"Red One" didn't stay number one for long. The holiday action vehicle for Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson flamed out at the box office well before Christmas ever came, and these odd decisions definitely didn't help matters.
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00:00Red One didn't stay number one for long.
00:02The holiday action vehicle for Dwayne The Rock Johnson flamed out at the box office
00:06well before Christmas ever came, and these odd decisions definitely didn't help matters.
00:11Warning!
00:12Spoilers ahead, if you're interested.
00:14Red One goes off the rails pretty quickly.
00:16After opening on a flashback scene of Chris Evans' Jack O'Malley being a naughty kid,
00:20it's not too long until it whisks away to the present day, when we're introduced to
00:24The Rock's Callum Drift, as he guards Santa Claus at a Philadelphia mall.
00:28The real Santa pretends to be a fake mall Santa for some reason, giving shades of Miracle
00:33on 34th Street, setting aside how Santa got this job or how his bodyguard got to be part
00:38of the deal.
00:39So far, so good.
00:40After Santa leaves the mall, Drift calls upon a squad of SUVs that escort him and his boss
00:45to a U.S. military hangar.
00:46In the hangar, Santa's classic sleigh, along with giant reindeer, is parked next to a few
00:51high-end fighter jets.
00:52Then, a U.S. military liaison greets Santa, ordering two pilots to escort his sleigh during
00:57takeoff.
00:58Soon enough, Santa gives the reindeer a magical command, and the sleigh goes into lightspeed
01:03towards the North Pole.
01:04Which raises the question, if Santa can go that fast, what's the purpose of the military
01:08jets?
01:09They don't follow him long, and once he speeds up, no mortal vehicle can catch him anyway.
01:14He's a singular force in the universe.
01:16One of the most egregious scenes in the film, due to its moral implications, is when The
01:20Rock tortures Jack O'Malley.
01:22Jack had just been abducted by director Harlow and her Mora agent, then shipped off to the
01:26North Pole to be interrogated on how he helped track down Santa.
01:29It quickly turns into an enhanced interrogation involving a large, sentient polar bear.
01:34"...I see him."
01:35"...What the hell?"
01:38This leads to the sound of cracking bones and Jack screaming in pain.
01:41That is, until Harlow orders them to stop.
01:43It's implied that this is a semi-regular occurrence.
01:46A big problem is that this is all played for laughs.
01:49It's riffing off of post-9-11 shows and movies, such as Zero Dark Thirty and of 24, which
01:54would portray torture as a necessary tool against terrorism.
01:57The supposed humor in Red One, then, comes from the incongruity of the gritty, hard-boiled
02:02setup and the whimsical Christmas movie aesthetics.
02:05The morality of The Rock or of Santa's organization, however, is not to be questioned.
02:09Worse, the whole theme of the movie is about how Santa doesn't want to punish bad kids,
02:14just reward the good ones.
02:15It's the villain Greela who plans to punish the whole world.
02:18To have a scene condoning punitive violence seems to inherently contradict that message.
02:23"...the world will be punished."
02:25One of the cringiest running bits in Red One has got to be the characters constantly spouting
02:30off supposed comedic acronyms throughout the interminable runtime.
02:33To be fair, the first one introduced, M.O.R.A., which stands for Mythological Oversight and
02:38Restoration Authority, isn't really a joke, and is instead an obvious failed attempt at
02:43jumpstarting some sort of cinematic holiday universe.
02:45Basically, it's meant to be like the MCU's SHIELD, or Monarch, in the legendary MonsterVerse.
02:51Other acronyms and initialisms, however, are clearly attempts at jokes, like N.L., standing
02:55for Naughty Lister.
02:57The worst of the bunch has to be ELF, which stands for Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification.
03:03It's the organization with special agents in red and green tactical leather outfits
03:07that protect Santa Claus, headed by Drift.
03:09But he somehow gets offended when Jack asks him if he's an elf himself.
03:12To make their elf acronym joke even worse and more nonsensical, Santa's elves also exist
03:18in this world.
03:19Are they not part of the ELF team?
03:20If so, how do they feel about the acronym being named after their species?
03:24And why is the ROXO discriminatory towards his cheery Christmas colleagues?
03:29Callum Drift's weapon of choice is a magical gauntlet that can turn toys into real objects.
03:34For instance, he uses the gauntlet to transform a Matchbox toy car into a real, drivable product
03:39play sports car.
03:41Chris Evans' Jack then quips that he wants to use the gauntlet on a Wonder Woman doll.
03:44It's not how it works, come on!
03:46The problem isn't the gadget itself, it's how lazy the rules around it are.
03:50We're told it has limitations, but never told what its limitations are, or the full extent
03:54of its powers.
03:55How did-
03:56I adjusted it to reality.
03:57And does that-
03:58No, it doesn't work on everything.
03:59No, you can't try it.
04:00No, you can't drive.
04:01No more questions.
04:02But seriously, what counts as a toy?
04:04At one point, The Rock takes a Monopoly board game and does nothing with it.
04:07Could he conceivably crush an enemy with a life-size hotel piece?
04:11Or would it be made of brick and mortar or steel-colored plastic?
04:14What about a Nerf gun?
04:15Would the projectiles become real, exploding missiles instead of foam?
04:19Also, it can turn a chicken keychain into a live bird, which means that Jack's assumption
04:24about the Wonder Woman doll might unfortunately work, given what's explicitly shown on screen.
04:29Another dumb aspect of the worldbuilding in Red One is how all toy stores, for some reason,
04:33have magical portals that can teleport people to other toy stores across the world.
04:38The Rock explains to a reasonably dumbfounded Jack that this is used as a travel network
04:42for Santa's helpers, and is also where The Rock gets his aforementioned supplies.
