Is Die Hard a Christmas Movie? Its Trailer Never Says So
The 1988 trailer sold a summer action movie. Now it's a 4 seed in our Christmas Bracket.
Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? The film says yes: it takes place on Christmas Eve, at an office Christmas party, and its soundtrack is full of holiday songs. The 1988 marketing never made that argument. Fox opened the film in July 1988 and sold it as a summer action picture.
The story is simple. New York cop John McClane, played by Bruce Willis, flies to Los Angeles to patch things up with his estranged wife at her company's holiday party in Nakatomi Plaza. Hans Gruber, played by Alan Rickman, takes the building hostage. John McTiernan directed, and Jeb Stuart and Steven E. de Souza wrote the screenplay.
Thirty years later the studio changed its pitch. For the film's 30th anniversary in December 2018, 20th Century Fox put out a new cut called "The Greatest Christmas Story Ever Told." It opens with a narrator saying "This is John. He just wants to spend Christmas with the family," plays music from The Nutcracker and works in Rickman's "Ho ho ho." It's the same footage with a new pitch.
The people who made the film still disagree. De Souza has argued, "If Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, then White Christmas is not a Christmas movie," pointing out that the story starts at a Christmas party held to reconcile a married couple. Willis took the other side at his 2018 Comedy Central Roast: "Die Hard is not a Christmas movie."
Audiences are split down the middle too. In a 2020 YouGov poll, 47% of Americans said Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and that number rose to 59% among millennials.
That's why it's a 4 seed in our Christmas Bracket. Watch the original 1988 trailer above, then vote. You can decide whether a summer release can be a Christmas movie.
Sources: newsweek.com · rollingstone.com · syfy.com · foxnews.com · en.wikipedia.org