It's a Christmas Movie.

[Music] die hard the action genre rattling 1988 film has become a lightning rod for clickbait so many including myself have attempted to answer the age-old question of whether die hard is a christmas movie surprise curveball shane black was literally in mctiernan's previous movie predator christmas illuminati confirmed and that's not even where our little christmas tale begins come back with me to the 1960s to meet detective joe leland echoing voices implying a passage of time time time [Music] my god i think i'm gonna be sick no you're not i'm gonna tense your muscles and get out the notebook the names were different but in a very literal way the first actor to play john mcclane was wait for it old blue eyes himself frank sinatra the detective was a 1966 roderick thorpe novel that ends with wrongful execution of an innocent man did i write that's dying it's a book about rooting out police corruption and chasing the sins of your past in 1968 the detective is adapted and released in theaters starring fr this book gets a sequel a decade later nothing lasts forever this book is a breath of stank 1979 air complete with retired and cranky cop joe leland attending a christmas party at his daughter's work that is inevitably taken over by german terrorists led by and i didn't make a word of this up anton little tony the red gruber anyway you can see why licensing the book to be a film might could use with a few name changes christmas curveball number two john mctiernan the dude that directed predator and die hard back to back bravo wasn't so sure at first he wanted to make nothing lasts forever into a film it was already moving into the latter half of the very changed by beverly hills cop 1980s the book was grim to put it mildly he didn't really want to make dirty harry for the 400th time [Music] he lobbies the studio to allow him to make that grim dark book lighter in tone he didn't want a retired cranky cop which john mcclane would obviously ultimately become but this intro is already too long so just hold on to that for a second on top of that everyone thought mctiernan was nuts for going to bat for this goofball from moonlighting hello wow my goodness mr pesto we're looking a little pale today aren't we and even lesser-known stage actor goofball alan rickman delivers the performance of a lifetime in his film debut every villain performance in every film until the end of time will be measured up against this one the og the man himself alan [ __ ] rickman the christmas setting was the thing from the book that mctiernan wanted to hang on to the most because it would help him make sight gags and keep the tone lighter in a movie kind of about shooting people in the face [Music] [Music] [Music] it is built into the plot of the movie it's also about stealing presents and being a real grinch after all you're posturing all your little speeches you're nothing but a common thing i am an exceptional thief mrs mclean it was christmas by necessity none of this ever should have happened so i guess what i'm saying is outside of how hard this movie was to make die hard is a christmas miracle anyway i did a bunch of extremely useless math and weird thought experiments to try and frame die hard as the masterpiece of action cinema that it truly is [Music] is [Music] [Music] die hard was a 1988 action film directed by john mctiernan shot by yon de bont produced by lawrence gordon and joel silver and written by jeff stewart and steven s d'souza i've been thinking about this movie since i was eight years old we had a copy taped off of television so this movie was censored for the first 10 years of my life another orphan of a bankrupt culture who thinks he's john wayne rambo was always kind of partial to roy rogers actually i really like those sequin shirts do you really think you have a chance against us mr cowboy cowboy that's the part we're supposed to say [ __ ] it's an odd realization upon turning 40 that jake peralta actually don't have [ __ ] on me when it comes to loving this movie because it's a part of my very being or that's a horror realization about the futility of time john mcclane is the stubborn sack of rocks who hides behind his much more successful wife soon to be ex-wife and he knows it her company and success can afford to fly his children's absentee father out to la to mope around and take absolutely zero responsibility for his previous actions luckily for john it's christmas and his kids would love to see him i mean it's not huge or anything but kids would love to have at the house well what a surprisingly easy setup you just prove you're a good dude did people couldn't believe it and then it's christmas baby of all nights in john's entire life he's got a nail this one got this john you let the cocaine guy off the hook miss something totally chill let me just freshen up beans there's a terrorist situation developing in the lobby the scale of this movie is tiny and it's also a christmas movie about the protagonist measuring up against people's expectations of him overcoming jon's biggest hurdle to ultimately become a better person but also save the day oh that's right that's literally