My boyfriend was appalled to learn that I’d never seen the movie Die Hard. It’s not necessarily the most brilliantly executed or most innovative film I’ve ever seen but I’ll be damned if it didn’t keep me captivated from start to finish.
Watching it after twenty years after it came out is a strange thing because there were several times in the movie where I thought “What an action movie cliché” or mentally noted obvious movie tropes and I was not impressed. But after doing some research and looking into it, I realized the Die Hard is essentially what started the action movie genre and it is what some people consider the perfect action movie. In this way, Die Hard is interesting as a historical document; the tropes and cliches that I identified were the basis and inspiration for the cliches and tropes that are so prevalently used in the action movies that I have seen.
John McLane is the ultimate action hero not because he is badass but because he is easy to identify with. He is relatable; he’s a working class man trying to balance work and family who ends up at the wrong place at the wrong time and kicks bad guy ass. There are several allusions to Westerns, particularly in reference to John’s character. Hans calls how a modern cowboy, which prompts his iconic “Yippee Ki-Yay, motherfucker” line. Some of these references are made in the dialogue while others are more subtle. For example, the moment in which John begins resisting the ‘terrorists’, the foreboding music that plays in every shot where we see the villains is repeated, but this time with some added guitar riffs that are reminiscent of the archetypal guitar music used in Westerns. This use of a Western guitar motif is repeated often throughout the film, providing us with subtle sonic hints that subconsciously draw our attention to John’s Roy Rogers-esque hero status.
Die Hard is set at Christmas time, which might seem irrelevant given the action-packed crime and violence that takes up the majority of screen time. However, when I watched this film through for the second time, I noticed that the Christmas setting actually plays a pretty big part in the film as far as sound design is concerned.
From the start of the film, we hear the sounds of Christmas. As John walks through the airport upon landing in L.A., we hear subtle jingle bells on the soundtrack, setting up the Christmas mood. There is relatively little background music in the film until John steps foot into the Christmas party as a four (or some other number) string quartet is playing classical Christmas music diegetically in the background. It is subtle, but this gentle string music plays for most of the first scenes in the office. As John and Holly talk (and fight) in the bathroom, you can hear “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee” playing softly from the party (pay attention to that, it comes back later).
Upon the arrival of the ‘terrorists’ in the big truck, a new musical motif begins. Foreboding music begins, still played by string instruments but much deeper ones (I would guess cellos and violas) which give you a sense of the danger these men pose. The film then cuts back and forth from scenes in the office where Christmas music is being played diegetically back to the scenes with the criminals in which non-diegetic string music is being played. It’s interesting to note that in the early scenes with the criminals, the strains of the music being played bear a distinct resemblance to the chorus of “Joyful Joyful”.
Hans singing tunes in the elevator
“Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee” continues as a musical motif as the film progresses. After Hans Gruber enters the office party and seeks out Takagi, he gets back in the elevator with his henchman with Tagaki in tow and as the elevator descends, Hans whistles the refrain of Joyful, Joyful. Even later in the film when Hans first sees the vault that he is trying to gain access to, the deeply toned strings (again, cellos and violas) on the nondiegetic soundtrack play that chorus of “Joyful, Joyful”. This is a consistent motif that reoccurs through the film and works in an interesting fashion; it takes something traditional and beautiful and morphs it, reinstituting it in moments of suspense and action to reconstitute how we perceive the song and by the end of the film, we begin to associate with the sinister European villains rather than with the loving, nostalgic emotions of Christmas. This is just one example of how a soundtrack can manipulate our perception of events and subtly reframe how we think as a film unfolds. By identifying moments like this in the sound design, we heighten our sense of our awareness and are better equipped to recognize the moments in which we are being manipulated by sound. Hopefully moments like this teach us something about the subtle manipulation that is such an integral part of the film-viewing process and make us more aware and more active participants rather than just passive recipients of visual and auditory stimulation.
To conclude, I haven’t seen the other films in the Die Hard franchise but for those of you who have, here’s an interesting link that identifies a few consistent tropes that are featured in every Die Hard installment.
http://flavorwire.com/370475/10-surprisingly-consistent-features-of-every-die-hard-movie/10
an·ti·cin·e·phile 