10 More Movies That Almost Had Much Better Endings
7. McClane Says - Die Hard With A Vengeance
For the most part, whenever John McClane (Bruce Willis) has been a spanner in the works of a terrorist organisation, there was something personal at stake for him. In Die Hard and Die Hard 2 it was his wife, in Live Free Or Die Hard it was his daughter, and in A Good Day to Die Hard it was his son.
In Die Hard with a Vengeance however, he was personally sought out by Simon Gruber (Jeremy Irons). Seeking vengeance for the death of his brother, Simon made it personal, evolving into a rivalry that ended with McClane shooting the villain's helicopter out of the sky.
McClane won, because of course he did, but there was almost a different ending that, though only for a short time, saw him lose. After being sent all around New York City with riddles and infuriating games of Simon Says, the villain would have gotten away with all the gold in Fort Knox, with McClane taking the blame, losing both his job and his pension.
For revenge, in something of a twist on the games Simon forced John and Zeus to play throughout the film, the hero had the villain play a deadly Russian roulette-esque game of McClane Says, with a Chinese rocket launcher modified to make it impossible to know which way it would fire. Answer a question wrong and pull the trigger. Of course, Simon lost. This would have been the epitome of a broken-down hero with nothing left to lose, and would have made for a more nuanced ending than a helicopter explosion.