Talk:Die Hard

Christmas movie?

Oh..... we should definitely reopen up this can of worms. NickCT (talk) 16:30, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I actually think having the Christmas movie is-it-or-isn't-it debate might warrant pulling into its own section with a sub-header within the cultural impact section, and yes I'm commenting this a year later :) SportsGuy17 (talk) 21:07, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:UNDUE for a once-a-year joke that a minority espouse. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 23:21, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this n-gram of total views since 2018 answers the question of whether readers think it's a Christmas movie. Yippie ho ho ho... Randy Kryn (talk) 04:48, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Thematic analysis

To me this kinda reads like a film-studies essay, and a rather subjective (and at times down-right tenuous) one at that? At the least it feels like it should be written more like the critical response section, where the views are clearly attributed to published works - I don't mean just citing sources, but outright stating e.g "Richard Brody, writing for The New Yorker, portrays Die Hard as a story of redemption through violence." etc in the same way Roger Ebert's opinions are clearly stated as his own. The section seems like an original-research opinion piece, backed up with the same few sources referenced several times throughout. It may be interesting, but it doesn't seem objective. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.125.229.155 (talk) 21:09, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree. This section reeks of ideology rather than objectivity. Obviously, it's difficult to quantify what objectivity really is when examining a film, but I feel this section will fall short.

But at least the Thematic Analysis is all one section relegated to the lower end of the article where it rightly belongs, if it belongs at all. However, in my opinion the opinion the summary should not include the line: "Retrospective commentators also identified and analyzed its thematic concerns, including vengeance, masculinity, gender roles, and American anxieties over foreign influences". I would be tempted to place a after it but won't for fear of vandalism. Or, that sentence should be removed from the opening summary and instead be included with the rest of the Thematic Analsis. 89.100.13.116 (talk) 12:42, 25 December 2022 (UTC)

Semicolons

I count 84(!) uses of the semicolon. This seems rather excessive to me; many of these can probably be full stops. I cannot recall reading another piece of prose with such of a high concentration. Sizeofint (talk) 07:45, 24 December 2020 (UTC)

Song?!

This article boasts that some “copy editor” has worked on it. Well, not one who would get hired anywhere as any kind of copy editor. The article is full of tortured prose that needs cleaning up.

Just one example. The Music section uses the word “song” to apply to themes in Beethoven’s compositions, which is hilarious to anyone familiar with how to write about classical music. This mistake may derive from an over-reliance on the language of modern commercial music software: Spotify, for example, mislabels everything from a Chopin mazurka to a movement in a Charles Ives symphony a “song”. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.145.170.122 (talk) 04:52, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for tackling “song”. Now perhaps you could correct “full performance” (which means the entire work is performed in the course of the film, obviously untrue). A more accurate sentence would be, for example, “the references build to a symphonic performance of the theme”. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.145.170.122 (talk) 08:12, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 27 December 2020

This line is in the Plot section: "Meanwhile, seeing another amiss, Powell prepares to leave" It should be changed to, "Meanwhile, seeing nothing amiss, Powell prepares to leave" Walter Wpg (talk) 05:53, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

 Done DonIago (talk) 16:37, 27 December 2020 (UTC)

Title

Apologies if I have missed it but there doesn't seem to be any explanation of the title of the film - should this be added in? McPhail (talk) 12:12, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

I would support this if there are reliable sources explaining the title. Not sure if it warrants its own section, so perhaps it could be woven in. Erik (talk | contrib) ^{(ping me)} 15:43, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

What hidden story is there to the title? Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 18:38, 29 December 2020 (UTC)

"Die Hard was released on VHS in January 1989, priced at $89.98."

This is extraordinary to me - that's almost 200 bucks adjusted for inflation. It's cited to a NYT article which does indeed give this figure, but I just want to make sure, is it possible that was an error? Maybe the home media market really was different back then. Popcornfud (talk) 14:44, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

OK, this Quora reply answers my question. Consider me educated! What a fascinating bit of movie history I never knew. Popcornfud (talk) 14:46, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

That's why I add that kind of thing, I think it is interesting. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 16:29, 16 January 2021 (UTC)

