Bruce Willis ends the ‘Die Hard’ debate: “It’s not a Christmas movie”
As we inch closer to Christmas, many of us will flick through the old DVD collection or browse the streaming platforms for a festive flick to warm the cockles. The perfect accompaniment to a mug of hot cocoa, mulled wine, or eggnog at this time of year is a heartwarming story of Santa and his elves or perhaps a cheeky little cherub who’s been left home alone. What couldn’t be further from the Christmas image, surely, is that of a vested Bruce Willis navigating ventilation shafts to solve a desperate hostage situation. Alas, 1988’s Die Hard is, in many people’s books, a bonafide Christmas classic.
Over the 34 years since its release, Die Hard fans have divided themselves into two camps: those who can only face the movie in December and those who deem it non-festive and enjoy it at any time of the year. The controversy stems from the fact that the hostage situation Willis’ John McClane has to deal with occurs on Christmas Eve, and the inevitable relief and jubilation at the end of the film take place with a Christmas tree in the backdrop. However, the film was released in the summer of ’88.
Whether you’re on either side of the debate or simply don’t care, surely you’ll agree that the opinion of those involved in making the film is final?
Back in December 2020, Die Hard director John McTiernan shared a 12-minute video via the American Film Institute. “We hadn’t intended it to be a Christmas movie, but the joy that came from it is what turned it into a Christmas movie,” he said of the controversy.
Elsewhere in the video posted by the AFI, McTiernan described the film as predominantly “a terrorist movie”, adding that “it was really about the stern face of authority stepping in to put things right again.”
McTiernan then revealed how he and producer Joel Silver had once compared it to the “Pottersville” sequence from the 1946 Christmas classic, It’s a Wonderful Life, which he said was “the clearest demonstration and criticism of runaway unregulated war capitalism.”
“My hope at Christmas this year is that you will all remember that authoritarians are low-status, angry men who have gone to rich people and said, ‘If you give us power, we will make sure nobody takes your stuff,'” McTiernan concluded. “And their obsessions with guns and boots and uniforms and squad cars and all that stuff,” he noted. “And all those things you amass with power meant to scare us, meant to shut us up so we don’t kick them to the side of the road and decent people of the world get on with building a future.”
In 2017, Die Hard’s co-writer, Steven E. de Souza, also gave his thoughts on the debate in a Twitter post. A fan asked the writer: “I’m sure you’ve weighed in on it before, but I’ve never heard you or Jeb Stuart offer your take on whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie.”
“Yes, because the studio rejected the Purim draft,” de Souza joked, adding the hashtag “#DieHardIsAChristmasMovie.”
Bluntly smothering the infernal debate, Willis chimed in on the matter in a 2018 conversation with Entertainment Weekly. “Die Hard is not a Christmas movie!” He said. “It’s a goddamn Bruce Willis movie!”
