Die Hard is the greatest action movie ever made.
Not bold enough? Okay. Die Hard best exemplifies the American Monomyth.
Seriously, hear me out. Filmgoers are overly familiar with the classical, Joseph Campbell monomyth, which posits a “Hero’s Journey” away from the community, into great unknown worlds. This narrative structure, presumed to be the basis of countless ancient stories worldwide, is consciously echoed in products like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, and also in Star Wars-burgling craptacles like Dungeons & Dragons and Eragon. Scriptwriter devotion to this now-cliché concept stagnates epic moviemaking. Hence the visually-interesting Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland gains a thoroughly inane plot.
The American Monomyth is a counter to the Campbellian concept, formulated in 1977 by Robert Jewett and John Shelton. Whereas Campbell’s Old World tale concerns journeying away from home as its central conceit, the American Monomyth (and like-titled book) is more concerned with defense, of a normal world and its “superhero” defending themselves from outside threats. Consider:
A community in a harmonious paradise is threatened by evil; normal institutions fail to contend with this threat; a selfless superhero emerges to renounce temptations and carry out the redemptive task; aided by fate, his decisive victory restores the community to its paradisiacal condition; the superhero then recedes into obscurity.
This all ties back perfectly to Die Hard, about a community (Nakatomi Tower) threatened by evil (superstar elite terrorists), unaided by normal institutions (the police, FBI), and rescued by a selfless, disconnected superhero (John McClane). Hell, the scenario itself is uniquely American. The outsiders are classical U.S. enemies (Germany, Japan), the setting (Los Angeles) is innately tied in with the rejected Campbellian notion of American westward expansion, and John McClane perfectly exemplifies blue collar virtues associated with the U.S. There’s even a heavy overlay of western themes to tie McClane in with the gunslingers more usually associated with this monomyth.
Not that Die Hard’s makers – action uber-producer Joel Silver, action uber-director John McTiernan, action semi-uber-screenwriters Jeb Stewart, Steven E. de Souza – were consciously echoing this narrative form. But that’s the thing with most so-called monomyths: they exist in a broader, less-often-acknowledged cultural context. Rather, Die Hard’s conscious qualities have more to do with an upending of the action genre as it existed at the time (the late ‘80s), and the cementation of a purer, more archetypal action template.
When picturing the ‘80s action superhero, one usually pictures Arnold Schwarzenegger, or Sylvester Stallone if one is drunk. We’re talking an abnormally strong, faultless Adonis, with comic book proportions, tackling whole armies without obtaining even a scratch. Joel Silver himself is responsible for propagating the most shameless example of this form (Commando); the more intelligent version of the same (Predator) sees even McTiernan perpetuating Schwarzeneggerian hero worship. This kind of biceps-and-bullets action was stagnating through overuse, with lesser efforts like Cobra and Invasion U.S.A. Part of the problem was the heroes themselves, so omnipotent they could never truly be in danger – a critique too of every Steven Segal movie ever made.
Though Die Hard was, to hear certain stories, supposed to be just a part of this cycle. Some claim it was Arnold Schwarzenegger due to play McClane, and not Bruce Willis as we ultimately got. This would completely upend how Die Hard works, as Willis’ version of McClane is its greatest movie-specific accomplishment. But this conversation is spiraling out of control. If Die Hard wasn’t originally conceived as a salve to Arnold’s pantheon, how did it come about?
Hugely surprising, Die Hard is a literary adaptation, of author Roderick Thorp’s “Nobody Lives Forever.” A 1979 novel, Thorp took inspiration from that era’s Towering Inferno, a building-based disaster epic, opting to replace “fire” with “terrorists,” and otherwise see how the same setup would play out. One of Thorp’s earlier books, “The Detective,” had already been adapted as a movie (1968’s The Detective, starring Frank Sinatra), and Thorp hoped his literary sequel would in turn become a cinematic sequel to that decade-old Sinatra effort.
When that didn’t happen, rights to the novel bounced around throughout the ‘80s, until Silver (and co-producers Charles and Lawrence Gordon) decided to adapt it as the standalone Die Hard. NOW we get to the Schwarzeneggerian moment, and the decision to pass him up for Willis – not an action star at the time, as counterintuitive as that now seems, but mostly known as a television comedy performer – for the Cybill Shepherd series “Moonlighting.” (His lone real pre-Die Hard movie was Blake Edwards’ similarly-comedic Blind Date.) So Willis, far from being an overly-muscled caricature, wasn’t even in the same ball park.
