It’s a sad fact but a testament to the clever construction of Bruce Willis and John McTiernan’s classic 1988 action blockbuster that the millions of people who have seen and loved Die Hard rarely understood that the film really is a rallying cry from the production team. A call to disband the already well-advanced feminist movement.

To the casual viewer this viewpoint may seem nonsensical, ludicrous even, but the evidence is all there if you’re willing to examine the film in some detail. Indeed, examining a big spectacle movie in detail for hidden motives is itself often a waste of time; the entire aim of the big action franchises is to wilfully ignore all but the most basic motivation and plot points; in it’s most basic form, the hero must rescue someone or something from the antagonist and in the case of the Hollywood action films, with as many big explosions and special effects as is possible to fit into the standard one hundred minutes. It is true that some films may pretend to have a higher purpose – The Day After Tomorrow, for instance, with it’s pseudo-factual environmental plot pretends to be showing damning evidence to the filmgoer of what will happen if they continue to destroy the planet. What it instead provides is a standard action-bollocks affair, with ludicrous plotting and terrific effects. Not exactly high-brow, but definitely entertaining.

Surely Die Hard is the most basic of all of the 1980s action films. It’s credited with starting the whole cycle of films in which a lone protagonist defeats all of the odds in order to defeat the bad guys and preserve some semblance of an American ideal after a terrifying situation. So what makes it different? Where does the anti-feminism undercurrent come from?

None of the events of the Die Hard film would have taken place were it not for the feminism movement of previous years.

John McClane, the protagonist is portrayed by Bruce Willis as the ultimate American family man. He’s a loving father in a difficult job; he’s a detective with the NYPD, strong willed and fair, but he’s found the time to buy great gifts for his children’s Christmas presents. But his family has been torn apart, not by him. Nor by his job putting pressure on the family, but by his wife.

His wife went and got a job.

And for John McClane’s wife, she wasn’t content to just work in the supermarket like the wives of his friends down the precinct. Holly is ambitious, the ultimate embodiment of the 1980s padded-shouldered businesswoman, born of the feminist movement. She’s got herself a high-ranking role within the Nakatomi corporation, and she was willing to end her relationship with John to take the job, tearing the family apart in the process.

Twenty years earlier, this would never have happened. John and Holly would have lived a happy existence in New York. She may have had a job, but it would probably have been in a florists, or a bakers.

If only Holly hadn’t taken the Nakatomi job. That one, selfish decision on her part directly results in the deaths of several innocent people. She doesn’t ever show any regret for this, maybe she didn’t even consider that her taking a job above her station was the cause of unnecessary suffering. But it was. The stupid, selfish cow.

It is probably helpful to elaborate a bit here. I’m assuming that most of you are familiar with the plot; Alan Rickman portrays Hans Gruber, leader of a group of German terrorists who have taken over the Nakatomi Plaza, pretending that they’re campaigning for the release of some of their fellow terrorists, but really aiming to steal millions of dollars of bonds from the company. His henchmen are well equipped with powerful and efficient weapons, and largely seem keen to avoid a mass slaughter. Early on in the film, they do kill the chairman of the Nakatomi Corporation as he refuses to open the safe for them, but immediately after this, realising the seriousness of the situation, his direct subordinate agrees to the terrorist demands and starts the process of opening the safe to release the bonds.

It’s at this point that Holly’s decision starts to affect the plot; if she was not a part of the Nakatomi Corporation, the gang would probably have escaped with all of the bonds. The Corporation would be in ruins, but the cost to human life would have remained at only one man. A huge cost in itself, but relatively small when compared to how the film eventually plays out.

Because of her presence there, John McClane is in town. And he’s pissed off, and despite the fact that his wife has left him, to him there is a hope of reconciliation. So he’s going to have to save her, and in an American action film that can only mean one thing.

It’s one-man-crusade time.

From the very point that McClane turns up at the building, all of Gruber’s meticulous plans are torn apart. Instead of just one killing, a demonstration of will, the viewer is now witness to death after death as McClane acquires guns and weapons in order to save his wife and their marriage. Villains and good guys alike die unnecessarily as a result, all to McClane’s damaged war-cry of “Yippee-kai-ay, motherfucker”, his mind now in tatters, distraught at the thought of losing his family from the possible reconcilation his Christmas trip had suggested to him.

It’s an American movie, so the resolution is inevitable; McClane wins out, and the bad guys are all taken out. Some will have died at his hands, some at the hands of their comrades, some by just dropping off a building very slowly, but McClane wins. He’s battle-scarred, he’s had a hard day and like any man he’s entitled to go home to his loving wife.

And there she is. Holly and John are reconciled, and drive off into the sunset. But at what cost?

If only Holly had been like the other police wives. Stayed in that bakery, worked in that florist. She’d never have been aware of the Nakatomi Corporation. And if that had been her life, John McClane would never have had cause to be at the Nakatomi Plaza in the first place. The terrorists would probably have completed their plot successfully. Only one man would have died. A corporation may have been destroyed, but no corporation is worth more than human life.

And all because of the feminist movement.

Die Hard lays its cards firmly on the table, and mourns the loss of the male-dominated society on a grand, explosive scale.

Or maybe I’m just talking bollocks.