The best Christmas movie

One of the joys of Christmas is movie watching and without doubt, I’ll have the same conversation I do every year when I dutifully select Die Hard for everyone’s viewing pleasure and someone will say “but this isn’t a Christmas movie?”.

So, I was excited to see an article by the blogger Stephen Follows (a film researcher with a love for data) that goes into extensive detail to test what a Christmas movie is by using data. So what better way to spend some pre Christmas party drinking time than to brush up your defence for putting on what I’ve titled above, is the best Christmas movie.

He breaks down his analysis into understanding the creative elements, the commercial strategy and the cultural impact. There is a lot here, so I’ve pulled out some highlights for your ammunition.

What I like about this analysis is the diversity of the data Stephen has found, from looking at the above video analysis, the prevalence of Christmas songs within Christmas movies to the spread of Wikipedia pages views by month (December being the key indicator, see below).

He finishes with Google Trends and takes the time to annotate the peaks, which again indicate the Christmasness of Die Hard.

One of my favourite quotes to take from this from one of the two credited writers of the film, Steven de Souza has publicly declared “If ‘Die Hard’ is not a Christmas movie, then ‘White Christmas’ is not a Christmas movie”:

“Unlike White Christmas, Die Hard took place entirely at Christmas, featured a Christmas party and the “Christ-like sacrifice” of John McClane walking on broken glass.”

Hope you enjoy watching Die Hard at Christmas and please take time to read the original article here.

For more data analysis and visualisations, click here.

Or, get in touch for a discussion about your data strategy.