25 Things You Didn't Know About Die Hard With A Vengeance
19. The Novelisation Shows Just How Broken McClane Was
St. Martin's Press
There's nothing quite like a good old fashioned novelisation of a big screen release, and D. Chiel's adaptation of Die Hard with a Vengeance is no exception.
The novel retains the original rocket launcher ending, and goes into a lot more detail surrounding just how far McClane has fallen since the last film. Bruce Willis does a solid enough job conveying that sense of loss and depression on camera, but Chiel really gets into McClane's head this time around, displaying his full range of emotions in great detail.
Chiel's novel also goes into Zeus' backstory a little more, explaining how police misconduct led to the death of his brother years earlier, and why he's currently looking after his nephews.
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.
