10 Movies That Aged Badly For Surprising Reasons

1. Die Hard (1988)

American Beauty Kevin Spacey
20th Century Fox

Die Hard - the quintessential Christmas movie, right? Timeless, ageless, an absolute classic as was back then and always will be today, tomorrow, in a thousand years when the archaeologists of the next society unearth a VHS tape of the movie. So what could possibly have not aged well with this film?

Well, if we ignore the idea that post-9/11 there's no way any police dispatcher would have ignored a claim of terrorists in one of the most expensive buildings around. We can also ignore, for a moment, the idea of 'Japanese Economic Conquest' that was so prevalent in the '80s. There is one single scene in this glorious movie that does not age well.

For that answer we have to look to an early scene involving Reginald VelJohnson's character, Sgt. Al Powell - a black police officer, because talk about type-casting. In the scene Powell is at a gas station fueling up - and by fueling up, obviously that means he's buying Twinkies, of course. And lo there, but what do we see? Gas is 75 cents a gallon.

Ask your grandparents about when gas was that cheap, because your parents probably don't even remember it.

Contributor
Contributor

Author of Escort (Eternal Press, 2015), co-founder of Nic3Ntertainment, and developer behind The Sickle Upon Sekigahara (2020). Currently freelancing as a game developer and history consultant. Also tends to travel the eastern U.S. doing courses on History, Writing, and Japanese Poetry. You can find his portfolio at www.richardcshaffer.com.