The Rock and Captain America Save Christmas in Red One Trailer
When Christmas needs saving, you call in the Avengers… or one of them, anyway, plus the Rock. Today, Amazon MGM Studios released a trailer for Red One, their upcoming Christmas action film. Red One finds a special Elf operative named Callum Drift teaming up with a human bounty hunter to find a kidnapped Santa Claus on Christmas Eve. Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson and Chris Evans star as the buddy cop leads, with Lucy Liu, Bonnie Hunt, Nick Kroll, Kiernan Shipka, and Mary Elizabeth Ellis in supporting roles, and the great J.K. Simmons as Santa Claus. Directed by Jake Kasdan from a script by Chris Morgan, Red One lands its sleigh in theaters on November 15, 2024, and you can see the trailer below:
This movie should be tailor-made for me. I love action movies, I love Christmas movies, and I really, really, REALLY love Christmas action movies, and I’m always ready to add another to my yearly Christmas Movie Watchlist, no matter how big it gets. But I’m underwhelmed by the Red One trailer, and that’s disappointing. Maybe I set myself up for failure on this one; I expected a somewhat more straightforward action movie. Sure, it involves Santa Claus, so there’s at least a little bit of fantasy involved, but I wanted something more in the vein of Violent Night, albeit not as gruesome (this is still the Rock). Instead, we’ve got giant killer snowmen, talking polar bear guards, a silly Krampus, a bevy of other fantastical creatures, and more CGI than your average train sequence in a modern film. I guess I should’ve figured as much; Jake Kasdan directed those Jumanji sequels the Rock starred in, plus comedies like Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, Bad Teacher, and episodes of Freaks and Geeks (which, if you’ve never seen it, I cannot recommend enough) and Undeclared (which is from a lot of the same people behind Freaks and Geeks and is also good but not in the same league). And screenwriter Chris Morgan wrote most of the Fast and Furious movies, Wanted, and Shazam!: Fury of the Gods. This feels more in line with that sort of thing.
And that doesn’t mean Red One won’t be good. I’m not opposed to an overly fantastical story about saving Santa (who would be?), and a couple of the lines in the trailer genuinely made me laugh – especially Chris Evans asking the toy store clerk if he has a Wonder Woman action figure. And even more than the two leads, I love the idea of casting J.K. Simmons as a gruff, jacked Santa Claus. Santa’s early joke about the Rock being his reindeer’s boyfriend makes me think this may not be an overly sanitized “modern” film that caters to the perpetually offended. Also, it’s always nice to see Lucy Liu again, even in what is probably a throwaway role; it feels like she dropped off the face of the Earth at one point, which is a shame because she’s pretty great. But there are problems with that trailer beyond different expectations. For one, the CGI looks mostly horrendous, which is the depressing norm nowadays, but it still irks. This movie has an astronomical budget – to the extent that I think we can safely assume it’ll be a flop – and still has ugly special effects, and there’s no excuse for Hollywood to keep doing this. And although a couple of lines land, plenty of others don’t, and they’re mixed with what look like corny set-ups for scenes that could have been much cooler. The Rock fighting Krampus should be awesome, but it’s a jokey scene involving a drinking game instead of a bone-crunching showdown. Sentient snowmen attacking a beach is undermined by a goofy gag that leads to a lame line from Evans. I want this movie to be amazing, but I get a mediocre-at-best vibe from the Red One trailer.
