Written by Mr. Mouseburger 5th Jun 2005
Simon Gruber, the brother of Hans Gruber(q.v.), has been foiled by Maclane, who has tracked him all the way to Canada.
Rightly miffed at this "Irish Flatfoot", he jumps in a helicopter armed with an incredibly high powered machine gun intent on blowing Maclane away. In contrast, Maclane is struggling (quelle surprise); he only has 2 bullets left in his trusty six shooter.
What happens next would be inexplicable if it were not in an action film.
Maclane decides to come out in the open and wait for a decent shot. Gruber, instead of just firing endless rounds into him, orders the helicopter to be lowered, so he can look eyeball to eyeball with Maclane before he dispatches him.
This manouevre requires the helicopter to delicately guide itself under a whole swedge of electricity cables. Maclane, realising the opportunity, shoots at the cable box and manages to get a cable falling towards the helicopter.
The camera focusing on an inanimate object like some cables can only spell disaster for Gruber
Too late, Gruber realising the problem orders the helicopter to get out of danger just as the cable hits the rotor blades and electrocutes them. The out of control helicopter then crashes in to a pylon and explodes.
I considered this an unsatisfying death because anyone with such attention to detail that they could plan an intricate heist of the gold reserves at the federal reserve, should not be making such a schoolboy error as to land a helicopter under all those cables. Also, Gruber had ample opportunity to blow Maclane away but did not take it.
say hello to your brother!
get out of here now!
BOOM!
Actually, Karl, the line is "say hello to your brother!"
why didn't Rickmann play Hans' brother?
They're brothers, not twins!
was Simon older than Hans or was Hans older than Simon?
Rickman is two years older than Irons in real life, but I don't know about the storyline.
Die Hard 4 coming in 07!
As far as I know, Simon was the older brother.
What about "Crash"?
What about Mexican Standoff? The two exchange glances, knowing either one could kill the other.
And it's McClane.
Just thought I'd bump this so that the category suggestions are noticed.
However, I'm not one for random bumping. Let's throw in a bit of trivia!
The ending to the film was significantly re-shot. The original ending was set six months after the main body of the film. The scene opens up in an unspecified foriegn country. Simon has having a nice drink in a hotel bar when a cleaned-up McClane strolls in. Simon is rather surprised to see McClane, as he left him with the bomb on the boat. McClane tells him that he was fired from the force (the FBI thought he had something to do with the heist) and, out of revenge, began to track Simon down. It's at this point we discover Simon escaped the country by melting the gold into statues of the Empire State Building.
McClane found Simon because the asprin bottle given to him by Simon was made by a pharmacutical company that shipped to a pharmacy just down the street from the hotel. McClane pulls out a Chinese Rocket Launcher, however the sights on it have been removed, so Simon can't tell which end is which. They play a little game of riddles. Each time Simon gets a question right, he has to turn the launcher around. Simon gets a question wrong and is forced at gunpoint by McClane to fire the launcher. Simon does, and a missile rips through him and explodes into the wall behind. The last words in the film are "Yippie ki Yay, motherf**ker."
Why wasn't it chosen? The sight of psychologically damaged McClane worried the executives over at Fox, so a new ending was devised.