Silver Pictures
Die Hard is one of the few successful Christmas action films
Despite it being the time of year when people go to the cinema the most, studios’ bets on Christmas action films tend to go wrong.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year – a time for carols and concerts, trees and decorations, mulled wine, fireplaces and, of course, The Rock (aka Dwayne Johnson). Or at least that’s how it is, according to Hollywood. The action star’s latest film, Red Onehas been showing in cinemas around the world since mid-November. But, from a critical point of view, it has been considered bad.
For those who haven’t seen it, the film was conceived as the first part of a Christmas-themed action franchise. The film features Dwayne Johnson as Callum Drift, commander of the North Pole security teama ELF (Enforcement Logistics and Fortification).
When the Santa Claus is kidnapped On Christmas Eve, Drift must join a band of Santa’s soldiers and mercenaries, played by action stars like Chris Evans and Lucy Liu, who must fight their way through Lapland to defeat the evil forces trying to destroy Christmas. .
In the words of its own marketing team, Red One presents itself to the public as an “action mission around the world to save Christmas”. But it is not known exactly which Christmas he plans to save.
The film currently has a 31% score on Rotten Tomatoesand opened to poor box office numbers around the world. Some analysts have predicted that the film will make a loss of around $100 million.
Despite the all-too-easy temptation to deride Red One as a clearly ill-conceived project, this is not an isolated disaster. On the contrary, Red One is just the latest in a long series of infamous attempts by Hollywood studios to make a spectacular Christmas action film.
In the 80s, we had Santa Claus: The Movie (1985), brought by the producers of Superman: The Movie (1978). If Superman made some viewers believe that a man could fly, Santa Claus: The Movie tried to use the same pioneering special effects to make us believe that reindeer could fly, turning Santa’s sleigh ride into a box office success. It was a failure.
In the 1990s, there was Jingle All the Way, a poorly conceived Arnold Schwarzenegger vehicle that, despite being the subject of many festive memes, was a critical disaster. In 2010, Arthur Christmas, a co-production between Aardman Studios and Sony Pictures, attempted to modernize Santa’s infrastructure, turning your sled into a rocket. Once again, the film was a box office disappointment, despite receiving positive reviews from critics.
Of course, there are exceptions to the rule of Christmas action films being box office failures. Let’s not forget that, for many fans, Die Hard It’s a Christmas movie. But the story of Hollywood’s attempt to combine the aesthetics of the action-adventure genre with that of Christmas almost always ended in failure.
So why does Hollywood persist with this strategy? In large part, because he painted himself into a corner. In its heyday, Hollywood produced Christmas classics like Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Meet Me in St Louis (1944) and White Christmas (1954).
These films are welcoming, warm and comforting. They set the model not only for the ritual of watching movies at Christmastime, but also for what that Christmas movie-watching experience should be. But they were all made before the popularization of television. And as home viewing has intensified over the past 75 years, Hollywood has been forced to position itself as the distinctly unwelcoming equivalent of the armchair and fireplace.
Watching movies at home is relaxing. When we imagine our Christmas movie routines, many of us imagine ourselves surrounded by loved ones, in comfy pajamas, enjoying a cozy night together watching Home Alone, The Muppet Christmas Carol or Love Actually.
Going to the cinema, however, It’s supposed to be spectacular. It’s loud, booming, exciting and visceral. This all seems a little intimidating and unnecessary when we’re sitting down with a nice turkey mayonnaise sandwich and a cup of tea.
If we don’t want our Christmas movies to look like Red One, maybe we should ask ourselves what we want from our seasonal experiences. Statistics show that Christmas continues to be the time of year when people have more likely to go to the cinema. But the core audience needed to keep movie theaters afloat is a younger demographic that prefers big superhero, action and sci-fi franchises.
The rest of us, however, are left looking forward to a Christmas viewing experience that now seems to have been taken over by channels like Hallmark and Netflix, which even have a section dedicated to Christmas. This is great news for Lindsay Lohan, who appears to be experiencing something of a career renaissance as she executive produces and stars in some Christmas “classics,” such as Falling for Christmas (2022) and, more recently, Our Little Secret .
These films may be cheesier than a party-baked Camembert, but there’s a reason they’re popular. They remind us of the ghosts of Christmas movies past that the big movie studios they don’t seem to be able to or don’t currently want to do.
The film industry needs to think hard about the types of films it hopes to contribute to the Christmas movie tradition in the future. But we also need to accept that we may be asking Hollywood for something that even Santa Claus would have difficulty delivering.
