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Using Data To Determine if 'Die Hard' is a Christmas Movie (stephenfollows.com)
Stephen Follows, a writer and producer who also researches data and statistics on the film industry, writes: Today we're going to use data to answer the question "Is Die Hard a Christmas movie?" Along the way, we're going to test Die Hard's Christmas bona fides against all movies in US cinemas for the past thirty years, using a variety of methods. I have put details of my sources and methodology at the end of the article. The short story is that unless I say otherwise, the data for 'all movies' relates to all movies shown in US cinemas between 1988 (ie the year of our Lord John McClane) and 2017.
Part 1 - Creative: Let's start by assessing the artistic work of Die Hard (as opposed to the commercial product or cultural icon). We'll do this by measuring the Christmas references in the script, on-screen and in the soundtrack. By going back to the film's script we are able to see what the screenwriters saw as part of their vision. The word "Christmas" appears 18 times in the script, which is more than the words "explode" (4), "die" (5), "hard" (11), "shoot" (12), "kill" (13) and "blood" (13), although far fewer times than "gun" (73), "terrorist" (51) and "suddenly" (45). [...] There are a total of 21 distinct Christmassy elements in the movie, ranging from Santa hats and Christmas Trees to festive treats and a pivotal piece of "Christmas Greetings" tape.
[...] Audible references: Let's turn to a cultural measure of Christmasification for which we can get large-scale data: songs. I gathered song listings for three-quarters of all movies released over the past thirty years and identified the songs culturally associated with Christmas. Of these films, 95.5% did not feature any Christmas songs at all. Shame. The prevalence of Christmas songs in modern movies varies considerably but in most years it ends up that between 3% and 7% of movies have at least one such ditty. This means that having even one Christmas song makes a film unusually Christmassy compared to most other releases. Die Hard features Christmas in Hollis, Winter Wonderland, a whistled section of Jingle Bells and a rousing rendition of Let It Snow over the end credits. This means that audibly, Die Hard is more Christmasy than 99.2% of all movies released over the past thirty years. Follows makes several more points in his argument. You can read them here.
Part 1 - Creative: Let's start by assessing the artistic work of Die Hard (as opposed to the commercial product or cultural icon). We'll do this by measuring the Christmas references in the script, on-screen and in the soundtrack. By going back to the film's script we are able to see what the screenwriters saw as part of their vision. The word "Christmas" appears 18 times in the script, which is more than the words "explode" (4), "die" (5), "hard" (11), "shoot" (12), "kill" (13) and "blood" (13), although far fewer times than "gun" (73), "terrorist" (51) and "suddenly" (45). [...] There are a total of 21 distinct Christmassy elements in the movie, ranging from Santa hats and Christmas Trees to festive treats and a pivotal piece of "Christmas Greetings" tape.
[...] Audible references: Let's turn to a cultural measure of Christmasification for which we can get large-scale data: songs. I gathered song listings for three-quarters of all movies released over the past thirty years and identified the songs culturally associated with Christmas. Of these films, 95.5% did not feature any Christmas songs at all. Shame. The prevalence of Christmas songs in modern movies varies considerably but in most years it ends up that between 3% and 7% of movies have at least one such ditty. This means that having even one Christmas song makes a film unusually Christmassy compared to most other releases. Die Hard features Christmas in Hollis, Winter Wonderland, a whistled section of Jingle Bells and a rousing rendition of Let It Snow over the end credits. This means that audibly, Die Hard is more Christmasy than 99.2% of all movies released over the past thirty years. Follows makes several more points in his argument. You can read them here.
A Christmas Story is just a kid's selfish quest to own a gun, whereas John McClane unselfishly uses guns to save his family.
Well there is that one scene where Ralphie uses a gun to save his family, but that was just a dream sequence.
It ain't Christmas until Hans Gruber falls from Nakatomi Tower
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
People seem to think a Christmas film must be directly about Christmas itself (Christianity, Santa Claus) but that rules out loads of films like home alone and love actually. Die hard does cover themes like family reconciliation, greed, duty (very Christian themes) and a metaphorical reference to Santaâ(TM)s sack of desirable gifts i.e. bag of C4.
My favorite, in fact.
Now I have a machine gun.
Ho
Ho
Ho
Corporatism != Free Market
I agree, it is a waste of time. They should use their skills for something more practical, like fixing unicode handling/filtering in Slashdot. That would be a nice Christmas gift to Slashdotters.
Table-ized A.I.
Die Hard and Gremlins are Christmas movies. Stop with the nonsensical argument.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Simply put, does having christmas content, make a movie a christmas movie?
Having a seat does not make a bicycle a chair.
Sitting on a rock, similarly, does not make that rock into a chair.
There must be more. Something of design intent. That intent may be in-advance (such as carving a rock into a chair), or subsequently, such as denoting a rock to be a chair.
However, the fact remains; without intent, a rock is never ever ever a chair.
I thusly claim that Die Hard is only a christmas movie, if it was intended to be a christmas movie, or if later it has become deemed a christmas movie by some form of intent (and obviously, here, we mean more than just one viewer's opinion).
Data sucks. You can read anything into it. We already have astrology. We have numerology. We have angels and demons and miracles and curses. Logic can be used to explain anything, that's its power. Logic is not reason. Data is not logic.
You are allowed to enjoy it before thanksgiving, therefore is is NOT a 'christmas movie'
If it were a christmas movie, it would be weird to watch during the springtime, for example.
Those that believe that Die Hard is a Christmas movie and those who are wrong.
If Die Hard come out in November or December, I would say that it was intended as a Christmas film. If I remember correctly, it came out in June, however. It was definitely summertime.
I think Die Hard is a non-Christmas movie that happens to use Christmas as a setting, and has since evolved into being viewed as a Christmas movie.
Which is fine... I have always seen Die Hard as a Christmas movie, and I remember when I first saw it in theaters when it came out, I was puzzled about why they didn't release it closer to Christmas.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
It doesn't get more Christmas than that
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.