LEGO Builder Builds 4ft Tall Nakatomi Building From Die Hard

Nakatomi Plaza, the skyscraper in which John McClane went to war with a small band of terrorists during his wife’s office Christmas party, has been faithfully recreated in over 15,000 Legos by a dedicated builder named Tierry Rutishauser. The building, which stands over four feet tall, caught our eye in a tweet from Brian Collins of Horror Movie a Day, who (rightly) called Rutishauser a “hero” for the construction effort. Massive, intricate works like this are not entirely uncommon among hardcore Lego builders, but in an era of licensed Lego “sets” that have instructions and a single “right” way to assemble them, it feels even more impressive to go off script and have it come out so perfectly.

The culture around Lego has changed significantly in recent years, with adult collectors and builders taking up more oxygen than they had in the past. Kids still play with them, of course, but it’s rare that a 10-year-old is going to make $250 by selling a gorgeously-detailed version of the Waverider from DC’s Legends of Tomorrow on Etsy (its’ there, really).

You can check it out below.

As for Die Hard? The franchise itself is as hard to kill as John McClane. Last year, it even got a tie-in board game — themed “Nakatomi Heist,” no less — in addition to several movie and comic book sequels and prequels.

The series seemed to have run its course after A Good Day to Die Hard, which introduced Jai Courtney as McClane’s son and took the franchise to Russia (back before seeing Russia as an existential threat was an everyday thing for most Americans). After waiting 12 years betwen Die Hard With a Vengeance and Live Free or Die Hard, A Good Day… waited only five years and it seemed like a sequel was in the works almost immediately before fading from the radar. The movie was said to be a prequel that would have reunited Willis with Live Free or Die Hard director Len Wiseman, but it fell apart because the “prequel” element didn’t meet with Willis’s approval. The movie ultimately ended up as one of a number of Fox-planned productions that got scraped when the studio was officially folded into the Walt Disney Company last year.