VHS price

I was surprised by this reversion. It's true that we don't say anything to imply the price was abnormal, but (as the previous talk section demonstrates) that's what a lot of readers are going to assume if we don't provide any context. So I'm not clear on why we wouldn't? I can't find a specifically relevant policy, but there are countless examples of similar clarifications throughout Wikipedia. So @Darkwarriorblake:, could you please explain your reversion? I've undone it for now, as cited material should not be removed without discussion, but I'm open to being convinced if you can point to a policy that says we actually SHOULDN'T have all those similar examples, etc. -Elmer Clark (talk) 23:28, 12 May 2021 (UTC)

If the price was standard for the time, then why are we talking about it in the article at all? I'm unclear as to the significance at that point. DonIago (talk) 02:09, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

The police to this is WP:NOT#CATALOG - we don't include prices on items unless they are common parts of discussion about that item (eg we generally include the MRSP of iPhones and other consumer products as this is part of a value aspect in critical reviews of the product). Now yes, that $90 VHS was expensive but that seems to be an indication of the expensiveness of VHS at the time of its introduction, not necessarily of Die Hard itself. That would be a factoid over at the VHS article, not on Die Hard (to compare, on Video game monetization, down near the bottom we track the average price of video game media, a notable subject, identify the switch from cartridges to optical media, and there's commentary around that, but the prices are limited to that article, not the games themselves). --Masem (t) 02:20, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Per the discussion above this one, it's just an interesting factoid for people who aren't even aware what a VHS is, especially when you adjust it for inflation, and it's text real estate is small. I don't feel it necessary to state it is a standard price. Unlike something like Trading Places where it was deliberately priced significantly lower by the distributor to promote VCR sales and there is discussion related to that. I just don't think this is something that needs a greater degree of clarity. And I do believe I mentioned that in my edit summary to some degree, it wasn't a blank revert. Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 11:36, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

On reflection, I'm persuaded by Masem's point that this isn't really relevant for this article. It also tends to create confusion. It is interesting but this isn't the place for the information. Popcornfud (talk) 11:46, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Ok I've removed it .Darkwarriorblake / SEXY ACTION TALK PAGE! 12:43, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

For the record, I did find the information about the price interesting, and went down a bit of a rabbit hole because of that. If you look through the 1988 Sears Wishbook, the vast majority of VHS titles are below $30... although most of the tapes listed are kids' movies, classic movies, nonfiction "special interest" titles, and Dorf on Golf-type stuff. Was the price for Die Hard typical for an adult-oriented, recent Hollywood release? (A reference from January 1987 doesn't really help establish a standard price for January 1989.) I understand that NOTCATALOG may discourage listing the price, anyway, but I'm interested in learning more. Zagalejo (talk) 16:26, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I have no idea if Die Hard's VHS was abnormal or not relate to other VHS releases at the time, but if was, and we have non-primary sources to document that, absolutely that's worthwhile to include. I would certainly encourage trying to discover if these exist, but if it seems to be the case that this was the norm for non-children VHS films and not exclusve to DH, then that would likely be hard. --Masem (t) 16:55, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

The thing is, just being interesting isn't enough, it also has to be relevant and clear. I too found it interesting (see previous discussion), but this interesting information should be covered in its proper place. We could put a lot of interesting information this article, like the height of the Eiffel Tower, but... Popcornfud (talk) 18:28, 15 May 2021 (UTC)

I’m not necessarily arguing for anything to be added to the article. I just think this is a fun thing to research. Zagalejo (talk) 00:07, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

If anyone's interested, I found a CBS Video Club ad that indicates the retail price of Die Hard had already dropped to $19.95 by 1990. (San Bernardino County Sun. March 11, 1990. pg. 118. Available from newspapers.com.) The copy reads, "Just look at what's happened to the prices on videocassettes! Contemporary hits like Twins, Die Hard, and The Accidental Tourist have been reduced from $89.95 to $19.95!" Zagalejo (talk) 00:29, 16 May 2021 (UTC)

This rather sounds like Die Hard's VHS price wasn't exceptional for Hollywood big budget films of the time. If so, however, we might have something to add to e.g. VHS or Videotape format war. Daß Wölf 19:51, 17 May 2021 (UTC)

Well, I feel a little bad that this discussion ended up completely removing this point of interest from the article instead of contextualizing it, but I can't really disagree with anyone's points - this does seem like the most appropriate solution. -Elmer Clark (talk) 01:38, 18 May 2021 (UTC)

