When we meet McClane, he is separated from his wife Holly because of career matters; he’s a New York cop and she has been transferred to LA with a very lucrative executive job. They embrace and then launch into a fight about how they are both unhappy with what is essentially a common marital problem. At the beginning of the second film, he’s an LAPD cop, having given up his career in New York for his family and followed her out to the coast. By the time he saves her for the second time, they’re established as a loving couple with this little problem of always inviting too many terrorists for Christmas.

Party Crashers

Once we get to the third film though, they’ve been squabbling again and McClane has gone back to New York even though they’re still married. When he finally gets the gut check to swallow his pride and call her, he unfortunately has to run off at the last second to save the United States entire MONETARY BACKUP and must leave her hanging on the line. Her reaction is to immediately start cussing him out over the phone. McClane once threw a guy through a jet engine turbine just because he threatened Holly’s safety, and her reaction to a missed phone call is to immediately assume he’s just screwing around with her emotions again? Further more, he’s completely faithful to her. In the original film, when a drunk executive flirts with Holly and invites her out for a romantic evening, she coyly retreats into her professional demeanor and chides him about the true meaning of Christmas. (I’m sorry, I hope my wife would say something along the lines of, “I’m married ass-hat and this is totally unwanted sexual harassment! I can’t wait till some German terrorist blows your cocaine addled brain out the back of your skull!”)

A Proportional Response

McClane’s way? In Die Hard 2, when the attractive Rent-A-Car Girl (the character’s legitimate name) asks McClane if he’d be interested in getting a drink, he immediately points to his wedding ring and laughs off the invitation. But the biggest knife in the back from our girl Holly is when McClane goes to visit his daughter Lucy in Live Free Or Die Hard and finds not only does she use her mother’s maiden name out of allegiance to Holly after the divorce, but she makes several comments hinting at the fact that mom thought he was a crappy guy. How does it pan out? After one afternoon in her dad’s world, Lucy can’t wait to tell anyone that will listen that her last name is McClane and she is her father’s daughter. Perhaps, just once, Holly should have set the kids down and explained to them that even though Mommy and Daddy aren’t married anymore they both love them very much and Daddy is just a little busy because often times he is literally the only thing keeping America safe from complete annihilation.

5) THE F*&%$#G WRITERS HATE HIM.

John McClane is a descent guy who just happens to do incredible things (the entire appeal of the first film is that he’s an everyman who rises to the occasion). He’s a loving husband and father, an honest cop, nice to everyone who isn’t trying to kill him, and, oh yeah, every now and then he saves the freakin’ world. However, somewhere around pre-production on Die Hard With A Vengeance, the producers discovered that they could save some coin by not hiring back Bonnie Bedelia and Reginald Vel Johnson.

Cost-prohibitive. And surprisingly gay.

To facilitate this casting decision, in the third film McClane becomes an alcoholic, washed-up loner. WHAT?!? Everything he does in the first two films is for his family and the safety of others, but now he’s a perpetual screw-up that can’t keep his life on track. To further this thread, and to play off the idea that McClane is an anachronistic guy living in a modern world, by the time Live Free Or Die Hard rolls around he’s completely aware of how much of a loser he is! He actually tells Justin Long how much his life sucks because he’s pretty much a superhero. See above WHAT?!? I once helped a guy at a traffic accident and when the guy told me thank you, I told that story to literally every human I interacted with for a month. John McClane should walk the earth never having to pay his own bar tab and spend most of his time wondering why everyone else can’t get their shit together, but instead the writers have Silent Bob and the Mac Kid ragging on him because he doesn’t know what a USB port is. When the bad guy hacks into his personnel records, he even makes a snide remark about how pathetic McClane’s financial picture is. Could that be because he’s an honest cop that never stole the free crap that the terrorists were constantly leaving in their wake or because he never sued the Beretta company for making their grips so damn slippery? (Seriously, watch the movies again, that gun slips out of his hand every ten minutes!!)