Is Die Hard a XMAS movie?

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We've gone on holiday by mistake
Die Hard takes place on Xmas eve, at an Xmas work party, features plenty of references to Xmas, has Xmas music, and is about an estranged husband getting together with his family for the Xmas holidays!
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I mean, everyone who answers affirmatively is able to make a case for it by referencing established Christmas tropes and everyone who answers negatively settles for "it just isn't".
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[Argyle puts Run DMC's "Christmas in Hollis"]
Argyle: Hey, that'll work.
John McClane: Don't you got any Christmas music?
Argyle: This *is* Christmas music!
I love how this exchange says a lot about the film itself
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It's amusing to compare this discussion with exchanges about "favorite halloween movies" (which seldom refer halloween, but are understood as "fitting movies for halloween"). But what such little debates evoke me most - and I keep coming back to that example - is the everlasting bickering about what is or isn't a RPG in videogames.

Which hasn't, can't have and doesn't require an objective answer. Because language. Language is simply a communication tool, a series of conventions about which sounds designate which things, and we use it to point at things in front of each others. As long as people agree on meaning, the system of references functions. That's why language varies and evolves. Doesn't matter if you call it a banana or a krumpalup, as long as the other person knows what you mean and brings the correct item.

And "christmas movie" is subjective in the sense that it means a different thing for different people. Movie taking place in christmas. Movie about christmas. Movie evoking christmas (even if just because attached to christmas memories). Movie promoting values that christmas is supposed to represent. The correct definition is the one that is relevant in a specific discussion with specific people (at a specific time), another one applies to a different discussion with different people. The only thing that matters is that the person you're communicating with goes "yeah that's what i mean" when you suggest a movie relevant to their wish for a "christmas movie". If it doesn't, your "but but other people consider it a christmas movie" is true but out of place. It's pure pedantry. Like "I know you're hungry, but banana also means spanner in north Bul****istan rural slang, so I brought you one instead".

Same goes with westerns, or any genre. It's a matter of context. I can be in the mood for a western in the sense of "historical movie taking place in the west part of the USA during the late 19th century" or in the sense of "simple violent emotional drama pitting very few characters against each others in a remote environment with very minimal social institutions". Which would, or wouldn't, include the likes of Quigley Down Under or Outland.

Any "it is" or "it is not", as if it was some inherent property, is completely devoid of meaning.
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One thing I wanted to ask about Die Hard, why does John make such a big deal that the company wanted his wife to use her maiden name, because it's a Japanese tradition? Was this just a really big deal to Western culture back then?



One thing I wanted to ask about Die Hard, why does John make such a big deal that the company wanted his wife to use her maiden name, because it's a Japanese tradition? Was this just a really big deal to Western culture back then?
Still is a big deal today tbh.

Holly gets cut off during the convo by John losing his cool.

She was going to explain that the Japanese company, with a woman who is married but separated from her husband, is against traditional Japanese ways.

John cuts her off though saying "But you are married, Holly, you're married to me!"
Then that woman walks into the room and stops the conversation dead anyway before it can get into a full blown fight.

---
See, John feels Holly should carry his name because they're married. And he sees her career as a blight against the marriage, and maybe toward the welfare of the children.
He's pissed that she's bending to her job by dropping his name.

Holly obviously loves the kids, but favours her career as a means to secure the future, but she also she knows John just wants her to stay at home and be in the kitchen and raise the kids while he works.

This all causes friction between them.
So basically, Holly going full on career with a Nanny to take care of the kids not only pisses John off... but it rubs salt in his imagined wound for her to drop his name as well even though they're still married.



Want to add to that... I can identify with McClane.

When my own kids were born, I was in an abusive relationship...

See, when a guy has kids... or gets married... it's extremely important for his name to be carried.
It's a built in response to have connection.

I was told by the family of my partner at the time, that the kids would carry their family surname and not my name, or I'd be killed.
I didn't care about me. All I wanted was my kids to carry my name. They knew it meant a lot to me, so they made sure I was unhappy.

For a guy to have his name attached to his wife and children means a hell of a lot to the guy.

If someone takes that away, it hurts.

Gladly I'm not in that relationship anymore, and my kids now carry my name too... which, from a John McClane point of view, is a happy thing.



