Protagonist

Character Role Analysis

John McClane

That whole Die Hard thing? Yeah, it's referring to John McClane. He's the one who dies hard, or, in this case, not at all. There's absolutely no doubt that the cowboy cop is the hero of this story. He's diametrically opposed to the central villain, Hans Gruber, in every possible way. Plus, we spend every possible moment of the movie rooting for him, wondering how he's going to get out of one scrape and into the next. Take John McClane out of the movie and all you have is a bunch of dudes cracking a safe while everyone else sits around twiddling their thumbs.