Featured Image Credit: 20th Century Studios
Topics: Film and TV, Christmas, Bruce Willis
Annie Walton
It's one of the big questions that plagues movie fans year on year.
Thankfully, Bruce Willis once offered his view on the Christmas movie debate of the century - does Die Hard count as a Christmas movie, or not?
If you ask any smug film fan what their favorite Christmas movie is, you're more likely than not to hear them wryly announce, "Die Hard."
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Sure - it's set around Christmas - but is that enough to make it a bona fide Christmas flick?
Well, it turns out the star of the film spoke out ...
"Die Hard is not a Christmas movie," Willis exclaimed at his Comedy Central roast in 2018.
"It's a Bruce Willis movie so yippee-ki-yay to all you motherf**kers and good night!"
In spite of Willis's remarks, the director of the film has quite a different view.
John McTiernan said in a 2020 interview: "Joel Silver sent me the script three, four times.
"And it was about these horrible leftist terrorists that come into the sort of Valhalla of capitalism, Los Angeles, and they bring their guns and their evil ways and they shoot up people just celebrating Christmas, terrible people, awful.
"And it was really about the stern face of authority stepping into put things right again, you know?
"And I kept saying to Joel, I don't want to make that."
"In fact, everybody, as they came to work on the movie began to get, as I said, this idea of this movie as an escapee.
"And there was a joy in it.
"Because we were, we've had changed the content.
"And that is how Die Hard became, we hadn't intended it to be a Christmas movie, but the joy that came from it is what turned it in to a Christmas movie.
"And that's really the best I can tell you about it."
So it turns out, we're no closer to settling this age old question.
Does a movie set at Christmas automatically become a Christmas movie?