Goldfinger set the standard for villains who go after a country’s gold. About three decades later, Die Hard with a Vengeance sent Simon Gruber after the gold beneath New York, and anyone raised on Bond will feel a familiar tug watching it. We’ve already let Austin Powers into a Bond list, so a Die Hard film getting one seemed fair.
Before anyone calls this a theft: we went looking for proof that the Die Hard filmmakers borrowed from Goldfinger and found none. On the DVD commentary, the screenwriter says he knows what the vault looks like because the Federal Reserve showed it to him, and that he learned about the aqueduct tunnel his villains drive through from a New York Times Sunday Magazine article. So this isn’t a list of things that were copied. It’s a list of places where two films about a government gold vault land in the same spot.
One thing to settle first, because it matters later: Goldfinger didn’t plan to steal the gold in Fort Knox. He planned to make it radioactive.
We checked every parallel against both films and ranked them by how closely they match. The closest are the same move made the same way. Below those come the same move run in reverse, and at the bottom, the same goal reached by a different route. Spoilers for both films throughout.
8 to 7: Same Goal, Different Toolbox
8. The Live Wire: Bond and Oddjob, McClane and Simon
Both heroes end up facing someone they can’t beat in a straight fight, and both turn the nearest live electrical line into the weapon. In the Fort Knox vault, Oddjob’s steel-brimmed hat lodges between the bars, and when Oddjob reaches in to pull it free, Bond puts the power where the hat is. Oddjob goes down for good. In Quebec, Simon is above McClane in a helicopter with the guns on his side, so McClane stops aiming at the helicopter and shoots at the power lines overhead until it comes down. The match isn’t clean. Bond’s opponent is the henchman and McClane’s is the villain himself, and Bond uses the wire up close while McClane does it with a gun from the ground. That’s why it sits at the bottom.
7. Clearing the Guards: Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus and Simon’s Fake School Bomb
Both villains need the people protecting the gold out of the way. Goldfinger’s answer is a dawn run by Pussy Galore’s Flying Circus, spraying gas over Fort Knox so the troops on the ground drop where they stand. (How that run actually went is a story for another list.) Simon’s answer is a phone call. He tells the police there’s a bomb in one of the city’s elementary schools, set to go off when classes end, and the NYPD spreads out to search them. McClane spots the gap: there are no schools around Wall Street, which is the point. Simon later admits the school bomb was fake. Goldfinger brings planes and gas. Simon gets the police to leave on their own.
6 to 5: Same Plan, Run in Reverse
6. Moving the Gold: Bond’s Objection and Simon’s Dump Trucks
In Goldfinger, Bond works through what it would take to empty Fort Knox and tells Goldfinger it’s impossible to move that much gold before the American military arrives. (We’ve done that math too, in our villain price tags list.) Goldfinger agrees. He never meant to move it. Simon simply solves the problem. His crew loads the gold into 14 stolen dump trucks and drives it out of Manhattan through a water tunnel that’s still under construction, and his men carry exactly enough cash for a bridge toll. The job Bond called impossible at Fort Knox is the one Simon’s crew pulls off in New York.
5. The Twist: A Robbery That Isn’t, and a Destruction That Isn’t
This is the difference from the top of the list, and it’s the cleverest thing the two films share. Goldfinger briefs his gangster partners on a break-in at Fort Knox, and Bond assumes it’s a robbery too. When Bond raises the logistics, Goldfinger’s answer is “Who mentioned anything about removing it?” The real plan is a bomb that leaves the gold radioactive and useless for decades. Simon runs the trick the other way. He announces he’s sending the gold to the bottom of Long Island Sound on his ship, and the ship turns out to be carrying scrap metal while the gold heads for Canada. Goldfinger dressed up a destruction as a robbery. Simon dressed up a robbery as a destruction.
4 to 3: Same Plan, New Paint
4. The Costumes: Goldfinger’s Fake Army Convoy and Simon’s Fake Cops
Neither villain’s crew turns up looking like a villain’s crew. Goldfinger’s men roll into Fort Knox as a fake US Army convoy, led by his lieutenant Kisch, with the laser that cuts its way into the Depository riding in an ambulance. Simon’s men walk into the Federal Reserve dressed as businessmen, then pass as security guards, police officers and maintenance workers once they’re inside, and a few of them are still playing cops when McClane comes back to the bank. Both crews dress as the people who are supposed to be there. In Kentucky that’s the Army. In New York it’s the police.
3. The Pitch: Chaos in the West
Goldfinger’s plan has a second customer. The bomb comes from Communist China, and with the Fort Knox gold out of action, Goldfinger’s own gold soars in value while China gets economic chaos in the West. That’s the real plan. In Die Hard with a Vengeance, the same idea is only a cover story: from the ship, Simon broadcasts that he’s destroying the gold to destabilize the economy of the Western world. Goldfinger meant it. Simon only said it. Three decades apart, two gold villains landed on the same headline.
2 to 1: Practically the Same Scene
2. The Bomb: Bond in the Vault, McClane and Zeus Carver on the Ship
At the climax of both films, the hero ends up chained to the villain’s bomb while the villain leaves. Goldfinger has Bond handcuffed to the atomic device inside the Fort Knox vault, locks the vault and goes. Simon’s men handcuff McClane and Zeus Carver next to the bomb on the ship, and Simon leaves them to it, though not before handing McClane a bottle of aspirin he’ll regret. Both heroes get out of the cuffs. After that the scenes split: a technician switches Goldfinger’s bomb off before it goes (how close that got is another list’s business), while McClane and Zeus get clear just before Simon’s goes off. Why a villain would chain the hero to a bomb instead of using a gun is a question we’ve asked before.
1. The Target: Fort Knox and the Federal Reserve
Goldfinger goes after Fort Knox, the most famous gold vault in America. Simon goes after the vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, downtown by Wall Street. Same kind of prize: a government-guarded vault full of gold, much of it held for other countries. And the film knows exactly what it’s being compared to. In the vault, Simon boasts that the haul is ten times what’s in Kentucky, then waves off Fort Knox as a place “for tourists.” If one parallel on this list is beyond argument, it’s this one, and the film says the name out loud.
Case Closed
Eight parallels, two films, no confession. The screenwriter says his heist came from a tour of the Federal Reserve and a magazine article, and we found nothing that says otherwise. Watch the two films back to back, though, and the biggest difference is what happens to the gold. Goldfinger wanted America’s gold to be worthless. Simon just wanted it.