Christmas Movie Showdown: ‘Die Hard’ vs. ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
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What comes to mind when you think of some of your favorite Christmas films? Maybe coming home for the holidays, life lessons through ghostly time travel, or romantic missed connections in snowy small town gazebos. No matter how you define a Christmas movie, there are two that deck the halls of all other holiday movies: John McTiernan’s Die Hard and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
But which is the best kiss under the mistletoe? Let’s see how they each stack up in typical Christmas movie tropes to find out.
Walking in a Winter Wonderland
There’s nothing like a snowy landscape or perfectly timed snowfall to get into the Christmas spirit. Though the half-finished Nakatomi Plaza tried to get into the spirit of the season, Die Hard has the automatic disadvantage of taking place in Los Angeles (the fiery ash from explosions only sort of counts as snow). On the other hand, Tom Cruise’s Dr. Bill Harford in Eyes Wide Shut is constantly out in the cold, snowy streets of New York City, which perfectly captures the icy undercurrent of moral decay at the heart of the city’s wealthy elite.
Winner: Eyes Wide Shut
Saving Christmas At All Costs
Most Christmas movie protagonists will stop at nothing to have the best Christmas ever. This is where Bruce Willis’s John McClane shines, having to nearly single-handedly stop a group of well-armed German terrorists to get back to his family. While Dr. Bill’s deranged determination to explore the darkest corners of sexual depravity deserves its own type of admiration, he just isn’t doing enough to save Christmas!
Winner: Die Hard
A Dark Night of the Soul
Whether it’s George Bailey losing all hope and seeing a world where he didn’t exist or Scrooge’s spectral trip through time, sometimes the holidays need to brutally break a person down to find redemption and/or the Christmas spirit.
Sure, John McClane goes through hell, but he’s still basically the same guy at the end of it. Dr. Bill, though, is a petty, full-of-himself jerkface whose patriarchal jealousy following his wife’s aggressively pot-fueled admission of her naval officer fantasy sends him on a very different type of nightmarish journey akin to George Bailey’s trek through Pottersville where he’s exposed to a hidden world of degeneracy and eventually reduced to a cowering shell before the Master of Ceremonies at the orgy party. By the end, he’s rediscovered marital monogamy bliss and is taking his family Christmas shopping!
Winner: Eyes Wide Shut
Small Towns Rule, Big Cities Drool
The prevailing sentiment of Hallmark movies and their clones is that small-town American culture is being destroyed by the evil temptations of the city and big business—don’t forget to buy more stuff, though! These two movies take place in archrivals for the title of the wickedest cities in America, but don’t be fooled: one of them makes a clearer point that big cities are the worst.
Dr. Bill Harford and his family live in New York City, a cesspool of temptation on the surface and even more sinister once it’s revealed that there’s a shadowy cabal of masked sex fiends made up of the city’s wealthy elite! If they made a sequel, I’m sure the Harfords would be living in Iowa, where Bill’s the town doctor and his wife, Alice, has a gingerbread bakery.
Sure, armed terrorists taking over Nakatomi Tower in Los Angeles—the home of Hollywood—doesn’t sound that great either, but let’s take a closer look. Yes, they may be in a big city, but Nakatomi isn’t even an American company but rather a sketchy multinational with a suspicious trove of $640 million in U.S. bearer bonds in their office safe. What are they trying to do in our country?! Maybe those terrorists weren’t so evil after all. Lastly, they’re stopped by a man from where? New York: a city run by a sadistic orgy cult of sex traffickers. I rest my case.
Winner: Eyes Wide Shut
Holiday Romance
Whether it’s romantic misunderstandings, mistaken identities, long-lost loves, or belated reunions, Christmas movies are full of magic under the mistletoe. This is where Die Hard shines, and John McClane’s struggle against Hans Gruber’s goons is a touching parable of how to repair a failing marriage and reunite the family for Christmas! His wife Holly’s use of her maiden name in the corporate world, how this factors into her survival, and eventual reclamation of her married name are straight out of a Hallmark movie.
Dr. Bill’s misadventures, like John’s, also kickstart due to masculine fragility and hubris, yet his quest for “gratification” is anything but romantic. The underworld he journeys through is a nightmare of transactional relationships and moral decay. Though he too reconciles with his wife by the end, it is not with the triumphant joy shared by John and Holly escaping from Nakatomi Plaza.
Winner: Die Hard
Christmas Party
Like many other Christmas movies, Christmas parties are key moments in both Die Hard and Eyes Wide Shut. In the former, John McClane is notably annoyed by the Nakatomi Corporation’s company party, with drunk suits doing coke and a little office hanky-panky. Besides the holiday decorations, there’s some lame corporate art, a random waterfall pond, and dated ‘80s interior design. And that’s just the first bite of Christmas cookies, with multiple partygoers violently murdered, held hostage, and having to get permission to go to the bathroom. No thanks!
The Ziegler Christmas party that Bill and Alice attend in the opening of Eyes Wide Shut is outrageously lavish, with thousands of dollars spent on lights, decorations, and tables and tables of food—all taking place in a stupefyingly large New York City mansion. There’s also a bit of drug-fueled hanky-panky, and both Bill and Alice flirt with beautiful people. Sure, the party may be the catalyst for the events of the film, but you could live inside the gorgeous shots of the Zieglers’ home for the rest of your life, or be shot by Germans with assault rifles.
Bonus round: Eyes Wide Shut also sends Dr. Bill to a fabulous masked “ball” in another awe-inducing, sprawling rich person’s mansion. Costumes, pagan rituals, and “merrymaking” sound like a Christmas party to me!
Winner: Eyes Wide Shut
We have a winner
The votes are in: Eyes Wide Shut is the ultimate Christmas movie!
After the kids go to bed this December 25, strap in for three hours of nihilistic festive cheer watching Tom Cruise learn that he is a literal nothing at the feet of New York’s upper class, and all that we have left—besides satisfying the ever-growing hunger of the one-percent—is family.