I usually end up working the night shift on Christmas Eve so I can have Christmas Day off. I usually will watch Die Hard during the shift because it's not something I'm able to watch with my young kids.

I really enjoy the movie.

1. Such great characters. Hans, McClain, Powell, Holly, Theo, Argyle, Ellis

2. Great intensity throughout the movie with them trying to hunt John down.

3. I love movies with intelligent villains who have a great plan. Watching both sides problem solve in real time is also great. The back and forth between who has the upper hand is great. Hans trying to find the detonators and then doing his American accent is one of my favorite scenes in a movie. Hans tricking John, and then John tricking Hans with the empty gun is so great.

4. The dialogue is a little campy but "it was the 80s man". Some great one liners though.

I'd like to read a novelization that begins weeks before that has a lot of Karl/Theo dialogue.

DH is very high up on my list of perfect movies. I ding it for only one thing - the sequence where he falls down the elevator shaft and manages to catch himself by the tip of his fingers. So 99.5% perfection.

I worked at the Schulman 6 theater in Bryan in the fall of 1988. Die Hard was a staple at that theater for months, and played in the biggest auditorium for most of that time. I watched the heavy action oriented parts of that movie every freaking night, or so it seems to my memory.

One benefit of close captioning on modern TVs has been to clear up an exchange of dialogue when the gunships are approaching Nakatomi. "Just like f**** Saigon, hey slick" agent Johnson yells. To which the other agent Johnson says, "I was in junior high, ********". I literally never heard that first line correctly until fairly recently. I thought I heard the first agent Johnson say something like, "Flying f**** Tigers, hey slick" as in the WWII Flying Tigers group that operated in China. That never made any sense. Neither of those characters were old enough to have been part of that, and they certainly weren't referencing the John Wayne movie.

I always loved the laughing during the final showdown - and the look on Holly's face who is just as dumbfounded as can be. I imagine her thinking something like, these guys are nuts.

Some great dialogue in the movie, including 80s quips:
Bad guy standing on a table - next time you get the chance to kill someone, don't hesitate
Bam bam bam bam bam bam bam from McClain on the floor under the table
McClain - thanks for the advice

Great movie.

I don't have much to add other than I think it's the most 80s movie that exists. If you were to choose a single movie to sum up a decade, is there one that represents the 80s more than Die Hard? The characters, the clothes, the hair, the dialogue, the plot, even the title are all peak 80s. It shares a ton of DNA with Lethal Weapon, which came out the year before, but Die Hard is still the gold standard.

Come out to coast, we'll get together, have a few laughs…

Underrated for what it did for action movies. It took the every man Indy action concept forward to the modern day, combined it with a modern plot, more grit, massively ramped up what action could take place, all behind a fairly decent and complex story line with several running plot lines at once.
I mean, think about action movies before die hard and after. It became the godfather of countless movies since.

Psychag said:

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#1 and 2 are one of the best originals and sequal. I like the hero being imperfect and gets his ass kicked around but perseveres. DH with some of the best villains in history.

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#3 is also a dang great movie. You know when you're doing something right when the FBI interviews your screenwriter because the villains plot is 100% plausible, forcing you to change security protocols…

annie88 said:

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I can watch the first one over and over. The rest of them are just kind of OK.

The original 1988 Die Hard teaser trailer used Christmas associated music .
Debate over , it’s a Christmas movie.
Merry Christmas 🎅🏻 https://t.co/EIajsOtms0 pic.twitter.com/Hro97o3jQI

— MaggieWise ⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@maggiewise111) December 25, 2025

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Ode to Joy is not a Christmas song.