[COLUMN] Red One is a Christmas Marvel - and Not in a Good Way | by Darren Mooney (Patreon)

Note: This piece discusses the plot of Red One, including the climax. So be warned.

For a movie trying so hard to evoke the Christmas spirit, Red One feels strangely soulless.

Early in the film, “Nick” (J.K. Simmons) goes undercover as a mall Santa Claus in Philadelphia. He explains that this is a way to retain some tangible connection to the current generation of kids. After all, he is the real Santa Claus, an immortal being who lives in the North Pole. It could be very easy for him to slip out of touch. It’s also invaluable market research. Through his boots-on-the-ground investigation, he is able to determine that the video game Vampire Assassin 4 is very hot this year.

Red One is the product of a similar impulse, even if it feels like nobody working on the film has actually interacted with a child. Red One seems deliberately engineered to appeal to some abstract concept of a younger audience, aggressively tailored towards what studio executives have determined to be their interests. It’s the Yuletide equivalent of that infamous leaked Sony email about The Amazing Spider-Man that wondered “if there’s an EDM angle somewhere with Spidey.”

Red One was produced by Amazon Studios, at a budget of $250m. Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson reportedly pocketed $50m of that, the highest upfront fee ever paid to a Hollywood actor, to star as Callum Drift, the head of Nick’s personal security detail. Johnson seems to have exerted considerable influence on the project: it was written by Fast and Furious franchise veteran Chris Morgan and helmed by Jumanji: The Next Level director Jake Kasdan.

Red One lacks a clear identity of its own. Instead, it’s a pandering mess of half-formed ideas about things that “kids these days” presumably like. In particular, Red One is very transparently an attempt to make a Christmas superhero movie in the mode pioneered by Marvel Studios, joining other clumsy franchise attempts to apply that formula like the Mortal Kombat reboot or Guy Ritchie’s King Arthur: Legend of the Sword. Virtually every decision in the film can be traced back to that impulse.

These superhero aspirations are, for example, obvious in the casting. Johnson was, after all, the actor who changed the hierarchy of the power in the DC Extended Universe – albeit not in the way that any one intended. Johnson is joined by Chris Evans, who will always be known for playing Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (the MCU). Evans’ Jack O’Malley is introduced as a cynical operator, but inevitably turns out to have a heart pure enough to save the day.

Red One lifts several elements from specific superhero films. The film’s version of the North Pole is hidden behind a camouflage dome that opens to welcome Nick’s sled and populated with beautiful spires that cannot help but evoke Wakanda from Black Panther. Drift has a bracelet that shoots rays which allow him to effectively turn toys life-size. While he insists that there are rules governing the use of such technology, even the visual language recalls the Pym Particles from the Ant-Man movies.

Like the MCU, Red One is built around the weird pseudo-rationality of Clarke’s Third Law, framing its magical conceits as hyper-advanced technology. There are a lot of color-coded energy blasts and a very literal-minded approach to this imaginary world. There is also a lot of bureaucracy and acronyms. A significant portion of Red One takes place in the sort of generic militarized warehouse and offices that that characterized movies like The Avengers.

The world of Red One is rigidly defined and codified. The magical world is defined largely through acronyms. Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu) heads M.O.R.A., the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority, and seemingly has the world’s leaders on speed-dial. Drift works for E.L.F., which stands for Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification. The characters investigate U.M.D.’s, or Unauthorized Magical Displays. Callum explains to O’Malley that magic is regulated by international treaty.

Red One leans heavily on lore, in much the same way that modern comic book movies have come to be built around fan service and easter eggs. When Drift explains that Nick has a brother (Kristofer Hivju), albeit adopted, O’Malley sets up the big reveal, “So, does Santa’s brother have a name?” Drift pauses for dramatic effect, as if he’s introducing Tom Bombadil (Rory Kinnear) on The Rings of Power. “His name is…” Suspenseful pause. “Krampus.” Give the audience a second to pinch the air.

It’s all paint-by-numbers. O’Malley’s character arc builds to a scene where, trapped in a snow globe and composited against what looks like a computer-generated screensaver, he apologizes to his son (Wesley Kimmel) for being a bad dad. At the climax, just as things appear bad for Nick and Drift, Krampus shows up to heal the rift with his brother. Henry Jackman’s score feels inspired by a temp track that liberally deployed John Williams’ Jurassic Park and Alan Silvestri’s Avengers themes.

