For years the debate has raged – is “Die Hard” a great Christmas movie, or THE great Christmas movie.
Actually, the Bruce Willis-led 1988 action feature is often considered the prime example of a film that, whilst not the definition of a ‘Christmas movie’ per se, could technically qualify as one because it is set during that holiday time.
The discussion over this has raged for years, but now someone in an actual position of authority has rendered a verdict – none other than the film’s director John McTiernan himself.
In a 12+ minute video posted by the American Film Institute, McTiernan has addressed all the talk about his film and offered his take on why it has become a Christmas movie.
After saying he took inspiration from the “It’s a Wonderful Life” scene where Bedford Falls becoming Pottersville and represents the evil of unregulated capitalism, he says he only signed on to direct “this terrorist movie” after producer Joel Silver agreed to allow Bruce Willis’ John McClane character to be a working-class, real human being and all the people in authority in the film were portrayed as kind of foolish.
He goes on to say that as people started to understand what they were making, there was a “joy in it”:
“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… There are genuinely evil people out there. 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.’ And their obsessions with guns and boots and uniforms and squad cars and all that stuff. 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.”
The somewhat rambling but interesting video response can be seen in full below:
