I decided chronistic should be in use as an antonym for anachronistic. Die Hard is intensely chronistic. It’s so 1988, it couldn’t have existed at any other time without dramatic differences.
A year later and the Berlin Wall fell — deeply relevant in regards to attitudes towards German characters.
Three years later, Rodney King faced police brutality; in the movie, a prominent Black police character has been working the desk beat, so to speak, for killing a child. Attitudes would shift.
Thirteen years later and terrorism is synonymous with 9/11, Al Qaida, etc. The fight up and down a tower would be different.
Witty, clever John McClane is also in conversation with earlier action heroes, meaning he wouldn’t have been the same at an earlier date. I mean, literally, he couldn’t have been the same – he was originally intended to be played by Frank Sinatra. But he also fundamentally inverts certain stoic hero tropes.
The technology in the movie – the novelty of early touch screens; Argylle’s car phone – is just so darn 1988.
Attitudes toward California and hero cops is perhaps a bit more timeless in America (or at least not as narrow). Demonizing the federal level police while lionizing local police is interesting. But the way McClane just laughed off a man kissing him as being gross gay California stuff (homophobic, but not violently so, very good-natured) is also a microcosm.
Of course this is probably my favorite Christmas movie, warts and all. It might be the very best example of traditional screenwriting. It’s executed like clockwork. Everything matters. Causal chains are incredible.
Alan Rickman is the most delicious villain. I wouldn’t have been mad if he won.
My sibling and I watch this every Christmas season. It’s a holiday essential. This year was the first time my teenager watched with us, and they didn’t say they especially liked it, but they were RIVETED. Die Hard is extremely not-boring. The one thing my teen said they liked was the intensity of the gay-ass vibes between McClane and Gruber (very much my child). You could write entire essays just about McClane and Gruber as foils, but if I tried to do it, it would quickly devolve into naughty fanfic, so I shall resist.
(image credit: 20th Century Fox)