One thing I wanted to ask about Die Hard, why does John make such a big deal that the company wanted his wife to use her maiden name, because it's a Japanese tradition? Was this just a really big deal to Western culture back then?
John wasn't mad that Holly was using her maiden name because of cultural considerations, he was just mad that she did it at all. But speaking of which, this does remind me of one of the more annoying misconceptions I've seen being spread about a movie, which is when people criticize Die Hard for having regressive gender dynamics, because supposedly Holly has the arc of renouncing her career and life independent of John when he saves her; I mean, did you guys even watch the movie? At no point does she ever do or say anything of the sort, and it's not even implied that she's going to do any of that; all that happens is that she happily leaves with John at the end because she's grateful that they're still alive, because of course she is, and hopefully this near-death experience will help them stay reconciled in the future, but not because she's going to give up her job or move back to New York to live with him again.

I mean, the arc of their relationship actually develops in the complete opposite way, because it's John who verbally beats himself up immediately after starting the argument with her, and then he drives that point further by admitting that he's sorry, and that "she's the best thing that ever happened to a punk" like him; do we really need a moment near th end where John says something to her like "Looks like the party's over... Ms. Gennaro" to get all of that?



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It's more of a symbolic rejection than a literal one - at the beginning of the film they set up Holly's Rolex as an indicator of her success as a businesswoman independent of John and at the end Hans is ultimately killed because he is holding onto the Rolex and John unfastens it from around Holly's wrist. When they finally meet Al in person, John introduces her as Gennero in apparent acceptance of her independent persona, but she instead refers to herself as McClane to demonstrate her return to openly identifying as a married woman. Maybe a reach, but in a film that's remarkable for the intricacy of its plotting and characterisation, these choices do feel deliberate.



It's amusing to compare this discussion with exchanges about "favorite halloween movies" (which seldom refer halloween, but are understood as "fitting movies for halloween").
This is a good point that I'm not sure I've heard before. I think this is the most sensible way to think about it. A Christmas movie is a movie that's fitting for Christmas, and not one that just happens to take place at the same time of the year (except that if the movie's any good, it won't set the movie then unless it somehow ends up being about Christmas).

But yeah, it's one of those questions that isn't really about the answers, it's about each person's rationale for their answer.



This is a good point that I'm not sure I've heard before. I think this is the most sensible way to think about it. A Christmas movie is a movie that's fitting for Christmas, and not one that just happens to take place at the same time of the year (except that if the movie's any good, it won't set the movie then unless it somehow ends up being about Christmas).

But yeah, it's one of those questions that isn't really about the answers, it's about each person's rationale for their answer.
It's much like It's A Wonderful Life - which originally was not intended or even thought of as a "Christmas movie" - that classification was bestowed upon it more by networks that started showing it around Christmas than anything else.

And yes, it does culminate at the holiday, but is the story of an entire life (like some other movies that are thought of as Christmas movies and others which may include the holiday but aren't thought of as Christmas movies).

As Yoda points out, it's the themes in It's A Wonderful Life that made it fit so well as a Christmas movie even when it wasn't originally intended to be.



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Still is a big deal today tbh.

Holly gets cut off during the convo by John losing his cool.

She was going to explain that the Japanese company, with a woman who is married but separated from her husband, is against traditional Japanese ways.

John cuts her off though saying "But you are married, Holly, you're married to me!"
Then that woman walks into the room and stops the conversation dead anyway before it can get into a full blown fight.

---
See, John feels Holly should carry his name because they're married. And he sees her career as a blight against the marriage, and maybe toward the welfare of the children.
He's pissed that she's bending to her job by dropping his name.

Holly obviously loves the kids, but favours her career as a means to secure the future, but she also she knows John just wants her to stay at home and be in the kitchen and raise the kids while he works.

This all causes friction between them.
So basically, Holly going full on career with a Nanny to take care of the kids not only pisses John off... but it rubs salt in his imagined wound for her to drop his name as well even though they're still married.
Oh okay, but I don't understand why he considers her career to be bad. It seems like a good career to me. I know they were going for a character arc where he learns a lesson, but I am just trying to figure out why it is such a big deal for him

I mean if the story was that they were separated and she started seeing another guy, I could see him thinking this is really bad for him and the family, but a job that seems to pay well, and the boss doesn't like the idea of women in bad marriages, so she wanted to make a good impression... It just seems like I do not understand why that made him pissed.



Oh okay, but I don't understand why he considers her career to be bad.

Some people see their careers as a vocation (teacher, cop, preacher, doctor) and John's career is in New York. Splitting a family is tough, because that feels like a betrayal regardless of who is right or wrong. John used to be on top and now Holly is on top. For him to move requires trust and a shift in the relational hierarchy. Change is tough. If you like your job and your home and pattern or life, it can be tough to make a change, independent of learned gender roles.


