Films made by committee, in which confused tones and tangents vie for dominance, offer at least some compelling friction in their chaos. Films made by focus groups, such as Redenter a boring Fake Movie canon dominated by Netflix’s wannabe blockbusters (Red notice, Heart Of Stone, The Gray Man). Starring former superhero actors and/or aided by their middle-manager filmmakers, these films emulate the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s betting success and offer everyone a little bit of everything while excelling at exactly nothing. . They are, as I wrote when reviewing Heart Of Stone“two hours that bear an uncanny resemblance to cinema, but on closer inspection look more like a business proposition.” These three Netflix films were created like dead-eyed horses forever circling a content carousel labeled “spy action thrillers,” but Amazon MGM’s Red is even more mercenary looking for a vacation franchise.

Because they’re both spy action thrillers And a Christmas movie (and a buddy comedy and a father-son reconnection story), Red is like the $250 million version of those IP-hunting public domain slashers starring Steamboat Willie and Winnie the Pooh. What’s a more recognizable, copyright-free name to build your synergistic, all-encompassing tentpole around than Santa Claus?

So, Red inserts a slew of Yuletide nouns into the MCU Mad Lib, bringing ex-superheroes Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans out of the Fake Movie mines. The frilly-clad globetrotters who chase MacGuffins with a slew of gadgets and powers and strikingly flashy cars just happen to be on the hunt for a kidnapped Santa Claus this time around – whacking CG henchman snowmen instead of CG bug aliens. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the film was written by Fast and furious franchise writer Chris Morgan, but that should only reinforce the idea that all blockbusters approach a monotonous event horizon from which no originality can escape.

As Jesse Hassenger notes in his AV club judgementthe desaturated colors, half-hearted jokes, CG gloss and anonymously frenetic action scenes don’t help Red to beat the MCU allegations. But that’s just scratching the surface of the flat, digitally transmitted film, where conversations mostly take place in the passenger seat on the way to the next warehouse in Atlanta. In addition to the built-in aesthetics, the world of Red replaces imagination with imitation. Where Artemis Bird made its myth-meets-tech universe accessible to children, Red introduces it to the military-industrial-superhero film complex. Referencing Santa Claus in the Secret Service speech is just the beginning.

See, inside Red– an Amazon Christmas film that deals seriously with delivery and production logistics – Santa Claus lives in a factory metropolis at the North Pole, protected by a Wakandan force field dome and monitored by multiple extra-governmental agencies. Callum Drift (Johnson) leads one of these, ELF (Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification). No, The Rock doesn’t ironically play 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 set in solidarity with his delivery person comrades?

ELF works with MORA (the Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), which is legally distinct from SHIELD, but is also obsessed with walkie-talkie communications, business efficiency, proper protocol, busy computer monitors, and wearing black. It’s led by Lucy Liu, who gestures to the Headless Horseman with even less disguised weariness than Samuel L. Jackson’s Nick Fury. They are all concerned that the Naughty List’s numbers are up 20% year-on-year. Remember when huge, cramped organizations were the bad guys in holiday movies?

RedThe film’s villains look a lot like the mob 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 critters like the ones that crash into Santa’s warehouse. Instead, they’re burly guys with face tattoos and body armor. Like so many superhero films that are ashamed of their origins, Red tries to ground herself in the wrong ways.

Who’s shooting at this witch’s heavyweights? Why do witches use drones? Why does an exposition scene take place in the North Pole weight room, with producer-star The Rock mocking JK Simmons’ unnecessarily jacked Santa Claus? The answer to all this is that big muscles, militarized gear and high-tech nonsense tick some algorithmic box, one that aims to offset the inherent frivolity of a Christmas caper or comic strips with Serious Cool Stuff. Therefore, the main character, Jack O’Malley (Evans), is only there to roll his eyes at the idea of ​​“saving Christmas” and end every other scene with a comment that is its own sarcastic shorthand among Marvel bashers became: “What just happened?”

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