Indeed, Red One doesn’t just lift actors, production design, plot elements and music cues from modern superhero movies. The film’s tone is very heavily influenced by the MCU. In particular, there’s the same winking irony that undercuts any meaningful attempt at sincerity. Most of the jokes in the movie consist of Evans sarcastically reciting the plot. When O’Malley is told he’s “a Level-Four Naughty Lister”, the punchline is O’Malley repeating those exact words in a knowing tone.

While this smirking humor is ultimately just a reflection of the larger structural issues with Red One, taken on its own merits it is perhaps the movie’s single greatest flaw. What is the point in making a holiday film that is embarrassed at the possibility of being sincere? Why expend any effort or energy into making a family-friendly Christmas movie that seems deathly afraid that it might seem corny or silly? Why try to be “above” it? If a film about Christmas can’t be earnest, why bother?

Even aesthetically, Red One is recognizable as a modern superhero movie. It is part of the larger trend of what might be described as “the DILF-ification of Santa”, along with the casting of Kurt Russell in The Santa Chronicles and David Harbour in Violent Night. As played by Simmons, Nick is properly jacked. An early sequence focuses on Nick hitting the gym in his private residence – which looks like a penthouse – as Christmas Eve approaches, with Drift spotting him.

This isn’t relevant to the plot. Nick is not an action hero, and doesn’t get any major action beats. As such, it’s just an illustration of the weird modern depiction of male bodies riven by superhero films. This muscular aesthetic extends beyond Nick. At one point, Drift and O’Malley square off against an elite team of snowmen assassins in Aruba. For some strange reason, these snowmen all have six packs sculpted into their abdomens. It’s never explained. It is not even acknowledged. It just is.

This all exists in the larger context of the film’s hyper-militarized framework. “Red One” is the codename that Nick’s protection detail have given him, evoking Secret Service codenames. On his return flight from Philadelphia, it’s revealed that Nick has parked his sled at a U.S. army base. He shakes hands with a friendly general (Darryl W. Handy). It’s a very strange choice. Does Santa Claus really need to be part of the American military-industrial complex?

When Nick is abducted by the wicked witch Grýla, who has been given a suitably sexy upgrade as Kiernan Shipka, the intruders are wearing winter camouflage. Drift chases an all-terrain vehicle through the snow, but even the intervention of “Skate Team Six” is not enough to apprehend the fugitives. Later, Drift realizes that the chase was a decoy and that Grýla and her goons never left. “The North Pole’s been taken”, he reports, stopping just short of saying “North Pole Down.”

It is all incredibly militarized. This is a sentence that is as strange to type as it is to read, but it cannot be emphasized enough: Red One is effectively a post-9/11 Santa movie. To be clear, this doesn’t seem to have been intentional. It’s highly unlikely that this was a conscious thought running through the minds of Morgan and Kasdan. Instead, it is the inevitable endpoint of so shamelessly copying the template and tone of this generation of superhero films, which were shaped by the War on Terror.

This militarization goes hand-in-hand with the film’s emphasis on industrialization. These are two sides of the same coin. The North Pole is no longer a rustic operation. It is a gigantic industrial enterprise. As he contemplates his retirement, Drift visits the old grotto, which is part of a public display. Above the door, there is a reminder: “Where it all began.” In a sense, Red One does to Christmas what Amazon has done to brick-and-mortar shops. It’s a scale business. Bigger is better.

There is an irony underpinning this. Red One is a shameless attempt to apply the modern superhero blockbuster template to a holiday movie, in a craven attempt to engineer a streaming hit that will resonate with younger audiences. However, it also feels painfully out of touch. These past few years have not been kind to this sort of superhero spectacle. Even allowing for successes like Deadpool & Wolverine, the genre is going through a box office drought.

Do kids want a Christmas film that feels like a rip-off of a template that is arguably past its sell-by date? Is this stuff what interests children? If this template appeals to anyone, it seems like it was tailored for a millennial audience that is already well into adulthood. One gets the sense that Red One would have been smarter to take a leaf from Nick’s book, to go out into the field and to actually engage with its intended audience.

As it stands Red One doesn’t seem like anything that anybody has on their Christmas list.