04:46However, there seems to be a lot of logistical issues involved with these magical toy store
04:51portals.
04:52For one, when the doors are opened, the portal itself is hidden by an illusion of a small
04:56supply closet.
04:57But what's stopping an employee from getting a mop and accidentally finding themselves
05:01in China or Finland?
05:03Also, what constitutes a toy store, anyway?
05:05Is it a store that only sells toys, or would a megastore like Walmart or Target count,
05:10since it undeniably sells a lot of toys, even if it doesn't exclusively?
05:15Where is the line drawn?
05:16Now, to be fair to Red One, there is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it shot of The Rock using a special key from
05:20his keychain before opening the toy store's supply closet.
05:23So, presumably, it's the key that's creating the portal, and not the toy store itself.
05:27However, that's still a plot hole, because if it's just the key that's creating the portal
05:32magic, couldn't The Rock just use it to make any door into a portal?
05:35The toy store portals and The Rock's toy manipulation gauntlet both lead to one of the most annoying
05:40issues in any universe that relies on a secret magical world hidden away from the real one.
05:44How do you keep that world a secret for so long?
05:47It makes a certain amount of sense if the plot takes place entirely in the fantasy realm,
05:52or the fights in the real world are in remote places, or even if there's some sort of fantastical
05:56explanation for why people aren't aware.
05:59However, Red One doesn't do any of that.
06:01Instead, we have The Rock transforming a toy car into a real one in the middle of a crowded
06:05city street with no one batting an eye, and then having a bombastic fight with sentient
06:10snowmen on a busy beach that didn't become headline news instantly.
06:14That was… so disturbing.
06:17This is especially galling in a modern context, since everyone and their grandmothers now
06:21have phones that can record video.
06:23So even if people thought it was a hoax initially, the multiple angles and sources would prove
06:28their validity soon enough.
06:29Even if not, conspiracy theories would pop up immediately anyway.
06:33There could have even been a plot point about the villain Gryla wanting to unveil the mythological
06:37realm to the humans to strike fear in them before her plan to imprison them.
06:41But alas, we got what we got.
06:43Like a lot of the MCU films that Red One is clearly trying to emulate, the main dynamic
06:47and emotional core of the film is the bickering between the two leads.
06:50The Rock as Santa's stoic, loyal soldier, and Jack O'Sullivan as the sardonic and selfish
06:55criminal-turned-antihero.
06:57This means their back-and-forth barbs take up most of the content's runtime, leaving
07:01little room for much else, including fleshing out Gryla's part of the story.
07:05Essentially, her plan involves manufacturing billions of magical snow globes that would
07:09trap any human that had ever done anything even remotely naughty, which would effectively
07:13be everyone living on Earth.
07:15At one point, Jack sees his estranged son Dylan get trapped inside one of them.
07:19Then in a series of events so stupid it almost made its own entry, Jack also finds himself
07:24trapped in a magical snow globe, too, positioned next to his son in Gryla's evil lair.
07:29However, after a brief heart-to-heart between the two, the magical snow globe prisons break
07:33and shatter, freeing them both.
07:35This means that there's no way Gryla would have been able to magically keep billions
07:38of people locked up for long if simply being slightly nicer than usual for, like, five
07:43minutes would allow prisoners to escape.
07:45A regular prison would be better, and more evil, too.
07:48Now, admittedly, the logistical issues involving Santa are inherently a problem with all popular
07:53Christmas movies that focus on him.
07:55For instance, how can Santa reasonably travel across the world in one night?
07:59And how was he not seen or noticed during that time, given our advanced technology,
08:03such as radar, sonar, surveillance cameras, cell phones, satellite feeds, and more?
08:08And most importantly, do parents get amnesia about the presents they didn't buy?
08:12The thing is, in most Christmas stories, the logistics of Santa's journey aren't that important,
08:16and can usually be hand-waved away with,
08:18"...because Christmas magic."
08:20Which, honestly, is fine.
08:22Holiday films are often simple fairy tales anyway, so there's nothing wrong with just
08:26implying Santa gets it done somehow.
08:28Some whimsy in your storytelling is healthy every now and then.
08:30The issue with Red One is we do see the logistics.
08:33It's a big part of the final scene.
08:35Furthermore, one of the main plot points that gets the story in motion is Jack using
08:39satellite tech to track down and find Santa.
08:42So it answers a question no one was seriously asking, and proceeds to answer it poorly.
08:47While Santa's reindeer are appropriately fast, Santa himself simply parkours everywhere at
08:51only slightly above regular human speed once arriving.
08:55And even though it's established that tech can find him, he doesn't do anything to hide
08:58himself outside of turning small.
09:01The only clever moment, how he deals with chimney-less houses, is ripped off from 1994's
09:05The Santa Clause.
09:06"...turns into jello, and a fireplace kind of appears, and goes through it like this."
09:13The North Pole, as seen in Red One, is basically a dystopian red-and-green-painted Amazon factory
09:17— not exactly a Santa-worthy sort of place.
09:20To add insult to injury, the rock visits Santa's original, humble, now historical cabin, with
09:25a plaque that even says where it all began.
09:27This obviously implies that Santa began his toy-making career in the cabin, and then subsequently
09:32grew his empire to be as gaudy as possible.
09:34This sort of capitalist hagiography, which galvanizes great, self-made men, has always
09:39been a lie, even if it's constantly regurgitated in our mainstream media.
09:44Even Amazon's Jeff Bezos, who many point to as a prototypical self-made billionaire, always
09:49fails to mention that he was given a loan from his family of over half a million dollars
09:53when accounting for inflation.
09:55That's an amount of wealth most people, even in the 90s, were not privy to.
09:59But seeing as Amazon MGM Studios is behind Red One, it's no surprise that this plot point
10:03is shoved in.