While it might not be a Christmas movie in the strictest sense of our own definition – even if it isn’t, it’s a Christmas tradition where I come from. Hey, it starts with a Christmas carol – by Run DMC, so it hit the right musical note, although I’m not sure if there’s an association between Ode to Joy (ostensibly the musical theme of the entire film) and the holiday season.
When New York Cop John McClane flies to Los Angeles to patch things up with his estranged wife over some Christmas cheer, the stage is set for what I think people were supposed to see as the next Towering Inferno. They may have been partly right, but Die Hard turned out to be so much more than that. Holed up in the not-quite-completed Nakatomi tower for a corporate Christmas party, McClane is busy making “fists with his toes” when the sinister Hans Gruber (probably Alan Rickman’s greatest performance, and definitely the greatest villain in the entire franchise) and his merry band of German terrorists show up to steal a whole whack of bearer bonds from the company safe. Well, nobody messes with McLane’s carpet toe scrunching and gets away with it… well, they might blow him up, mulchify his bare feet with broken glass, and beat him unmercifully afew times, but they eventually don’t get away with it. Bruce Willis redefined the movie cowboy in this film, one man suffering excruciating physical torments to save the town… or the building.
Hey, did you ever consider that Family Matters is essentially a spinoff from Die Hard?
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It’s a feel good movie for the entire family. Explosions and guns for the guys. Sweaty men and foreign accents for the women.
And plenty of Michael Godunov for everyone else! That, and a thorough lambasting of the media’s already poisonous presence in American culture. It’s a yuletide smorgasbord!