And therein lies the genius in using him as John McClane. McClane starts out, at best, at neutral, more of a regular Joe than a goon awaiting his first action sequence. This continues through the incredibly patient opening to Die Hard, which barely hints at the action extravaganza it will morph into. Actually, far from a perfect superhuman like John Matrix or John Rambo or John Spartan, John McClane (yeesh!, what is with the “Johns?!”) barely has a handle on his life. As a New York police officer, he is estranged from his L.A.-based wife Holly née Gennero (Bonnie Bedelia), and finds himself at her office tower’s Christmas party disoriented and with jetlag to boot. That’s when, completely without expectation, the terrorists arrive and seize the party’s 30-some-odd guests as hostage.
And John McClane runs away.
This must’ve been a revelatory moment in 1988, for audiences schooled to expect body counts in the double digits per action sequence. Hell, a Schwarzenegger could’ve ostensibly resolved this hostage scenario instantly, with a good 9/10ths of a movie still to go, with only minor collateral to give things some “edge.” As apocryphal story has it, a young child in Die Hard’s opening audiences turned to his father at this point to declare, “The hero is a sissy!”
Well, what would you have done? Exactly! John McClane, armed with only a six shooter and the mouth of a sailor, is the ultimate embodiment of the everyman action hero, whose instinct is first avoidance, then survival, and only proactive assault when all else fails. That John McClane is today in the absolute upper echelons of action heroes, right there with James Bond and Indiana Jones, and above any of the musclemen he replaced (though an argument could be made for Schwarzenegger’s Terminator), is a testament to his pure badassness, which transcends physical limitations and fears. It’s an attitude, and the sense that, in the end, McClane has overcome far greater obstacles in thirteen terrorists than Rambo ever did in untold hundreds of enemy soldiers.
Of course, having a good villain helps, and Die Hard has a great villain. Alan Rickman plays the suave, snakelike Hans Gruber, himself as much of an actorly revelation (his first movie!) as Willis. Look at roles like Severus Snape in Harry Potter; Rickman continues to trade off of the impression his Gruber makes. And while McClane is a pop culture-savvy lover of cheap beer and microwave meals, Gruber is a perfect foil: hyper-literate, educated in the classics (a major reason why I love his murdering ways), and prepared to a ridiculous degree. Few movies portray their heroes and villains as opposites so successfully!
Gruber is smart, and his plan is smart, hardly necessary for most gun-totin’, show-of-force action spectacles. Satisfying a change made by director McTiernan, Gruber’s building-seizing actions are not mere terrorism, with the sour scent of ideology hanging over them. Rather, this is a vault heist – making Gruber relatable – and let us skip over the possible strangeness of committing, in essence, international terror merely to steal $600 million in bearer bonds. (Bearer bonds: another example of Die Hard’s atypical intelligence.) To pull off this burglary, Gruber has preplanned every step taken by himself, the hostages, the eventual police and FBI presence on the ground. The only element he never anticipated is McClane – Geez, I sound like a movie trailer!
Even with a robbery glommed onto an otherwise-faithful Thorp adaptation, Die Hard is among the most tightly-plotted action pictures you’ll ever find. This is a major reason why it is an action classic, more so than its quite good (but not wholly flabbergasting) action sequences. (Compare Die Hard to, say, the somewhat similar Hard Boiled, for a near-classic which opts for excellent action choreography over crackerjack plotting, for a counterexample.) Unlike just about every other action movie ever made, if you boil Die Hard down to its bare bones, it remains an action movie. Others become thrillers, or dramas, adventures, sci-fi, westerns, something else; Die Hard IS an action premise, through and through. There is not a single arbitrary action sequence in here, as every one of them not only informs the developing plot, but is the plot. Every encounter between McClane and Gruber’s progression of terrorists reshuffles the chess board, reveals new facets to Gruber’s plan, and otherwise simply informs the picture.
As action films go, Die Hard is remarkably micro scaled – and I say this aware of the series’ reputation for gigantic action. But given a single compressed setting and time frame, set pieces limited solely to a single high rise, action beats are built around the tiniest of details, such as the layout of the duct system, or the shape of a single table. Yes, one table informs an entire action sequence, and it’s great! Such claustrophobia greatly counters the usual expansive strictures of the genre, and counter intuitively makes the stunts seem that much wilder when they occur. By the time the climax has rolled around, and helicopters are weaving through the canyons of urban Los Angeles, it impresses far more than the same spectacle would at, say, the opening.
And Willis performs most of his own stunts, including the film’s highlight, which amounts for a lot.
