Is Die Hard a Christmas movie? The Bruce Willis action movie classic is a regular watch around this time of year, since it’s set during Christmas (the movie starts on Christmas Eve, with Willis’ character John McClane landing in LA to spend Christmas with his estranged wife). But its status as an official Christmas movie has been hotly debated for decades. Well, there’s one high-profile actor who thinks Die Hard is very much NOT a Christmas movie — and he should know, as the star of Home Alone.
Macaulay Culkin played Kevin McCallister in two of the best Christmas movies ever made: Home Alone and Home Alone 2: Lost in New York, so you’d think he’d know a thing or two about what makes a Christmas movie a Christmas movie. And for him, Die Hard doesn’t fit the bill.
“No it’s not. It’s based around Christmas. Don’t fight — fight me on the moon!” Culkin insisted during an interview with Mythical Kitchen. “It’s based around Christmas, but if it was also St. Patrick’s Day, it would still be… it would work. But you couldn’t do like a Memorial Day Home Alone. Nah, it doesn’t work that way.”
He added: “Listen, I’m kind of the godfather of Christmas nowadays. Yes, my opinion has some sway in this argument.”
This isn’t the first time Culkin has expressed his views on Die Hard’s status. Last month, Culkin was actually booed by an audience for saying it wasn’t. Speaking at A Nostalgic Night with Macaulay Culkin to celebrate the 35th anniversary of Home Alone, the 45-year-old actor said: “I know. Some of you guys want to fight me, I’ll meet you at the loading dock, but it’s just a movie that’s set at Christmas. If you set it at St. Patrick’s Day, the exact same movie. But you set Home Alone at St. Patrick’s Day…”
Culkin, who stars in Fallout Season 2 on Prime Video, has certainly raised a few eyebrows with his comments, but it’s worth remembering that in 2017, Steven E. de Souza, who wrote Die Hard, took to social media to joke that Die Hard is in fact a Christmas movie “because the studio rejected the Purim draft.”
