Warning! This article contains SPOILERS for Die Hard: Year OneThe official comic prequel toDie Hardreveals the tragic inspiration behind John McClane’s iconic plan to infiltrate Hans Gruber’s lair inside Nakatomi Plaza.John McClane’s one-man-army approachto defeating Hans Gruber and his gang stands apart from other action heroes of his era. Instead of facing the terrorists head-on and guns blazing, John McClane relied on strategy, deception, and pure audacity.
One of the best examples of John McClane’s resourcefulness is his venture into the Nakatomi building’s ventilation system. Nowadays, a character crawling through an air vent is already a well-known cliché in the action and comedy genres. However, it was John McClane’s iconic vent scene from 1988’sDie Hardthat set the first major precedent.
While McClane’s vent crawl strategy seems like a spur-of-the-moment decision inDie Hard,2010’sDie Hard: Year Onecomic prequel, written by Howard Chaykin, reveals that McClane was already acquainted with claustrophobic crawl spaces long before he became a full-fledged action hero.
Die Hard: Year One #6; Written by Howard Chaykin; Art by Gabriel Andrade Jr. and Stephen Downer; Letters by Ed Dukeshire
InDie Hard: Year One#6, John McClane is called by his partner Olga Cruces to intervene in a hostage situation. By this point, McClane has already made a name for himself as a last-resort agent with unconventional methods. Hence, he crawls through a building’s ventilation system in order to catch the first-time terrorist with his guard down. While crawling,JohnMcClane remembers his traumatic near-death experience crawling under a house as a kid and crawling through a tunnel in the Vietnam War.
Die Hard: Year One’s flashbacks to John McClane’s previous crawling experiences put his most iconicDie Hardscene in a new light. McClane almost died crushed by an excavator as a kid, shot by enemy forces in Vietnam, and later shot by a wannabe criminal as a police officer. Three extremely similar brushes with death were already enough to make John McClane develop a phobia. Yet, he went straight for the air ducts while escaping Gruber’s men inDie Hard.
Die Hard: Year One Toes A Delicate Line In John McClane’s Backstory
John McClane Is Both A Hardened Hero And A Regular Guy
The biggest factor inDie Hard’s massive success in the late 1980s was its protagonist’s everyday nature.Bruce Willis was by no means an action starand didn’t have the towering, muscular build of box office darlings like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone. Likewise, John McClane was presented as a regular police officer caught amidst a terrorist attack on a bad day.Like the franchise’s fourth and fifth installments,Die Hard: Year Onerisked portraying McClane as an invincible action hero born to survive any challenge thrown at him.
A prequel-sequel movie starring a young John McClane set in the 1970s was in the works at some point in the 2010s, but it has been permanently canceled.
Die Hard: Year Onedoes add some extra grit to John McClane’s backstory.McClane faces a wannabe terrorist group similar to Hans Gruber’salmost as soon as he enters the police force, and he basically trains the exact skills he needs to stop Gruber years later, including his crawling and building-jumping talents.Die Hard: Year Onedoesn’t go overboard with John McClane’s pre-Die Hardfeats, but it does confirm that McClane wasn’t any run-of-the-mill cop when he stepped into Nakatomi Plaza that fateful Christmas Eve.
Die Hard: Year Oneis available in its entirety from Boom! Studios
