25 Things You Didn't Know About Die Hard With A Vengeance
16. The Revenge Plot Came From A Writer's Childhood Experience
20th Century Studios
Writers draw upon their own life experiences to craft stories all the time, and Hensleigh is no exception. Die Hard with a Vengeance's cat-and-mouse story of revenge actually stems from a childhood experience the writer had, and the anxiety over whether it would ever come back to haunt him.
As Hensleigh tells it, the premise behind Simon Says came from when he once injured a friend after throwing a rock at them, and the thought that said friend could decide to seek revenge as an adult.
It might seem pretty mundane, but there's no denying it resulted in a great story. The look on McClane's face when he learns Simon is Hans' Gruber's brother sells it alone!
WhatCulture's very own resident movie guy, Ewan has been working in the content creation biz for over 10 years now, having started as a freelance contributor to WhatCulture Gaming all the way back in 2015. After graduating with a First-Class Honours in History from Northumbria University in 2017 (where he won a prize for a totally killer dissertation on the Watergate years), Ewan took on the role of Comics Editor at WhatCulture and quickly developed WhatCulture Comics into one of the biggest superhero-focused channels on YouTube. He followed this with a brief hiatus at Screen Rant in 2021, where he worked across the Gaming and Film sections as a writer and editor, before returning to WhatCulture as a Senior Content Producer / Presenter in 2023. He started his own podcast, We Love Dad Movies, in 2022, and has contributed several written pieces to the Eisner-nominated comics website Shelfdust as well.
In his current role, Ewan incorporates his love of cinema, comic books, and history into written pieces and video essays for WhatCulture's Film & TV channel, as well as WhatCulture Gaming and WhatCulture Horror, with a particular focus on nineties-era Dad Movies, old school Westerns, and Golden Age Hollywood Noir. John Carpenter is his fave, and he thinks Batman Beyond should never have been cancelled. If that's your vibe, you'll probably like his stuff.
