Release Year: 1988

Genre: Action, Thriller

Director: John McTiernan

Writers: Jeb Stuart, Roderick Thorp (novel)

Stars: Bruce Willis, Alan Rickman, Bonnie Bedelia

Try to imagine the perfect action movie.

What are you picturing?

• Fights, right?
• And amazing stunts, of course.
• Maybe an average Joe capable of superhero-like feats?
• There's gotta be a damsel in distress, too.
• And an eerie villain who sets it all into motion.

You need all those things, plus an X-factor. A certain something that propels the movie from straight-to-video status to the realm of legend.

Die Hard had it. 

Arriving on the scene without much fanfare in the summer of 1988, it quickly became a box office hit, earning around $140 million worldwide (which was a lot in 1988). That's all thanks to the movie's X-factor: a winning combo of witty one-liners, a barefooted hero, and, as it turns out, Christmas in July.

Die Hard was released on July 15, 1988. But here's the thing. Whereas today, most summer blockbusters are preceded by weeks—nay, months—of advertising, followed by a blitz-style release, Die Hard was practically buried. After a teeny-tiny ad campaign, it had a limited release to just 21 theaters in 20 cities. But it was met with such enthusiasm that by week two, it was in 1,200 theaters across the country.

Part of the reason for this tiptoeing release was that at the time, the muckety-mucks were a bit worried about Bruce Willis's box office clout. He was earning five million big ones for the role, which was a shocking sum for the time, and the higher-ups at its production company, 20th Century Fox, were worried that his big payday—along with his less-than-stellar reputation in the press, and a resume that included virtually no action work—might alienate viewers.

They were wrong. So very wrong.

As it turns out, America was all kinds of ready for a movie about a no-nonsense New York cop named John McClane who travels to unfamiliar and glitzy Los Angeles to reunite with his estranged wife at Christmas and winds up being the only one who can take down the terrorists who hold said wife—and all her coworkers—hostage in the Nakatomi Plaza high rise.

Once the Die Hard buzz caught on, the movie took off, outperforming just about every other action movie that year (except, weirdly, Crocodile Dundee II). Critics dug it. Fans quickly fell in love. And the crowd pleaser was even nominated for four Academy Awards.

The legacy of Die Hard continues well beyond 1988. In the thirty-ish years since its release, Die Hard has become something of a cultural touchstone. Its one-liners are quoted on everything from T-shirts to bumper stickers, and John McClane has become synonymous with "everyday American hero." The movie ushered in a new era of action movies that took the genre out of the realm of epic war zones (Rambo, we're looking at you) and into the realm of taut, single-setting catastrophes into which an American everyman gets thrown. Instead of saving the entire human race from a potential nuclear holocaust (Terminator, we're looking at you), Die Hard and its successors focused on saving one thing—a building, a bus, a plane—with the kind of ramped-up tension that only a single location and a small cast can bring. Die Hard ushered in a whole era of these movies, often referred to as Die Hard on a [Insert Location Here], and in so doing, helped change the landscape of action movies forever.

It's 1988. The Cold War is winding down. The Reagan era is at its peak, as George H.W. Bush is elected on his predecessor's coattails. The specter of communism seems all but done in, and America shifts its focus from geopolitical threats to the awesomeness that is domestic prosperity.

What did we have to be afraid of?

Die Hard has an answer: money-grubbing dandies with a taste for expensive suits and no regard for good old-fashioned American values.

As Soviet threats faded into the background, and America cemented its superpower status, the 1980s ushered in a time of relative domestic tranquility (relative being the operative word). No longer needing to peer through the Iron Curtain for mustache-twirling villains, action movies looked elsewhere to find antagonists whose antics matched the nation's more upbeat outlook.

Look no further than Hans Gruber.

He's the perfect late-'80s villain. He's without king or country, driven not by a righteous cause, but by the almighty dollar and his own massive ego. He's set up as the exact opposite of our everyman hero John McClane. John is unkempt; Hans is well groomed. John is uncultured; Hans is urbane. John is barefoot and clad in the world's dirtiest tank top; Hans wears a designer suit. While John fumbles his way through the building, frantic and frenetic, Hans executes his plan, cool as a cucumber, from the corner office. He's the slick, European dandy to John McClane's rough-and-tumble modern cowboy.

In other words, at the heart of Die Hard are the sprouting seeds of the Great American Culture Wars. With no Big Bad to fight beyond borders as the Cold War drew to a close, Americans looked inward to find new enemies, and fought bitterly (wielding rhetoric, not weapons) about what it means to be an American, divided on issues like abortion, gun rights, drug use, religion, and, of course, money.

While none of those are at issue here, Die Hard does take a stand on the larger issue. In this movie, being an American (more specifically, NYPD) means you fight for good old-fashioned American values (like loving your wife and Twinkies), even when you're outnumbered and out-ammoed by a team led by an intellectual effete whose defining traits are his lack of a cause and elite sense of self. Gruber's out for money. McClane, for all his swearing and cowboying, is, as strange as it sounds, the family-values alternative.