Here, we have a guest essay submitted for review by a dear friend:
So now that my finals are over I’ve begun to get the pervasive feeling that I’m not getting graded enough. In that spirit, I’m asking the denizens of the Burger Salon to rate my essay. I think this essay is amazing, and that it represents an incredible amount of analysis and insight, but then again I’m an arrogant fuck. I’m giving it a 9/10. The one point knock off of ten is because there is a lot I left out. This was in the interest of space, but I hate compromise. What’s your rating?
-RFW
In biology, there are many instances in which two lineages, totally independent from each other, will solve problems in the same way, and come to resemble one another despite distance, time, and no connection between the species. This phenomenon is convergent evolution. Observe, for example, the similarities between armadillos and pangolins, or Tasman wolves and American coyotes: these creatures are but distant relatives, but have adapted in much the same way. I believe that this same process can also occur in the fine arts, a sort of convergent evolution of creative thought: the motifs and themes coming together despite no discernible connection between the pieces. This, I believe, is what is responsible for the plethora of concurrences between the films Home Alone and Die Hard.
It should be noted at this point that the reader’s familiarity with these movies is assumed. If you have seen either of these movies fewer than a dozen times, then going any further is an exercise in futility. It is beyond the scope of the article to provide these details. Seriously, you’ve seen them already, right?
First, the settings of these movies plays a significant role in their mood and effect, and cannot be ignored. Both movies are set around Christmas, a time of family and togetherness, but our heroes are removed from their loved ones by the circumstances they find themselves in, and spend the movie seeking reunification, even despite initial indifference to their absence. Meanwhile, Kevin McCallister’s mother and John McClane’s ex-wife frantically fear for the safety of their loved ones while they are unable to aid them in their dangerous situation. This plays against the typical safety and togetherness of the holidays.
The movies are both set within a single building, which quickly is altered from a place of relative security and comfort to one of extreme danger and fear by the introduction of criminal interlopers. In both cases it is a team of ruthless thieves, who use deceit to fool witnesses to their intentions. The movies’ antagonists also share delusions of grandeur, though in different scale: Hans Gruber styles himself a modern Alexander the Great (“And When Alexander saw the breadth of his domain, he wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer”) while Marv and Harry imagine themselves as infamous thieves known publicly as the “Wet Bandits”.
It is also worth noting the names of our heroes. Though the comparison may seem superficial, these things have a way of denoting deeper ties. It could certainly be postulated that both heroes having Scottish last names may draw upon the pragmatic nature and ingenuity generally attributed to the Scots.
From here, the similarities only deepen when one stops to examine the responses of our heroes to the situation in which they find themselves. In both cases, no action is expected from our heroes. A child could not be expected to thwart a burglary, nor could an off-duty cop be expected to foil a large-scale heist by a team of international professionals. Yet in both cases, the bravery and ingenuity of our heroes have them doing just that. They step up with a ferocity and courage that is matched only by their wit and wry sense of humor, apparent in both movies. Where their adversaries are overcome with rage that interferes with their ability to function, our heroes are unflappably cool-headed under fire. They avoid the brute force violence of their attackers, and by intelligent intervention and an impressive display of bravado dismantle the plans of the thieves. In both cases the villains are humbled by their encounters with a lone cop or a lone kid, striving against long odds with only their wits to keep them alive.
Finally, there is the last minute intervention of the unlikely savior. In Die Hard this role is filled by Sergeant Al Powell, who, although at first he seems like a harmlessly inept and bumbling cop with an aversion to violence, pulls through at the very last minute to save John McClane’s life. In Home Alone there is Marley. At first, he is the frightening old man, feared by the neighborhood because of his isolation and eccentricity. But he is characterized more thoroughly as a caring human being throughout the movie, and at the end, saves the life of Kevin McCallister.
This is convergent evolution in cinema in action. Though their environments (family comedy and action) are widely separated, many of the same plot devices were independently invented to fill the same role. I believe that no plagiarism is at work, and that the two are convergent merely through the natural workings of creative minds. The fundamentals of the story are as old as Homer’s Odyssey, but these parallel retellings are neither tired nor boring, as both movies are as fresh and entertaining as the day they were released. Convergences such as these need only remind us that the pathways of creation can lead to strange, often fascinating crossroads, and that to ignore these joining paths is to miss the connections between all great creative endeavors.
- Guest Writer, Rex Williams
