With Red One, Amazon delivers a Marvel knock-off for Christmas

Films made by committee, where confused notes and tangents compete for dominance, at least offer a compelling friction in their chaos. Films made by focus groups, e.g The red oneenter a bland Fake Movie canon dominated by Netflix’s wannabe blockbusters (Red message, Heart of stone, The gray man). These films—starring former superhero actors and/or helmed by their middle management filmmakers—chase the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe with bets, offering a little bit of everything for everyone while excelling at exactly nothing. These are the ones that I wrote at review Heart of stone“two hours that bear an uncanny resemblance to cinema, but on closer inspection is more akin to a business proposal.” These three Netflix films were made to be dead-eyed horses forever circling a content carousel labeled “spy-action-thrillers,” but Amazon MGM’s The red one is even more mercenary in pursuit of a holiday franchise.

Being both a spy action thriller and a Christmas movie (and a buddy comedy and a tale of a father-son reunion), The red one is like the $250M version of those IP-chasing public domain slashers starring Steamboat Willie and Winnie the Pooh. What more recognizable, copyright-free name to build your synergistic, ubiquitous tentpole around than Santa Claus?

So, The red one inserts a slew of Christmas nouns into its MCU Mad Lib, trapping ex-superheroes Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans from the Fake Movie mines. The leather-clad globetrotters chasing MacGuffins with a host of gadgets and powers and eye-popping cars, this time on the hunt for a kidnapped Santa Claus – beat CG snowmen instead of CG bug aliens. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that the film was written by Fast & Furious franchise writer Chris Morgan, but that should only reinforce the idea that all blockbusters approach a monotonous event horizon from which no amount of originality can escape.

As Jesse Hassenger notes in his AV Club reviewthe desaturated colors, half-assed jokes, CG sheen, and anonymously frenetic action sequences don’t help The red one beat the MCU charges. But that’s only on the surface of the flat, digital-forward film, where conversations mostly take place in the passenger seat on the way to the next Atlanta warehouse. In addition to its build-it-in-post aesthetic, the world of The red one replaces imagination with imitation. Where Artemis Fowl made its myth-meets-technology universe accessible to children, The red one introduces it to the military-industrial-superhero movie complex. Referring to Santa in Secret-Service-speak is just the beginning.

You see, i The red one— an Amazon Christmas movie deeply concerned with delivery and production logistics — Santa lives in a factory metropolis at the North Pole, protected by a Wakandan force field dome and guarded by several non-governmental agencies. Callum Drift (Johnson) controls one of these, the ELF (Enforcement, Logistics and Fortification). No, The Rock is ironically not playing a little elf, despite Drift’s main gimmick being that he can shrink and grow at will just like Ant-Man; he’s just a loyal employee who works for Amazon like everyone else. Maybe Johnson pissed in a bottle on put out of solidarity with his delivery driver comrades?

ELF works with MORA (Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), which is legally separate from SHIELD, but similarly obsessed with walkie-talkie communication, corporate efficiency, proper protocol, busy computer screens, and wearing black. It’s led by Lucy Liu, who gestures at the Headless Horseman with even less disguised weariness than Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. They are all concerned that Naughty List’s count has increased 20% year-on-year. Remember when massive tight-knit organizations were the bad guys in holiday movies?

The red one‘s villains look pretty much like the rabble running around in every other recent action movie. The main villain Grýla may be an ancient winter witch inspired by Cate Blanchett’s Hela, but her militia of underlings aren’t weird little creatures like the ones that walk into Santa’s warehouse. Instead, they are burly guys with facial tattoos wearing flat jackets. Like so many superhero movies that are ashamed of their origins, The red one trying to ground himself in all the wrong ways.

Who’s shooting this witch’s heavy stuff? Why do witches use drones? Why does an exhibition scene take place in the North Pole weight room where producer-star The Rock sees JK Simmons’ needlessly jacked-up Santa Claus? The answer to all of these is that big muscles, militarized equipment and hi-tech nonsense ticks some algorithmic box, one that seeks to offset the inherent frivolity of a Christmas caper or comic book story with Serious Cool Stuff. That’s why the main character, Jack O’Malley (Evans), is just there to roll his eyes at the thought of “saving Christmas” and end every other scene with a remark that has become its own sarcastic shorthand among Marvel -bashers: “What just happened?”

What just happened is that The red one was designed from the ground up by Hiram Garcia, president of The Rock’s production company, less as a movie and more as a shareholder stocking stuffer. It was made by people who spend their days exploiting Santa for tax breaks. It was made to bank on a potential universe, to fulfill brand partnerships (with Hasbro, Mattel, and at least a few others front-and-center), and to capitalize on overworked FX houses with one last monster for dark and green -gray to see. Some have described The red one like a Grinch-esque movie, but it’s not quite right. The red one didn’t steal Christmas but bought it in a hostile takeover and fired everyone.