One of the few changes when they turned Nothing Lasts Forever (1979) into Die Hard (1988) really bugs me. They do the same "pretend to be terrorists" thing, except in the novel, they're revealed to be liberating profits of human rights violations to give them back to the world.

Their plan was good, and not a single person would have been hurt had that meddling cop not been running around barefoot, hiding in the air vents yelling yippee ki-yay. He causes literally every single death that happens, and had he done nothing everything would have been fine.

John McTeirnan turned the story of a washed up old cop causing the deaths of innocent people, by operating all on his own outside his jurisdiction, into a piece of copaganda about how it's good there are barefoot cops yelling yippee ki-yay in air vents and shooting at people.