Christmas Dies Hard

Christmas Dies Hard

I’m home with a sick Linus today, watching Christmas movies. Our first was a lousy HOME ALONE ripoff starring Patrick Swayze from 2007 called CHRISTMAS IN WONDERLAND. It’s about a family that moves to Ontario, spending Christmas Eve in a mall. The kids discover a pile of counterfeit money, use it to buy presents for the family, while being chased by three bad guys. If “wonderland” is a Canadian mall, no thanks. We’re currently watching THE MAGIC SNOWFLAKE on Netflix. This is about a kid who takes over for Santa when the big guy retires?? We’re still trying to figure it out..
➡️Mystery solved! Turns out it’s a sequel to SANTA’S APPRENTICE. Make sure you watch the first movie first!

All this Christmas joy is taking me back in time to last Friday, when I introduced the boyos to the greatest Christmas movie of all time (not IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE): DIE HARD. This movie came out in 1988, my senior year in high school. I had remembered it as 1983 or so, roughly when I was the same age as Linus or Miles. Nope~ I was older than James is now. Even when we discovered the movie was an R, I didn’t think too much about it. I wasn’t traumatized when I was a kid...

Yeah, I was wrong. 80s action movies were much different than today’s. I’m not being nostalgic. There really aren’t many R action movies anymore. The studios learned if they took away things like rampant cursing and blood splatters when bad guys are shot they could rate movies PG13. This would increase their audience, while the content would be more acceptable to parents. DIE HARD is a much harder movie in terms of language and blood than kids will expect.

DIE HARD wouldn’t be made today. Not because of its lack of political correctness~ its content. I haven’t seen the most recent installment of the franchise from a few years ago (2013), but my guess is that it’s much different from 1988.

Anyway, here are some DIE HARD observations, thirty years later, in no particular order.

  • This is not original to me, but Hans Gruber is one of the great movie villains. The late Alan Rickman’s performance sets him apart from everything else.
  • Hans’ critique of Western culture becomes unintentionally ironic. He  celebrates “the benefits of a classical education” in one scene, recalling Alexander the Great’s mourning over no more countries to conquer. Later he teases American fascination with watching action movies. Little could he have known DIE HARD would become a huge action franchise!
  • One of my favorite characters is the Huey Lewis clone- where did Hans find this guy? And what is his job? He takes the role of the murdered security guard, letting Sgt Al Powell inspect the building while watching football on TV, his cowboy boots perched on the table. Huey Lewis is one of McClain’s final kills. It’s hip to be square!
  • And the movie takes place on Christmas Eve- so why is Huey watching the USC/Notre Dame game? Are they meeting up in the Alamo Rent a Car Bowl in Iowa City or something??
  • The character actors playing the Assistant Police Chief and the reporter whom Holly clocks at the end of the movie~ both guys basically played the same jerks in THE BREAKFAST CLUB & GHOSTBUSTERS, respectively. Typecasting!
  • Gas in California in the late 80s cost 74 cents. Hello.
  • I’ve experienced it multiple times- the salesman’s tip to McClain on the plane- the thing about making fists with your toes on the carpet- really works.
  • By the way, McClain is afraid of flying but jumping off a 50 story building is no big deal??
  • Argyle the limo driver plows through the parking barriers at the end of the movie to give John and Holly a ride home~ why didn’t he do that when he was trying to escape an hour earlier?
  • John McClain cements his place in the Xmas movie pantheon with his George Bailey moment. At the end of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, George pleads to live again, confessing his desire to live. Here McClain asks Al to deliver a message to Holly: “She’s heard me say ‘I love you’ a thousand times, but she’s never heard me say, ‘I’m sorry.” That’s a hero!