Hello and welcome to this year’s Holiday-Palooza, where we go and take a look at Holiday themed or, in this case, Holiday adjacent movies, television specials and whatnot and review them. Now, I say “Holiday adjacent” as, despite even Disney+ Philippines including Die Hard and Die Hard 2 in their Happy Holidays list along with movies like Miracle on 34th Street and *shudder* Home Alone: The Holiday Heist, a lot of people say “Die Hard is not a Christmas movie” even though the Mouse has spoken and proclaimed they’re all wrong.

But here’s the thing: the naysayers will only focus on the first Die Hard, totally forgetting that its sequel, Die Hard 2: Die Harder, is also a Christmas movie. I can’t really blame them as, whenever we do talk about “alternative” Christmas movies, even fans such as myself only talk about the first Die Hard and never about the second film, which also has Christmas themes.

So, why is that? Why don’t we speak fondly of Die Hard 2: Die Harder as we do its predecessor? Why does the second film in the series usually get lost in the shuffle like, well, Live Free or Die Hard and A Good Day to Die Hard? Well, for the first week of Holiday-Palooza, let’s go check out the often forgotten other Christmas Die Hard movie, Die Hard 2.

Die Hard 2: Die Harder takes place a couple of years after the first movie. John McClaine is picking up his wife at the airport, packed with people and numerous flights coming in and out. A group of mercenaries use this as leverage as they take control of the airport covertly and plan to start crashing planes if their demands are not met. John McClaine figures this out and, realizing his wife, Holly, is on one of the flights in jeopardy, springs into action.

One thing I will say about Die Hard 2 is it’s much harder to defend it as a Christmas movie than its predecessor. The Holiday spirit doesn’t feel truly baked into the film and feels much more superficial. It comes off as more of in the background rather than being an integral part of the reason why all of this is happening. Sure, John McClaine does mention several times that all of this is happening again during the Holidays and the airports are jammed up because it is the Christmas season. But, then again, when are the airports never packed with people? I guess this is when the Die Hard franchise kind of thought they could ditch the Christmas shtick with further sequels as the later entries in the franchise never happens on Christmas anymore.

I will say Die Hard 2 is bigger in pretty much everything when compared to the first Die Hard. It’s set in an airport and the surrounding area, which is much bigger than the Nakatomi Plaza. The stakes are more dire with planes filled with hostages as well as the mercenaries wanting to free a corrupt dictator instead of a simple theft of millions of dollars. Unfortunately, bigger doesn’t always equate to better as Die Hard 2 lacks the memorable characters of the first film. This does kind of hurt the film as, for the most part, I don’t care what happens to the bad guys here. Yes, Hans Gruber and his band of thugs are ruthless criminals but they do stick out in your memory because of each of them have some personality. The mercenaries in Die Hard 2, sadly, are just bland and generic baddies, ripe for getting shot down by John McClaine.

Speaking of characters, none of them are particularly likable or memorable. Bruce Willis does manage to still pull of the everyday man dropped into an impossible situation quite well. This was way before John McClaine was the grizzled and unkillable superman he became in the later Die Hard films, of course. I kind of miss the wisecracking Bruce Willis as, even in his non-Die Hard movies, he was given roles where he had to be more stuck up and hard nosed, a far cry from what made him popular. Besides Bruce Willis, the only performance I really enjoyed in Die Hard 2 was William Atherton reprising his role as the dickishly Dick Thornburn. Besides them, everyone, even the usually wonderful Dennis Franz’s Captain Lorenzo, came off like pale comparisons to the characters in the first film.

Thankfully, the action scenes and sequences in Die Hard 2 are pretty good, if a little less creative than the ones in its predecessor. They do have a lot more room to breathe as they have many more locations they could use rather than just an office building. However, like I said earlier, bigger isn’t always better. Oh, the shootouts are fine but they kind of lack the visceral appeal of the original because I can’t really tell any of the bad guys apart! They just come off as generic so, if one of them bites the dust, I don’t particularly care all that much.

The overall plot in Die Hard 2 is much more straightforward and, at the same time, a little more intricate than the first film. It’s pretty easy to piece together what’s going on and they try to add a little twist to the proceedings but, once again, since we don’t care too much about the characters besides John McClaine, the twist isn’t as awe-inspiring as it could have been. Still, I do like how it tries to switch things up a little.

Overall, Die Hard 2: Die Harder is still a good Christmas-type action movie but does lack a lot of the charm of what made Die Hard the Christmas classic it is today. It a fun throwback to see Bruce Willis doing wisecracks instead of being all intense like in his later years. The action scenes are fun but just not as creative as the original. Honestly, I don’t see this being added to my Holiday movie list like Die Hard has become. It’s still a fun film to watch once or twice but it’s not exactly the must watch for the Holidays as the original.

What did you think of Die Hard 2: Die Harder? Do you think it deserves to be called a Holiday movie or not? Let me know in the comments section below!