“Love Actually.” “Gremlins.” “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” The common factor among these titles is their status as Christmas movies … or perhaps not. When it comes to the classification of movies dancing on the line, it seems as though certain criteria must be met to qualify a movie as Christmas. One film is particularly disputed: John McTiernan’s “Die Hard.”
When it comes to making the case for “Die Hard” being a Christmas movie, many look to other less debated films to draw a comparison. Faculty member Sara Asher is one of them: “I think ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie just as much as ‘Home Alone’ is a Christmas movie. Christmas is at its very center,” she says. Asher points out similarities in the plot, too: “The main character wants to get home for Christmas, just like in ‘Home Alone,’ the main character is stuck at home, because the family is traveling because of Christmas. It’s a parallel,” she says.
Also calling on Kevin McAllister to make his argument, eighth grader Jack Hawley says, “It is as much a Christmas movie as ‘Home Alone’ is in the [sense] that the movie starts at about the time of Christmas, and there’s multiple aspects of it throughout the movie.” For Hawley, “definitely some part of celebrating the event, presents, a tree and usually snow” are the minimum requirements for a Christmas movie to include.
Some people’s Christmas movie requirements are extremely minimal. Freshman Ella Langham might have the least: “I think ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie, because they had a Christmas tree in the lobby of the hotel.”
For others, ‘Die Hard’ is not quite Christmas enough. Junior Neela Rangarajan is one such critic: “I don’t think ‘Die Hard’ is a Christmas movie because, for me, I don’t think just for a movie to take place during Christmas makes it a Christmas movie. I would put ‘Die Hard’ under an Action/Thriller [genre] because, again, all it does is take place during Christmas,” she says.
Making her parameters clear, Rangarajan says, “A Christmas movie is more focusing on the tradition itself, so it should probably include some snow and family. You could say, since it takes place during Christmas, ‘Home Alone’ isn’t a Christmas movie, but the themes of family really makes it a Christmas movie. [It should include] maybe some Santa and things like that. The plot should have some more Christmas in it.”
With many believers, critics and ‘Home Alone’ references, it is clear that ‘Die Hard’ lies somewhere in the middle between a consideration as a Christmas movie or not.
