Everyone keeps saying that, but it could be a random party. It’s not particularly important that the party is Christmas, the company could be having an Easter celebration or even just a random party for a specific milestone for the company. As far as I remember, there’s nothing particular about being Christmas other than the decorations.
Home alone has to be set during Christmas, these are crucial parts of the plot:
The entire block travels at the same time
Houses have decorations, which are used as traps
Houses have lights that turn on at a specific time
It has to be set during winter
So if you could have a different holiday during winter where lots of people decorate their houses to turn on lights at a specific time, then it wouldn’t necessarily be a Christmas movie. Otherwise you need to change crucial points of the plot.
Other examples are Jingle all the way or Nightmare before Christmas you can’t change the Christmas theme in those movies. I mean, you can but you’ll end up with a very different movie. Whereas if you change Christmas on Die Hard for any other party event only the decoration changes, the plot of the movie would be essentially the same.
“If Elf was about a human raised by bunnies and then Buddy helped a family learn the true meaning of Easter it would be an Easter movie! So Elf isn’t a Christmas movie.”
That’s what this argument sounds like to me. You’re hyper focusing on one tiny element of the story. Yes, there are not many Christmas parts, but taken together they are sufficient to make a Christmas movie. If the party wasn’t Christmas themed you’d still have Christmas themed misic and a movie about a man trying to fix his family (super common Christmas trope).
Everyone keeps saying that, but it could be a random party. It’s not particularly important that the party is Christmas, the company could be having an Easter celebration or even just a random party for a specific milestone for the company. As far as I remember, there’s nothing particular about being Christmas other than the decorations.
Thats a pretty thin argument. “If you replace this part of the movie, it could be completely different!”
Is home alone not a christmas movie because they also could have taken any vacation and left their kid at home?
Home alone has to be set during Christmas, these are crucial parts of the plot:
So if you could have a different holiday during winter where lots of people decorate their houses to turn on lights at a specific time, then it wouldn’t necessarily be a Christmas movie. Otherwise you need to change crucial points of the plot.
Other examples are Jingle all the way or Nightmare before Christmas you can’t change the Christmas theme in those movies. I mean, you can but you’ll end up with a very different movie. Whereas if you change Christmas on Die Hard for any other party event only the decoration changes, the plot of the movie would be essentially the same.
“If Elf was about a human raised by bunnies and then Buddy helped a family learn the true meaning of Easter it would be an Easter movie! So Elf isn’t a Christmas movie.”
That’s what this argument sounds like to me. You’re hyper focusing on one tiny element of the story. Yes, there are not many Christmas parts, but taken together they are sufficient to make a Christmas movie. If the party wasn’t Christmas themed you’d still have Christmas themed misic and a movie about a man trying to fix his family (super common Christmas trope).