BW Media Spotlight

Yes, it’s that time of the year again. Pine trees are decorated with lights and little art pieces of Christmas symbols. Gingerbread Houses are built but never eaten because the only thing harder are fruit cakes, or so the lore goes. Children wait for Santa Claus with the hopes they were good enough to get presents. Christians honor the birth of their Savior, the reason we actually have a Christmas, which is why the Christmas haters hate Christmas. And moviephiles take to social media, podcast panels, and the occasional physical gathering to debate the big question: is Die Hard a Christmas movie?

Loosely based on the 1979 novel Nothing Lasts Forever, the sequel to Roderick Thorp’s The Detective, Die Hard follows NYPD police detective John McClane, in Los Angeles to spend Christmas with his estranged wife and hopefully see their young daughter. Meeting up with his wife at an office Christmas party, trouble arises when crooks posing as terrorists try to rob the building’s vaults. During a party. With a lot of people. This seems like a very dumb idea, but I’m not a psychotic crook posing as a terrorist. It’s up to John the police everyman to get past and take down the bad guys and rescue the hostages despite the police being of little help and having to gather his resources along the way, like weapons and combat skills. Originally panned by critics, today’s critics praise it for pretty much the same reason: the action and characters. While the novels and the story of Joe Leland end here, McClane would continue through a series of increasingly panned sequels.

It also the source of a huge debate as film geeks argue every December whether or not the July released movie (long before the whole “Christmas In July” sales campaign) qualifies as a Christmas movie. It’s a huge, fiercely argued debate. Well, here’s my opinion: I DON’T CARE ANYMORE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I don’t mean “I don’t care” in the same way I don’t care about the Superman Vs. Batman debate as to who would win (I want to see the heroes fight VILLAINS, not each other) or Unicron Vs The Death Star (Unicron at close range, Death Star at a distance, now shut up). I mean the level of rage and insistence of being right that I see has gotten me to the point that I don’t want to even hear the debate. I don’t even want to watch the movie when it isn’t Christmas, nevermind when it is, to protest both sides. Now for the record, I do have a definite opinion, and maybe it will leak out in this commentary to anyone not fixed on their view as “the absolute truth”. However, I’m not going to state it here officially because doing so will miss the point that I’m sick of both sides of this argument, both from the pro-“Die Hard is a Christmas movie” and the anti side. You’re both draining the fun out of it and now taking other movies with you, and I just don’t want to hear it anymore. I stopped listening to a livestream recently as the host argued with his audience, allegedly in good fun but at this point I’m not convinced anything about this debate is fun. Rather than discuss my reasoning for whether it is or isn’t a Christmas movie, let me instead go over why I want this debate to die…and I will be taking both sides on for this because you’re both the problem!

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