OP is back to note that Rickman WAS good in "Robin Hood," but the structure and look of the movie, the story, Costner's bizarre miscasting, etc was such that the material worked against Rickman rather than with him, as "Die Hard" did.

All these years later, "Die Hard" is looking more and more like a rather classic piece of entertainment. As against other Joel Silver-produced 80's and early 90's action movies, "Die Hard" has a certain elegance of structure and wit of lines that, say, "Lethal Weapon" or "Cliffhanger" did not have.

"Die Hard" became a template of sorts : Die Hard on a bus (Speed); Die Hard on a luxury liner (Speed 2), Die Hard on a battleship (Under Siege), Die Hard on a train (Under Siege II), Die Hard at a hockey game (Sudden Death).

None of those films quite had a villain who matched the villainy of Rickman's Hans Gruber in look, manner, voice. (The villains in those others included such more-familiar faces as Dennis Hopper, John Lithgow, Gary Busey, Willem Dafoe, Powers Boothe, and even Eric Bogosian, not to mention Oscar Guy Tommy Lee Jones in one of them.)

I didn't check Rickman's imdb listing, so I forgot all about his playing Snape, which, in the first film, was great "twist casting": Snape looked to be the villain of the piece (because Rickman played the role) , but wasn't.

In "Die Hard," there was the matter of first impression: that deep, sonorous voice; a face with a handsome, sympathetic pleasantness to it, a disingenuous toothy grin, and a "manner" (Gruber is a crook masquerading as a terrorist, amused by his own facade) that was just too fun not to enjoy. I recall Rickman's genuinely perplexed facial expressions when confronted by Hart Bochner's hustling Yuppie slickster who addresses him with "Hans...Boobie!" Hans Gruber is a cool guy when not killing people; he probably kills Bochner just on general principles for being a schmuck.

Anyway, 20 years ago. Man. Time flies.