It’s the most wonderful time of the year. It’s the season for carols and concerts, trees and tinsel, mulled wine, fireplaces, and of course The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson). At least according to Hollywood, it is. The action star’s latest film, Red One, has been shown in theaters around the world since mid-November. However, critically, it is considered a bit of a stinker.
In case you missed it, this movie was planned as the first in a Christmas-themed action series. Dwayne Johnson has been cast as Callum Drift, commander of the North Pole Enforcement Logistics and Fortress (ELF), or Santa’s security team.
When Santa is kidnapped on Christmas Eve, Drift teams up with a band of Santa soldiers and mercenaries, played by action heavyweights like Chris Evans and Lucy Liu, to take down the evil forces trying to destroy Christmas. We have to break through Rand.
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In the words of its marketing team, Red One is marketing itself to viewers as “an action-packed mission across the world to save Christmas.” However, it is still unclear whose Christmas exactly they believe will be their salvation.
The film currently has a 31% score on Rotten Tomatoes, but has underperformed at the box office worldwide. Some analysts predict that the film will make a loss of around US$100m (£78m).
It’s very easy to want to deride Red One as a clearly ill-conceived project, but this isn’t just a one-off disaster. On the contrary, Red One is just the latest in Hollywood studios’ infamous attempt to make an epic Christmas action movie.
The 1980s had Santa Claus the Movie (1985), brought to you by the producers of Superman The Movie (1978). “Superman” famously made some viewers believe that humans could fly, and “The Santa Clause: The Movie” used the same pioneering special effects to make some viewers believe that reindeer could fly. They tried to transform Santa’s sleigh ride into a blockbuster movie. It was a failure.
The 1990s saw the arrival of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ill-advised vehicle, “Jingle All the Way,” which, despite being the subject of many festive memes, was a major disaster. It became. In 2010, Arthur Christmas, a co-production between Aardman Studios and Sony Pictures, attempted to modernize Santa’s infrastructure in order to upgrade his sleigh into a rocket ship. The film also received positive reviews from critics, but was a disappointment at the box office.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule that Christmas action movies bomb the box office. Remember, for many fans, Die Hard is a Christmas movie. But Hollywood’s history of trying to marry the aesthetics of the action-adventure genre with the aesthetics of Christmas has almost always ended in failure.
Read more: Die Hard is a Christmas (terrorism) movie
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So why does Hollywood insist on this strategy?A big reason is that it has backed itself into a corner. During its heyday, Hollywood produced such Christmas classics as Miracle on 34th Street (1947), See You in St. Louis (1944), and White Christmas (1954).
These movies are cozy, warm, and comforting. They established not only the ritual of watching a movie on Christmas Day, but the template for what the Christmas moviegoing experience should be. However, all of them were created before television became popular. And as home viewing has intensified over the past 75 years, Hollywood has been forced to position itself as the decidedly uncomfortable equivalent of armchairs and roaring fires.
Watching a movie at home can be relaxing. When we think of cinematic Christmas routines, many of us imagine watching movies like Home Alone, A Muppet Christmas Carol, or Love, surrounded by loved ones, wearing comfy pajamas, and drinking mulled wine and canned beer. I’m sure you’re imagining enjoying a cozy evening watching Actuary or something together. quality street.
Read more: ‘The Muppet Christmas Carol’ turns 30: How this movie became a cult classic
But going to the cinema should be great. It’s loud, thumping, thrilling and visceral. It all feels a little intimidating and unnecessary when you’re sitting at Jim Jam with a delicious turkey mayo sandwich and a cup of tea.
If you don’t want your Christmas movie to look like Red One, you might want to ask yourself what you want out of your seasonal viewing experience. Statistics show that Christmas remains the time when people are most likely to go to the cinema. But the core audience needed to keep movie theaters afloat is young people who prefer blockbuster superhero, action, and sci-fi series.
But the rest of us are left craving the Christmas viewing experience, which now seems to have been taken over by the likes of Hallmark Channel and Netflix, and there’s even a section dedicated to Christmas. This is good news for Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay Lohan is undergoing something of a career renaissance, executive producing and starring in questionable Christmas “classics” such as Falling for Christmas (2022) and, most recently, Our Little Secret. It seems that you are experiencing.
These movies may be cheesier than a festive baked camembert, but there’s a reason they’re popular. These remind us of the ghosts of Christmas movies of the past, which major film studios seem unable or unwilling to produce today.
The film industry needs to think seriously about what kind of films it wants to contribute to the Christmas movie tradition in the future. But we also have to accept that we might be looking for something from Hollywood that even Santa would have a hard time delivering.
