Bruce Willis' John McClane 'Cameo' In Pearl Harbor - An Urban Myth Explained
Critics reviled director Michael Bay's historical romance "Pearl Harbor" when it was released in 2001. But the three-hour epic fared better with audiences, and some viewers have revisited the film enough over the last two decades that an urban legend about the production has spread across the internet. The story of the 1941 attacks on Oahu as told through the eyes of two best friends (Ben Affleck and Josh Hartnett) and a nurse (Kate Beckinsale) sports an impressive cast list — but in spite of what you may have read online, it doesn't appear that Bruce Willis ever appears in the movie.
Internet rumor has it that John McClane — Willis' infamous "Die Hard" character — was added to one particular scene during post-production. The shot in question comes two hours into the film's three-hour run time and takes place at the hospital where Evelyn (Beckinsale) and Sandra (Jennifer Garner) work. In the scene, the hospital staff is struggling to organize and assist the injured and dead being brought in for care, and at the end of the sequence, Sandra has a breakdown where she cries, "I don't know what to do."
In the background of Sandra's shot is an actor who looks suspiciously like Willis' 1988 portrayal of John McClane from the action film "Die Hard." And for years, people have suggested that Bay digitally inserted the character into the scene as an Easter egg.
Bruce Willis probably wasn't digitally inserted
While the actor in question does look like Bruce Willis — boasting similar facial features and hair, and dressed in a white tank top akin to the one John McClane wears during his quest to defeat Hans Gruber (Alan Rickman) — neither Michael Bay nor Willis nor anyone else close to the production has ever confirmed or denied that it is him. What we do know is that there are only four pure CG shots in "Pearl Harbor," including two shots of the USS Arizona exploding.
Since CGI was used so sparingly, the actors were given flight training so they could actually handle the planes during production. The Dolittle Raid was filmed by having real pilots position the planes, at which point the actors took over and piloted the planes to get the shot. The explosions shown in the film were primarily created using visual effects, and "Pearl Harbor" earned a shoutout in "The Guinness Book of World Records" for having created the priciest film explosion sequence, one of the most expensive movie scenes ever filmed.
"Pearl Harbor" is an epic war film with an epic production budget of $140 million — but the project was so onerous that Bay quit several times over budgetary concerns. In the end, the movie brought in $449 million in worldwide profits, but considering the poor reviews and the film's underwhelming box office performance as compared to expectations, it is still considered one of the bigger industry bombs.