It’s halfway to Christmas and even so you’re not ready to behold the confoundingly chaotic trailer for Red One. The Chris Evans and Dwayne Johnson holiday action movie directed by Jake Kasdan (Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle) is set for release on November 15 from Amazon MGM.
Starting off with a swole Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) lifting weights (to keep those cookie calories down, presumably) with the help of the commander of the ELF Task Force—played by Johnson as “The Rock if he were Santa’s bodyguard”—isn’t much of a stretch for an action movie, sure. It’s more the incomprehensible series of plot slop that follows, which leaves us wondering what this is movie trying to be, outside of a Christmas version of Taken? The buff-butt snowmen fight scene on the beach is only the tip of the head-scratching choices here. Take a look for yourself in the trailer below:
We have so many questions! Just in this clip we get a jacked Santa being benched and kidnapped; Chris Evans (with dark hair to signal he’s a rebel) playing a guy who’s both on the naughty list—but also an essential part of helping the Rock find his boss; magic that embiggens toys into functional real-world objects; a Krampus kink fight club; and those nightmare fuel snowmen with bodybuilder bods, including ice cream scoop butt cheeks that don’t melt on the beach.
Somehow, this first look at Red One seemingly strips its holiday movie conceit of any Christmas spirit by leaning hard into the action. Young Rock’s holiday special, one of the best Dwayne Johnson starring vehicles produced by his team, actually captures the childlike wonder of the holiday season, which makes the surprising mess on display here even more curious. Compare this to Violent Night, another recent holiday action movie featuring a subversive Santa which still took an earnest approach to all its seasonal lore. Here, it’s presented as secondary joke fodder on steroids. Seriously, why do all the Christmas characters look like they go to the same gym? From the trailer at least, Red One is giving Saturday Night Live skit meets commercial action movie, without the cleverness or heart of holidays films.
Red One opens in theaters on November 15.
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