all christmas movies nobody really had confidence here they took a book that wasn't exactly flying off the shelves in the mid-1980s and made it something truly one-of-a-kind die-hard is a surprisingly simple movie father fixes family issues by doing the impossible come on to the coast we get together have a few laughs and then nothing lasts forever the book leland's daughter is addicted to drugs and both her and anton little tony the red gruber fall to their deaths together from the building at the end of the story it's a real bummer jeb stewart is really the one doing the work of adapting this book into a film he's the first writer on this project the world needs to be filled out more because the book really only exists from leland's perspective the additions here are really what makes die hard die hard so to speak it's about more than the situation it's this wonderfully designed film where all these different people do heroic work nice suit john phillips london allow me a moment to explain point one in die hard all police are terrible at their job and have no idea what's going on at really any time and before you say tut what about sergeant powell gentle reminder he was sitting behind a desk because he shot an adolescent holding a plastic toy gun this entire film culminates in him finding the strength to fire his gun again it's cringe there's no other word for it this makes me cringe it's embarrassing in die hard all the fbi are terrible at their job and all of the cops in the movie make fun of them for it the circuits that cannot be cut are cut automatically in response to a terrorist incident you ask for miracles to i give you the f b it's the mere existence of the fbi that allows the ludicrous plan to work point three die hard is a western this was the pivot to lighten the tone in the script stage no one can fix the situation but john mclean roy rogers his dang self which is like galaxy brain movie making a western set in los angeles the cowboy just rolls into town and everyone around them is incapable 2.4 bruce willis is a gifted wonderful actor i'm gonna lightly sear john mclean as a character over the course of this piece but i want to be abundantly clear bruce willis carries this entire franchise on his shoulders and always has through some subterfuge of their own mctiernan had cinemascore test bruce willis's screen score on the dl to try and create data to convince the studio to go with willis this definitely wasn't always a done deal arnold schwarzenegger turned the part of mclean down which is why any of this was possible [Music] joel silver is the reason you have alan rickman in this film silver saw rickman in a stage play over in england and simultaneously to this stephen d'souza is now doing a rewrite on jeb stewart's script which was mostly about lightening the tone and fleshing out the world around the protagonist hey come here for a second i just want to like keep this on the dl because like on paper hans gruber is the protagonist this may be cool be cool like if hans didn't show up then like holly and john mclean wouldn't get back together however temporarily it was hey you guys like be real here because like it's so sad that john mcclane can never overcome himself despite his ability to overcome overwhelming odds all the time they built this entire movie on essentially the chemistry between bruce willis and alan rickman which brings us back to d'souza doing rewrites on set and trying to figure out a way to get these two characters in the same room before the end and funnily enough d'souza overheard alan rickman trying out his american accent on set and went please no you're one of them you're one of them that's why this scene exists mctiernan a real hard ass to put it mildly dropped alan rickman too early on purpose for the final shot of the movie it took hours to convince rickman to do this drop onto a bag because he was so deathly afraid of heights again with the benefit of hindsight i i looked at the faces of some slightly incredulous producers when i said that i would do it myself and it was being dropped from about 40 feet as i recall this because this was in the days of there wasn't any cgi so uh it was let's drop the actor they were very careful to make it my very last shot that look of terror on his face that slowly morphs into the purest hatred of a thousand sons is authentic that's like if john mcclane slept with hans gruber or even worse jeremy irons from the third one i think die hard one is a collection of happy accidents and really clever problem solving it's the other ones that that i think we let me get my list [Music] what of the hero who never learns the core trait of john mclean as a character today is that of a cautionary tale illustrating that empty heroics of diminishing returns not only ruin your life but they take away your ability to grow and learn the audience needs mclean to be exhausted and upset all the time it's the only place he shines [Music] do you think i understand the word you're saying i don't know what we're yelling about i want to make a specific case for the perfect storm of untested talent that die hard truly was it is a hail mary in a snowstorm