People McClane is a good improviser. Here I'll even make a list off the top of my head.
- When McClane encountered his first terrorist, he gets into a brawl and then uses a stairwell to kill the guy.
- After McClane kills the guy, he puts his body on an elevator with the words "now I have a machine gun" written on his sweater for the other terrorist to find. IIRC wasn't McClane on top of that elevator looking down so he can identify the other terrorists and can get more info about their plans?
- When McClane fights the guy's older brother Karl (no not Carl Winslow), again McClane uses his surround to his advantage. This time he gets the guy to chase him up a stairwell so McClane can wrap a chain around his neck and push him off, hanging the guy.
- Hans decide to screw his plans and blow up the roof to kill McClane. McClane then uses a fire hose to jump off the building and swing down to the lower floors.
- At the end when McClane tries to save his wife, he knew they would use her to force him to drop his weapon. He was right. So he took out the last two bullets from his machine gun and loads them inside a small handgun. He then tapes the gun to his shirtless back, giving the illusion he has no weapons on him.
- In Die Hard 2, when McClane was fighting terrorists dressed up as repair men, he was trying to get one person that was on top of a scaffle. In most things the two characters would of had a shoot off when they're constantly firing and taking cover until someone finally dies. Not this time. McClane simply pushes the scaffle over and causes the guy to fall off. Now that's how you do it.
- Later in that fight McClane gets stuck under I believe a scaffle, his gun is out of reach and a terrorist is approaching him. Well I guess John is screwed now. No wait he hits the button on the conveyer belt and has the gun come to him.
- When the terrorist have McClane cornered inside a plane, they decide to give McClane a fancy funeral by blowing up the thing. McClane then uses the ejector seats to escape the explosion.
- In the end when the terrorist manage to knock John off the 747, McClane retaliates by using a lighter of all simple things to blow the thing up by lighting the gasoline trail that he opened up on his way down.
- In Die Hard 3, John wins another fight by hitting a level that cause a chain swing and knock his opponent off his feet. Then he uses the chain to beat the guy down.
- When John and Samuel L. Jackson were handcuffed to a bomb, Sam drops the pin to try and free himself. Instead of wasting time, McClane uses the explosive liquids from the bomb itself to free Samuel.
- In his showdown with Simon, Simon shoots down McClane's helicopter, but John manages to beat him by shooting off a electrical wire off a nearby post that causes Simon's copter to crash.
- In Die Hard 4 a helicopter was shooting down at McClane and Justin Long, unable to fire back John gets rid of the gunner by running over a fire hydrant and have the gushing water knock the guy off the copter.
- Later McClane gets rid of the copter itself by using a toll booth as a ramp to hurl the car at he copter.
- While McClane was helping Justin escape from terrorist, he gets rid of one of them by rolling a fire extinguisher near him and shooting it. Causing it to blow and send the guy flying out of the building.
- During McClane's fight with "Spider Man", after seeing how difficult it is to shoot him, John beats him by releasing the gas in the pipes they were fighting on to cause the guy to fall to his death.
- John has to beat a fighter jet with nothing but a truck. No power lines to use, no fire hydrants nearby, and no leaked gas tank to ignite. How does he do it? By using the wreckage from his own damage truck to fall into the jet's engines once the jet had to lower down to his level in order to machine gun him.
- Now McClane has to make a escape because the freeway bridges they were fighting on was collapsing. There's nothing he can use to swing down, so he's screwed now right? Nope McClane jumps onto the same fighter jet that was attacking him, then jumps into a section of the freeway that was already destroyed to escape the upcoming explosions.
- In the final confrontation, McClane gets shot and has Thomas Gabriel using him as a human shield with a gun pointed at his head. What does he do? Grabs the gun and points it into his gunshot wound and shots himself. Causing the bullet to go through both of them.
And remember that list was off the top of my head. Now lets see Jason Bourne's and Batman's list of improvising.
Also on another thread someone said if a person had a gun right infront of McClane, with John's luck the gun will jam. Guess what? McClane did had guns right infront of him and no it didn't jam. Instead this is what happened. A person pulled out a gun infront of John, he twist the guy's arms in a special lock. However the guy still had his gun in his hand. He opened fire and John impressively managed to dodge the bullet of a gun that was literally inches from his face. Then there was another time when someone snuck behind John and Justin. McClane drops his weapon and raises his arms. He then runs backwards to use his raised arms to lock the bad guy's arm, then he judo tossed him onto a chair and kicks the chair down McClane's old friend the stairwell. That's not luck, that's skills. Where's all this apparent luck that I keep on hearing about? Here are the examples I can think of.
- In the first Die Hard movie McClane was in the air vents and one of the terrorist was checking them. Luckily was called back and McClane wasn't found.
- In Die Hard 3, Samuel comes into help McClane deal with a mob. Though in my opinion this was just to introduce Samuel into the film and John could have survived that mob without Sam's help.
Anything else? I could list two other examples of McClane's apparent luck factor coming into play.
- In Die Hard, when John was traveling in between the ducts, he reaches an area where he can plummet to his death. McClane then uses his gun to climb down onto another duct. However the plastic stock on his gun breaks off and John nearly falls to his death.
- In Die Hard 3 when John and Samuel were on the freighter, Samuel tries to be a hero but gets captured. It leads to John being force to surrender and handcuffed to the bomb.
Great luck there right? If you want to see lucky people, look at the horror slasher films and Smallville example that I gave. Heck superheroes seem to have better luck.
- After getting gassed by Green Goblin, Norman could had killed Spidey or pulled off his mask to see it's Peter. But nope Norman just wanted to talk to Spider-man and offer a team up.
- During the bridge scene, Spider-man just had to hold onto the cable tram as a barge goes underneath it. However Green Goblin was knocking Spider-man off while this was happening. Luckily there were people on the bridge that scared off Norman.
- During Peter's train fight with Doc Ock, he manages to stop the train once it reaches the very end of the track. However Peter passes out and is about to fall off. Luckily the people grabbed onto Spidey and pulled him in.
- In the end fight of Spider-man 3, Peter was getting killed by Venom and Sandman. Luckily Harry decided to help out his old friends.
- In Batman Begins, Batman gets gassed by Scarecrow. Luckily Morgan Freeman was able to create an antidote and cure him.
- Later in Batman Begins, Batman discovers the true identity of Ra's al Ghul. Liam Neeson fights Bruce, a wooden beam then falls down and knocks out Batman. Ghul orders his men to make sure Batman doesn't make it out alive. Luckily Alfred knocks out the person watching Bruce and wakes up Bruce. If Alfred didn't came, Bruce would had surely died in the fire.