“What’s your favorite Christmas movie?” This is a question that is very commonly asked during the holiday season, and usually elicits answers of popular Christmas films, like The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), A Christmas Story (1983), or Christmas Vacation (1989). This is all well and good, but there’s another common answer to this question that (in all honesty) probably won’t be very surprising.
Die Hard (1988) is an action movie following John McClane (Bruce Willis) in his effort to save hostages from a group of terrorists, which just so happens to take place on Christmas Eve. For a lot of people, this—and a multitude of inconspicuous plot details—seem to be enough to elicit calling this film a Christmas movie. Well, if you couldn’t guess from the title of this article, I am going to be arguing why these people are wrong.
Now, the biggest problem that comes with this debate is one of definitions. We’re arguing about whether or not Die Hard is a Christmas movie, but what even is a Christmas movie? You could give a lot of answers to that question, and I’m sure there are many contrasting opinions, but I think the simplest, most inoffensive definition one could give is that a Christmas movie is a “movie about Christmas.” Even so, this definition is a little too simple for our purposes, so I propose a slightly more in-depth version. To me, a movie being “about Christmas” means that Christmas, the holiday itself—or a common theme or trope heavily associated with it—is the central focus and driving force of the plot. This seems like a pretty reasonable definition to me, and will be what the rest of my argument will hinge on, so if you already disagree with it, you may as well stop reading (or feel free to provide an alternate definition in the comments). Anyhow, under the rule of this definition, Die Hard fails in almost every way.
In short, Christmas as a holiday is so barely represented in the film that I’m convinced the first person who made the argument that it was a Christmas movie did it as a joke. Admittedly, the film does a good job of making Christmas just noticeable enough to make people think that it’s essential to the plot, but it really doesn’t do much else with it. The main reason people argue that Die Hard is a Christmas movie is that—along with the fact that it takes place on Christmas Eve—the holiday is, to paraphrase many people who’ve argued this, “the entire reason he’s there,” this “he” referring to John McClane, of course. This argument has some merit. It’s true that the reason McClane is in LA (and not New York, where he works as a cop) is to attend a Christmas party in order to reconnect with his wife, but does this alone constitute the movie being “about Christmas?” I would say no. According to our definition, Christmas must be a “central focus and driving force of the plot.” While the holiday does serve as part of the main character’s motivation, it is by no means the main focus of the story. Hell, it really isn’t a focus of the story at all. Christmas really serves no purpose other than as a backdrop to frame the real narrative of the film, one of a man stuck in a building with a bunch of terrorists (along with themes of vengeance and redemption and all that jazz). In fact, you could really remove all mention of the holiday from the film with no major repercussions. All of the events that lead to the main situation in the film can exist entirely divorced from Christmas. John McClane visiting his wife at a work party is not a Christmas-exclusive possibility.
And that, holiday film enthusiasts (or just random people), is a (relatively) short explanation of why I don’t consider Die Hard to be a Christmas movie, despite all the arguments for the contrary.
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