Do you know what today is (27 November)? Sure, it's Cyber Monday so you can get some cheap shopping deals. But, no, it's a much more important day than that: it's the 35th anniversary of an all-time classic Christmas movie that's finally on Disney+ right now. That's right: 1988's Die Hard is now available to stream.
I already know some of you are likely baulking at the suggestion Die Hard is even a Christmas movie at all. But, hey, it just is. There's an office Christmas party. An instrumental of Let It Snow by Frank Sinatra features. There's a coming together of family (of sorts). It might not feature the most obvious tropes, but you can call it Christmas-adjacent at the very least.
I recently watched Die Hard on a plane while travelling just the other week. It jumped out of the classics menu to me because, well, it just is a true classic. So I've got many scenes fresh in my mind and it's pretty mind-blowing to me that this flick is a full 35 years of age. It sometimes looks it, but it's still very well-pieced-together entertainment that marries together action and a lick of comedy too.
It's the movie that propelled Bruce Willis to superstardom thanks to his take on cop John McClane – but the other exceptional role is, of course, Alan Rickman's portrayal of Hans Gruber. No, I can't call him Scrooge-like, but Gruber's demise not only threads into the movie's sequel, it's caused all kinds of spin-offs, including a frankly absurd Advent calendar.
As we get close to December and the end of the year for the festive period, I'm looking forward to compiling a bunch of Christmas and Christmas-adjacent movies across the best streaming services. And I'm not talking about the 'best worst-rated Christmas movies' as I somewhat self-indulgently pieced together last year, but actual quality films worth watching.
All in all, I think it's great to see streaming services continue to deliver variety: while Disney+ has recently added a version with ads, it's promised to not ruin your movie-watching with adverts during those typically longer runtime pieces of content. I'm yet to subscribe to Disney+ myself (I'm paying top whack for Netflix after all), but if movies such as Die Hard and other classics come to the Disney fold then, well, I may be forced to sign-up...
