The debate over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie or not rages on 35 years after NYPD cop John McClane saved his wife Holly from Hans Gruber and his gang of evil terrorists in the Nakatomi Plaza skyscraper on Christmas Eve.
But what’s never been looked at too closely is the science behind the stunts, and whether John would really have survived to tell the tales of the four sequels.
For comedian Chris Ramsey, who attempts to remake some of the Die Hard action sequences, there’s no question about whether the films should be considered Christmassy.
“I won’t hear anything against it, they are 100% Christmas movies. I don’t understand how it’s a debate,” Chris, 37, says. “Die Hard one and two are Christmas movies. Die Hard With A Vengeance literally starts with the song Summer In The City to tell you this one isn’t a Christmas movie by the way, but the other two are. I always watch them when I’m wrapping presents.”
Chris, who is a die-hard fan of the Die Hard movies, reveals it was a “no-brainer” when he got the call from Sky to look at the science behind the films along with fellow comedian Paul Chowdhry and engineer Zoe Laughlin.
“As soon as I saw, ‘You’re going to do the stunts’ I was like, ‘Yes! 100 percent,’” Chris says. “I was away for the Home Alone version of the show they did last year, but for this one I rescheduled lots of things around to be able to do it because I love Die Hard. I love jumping off stuff and messing about, it’s great.”
Die Hard is known for its crazy stunts and actor Bruce Willis, who played John McClane, did many of them himself. But whether John would have survived the gunfights, and his famous jump off the Nakatomi Plaza building with a fire hose around his waist, is another question altogether.
“We do the iconic Hans Gruber fall from the end of the movie,” reveals Chris. “We walk over glass as well, and the science behind it is incredible. They use this stuff that’s basically jelly, but when you snap it, it goes into shards to make it look sharp. So you just walk on it and they put the sound effect of glass on it. It’s absolutely horrible to watch.”
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One thing the Die Hard films aren’t short of is explosions, which Chris, Paul and Zoe put to the test.
“There’s a bit in Die Hard where the lift shaft blows up and a fireball comes up. It’s really iconic,” explains Chris. “The fireball comes up slowly and John jumps out of the way of it. Basically we learned that if it really was C-4 explosives, then John wouldn’t have had a second to move – he would have been incinerated!
“We also went out to this field and blew up a shed – it was horrifying. You see people in movies walking away from an explosion lighting a cigar, but actually it would have thrown them miles into the air and ripped all the skin off their back.”
Chris loved recreating the film’s stunts so much he almost considered changing career.
“The stuntmen, and I’m not lying here, said numerous times, ‘Quit comedy and come and work with us,’” he laughs. “I’m not lying. It sounds like bulls**t but I swear to God, that’s what the stunt team said. Those guys were the best stunt team in the UK and I trusted them, they were like, ‘Jump off that, it’s fine’ and I was 100% up for it, I loved it.”
It’s not the first festive special show that Chris’s family has been a part of. His wife Rosie appeared in last year’s Strictly Come Dancing Christmas episode where she performed a jive with Neil Jones. Chris competed in the 2019 series with partner Karen Hauer, and finished in fourth place, but he reveals he’s hung up his dancing shoes now.
“It was so difficult, it was so hard,” Chris says. “And the professional dancers get credit, but I don’t think they get enough credit for how hard it must be to teach useless celebrities how to even walk around that dance floor. It’s much harder than they make it look on the telly – give me the stunts any day of the week.”
The Unofficial Science of Die Hard begins on Saturday 23 December, 8.10pm, Sky Max