Our Daily Trailer: DIE HARD

I don't know if I've ever met an adult who preferred Die Hard 2 to Die Hard, and I'm quite sure I wouldn't want to, but I'll give Renny Harlin's sequel this much: it's actually a better Christmas movie than the original. The snow alone makes it more Christmas-y (it takes place in DC instead of the original's Los Angeles), but also the chaos at the airport that allows the terrorists to do their thing is holiday-based (as Dennis Franz explains, he's got "eight fucking reindeer from the fuckin' petting zoo!"), which is a slightly better excuse to invoke the holiday than a party at the office (which, if you recall, was celebrating a new account as much as it was celebrating Christmas). Oh and a cop tearing up your parking ticket is a way bigger/better Christmas miracle than the FBI following the FBI book.

I bring this up because last year someone on Twitter got really angry when I pointed out that Die Hard's Christmas elements were largely incidental, and the movie could pretty much play out identically if McClane had gone to LA to visit his wife for their anniversary or something (again, Nakatomi would still be having an office party to celebrate their new account, am I right Jo-Jo?). All that would be lost would be the guy saying they shouldn't shut the power down because people were having parties, which is literally just a line of dialogue - it's not like McTiernan cut to a montage of parties being ruined. That the soundtrack, and the addition of "Ho Ho Ho" to John's sweatshirt message would be the only real changes, so it's hardly steeped in December 25th. Don't get me wrong, it's fine to consider it one and I'd never stop anyone from making it a Christmas tradition, but it's not likely to be mistaken for a Shane Black movie, you know? The trailer you presumably just watched has about half of the movie's evidence that it's even Christmas at all.

Speaking of the trailer (which I should do, since it's an Our Daily Trailer column), I never noticed how odd it was that they end it on McClane saying "Got invited to the party by mistake. Who knew?", because they had earlier gone out of their way to explain that he was there to see his wife. In the movie, the context makes more sense; he's talking to Hans and thus protecting his interests JUST IN CASE this guy turned out to be the very bad guy he was after. But the trailer lacks that setup; it feels like a good one-liner should be in its place ("Come out to the coast..." would be the best option, or maybe the "Don't hesitate!"/"Thanks for the advice" bit), but it's not a particularly funny line.

Otherwise it's a pretty good spot that sets up the movie's plot and main characters fairly well (not always a given), and it's fun to think about a time where audiences were probably somewhat surprised to see Bruce Willis as the star of a summer action movie. As he was primarily only known for Moonlighting back then (it was in between its fourth and fifth seasons when the film premiered), the equivalent today would be, I dunno, Jim Parsons or someone like that. And they mention his name a couple times, which surprised me since he wasn't a big star then, which is why the original poster lacked his face in favor of the building itself - Fox may have paid him 5 million bucks, but they still weren't sure this Bruce Willis guy could be trusted to sell an action movie. Cut to 25 years later, and their initial marketing campaign for the godawful A Good Way To Ruin Die Hard was just this poster:

It doesn't even say Die Hard! Or make sense! Man, fuck that movie so much. Just watch this one, whether you think it's a Christmas movie or not.