This sounds like people might be confusing rental VHS for retail VHS retail prices. Even today, a retail DVD will usually sell for 80 to 120$ per tape/disc (one use to find rental-intended discs on Amazon, but last I checked, they are hard to find). This is priced by studios to offset that the tape or video will be rented to multiple people by the rental business who buys it. In contrast, the retail price is usually 16-ish$ reflecting that only one family is expected to utilize the disc/tape. Especially in the '80s, a lot of VHS sales were by rental businesses, this changed as more and more people bought retail. It use to be that if you were a rental business, you had to purchase the rental disc/tape to be compliant with the licensing. In the past decade, that has pretty much vanished as the only real rental business remaining is Netflix's DVD/Blu-Ray-by-mail service (yes, it still exists as on 2021), so it is no longer really enforced. The last Blockbuster, for example, does not usually buy Rental discs, but rather grabs whatever retail disc they can procure, so even for them, the rental licensing is mostly a thing of the past. — al-Shimoni (talk) 12:00, 19 December 2021 (UTC)

Vandalism

Any idea why this article is subject to so much vandalism today? Is there a post on reddit or something? Seems out-of-the-ordinary. Liz ^{Read! Talk!} 02:52, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

@Liz: It was TFA yesterday. Daß Wölf 06:17, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Importance rating

This is of low importance for American cinema? Seems very wrong and inaccurate to me. Zedd1997 (talk) 12:00, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 25 December 2021

WP:PIPE the link "making it character of its own" towards Anthropomorphism. 2601:646:8400:1ED0:3890:8503:2139:77F5 (talk) 09:10, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

 Not done: The text appears to be easily understandable to a reader. We don't generally add links for the sake of adding links. DonIago (talk) 17:38, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Christmas Eve in lead paragraph

Had added Christmas Eve to the last sentence in the first paragraph "who is caught in a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper while visiting his estranged wife on Christmas Eve", which seems perfectly fine and even essential as a descriptor since visiting an estranged wife at any time is quite the thing, and doing so on Christmas Eve is a long way from random (say, March 10). This was reverted. Then I linked Christmas Eve further down the lead which was, again, reverted as an overlink. Seems the lead is allergic to Christmas Eve. Since this film is now firmly in the Christmas column (see these 2018-2022 n-grams if there is still doubt) I'd like to propose adding Christmas Eve back into the "visiting his estranged wife" descriptor in the lead paragraph. Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:00, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

What is this "firmly in the Christmas column" thing? People watch it at Christmas because that's a tradition people have formed, view count doesn't make it a christmas movie, it makes it a film people watch at Christmas or read about AT Christmas because people say it's a Christmas film for clicks. Christmas Eve is an obvious term and so per Overlink it doesn't need to be linked, it's like linking to China in the Box Office section. Darkwarriorblake / Vote for something that matters 13:18, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Christmas Eve would not be an overlink, but that could be another discussion point in this section. "Christmas is all around us" (with this film), it is not just a random part of the plot. Yes, traditionally viewed at Christmas can designate it as a Christmas film, per common sense. In any case, this section refers to adding Christmas Eve to the first paragraph sentence quoted above. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:24, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Ok, so if a majority of people started watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at Christmas, would we start calling it a Christmas film or a film people watch at Christmas? Darkwarriorblake / Vote for something that matters 13:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

To be honest... if a majority of people started watching the Texas Chainsaw Massacre at Christmas, then a silly debate would emerge around whether it was a Christmas movie, then this debate would grow large enough to be covered by reliable secondary sources, and then we'd probably cover it in Wikipedia. Popcornfud (talk) 13:37, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

"Christmas Eve" is an "everyday word understood by most readers in context" (WP:OVERLINK). Popcornfud (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

I would say it that the Christmas Eve detail is not essential for the sentence that summarises the film premise — Christmas Eve has very little to do with the plot.

