People like this movie???
It is one of the Great Films.
It is. Heck, in Lethal Weapon you even have someone change their mind on killing themselves due to a good friendship, which manifests in presenting the other cop with the Christmas gift of the bullet he was going to use to kill himself when the movie began.
It’s a movie about good guys and bad guys trying to kill each other, with a substantial amount of success on both sides. From the plot description at fandom.com, the carnage is considerable; I lost count of the bodies while reading through it.
To me, considerable carnage and the Christmas spirit aren’t exactly on the same page. I’d say that differentiates it from any movie I’ve ever regarded as a Christmas movie.
They up the body count considerably in the sequel. Which is also a Christmas movie.
If Die Hard isn’t a Christmas Movie, explain the Nakatomi Plaza advent calendar!
There are two types of people in the world: Those who know Die Hard is a Christmas movie, and those who need to learn the true meaning of Christmas.
Easy.
The crafty separating the deluded from their money!
There’s one born every minute!
This defines almost all of Christmas…
It is a movie that is set during Christmas, which is not the same as a Christmas movie.
Christmas movie is a not a universally agreed upon category with a clear definition. A lot of people, me included, genuinely consider Die Hard a Christmas movie. Many of the reasons have already been given above, but ultimately it’s an emotional one.
You know who also didn’t consider Die Hard a Christmas movie? This guy:
https://memegenerator.net/img/instances/400x/74223825/bah-humbug.jpg
“A Christmas Carol” isn’t a Christmas story because it could have taken place at Scrooge’s retirement party.
And if the date was the only Christmas reference in the story, you’d have a point.
Ah, but references to Christmas are not enough. The criteria seems to be this: if we strip all mention of Christmas from the story, does it still work?
So we have a story about a miserly old man who is visited by three spirits - Secular Past, Secular Present, and Secular Future. The spirits show him what was, what is, and what will be. The miser wakes up the next morning and realizes that he has wasted his life, but he still has time to change it! He is a new man!
The story doesn’t require Christmas at all! Clearly not a Christmas movie, except for the minor detail that it’s obviously a Christmas movie so long as we don’t apply fiddly rules to it.
And like I half-jokingly mentioned early, really unless it’s about Jesus’s birth, aren’t a lot of these so-called Christmas movies really about secular magic (though granted, It’s a Wonderful Life has a non-denominational angel) and not about Christmas at all?
Indeed, like I said "The actual issue is defining “what is a Christmas movie?”
If you define it as a film set during the holiday season, then yes, this and Wonderful Life qualify.
If you define it as a film all about Christmas, such as Rudolf, the Santa Clause, The Polar Express, White Christmas,Miracle on 34th st, then it isnt."
Isn’t Christmas supposed to be about “fellowship of man” and “good will on earth”?
So I woulda thought that a “Christmas Movie” needs a combination of being set during the holiday season and having the core plot of promoting good will amongst family etc etc -
Or the very obvious ones about elves and santa
Bolding mine:
I’d argue Die Hard is just as Christmasy, if not more so, than White Christmas. Other than the song being featured twice, that move is barely about Christmas.
And few people actually use definitions that strict, if they analyze what they consider to be Christmas movies or not.