Die Hard anachronisms & other things

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Looking at Die Hard II (and the original) the last couple of nights and I am freaking amazed at some of the anachronisms in the films. It is a very heady feeling to see classic films like these and be so shocked at so many of the things in them.

Smoking: In both films, McClane--and other characters--smokes in the restaurant, in the offices, and just about everywhere. There are no bans on smoking noted at all.

Guns: In the first movie, McClane carries a gun on the plane in a holster strap. In the second film, his wife Holly sits next to an older woman who has a taser. In one "funny" moment, the older woman tells Holly that she tested the taser out on her dog, and says he couldn't walk for a week. The taser gets used on the idiot reporter (William Atherton) while he's trying to do a phone story via the airplane phone. Obviously, with the kind of films these are (action-adventure), gunplay is a major part of them.

Glass: In the first film, McClane has to run through a barrage of splintered glass, and ends up picking shards of glass from his feet. Safety glass is now mandatory (I believe) in most places of employment.

Cell phones: Not completely non-existent, but certainly extremely rare. Painfully so. When the tower is trying to call the circling planes, the methods of communication are very limited almost to the point of claustrophobic.


A few observations. Unfortunately, they used a city in 2 which was ridiculously wrong for the scenario. The problem with using Dulles is that for planes circling the airport running low on fuel, there would have been more than enough fuel to divert the planes to either National or BWI. They did mention the "alternate" airports, but they were too far away to be of significance. National or BWI would have been logical alternatives, especially for the foreign planes running low.

In one of the opening shots, Holly (on the plane) sends a message to McClane's beeper from the airphone, and he calls her back. He uses a phone in a phone bank, and the phones clearly show the "Pacific Bell" logo on them. In addition, I don't believe you are able to call someone back on an airphone.

The pushy reporter (William Atherton, again) has his engineer friend monitor the flight radio frequency through his own radio. I am not certain, but wouldn't communications between the plane and the tower be scrambled? And I will assume that the radios used would certainly have fucked up the communication equipment anyhow.


Not all the things I noticed, but enough to make me see how far we've come since 1988 and 1990.

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1. Aren't there any Die Hard fans at DU?

A kick and question!