‘Red One’ — Saving Christmas Apparently Costs $250 Million & Hollywood’s Soul

Is Red One good? No. Is it enjoyable? Maybe? Sometimes? Depending on the circumstances.

Overall, this attempt at a fun Christmas action-adventure in the middle of November fascinates me — not because of the film itself, but what it represents. Red One is a textbook example of Hollywood’s greatest problems and self-sabotaging pitfalls. Welcome to the Santa-verse.

Red One

Premiere: November 3, 2024 (Berlin)

Sound the alarm: Santa Claus has been kidnapped! Callum (Dwayne Johnson) — head of security in the North Pole — leads a feverish effort to get Saint Nicholas (J.K. Simmons) back, but he can’t do it alone. Sassy, naughty big city hacker Jack (Chris Evans) becomes an unlikely partner as the pair scour the Earth before time, and hope, runs out.

Reception to Red One has generally been negative, though audiences seem to appreciate it more than critics. The film currently holds a 34 rating from Metacritic, 33% on Rotten Tomatoes, 6.9 out of 10 on IMDb, and 2.5 out of 5 on Letterboxd. The Rotten Tomatoes Popcornmeter, which is user-based, stands tall at an extremely generous 90%.

I experienced this in 4DX, and those chairs rock harder than the Star Tours motion simulator at Disneyland. The added elements made Red One fun, for sure. I was on Santa’s sleigh for real, immersed in the action. Otherwise, had I been in a more conventional setting, I imagine my impression would be overwhelmingly un-amused. Most of the action, without gimmicky cinema enhancement, is just random, blurry stuff moving across a screen.

The story doesn’t give you a reason to engage with (or invest in) the images on display. The dialogue is rough, to say the least. The pacing is way off. The antagonist isn’t compelling, and it hurts saying that, because Kiernan Shipka is wonderful. Look for her in Twisters.

Some of the creatures are uncanny. The humor doesn’t land well. It’s reaching for Marvel or Jumanji & not quite getting there, often being too juvenile for adults and too mature for kids.

Profits Roasting on An Open Fire

$250 million dollars for this? Godzilla Minus One did far, far superior work with less than 10% of that. Where does the money go? This is the first current-day Hollywood problem made manifest in Red One. Heaps & heaps of cash are thrown indiscriminately at a project without concern for quality.

I’m not trying to beat up on everyone who worked hard to deliver a finished film, and I appreciate the artists working themselves to the bone behind the scenes. People toiled to fill each frame, and the worth of that effort should not be minimized. Rather, I think my lack of interest in the visuals stems from a weak script and lack of care from the top.

Filmmakers obviously move between genres fairly often, though this push for a holiday movie with decidedly non-holiday DNA doesn’t work.

Chris Morgan penned the screenplay — his previous work includes Shazam! Fury of the Gods & an otherwise nearly exclusive cohort of Fast & Furious franchise films. Jake Kasdan only directed, though he has been a writer/director on projects such as Jumanji: The Next Level & Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story. His father is Lawrence Kasdan, famed screenwriter for many Star Wars entries & Raiders of the Lost Ark.

These are gifted people, who have made enjoyable concepts before. What went wrong? Was it a lack of passion or energy? Was it trouble with juggling too much at once? Were their hands tied?

I don’t have answers to many of my own questions, but I do know this: Kasdan & Morgan can — and have — done better.

Dwayne Johnson reportedly missed several days of shooting, and frequently arrived hours late. While some of his fellow cast members (and the director) defended him, and it’s perfectly possible there were important, reasonable excuses, I do believe that tardiness sets a metaphorical tone for Red One as a whole.

It all feels phoned-in and phony; unfinished, un-prioritized.

As absurd as it sounds, a Christmas action/kidnap-rescue/fantasy world flick could work; however, when it arrives joyless and mundane, there’s no chance. With a $32 million opening weekend, Red One will struggle to turn a profit. We’ll see how streaming goes.

Shallow, Disingenuous Sentimentality

Red One feels inherently commercial, and there’s something uncomfortably cynical about that. It doesn’t venture past its worn-out formulas, yet it still begs for your money & expects to be treated as a worthy blockbuster — regardless of the content.

I do appreciate the hope offered in the movie’s ideas: second chances, believing in people, even when they aren’t believing in themselves, or are making poor choices. The film is definitely trying to give us some emotional resonance with its two leads. I can see it. Evans is struggling to be a better, more present father for his character’s son. Johnson’s character has lost faith in the goodness of people, grownups, to be specific, and needs that spark of purpose restored.

