John McClane fights to free his wife and several other Christmas partygoers who have been taken hostage.

Die Hard has surprising literary roots. The holiday-set action flick is based on the 1979 novel 'Nothing Lasts Forever' by Roderick Thorp, which itself was inspired by the star-studded 1974 disaster epic 'The Towering Inferno', about a massive skyscraper slowly overcome by an out of control blaze.

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