I feel that ranking #DieHard as one of the greatest movies to exist within the action genre is not up for debate. What is, though, is just how close it skirted in development to being anything but.

Just look back over its history:

Sourced from a novel by Roderick Thorp called 'Nothing Lasts Forever', this was in itself a sequel to his own book called THE DETECTIVE, which had already been made into a movie with Frank Sinatra taking on the role of Thorp’s protagonist, Joe Leland.

THE DETECTIVE was an accomplished, somewhat successful picture for the studio and plans to develop a sequel were put in motion. Sinatra wasn’t playing though and 'Nothing Lasts Forever' was twisted into a stand alone piece.

Robert Mitchum liked the part.

Studios didn’t like Mitchum for the role. 'Nothing Lasts Forever' disappeared from the studio’s slate soon after. Flash forward a good decade or so and the property was in the hands of producer Joel Silver.

He put it at Stallone’s door.

Stallone had just walked away from BEVERLY HILLS COP, taking all his “script-ideas” with him and working on a property for them, that would soon become COBRA. He would fit the project in, if he could work on the script and get “the plot out of the building”.

You still with me?

Things didn’t work out with Sly and Silver had spent a fair amount on the property so decided the best move would be to use the material for a sequel to one of his existing hits like COMMANDO. Even though that never got past the "idea" stage no matter what "Film Twitter" says.

One draft of the script fell into the hands of director John McTiernan on the set of PREDATOR – who liked it and wanted to helm it but thought it should be a stand-alone movie, not a sequel to anything (Silver was at the point of considering working the material into...

... a new 48HRS movie for Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte). Silver started courting Richard Gere for the role of (now renamed) Detective John McClane. When Gere said no, Burt Reynolds was romanced, then James Caan, then Don Johnson, then Richard Dean Anderson.

All negatives.

But it was whilst pouring through the TV schedules that they spotted someone with potential… Bruce Willis, star of TV’s MOONLIGHTING.

DIE HARD, as we know it now, started to form. Yippee-Kayee Motherfucker!

And what a formation huh?

Producer Joel Silver was on what could only be described as a ‘gold-run’ with 48HRS, COMMANDO and PREDATOR to his belt already, and LETHAL WEAPON waiting in the wings. John McTiernan had inexplicably gotten Hollywood’s attention with NOMADS and blew them away with PREDATOR...

... TV critics loved Bruce Willis and anyone with any sense could see he was in desperate need of just the ‘right’ big screen property to break him. And they were hiring a stellar technical team to back them up:

Michael Kamen for the music.

Jan De Bont for the cinematography.

Richard Edlund for the visual effects.

And a casting unit sensible enough to spot Alan Rickman and cast him to perfection.

This was very much a case of the perfect elements lining up at the perfect time to create an action event so undeniably effective that it spawned, not just its own rip-offs, but its own name for said rip-offs.

PASSENGER 57? “Die Hard… on a plane”!

CLIFFHANGER? “Die Hard… up a mountain”!

UNDER SIEGE? “Die Hard… on a ship”!

SUDDEN DEATH?“Die Hard… in a ice hockey stadium”!

Willis is so utterly perfect in his role that it rightly deserves the label ‘icon’ alongside the likes of Poppy Doyle or Harry Callahan. He judges the tone perfectly so that the ‘quips’ never lighten the tone or lessen the seriousness of the threat.

He created a character so enjoyable that for a long time we all thought it didn't matter whether you put him in an airport, a city or rambling round America as a whole, as long as you have Bruce Willis playing him, fuck him/whatever he is wearing up AND...

... get him to say “Yipee-Kayee Motherfucker!” and not “Yipee-Kayee-*GUNSHOT*!” (thank you DIE HARD 4.0) then people WANT to see him and that movie.....

..... until we were all proven wrong when he went to Russia!

There’s been studies in universities of this film with people saying it is a glossy promotion of xenophobia (every foreigner in the movie is bad!), chauvenism (Willis’ John McClane does not like his wife’s independent attitude) and...

... misogyny (women in the work place only serves to cause trouble!) All are reaching for something and coming up with nothing; taking the last accusation into account, do people really think that if Holly McClane had been...

... a “good” stay-at-home wife-type that Hans Gruber wouldn’t have carried out his ‘attack’ or is it more that John McClane just wouldn’t have got caught up in it?

This is not a movie to be studied for subtext.

It is a movie to be studied for its relentless sense of pace, its awesome set-pieces (the roof-top jump, the bone-crunching fist fight, the helicopter assault, and on and on I could go!) and the almost beautiful shine that it has to its look.

It’s a film scripted so finely that it has just the perfect amount of build-up and exposition to it, so that we come to know enough about the characters to care, before setting off its ‘fireworks’.

Best of all, what DIE HARD has that MOST of its sequels never got right was in writing and casting some of the best ‘side’ characters of any movie of that decade.

Paul Gleason’s Deputy Police Chief Dwayne T. Robinson? Devoreaux White as Argyle? Reginald Veljohnson as Al Powell?

Alexander Godunov as Karl? Al Leong as Uli? Hart Bochner as Harry Ellis? Robert Davi as FBI Agent ‘Big’ Johnson? Grand L. Bush as FBI Agent ‘Little’ Johnson?

And who could possibly forget William Atherton as the deliciously slimy Richard Thornberg?