Given an impressive escalation of scale throughout the picture, McClane’s evolution from everyman to one liner-quipping badass seems normal and believable. For every etched-in-the-firmament utterance like “Yippee kay-yay, motherfucker,” we have forgotten lines such as “Please God, don’t let me die.” I’m serious, even in the heat of Die Hard’s most balls-to-the-wall extravaganzas, McClane remains mortal, saying things we imagine we’d say given the circumstance – and still overcoming.
And he is funny. The movie as a whole is funny – far funnier than most any Police Academy, for instance. In keeping with McTiernan’s aim to keep this terrorism-and-execution-based plot out of the grim mire it might get stuck in, the story’s edges are absolutely filled with observational tidbits. Consider, in the middle of a shootout, one terrorist stocks up on candy bars. It isn’t silliness, but a slyness which counters the relative seriousness of the rest of the picture – a seriousness it has earned beyond most action movies, where its hostage scenario seems to take place in a far more real world.
Actually, Die Hard has an astounding degree of layers, a sign of an impeccably crafted work. We’re all hopefully familiar with the surface-level story. There are details added to that framework which indicate how thoroughly Die Hard has been imagined. The mere decision to set it on Christmas Eve, and thus layer Christmas details throughout, is inspired. It adds nothing to the larger structure, but has a familial specificity which makes Die Hard seem more lived-in, more unique. And Christmas has a thematic importance as well, with the actions of Gruber and the FBI both paralleling classical, wholesome Christmas concepts. Consider how the FBI’s helicopter assault resembles Santa’s midnight sleigh ride, or how Gruber’s heist is a reversal of the chimney-and-presents routine. Or how McClane makes repeated tactical use of holiday accessories, without it ever seeming gimmicky or needless.
Perhaps it’s Christmas which allows McTiernan to sample Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” – far more appropriate than the clamoring seasonal ditties like “Let It Snow!” Like so much of Die Hard, Beethoven is a hugely counter intuitive choice for an action movie score, yet it is so appropriate. In fact, McTiernan intends greater thematic importance here, as using Beethoven imitates something Stanley Kubrick did in A Clockwork Orange. And lest you think that a coincidence, “Singin’ in the Rain” is also sampled, itself something A Clockwork Orange employed.
Actually, these are the little details, so easy to miss, which all add to a greater whole. Western imagery is layered throughout the movie, an even McClane’s immortal “Yippee kay-yay, motherfucker” refers back to cowboys and Indians. His final showdown with Gruber is even something you could picture in an old oater.
Then there’s the notion of Germans as the enemy, or the low-key media satire, or the intrusion of technology or modernity, all these things which suggest Die Hard meant more to its creators than a simple hail of gunfire. And most of these extras can tie back to the American Monomyth.
Even Jan de Bont’s cinematography adds to the spectacle, in the specifics. It’s not enough for Die Hard to look good. There’s a triangle motif strung throughout a huge number of shots, another example of how thoroughly thought out it is.
I absolutely love Die Hard; I would without hesitation count it as among my five favorite movies. Not that it is anywhere near the absolute greatest films ever made, but personal enjoyment and respect of artistry are two different things. (Citizen Kane is undoubtedly superior, but that’s not something I can watch nearly as often.) The thing is, McTiernan and the rest of his crew, while innately skilled technicians, are not auteurs, are not the sort of filmmakers you would closely study. But Die Hard pales if you insist that the only way to read a movie is in the way its makers intended. For if the monomyth truly is that, it for one transcends notions of intent.
Die Hard is not the work of a single genius; it is a wonderful coincidence, an example of many different elements adding up perfectly. The right star, the right technicians, the right pop culture moment to give it popularity and success and importance. There are interesting things in here which are inarguably not meant to be. I mean, terrorists, tall building, explosions…Geez, Die Hard is a freaking commentary on 9/11…unintentionally. But it’s there, if you want to follow such a train of thought, and that again somehow strengthens how innately American it is.
But all these high-fallutin’ theories have no explanation for why most people love Die Hard. (I’m the same guy who seriously thinks The Road Warrior is a criticism of Homer’s “Iliad,” so take all my theorizin’ with a grain of salt.) Die Hard is primarily a rollicking, excellent action picture, with a beloved hero and immaculate construction. It’s the perfect Christmas classic. It’s the encapsulation of an entire genre. It’s a game changer, a classic, an archetype, an icon. It’s perfect!
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• No. 2 Die Hard 2 (1990)
• No. 3 Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995)
• No. 4 Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
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