Here's Why 'Die Hard' Is, Absolutely and Definitively, a Classic Christmas Movie
Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie?
When tasked with naming the most essential Christmas movies, certain titles always come to mind: It's a Wonderful Life, A Christmas Story, Miracle on 34th Street, The Nightmare Before Christmas—movies like that. But seemingly, as the years go by, another title keeps getting mentioned in that mix, working its way more and more into the cinematic Christmas conversation: Die Hard. That's right, John McTiernan's 1988 R-rated, quick-witted and explosive action masterclass is a perennial favorite that spikes in popularity around the holiday season.
The action thriller's greatness and place in film history is set in stone; it's consistently ranked among the most exciting movies of all time, with some observers even saying it's the all-time high point of the action genre. The influence of Die Hard on pop culture is hard to overstate; recently festive hit Netflix rom-com Love Hard stars Nina Dobrev as an L.A. columnist obsessed with the film. For holiday season 2023—well over 34 years after 20th Century Fox's risky actioner of unusual alchemy hit theaters—we're definitively counting the ways it not only qualifies but excels as a Christmas film. Frankly, it's a holiday classic.
Yippee Ki-Yay... Merry Christmas! Here are five reasons Die Hard is, definitively and absolutely, a Christmas movie.
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?
1. Die Hard is a heartfelt movie about coming home for the holidays... just, with explosions.
This may surprise you, but one of the most notorious shoot'em-ups in Hollywood history is actually based on a novel. A sequel to his book The Detective (made into a moderately successful Frank Sinatra picture in 1968), Roderick Thorp's Nothing Lasts Forever centers on a retired private eye who reunites with his estranged daughter and grandchildren in a Los Angeles skyscraper amidst a corporate Christmas party—only the shindig and the building are commandeered by German terrorists, leaving the aging officer to fight for his life and family.
Produced by action-savant Joel Silver (who re-titled the film), Die Hard underwent multiple rewrites and re-workings (director McTiernan, fresh off a hit with Predator,also played a part in this). Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza carry writing credits for a script that, over time, was tweaked to balance brutal action, a high body count, escalating tension and stakes, humor and appealing characters. The writers and filmmakers created and focused on John McClane (Bruce Willis), an NYPD Detective arriving in L.A. in an attempt to reconcile with wife Holly (Bonnie Bedelia) as an office Christmas mixer at Century City's towering Nakatomi Plaza is hijacked by European thieves spearheaded by Alan Rickman's erudite, sociopathic Hans Gruber.
Sometimes—more often than not, even— a script with many hands on it becomes a case of too many cooks. With Die Hard, competing experienced creatives produced a film that works on multiple levels. It's a gleefully violent picture with an often hilarious, relatable emotional through-line.
Related: The 14 Classic Christmas Movies Everyone Must See at Least Once
2. Bruce Willis' John McClane is the kind of family man we love to root for... especially at Christmastime.
20th Century Fox
Essential to the success of Die Hard is Bruce Willis as John McClane, an unlikely casting choice that made the Moonlighting heartthrob one of the highest-paid movie stars in the world—and, let's face it, made the movie. The actor was previously known as an affable, self-effacing everyman, and the very idea of him as an action hero struck the masses as unintentionally humorous. Even the studio had their doubts about the decision after reports of audiences laughing and even booing during previews—and removed the star from the final lobby cards promoting Die Hard in favor of focusing on the 70mm spectacle and skyscraper setting.
Ultimately, the skeptics were silenced the moment Die Hard hit theaters in July 1988. The blend of humor, heart and well-crafted, thrilling carnage made the picture the seventh-highest-grossing Hollywood film of the year, spawning a long-running franchise.
If there is one element of the mostly gloriously entertaining enterprise that stands out as groan-worthy and underdeveloped, it's Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson (The Breakfast Club's Paul Gleason), a contrarian whose terrible judgment serves the plot but stretches any metric of plausibility; he does stupid things because the plot needs him to, a weakness of the script. This character is, in fact, rather famously what irked Roger Ebert enough to give the picture a negative review (he praised the two immediate sequels). It's definitely the weakest element of an otherwise rock-solid thriller, but the obstacles that the schmuck's ineptitude provides do perhaps make McClane even more relatable and sympathetic.
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3. Die Hard values family over greed and materialism—a solid Christmas message!
Perhaps more than ever during the holidays, the average audience member wants a hero with values, who stands for the things we all do—and what do we value more than family? An amalgamation from several talented writers with different ideas of what Die Hard should be, and most vitally an actor with the necessary chops—at a make-or-break moment in his career when he had to prove himself—Willis' McClane earns our sympathy early on, a cop who's struggled with balancing work, life and love life (like most people). He humbles himself enough to apologize to his neglected wife, and he's rough enough around the edges to thwart a terrorist heist... with no shoes or shirt. Swoon; of course McClane was iconic from the jump.
On the opposite side of the spectrum is Rickman's Gruber, another star-making performance and an all-time great big bad. More flashy in his culture and sophistication than everyman McClane, Gruber is, like McClane, an undeniable charmer—but his empty greed ultimately leads to his quite literal downfall.
Fun fact: This iconic death sequence took up an entire day of production, and the unmistakable look of fear in Rickman's eyes is real. The stunt team dropped him early and without warning from a rig. He landed safely, after cameras captured a hell of a gratifying coup de grace.
It's a Wonderful Life doesn't have as many C4 explosions as Die Hard, but Die Hard shares plenty of common ground with the OG Christmas movie where it counts. Both films are about an imperfect but good-natured guy in crisis, whose experiences re-affirm his purpose and relationships. That's a big part of why both movies are so enduringly popular: We feel really good and upbeat after we watch them. For a holiday double bill, you couldn't do much better.
4. Die Hard actively utilizes its Christmas setting.
Here's perhaps the most obvious reason Die Hard is definitively a Christmas film: It's set at Christmastime, and that element is integral—creatively and humorously—throughout its 132-minute runtime. Among the most amusing yuletide-leaning moments in DieHard: lovable good-guy cop Al Powell (Reginald ValJohnson) innocuously singing "Let It Snow" before a baddie's bloody corpse falls several stories onto his patrol car and all hell breaks loose, and a memorable "Joyful, Joyful" instrumental queue at the top of the third act. Then there's plucky limo driver Argyle (De'voreaux White)'s final line: "If this is your idea of Christmas, I gotta be here for New Year's."
It's important to mention this: If you want to learn more about the years-spanning, often chaotic and ultimately triumphant production of Die Hard, check out Netflix's mini-documentary, a part of the excellent and highly binge-able series The Movies That Made Us. It's now streaming.
Related: 25 Best Alternative Christmas Movies
5. Die Hard is a little formulaic, over-the-top, and comforting—just like so many of the best Christmas movies.
Die Hard stands out because of the unexpected: an unlikely star, a delicious villain, a wealth of wiseass humor, a touching romance—and even more touching bromance. Also, like many of the Christmas movies we play on repeat every year, it sticks to a crowd-pleasing formula. The novel it's based on ends in tragedy (our grizzled, already-bitter hero watches helplessly as his daughter falls thirty stories to her death). There's definitely a place for bleaker, even outright downbeat thrillers when they're done right, but the filmmakers of Die Hard were right to heavily rework the source material. Die Hard is a nuanced but streamlined hero's journey. We root for him; he wins.
Die Hard appeals to the "kidult" in all of us. We'll be talking about it for decades to come. It's ironic that it all started with a book called Nothing Lasts Forever. Die Hard is a classic Christmas movie, and Die Hard is forever.
Next, check out the 100 best movies of all time.