in ways that are not echoed in the diminishing reflections of john mcclane a dude that saw himself as roy rogers once upon a time hey that's roy rogers and triggered what happens when a character grows beyond the things they were influenced by the dude who freaking it's a wonderful life himself when confronted by his own mortality and the numerous regrets he has in his own life god that man looks really pissed he's still alive only john can drive somebody that crazy john's stubbornness is his strength that drives him beyond the limits of a sensible person to earn the opportunity become an actual father and partner to his wife with numerous just die hardem again sequels the character grows into a husk of themselves people throw the word cannon around but mclean is canonically a dude suitable for a whopping single situation and effortlessly becomes a psychotic denier of jurisdictional process rest of the time he's just like international okay really messed up metaphor time imagine if you will that it's a wonderful life had four sequels where george bailey just slowly pushes away everyone who loves him the audience is the god of fate for poor john mcclane that's us this character must appease our desire to see him turn into an alcoholic husk of a toxic human being who fight real good his own wife wants nothing to do with him and he's about two steps shy of becoming a full-blown alcoholic human growth stagnates a franchise batman has to punch people in the face as a result of unresolved trauma forever okay i'm gonna say the realest thing here our collective arrested development ensures that our favorite characters will never grow up and never fix it you know what let's just go for it i'm gonna turn the whole die-hard argument on its head die hard 2 is not a christmas movie kaboom and i think further its mere existence cheapens the effect of the first ones being a christmas movie [Music] john just kind of starts breaking laws at the airport and ordering everyone around what is it got a key for this door yeah why because i want you to open it up that's why i mean i know where dummies up here mclane so give us a little taste of your brilliant genius [Music] who are you i'm marvin and marvin i'm i'm it takes place at christmas but really john just oversteps his bounds and acts like a real jackass for the entire run time and then blows up plane um and then the other planes can let you oh i mean die hard 2 is after all a movie about let me just right-wing terrorism oh no no no no no did i just get did anybody see if i just got to monetize [Music] you want the hardest truth the effect of entertainment companies gobbling each other up like popcorn to see who can be the king of ip mountain was a well it was a one-way street i'm about to say a hell sentence so buckle your [ __ ] up die hard the brand of car battery not the movie a business that was sold twice in his lifetime licensing the die-hard film brand from jesus christ to make a super bowl car battery commercial for advanced auto parts to feature character reprisals from die hard 1's theo and argyle but is also a super bowl ad for a car battery bonus fact this three minute commercial is a better die hard five than die hard five yes i'm still on this [Music] i'm not done talking to you here's the thing i'm pretty sure will eventually be brought through the hell dimension to our current corporealish lucy mclean season one coming this fall to hulu the longer you think about it right diehard one opened to wide release in america behind both who framed roger rabbit and coming to america it was an unknown quantity no one knew how america would react to that particular brand of cranky here's a passive aggressive statement yet entirely illustrative die hard made less money in 1988 than crocodile dundee ii sequels are a hell of a drug it was the little engine that could never quite replicating the lightning salad in the bottle the same way with each successive sequel here's the real [ __ ] john mcclane's descent into psychopathy is kind of like scrooge or the grinch or rudolph or elf or george bailey just said screw it after their huge emotional breakthroughs and just were like yeah actually um i'm just gonna not do the emotional labor thing and just go back to being a real piece of [ __ ] so i really just wanted to make an episode that celebrates the fact that bruce willis played his character so against type that became his type let's end it with one more but did you know that i think we'll be quite illustrative of how all of this happens but as you know frank sinatra turned down the roll by the way as detective joe wet blanket bomb noise leland nestor you're a miserable son of a [ __ ] broderick thorpe's number one best seller sometimes it's the decisions you don't make that make all the difference i like [Music] so [Music] [Music] you

Channel: FilmJoy

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Keywords: die hard, die hard essays, is die hard a christmas movie, bruce willis, movies with mikey, mwm, filmjoy, movies with mickey, positive film criticism

Id: 5YTgQMWNaBw

Length: 21min 9sec (1269 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 22 2022