I picked up on all of that. Those messages are there, but they’re soulless in execution; rudderless, unbalanced, artificial, pedestrian. We’re going through the beats, doing the motions, and as we venture from scene to scene, there’s a consistent emptiness.

The characters are written one-dimensionally. Evans is the silly one. Johnson is no-nonsense. Lucy Liu is your stereotypical Hollywood head of the FBI, CIA, Insert Acronym Here, but for mythological assets. Simmons is a ripped, badass gym bro Santa, who nevertheless still values cookies & kindness. Krampus (Kristofer Hivju) slaps the shit out of people. That’s what they do. They have one trait, a slot in the plot, they do their thing, and that’s it. There’s no mystery, depth, or nuance. Key conversations & moments of imperative growth play out in bland car interiors with little or no background music.

In general, the possibility for enjoyment can get lost within shoddy world-building, mind-numbing exposition, straight-up awkward, cringe-worthy moments, and somewhere around twenty mediocre interpretations of movies from ten different genres attempting to share the same two-hour slot.

Red One is supposed to be silly. That’s not my issue. I simply wanted the silliness to be cool — and it could’ve been. This whole thing could’ve been a fun, holiday blast with a tighter script, less reliance on disjointed spectacle, and fewer cheap attempts at grabbing audience attention. More cast members needed to loosen up & embrace the ridiculous premise. Some absolutely did; others, while still talented and performing admirably, didn’t seem to grasp the atmosphere. Perhaps no one was told what the atmosphere should be in the first place.

More than anything, Red One keeps saying look how sentimental I am without earning it. It skips the difficult work of connecting audiences with their sense of empathy, assuming you won’t notice the cut corner.

Even at its absolute best, a Christmas kidnapping caper would likely never be a shoo-in for the Oscars, and it didn’t need to be. With a little more self-awareness — a little more self-ridicule — this movie might’ve saved itself by laughing at itself.

Studios Can Be Woefully Out-of-Touch

Initially, Red One was supposed to be a Prime Video release with no theatrical run. After significant delays related to the SAG-AFTRA strike, it was promoted to a cinema offering, and Johnson, after seeing Oppenheimer, believed an IMAX release for his new Christmas flick would be a “game changer” on the scale of a Christopher Nolan biopic.

What? Oh no. What were they thinking? How do you make that comparison? Which executives emboldened these thoughts & saw this through?

It amazes me to see so many major figures of Hollywood scratch their heads confusedly, wondering why multiple motion pictures have failed at the box office recently. People want to see a good movie. It’s that simple. They don’t want to see a bad one. Audiences are exhausted from seeing the same sanitized, manufactured, risk-assessed products again, and again, and again. The average person’s budget is getting tighter and tighter. Their TVs at home are getting nicer and nicer. Unless you’re a dedicated cinephile, no one is going out to the big screen for anything sub-par or lackluster.

This anxious climate has made major studio heads risk-averse. They don’t want films to be different. They want them all to be the same. Replicate and duplicate with minimum effort, maximum return. Franchise, franchise, franchise, franchise, franchise. Spectacle and nothing else. Forget artistic independence and freedom.

Yes, sometimes filmmakers just can’t make it work. They do a bad job and move on, but personally, I think something else happens more often these days. Distrust, among shareholders, executives, the powers-that-be, leads to the watering-down of a filmmaker’s vision. The end result is less the director’s creation and more the offspring of a corporation.

When so much meddling happens in the creative process, you can see it. You can see each moment on screen that came to be when someone thought they were “saving” Red One from financial ruin. In reality, the opposite occurred.

There’s still hope for Dwayne this year. Moana 2 is coming, and while I disapprove of Disney’s never-ending sequels & remakes, I am excited for that one.

On merit alone, Red One is a no-go. With that said, I do believe it has some potential to impress the so bad, it’s good crowd.

At least we know how Santa Claus is able to deliver gifts to every household on Earth in one night now: crazy-ass, janky Ant-Man parkour.

Big shout-out to Garcia, though. That’s my guy. Love polar bears. Love Garcia. Don’t say anything bad about him — not a single word. Are you telling me this clown is a Level 4 Naughty Lister?

Red One receives a 3 out of 10.

Additional Information:

• Director: Jake Kasdan
• Writer: Chris Morgan
• Cinematographer: Dan Mindel
• Music: Henry Jackman
• Production Companies: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Seven Bucks Productions
• Distributor: Amazon MGM Studios (US), Warner Bros. Pictures (International)
• Images of Film from IMDb

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