We need John to be a fish out of water. We don't want him to be familiar with the building or the employees. He is a total wildcard, so we need a reason for him to be in that building, but to not really belong there. And the estranged wife angle allows for a convenient emotional arc. That John hasn't accepted her job, shows that he's hard headed and resolved, which fits his character (e.g., not doing what "dumb" cops tell him to do on the radio).



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Okay thanks. That makes sense. And I guess I didn't associate her dropping his last name as the icing on the cake, but took it as it's own issue. It makes more sense as an icing on the cake.

The character arc with John and Holly feels similar to the character arc in Rear Window actually, in that you have a couple that is not getting a long, but then a dangerous crime situation happens, which brings them together closer in the end, if that's a good comparison.



I think it's fairly obvious (although I haven't seen the movie in a while) that Holly's career choices ruined their marriage and John resents it.
Who wouldn't resent when it meant breaking up a family and the wife taking the kids to the other side of the country (while leaving hubby behind since he already had a much longer established career) just for a job?

I don't know if the movie made it clear which came first - was their marriage already on the rocks which made Holly seek a job on the other side of the country as a way to get away from John, or was her landing the job (which required her to move) what put the marriage on the rocks?



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It seems that it was the second one and it was her landing the job which is what put it on the rocks, or so that is what I gathered. But in a situation like this, where one of the married spouses wants to move, who has the right say? For example, John realizes what a jerk he has been like he said, but if the filmmakers chose to write it so that Holly was the one who apologized and came back to him to support him, would that have made any difference, or is this situation really a coin flipper in terms of what is right?



It's more of a symbolic rejection than a literal one - at the beginning of the film they set up Holly's Rolex as an indicator of her success as a businesswoman independent of John and at the end Hans is ultimately killed because he is holding onto the Rolex and John unfastens it from around Holly's wrist. When they finally meet Al in person, John introduces her as Gennero in apparent acceptance of her independent persona, but she instead refers to herself as McClane to demonstrate her return to openly identifying as a married woman. Maybe a reach, but in a film that's remarkable for the intricacy of its plotting and characterisation, these choices do feel deliberate.
Yeah, but we have to take additional context into account; Holly didn't use her maiden name because she made the decision on her own to be more independent of John, she did it because she apparently didn't want to deal with whatever regressive cultural stigma she thought she would've faced by being an openly married businesswoman working at a Japanese-owned company. On top of that, the movie also portrays Holly using her maiden name (and concealing her status of being married to John) as being an implicitly positive thing, because doing so is what conceals her relationship with John from Hans, which prevents her from being in put in anymore danger than she already is (and in fact, Gruber learning that she's his wife is what threatens her life even more towards the end of the movie). So if you ask me, the potential symbolism of Holly's watch being unclasped to save her life doesn't necessarily indicate that she'll end up quitting her job for John, if indeed that symbolism was put there intentionally, instead of just being a general example of set-up/pay-off screenwriting that's been "read into" a bit too much.



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Change is often met with resistance, especially when it is thrust upon us. John and Holly had established a life in NYC. John was good with that. Holly's career progressed that required a revision of their life and John was threatened by that. So, he held out in NYC hoping she would come back (established in the conversation with Argyle in the Limo). He's angry about Holly's choices and they start the argument again where John immediately acknowledges the immaturity of his position. So, the seeds of acceptance are already there. And John visits L.A., which is another clue that he is budging on his stand.

The disaster brings them together. At the end, John introduces her as Gennero as an expression of respect and devotion to her. Holly introduces herself as McClain as an expression of respect and devotion to him. Will it last? That is open to interpretation.



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Oh I see. What if it were written so that she decided to apologize to him for how she behaved and had a conversation with Al on the phone saying if I can't tell him, tell him I'm sorry. Would this have caused a different feeling in the end for the audience, or not really, since it's coming together for them either way?



Oh I see. What if it were written so that she decided to apologize to him for how she behaved and had a conversation with Al on the phone saying if I can't tell him, tell him I'm sorry. Would this have caused a different feeling in the end for the audience, or not really, since it's coming together for them either way?
I think doing that would obviously have created a different reaction in the audience, since it would completely undermine the arc of their reconcillation that the film set up; it was John who picked the fight with Holly over her maiden name (and he did so after she tried to draw him closer by inviting him to stay at her house for Christmas, to boot), and it was John we see explicitly admitting that he was in the wrong afterward. How much more explicit can the movie make things? I mean, it's not like we never see Holly on her own later on, so we very easily could've had a parallel scene where she talks to one of her co-hostages about how she's going to quit her job and move back to New York to live with him if she survives, but we never get that scene, because the whole point of the film's character arcs is that John's the one who has to change, not her.