Red One Review – How The Marvel Movies Stole Christmas

Red One dares to ask what would happen if you used the latter-day MCU format to make a Christmas movie. Every problem that the film has stepped straight out of the post-Endgame playbook. The dodgy CGI, unconvincing pathos, rough editing, and insufferable dialogue feel irritatingly familiar. Subsequently, even the film’s missteps remain bland and outdated.

Dwayne Johnson seems to adopt many of the filmmakers that create his star vehicles. Director Jake Kasdan used to make comedies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Sex Tape. He made the first Jumanji reboot, then the sequel, and now this. Chris Morgan made a name for himself writing movies in the Fast Saga, but now he’s stuck with stuff like this. It’s a little odd to see studios tie writers and directors to actors like they’re trying to force new iconic duos.

A Christmas Coat of Paint

Red One feels like a movie someone assembled out of other action movies and lightly decorated for the holidays. Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans star as the requisite headbutting heroes. The former is Santa’s jaded bodyguard, Callum Drift, while the latter is a freelance criminal and deadbeat dad, Jack O’Malley. Jack pulls off a job that somehow reveals the location of Santa’s North Pole workshop. Meanwhile, Callum discusses quitting because he’s rapidly losing patience with the ever-increasing naughtiness among humans.

A team kidnaps Santa, leaving the Men in Black/S.H.I.E.L.D. organization to send Jack and Callum after him. If you’ve seen a movie, you know that they’ll gradually learn from each other, become better people, and address each other’s moral weaknesses along the way. You see the movie’s road map in perfect clarity halfway through the first act, and there are sadly no surprises.

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The characters are a fundamental weak point in Red One. Say what you will about the Marvel movies; I’ll certainly toss some more derision their way later, but at least their heroes tend to have a personality. Everyone knows exactly who Tony Stark, Steve Rogers, and Thor are. They’re the kind of protagonists who can carry a franchise on their back, but Callum Drift and Jack O’Malley are cardboard cutouts. Callum feels like the same character Johnson always plays; he’s Luke Hobbs, Dr. Xander Bravestone, or Davis Okoye in a different outfit. There’s a bit more to Jack, but he still feels like Chris Evans on autopilot. Since he stepped away from Marvel, it feels like he’s reverted to projects like Fantastic Four and The Losers. Personally, I’d love to see him revert further and take another crack at Not Another Teen Movie.

The Merry Cinematic Universe

One of Google’s helpful recommended search terms when I typed in Red One asked whether it belonged in the Marvel or DC Universe. People know what they’re looking at when they see these awkward leather outfits, quippy dialogue, and ugly CGI. This is a late-stage Marvel project in all but name. Everything fanciful or magical bends around distinctly American views of military and espionage, just like Marvel. The design philosophy manages to make Santa’s workshop look like Stark HQ. Even the tiny details look familiar. Johnson’s primary power set involves changing size via a device on his forearm, exactly like Ant-Man. He can alter his own size and expand toys into real things. It’s like they were trying to make an Ant-Man Christmas special, but The Rock had other ideas.

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This curious lack of creativity invades every competent element of the film. There are a dozen worse movies between Johnson and Evans, but most of them have at least one or two semi-new ideas. Red One is like an IKEA-branded feature film. It’s perfectly functional, barring the fact that a lot of the VFX are ugly as sin. It all looks rushed and unpleasant in a way that makes me think we’ll get some harrowing stories from overworked artists within the month. It’s all snapped together from familiar parts by people who vaguely know what they’re doing, but there’s no soul behind the project. That takes a lot of the reindeer out of its sleigh when it tries to let a woefully underused J. K. Simmons deliver a moral lesson. I struggle to imagine the kind of person who might feel something during this film.

Turning Santa Into an Asset

The thing that kept entering my mind during Red One was the grim militarization of Santa Claus. So, there’s this extranational, extra-governmental military/espionage organization that has unilateral authority over the “mythological” world. These beings, including Santa, Krampus, and the Headless Horseman, at least, have been around forever, but they’re now under the protection of this organization. That group, M.O.R.A., engages in armed conflict, black bag operations, global surveillance, and at least one (relatively mild) torture sequence. Santa Claus, supposedly the avatar of Christmas cheer, is a willing participant in a system that at one point arrests and interrogates the Headless Horseman in a black site prison. Am I the only one who bristles slightly at jolly old St. Nick tacitly approving of an organization we see torture a man into accepting a black ops suicide mission?

The people who whine about the so-called “War on Christmas” apparently have no problem with Santa as a military asset. At one point, Lucy Liu, the director of M.O.R.A., explains that she’ll have to alert the leader of every major nation to the possibility of a year without Christmas. So, M.O.R.A. has connections with all of the existing governments? Do they work alongside dictatorships? Are they standing idly by with incalculable magic powers while certain world leaders carry out atrocities? These are not questions that should come to mind during a movie about saving Santa Claus. They wouldn’t typically be, but Red One insists upon this played-out military terminology gimmick. They can’t constantly mention NORAD and send Santa off with fighter jets without raising some eyebrows.

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Red One is a Christmas movie with no Christmas spirit. It doesn’t have a soul, a brain, or a heart. Dwayne Johnson pocketed a lot of money for the project, so he’s probably happy with it, but he may be the only one. This movie shouldn’t have gone to theaters. It’s boring, familiar, played-out schlock that would barely hold the attention of an 11-year-old Marvel superfan. I didn’t hate Red One for its quality, as it remains as blandly competent as most major blockbusters. I hated it for its soulless goal and mindless execution. Anyone who had a good action movie on their Christmas wish list should hope Santa tries again next year.