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RALEIGH, N.C., Dec. 24 (UPI) -- Die Hard is not a Christmas movie, according to most Americans. Raleigh-based polling firm Public Policy Polling released a Christmas-themed poll this week reporting 62 percent of Americans don't consider the 1988 film a holiday movie.
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"Americans have spoken and have an emphatic message: Die Hard is not a Christmas movie," the firm wrote. Only 13 percent of voters consider the film to be such.
Die Hard, which stars Bruce Willis as NYPD officer John McClane, takes place on Christmas in Los Angeles. The movie sees McClane face off with a terrorist (Alan Rickman) who takes his estranged wife (Bonnie Bedelia) and others hostage during a Christmas office party.
Many, including MovieFone writer Drew Taylor, argue the film is indeed a Christmas movie. Taylor went so far as to compare Die Hard with the 1946 holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life.
"In [It's a Wonderful Life], a man, despondent and morally conflicted, is shown the beauty of life (and what his life would be like if he was no longer in it), and is reborn, literally and spiritually, at the film's close," he wrote. "He's reconnected with the things that are really important in life. So is John McClane."
"When he emerges, bloodied and burnt, at the end of the movie, his wife can barely recognize him," he added. "And how does she address him? 'Jesus Christ,' the kid whose birth we're ostensibly celebrating on Christmas Day. But his transformation is also spiritual."
Die Hard inspired four sequels starring Willis, the most recent of which, A Good Day to Die Hard, opened in 2013. 20th Century Fox reportedly has a prequel in the works that would take place in 1979 and is tentatively titled Die Hard: Year One.
