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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.
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.
Those that believe that Die Hard is a Christmas movie and those who are wrong.