On the other hand, if we're going to mention the infamous "is it a Christmas film" dispute in the lead, then it feels appropriate to very briefly mention the Christmas Eve setting in that part instead. Otherwise the reader might wonder what the hell triggered the debate in the first place. Popcornfud (talk) 13:26, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

Well, good to get the anti's addressed. The Christmas Eve setting of the film seems essential to the plot and resolution (and is carried over into the second film), so adding it to the estranged wife first paragraph sentence defines the concept. People who visit their estranged wives do so either when the restraining order runs out or when an emotional bridge appears, and Christmastime kicks that process into higher gear (not speaking from personal experience...or am I? No, I'm not). So yes, Virginia, there is a Christmas element to this film and should be addressed (or at least described) in that first paragraph sentence. With an obvious polar opposite disagreement here, maybe heading towards the RfC route, since this question hasn't been fully discussed as yet and either some carolers or some bah-humbugs can be overheard from time to time. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:45, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

This is a simple request, to add three words, 'on Christmas Eve', to the lead sentence "who is caught in a terrorist takeover of a Los Angeles skyscraper while visiting his estranged wife on Christmas Eve." Since many people believe that this is a Christmas film, Wikipedia includes the film in List of Christmas films, and the n-grams show conclusively that the views of this page peak in an extreme manner at Christmas, the addition of those three words would seem uncontroversial. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:59, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

All things being equal, it would seem like a non-issue to mention that the film occurs on Christmas Eve, which it does. However, given the controversy over whether or not this is considered a "Christmas film", I do have some concerns that adding those three little words in will amount to us putting our thumb on the scale in favor of calling it a Christmas film. As such, at this time I'm inclined to weakly oppose adding the three little words. DonIago (talk) 13:32, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

I would agree with others that the fact this film takes place on Christmas Eve is non-essential to the plot (basically a mechanism for having a nearly empty building and a reason for McLean to be in LA), so having it up that high in the lede doesn't make sense. Instead, adding something to the last sentence of the lead, like "As Die Hard takes place on Christmas Eve, it is also considered one of the greatest Christmas films made, though its status is disputed." --Masem (t) 13:43, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

• Consensus seems to be to add the mention in the last lead sentence so as to not confuse readers about the Christmas-related controversy descriptor. Have added 'Christmas Eve' to the sentence. I'm still not understanding the controversy, especially since the film "was voted the greatest Christmas movie by British film magazine Empire readers in 2015", which provides a very well-sourced evidence for it being a Christmas film and actually one of the greatest Christmas films. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:54, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Regardless of anything else, your inability to understand that readers of Empire magazine voting it a Christmas film does not, in fact, retroactively alter its genre, is frustrating. As is your ability to selectively ignore the content in the article that shows the majority of people do not, in fact, consider it a Christmas film, or that being set at a time of year but not being about that time of year, also does not make it a Christmas film. The Batman is not a Halloween film before it starts and takes place immediately after it. If you presented your case in any other way than "Bob who serves me coffee on my commute every morning thinks it is a Christmas film, there's a pretty clear consensus here," the engagement in the discussion might have been greater. Darkwarriorblake / Vote for something that matters 12:14, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

Sources are what counts on Wikipedia, and the Empire poll is an extremely major source for, if nothing else besides being judged the greatest Christmas film of all time, this being a Christmas film (by the way, I don't drink coffee, so don't know Bob). As for possibly reverting the mention of 'Christmas Eve' in the last paragraph, please explain how would you describe the consensus of this lagging discussion? Randy Kryn (talk) 12:18, 22 January 2023 (UTC)

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Public reception

The reception section and its summary in the lead currently focus on its mixed/mediocre initial reception and subsequent reappraisal. What seems to be missing from that summary is the fact that it received an A+ CinemaScore and was considered a surprise success, especially considering how negative coverage of Willis was before release. Both seem to point to a very positive audience reception even at the time. These facts are mentioned in the article, but the overall narrative seems to contradict them. Over the last few years there have been plenty of films with mixed critical reception but overwhelming audience scores (notably Venom, the Mario movie or Dead Men Tell No Tales), so it shouldn't be that hard to include that in the article. jonas (talk) 03:31, 28 April 2024 (UTC)

Literally the first sentence of the critical reception section: "Initial critical reviews of Die Hard were mixed.[43] Audiences reacted more positively; polls by the market research firm CinemaScore found that audiences gave it an average rating of "A+" on an A+ to F scale."

LIterally the second and third sentence of the box office section: " It was considered a successful debut with a high per-theater average gross.[70] The Los Angeles Times said that the late change in advertising focus and diminishing popularity for action films should have worked against Die Hard. Instead, positive reviews and the limited release had made it a "must-see" film."

Literally comparing Venom's B+ score to Die Hard's A+ and calling it an overwhelming audience score? Darkwarriorblake (talk) 10:01, 28 April 2024 (UTC)