Watched: 12/20/2025
Format: Peacock
Viewing: Unknown
Director: John McTiernan
One of the great points of relief for me this year has been that, at long last, people are being shamed on social media for asking if Die Hard (1988) is a Christmas movie. It is. We're done. Shut up.
What younger audiences won't know is how much Die Hard changed the game for action movies.
I'll often point to Commando (1985) as the template for action movies, and in some ways, that's right. But it also reflects the kind of movie being made where our hero was already a super soldier we understood stood above other men. He could walk through a hail of gunfire without so much as a scratch and dispatch 100 anonymous henchmen before tangling with the Big Boss at the end of the movie. And in the 1980's, action heroes were guys like Stallone, Schwarzenegger and Chuck Norris.
Die Hard suggested that much more of a common man could be an action hero in the right situation. He'd get the crap beat out of him, he'd get injured, he'd make mistakes, but as long as he kept a cool head and remembered Bonnie Bedelia needed him now, he just might save the day.
