The Nature of Justice and the Core Failings of ‘Red One’

Christmas is all about cheer, goodwill, and remembering childish innocence… right?

One would have thought, for all the effort they put into their ad campaign and promoting how much ‘audiences are loving’ Red One, that Hollywood had actually put out a decent movie. They had big-name actors, incredible amounts of CGI, and Henry Jackman composing the soundtrack.

But… it turns out that no matter how much money you throw at a thing, if the core isn’t good writing and a true, resonant message, well, it’s going to flop.

I watched Red One when it came out on Prime (free, which already indicated I needed to keep my expectations low.) When the film started rolling, I thought, oh, yeah, the little boy doesn’t believe in Santa but he’s going to grow up and find out that Santa’s real and that he has to rescue him. It was going to be like Elf — funny, lighthearted, with the classic-if-trite message of ‘just believe in Santa and get some Christmas cheer.’ That expectation stayed until the abrupt arrival of the Christmas Witch.

Yes, you heard that right. A Christmas Witch.

It could have been funny. It could have been a superhero-spy-santa mashup in the tongue-and-cheek tradition of Penguins of Madagascar, or with the silly special-ops side of Prep and Landing or Rise of the Guardians. The characters could have been fully fleshed out with individual fears and faults.

Instead, it got weird, and it got weird fast. Enter a whole lot of un-foreshadowed chaos involving slapping contests, gender-ambiguous children, fast cars, a ghost piano they really should have just run over (haven’t you ever seen a horror movie? Save yourself some trouble!) and some goat-devil-thing that somehow shares a mother with Santa Claus. I get it, they were trying to throw in some allusions to folklore, but it ended up highly confusing the genre and overcomplicating the whole thing.

But the worst part was the message. Christmas movies usually have some sort of sentimental, cheesy message, so it wasn’t like I had high expectations. Hollywood yet again demonstrated just how woke it’s gone, however, in the form of some highly expository and on-the-nose dialogue.

According to the witch, this is her goal — “The world is a mess because they fear nothing. I’m going to give them something to fear.”

She has it partially right. The world is indeed a hot mess because people do not fear God, or His righteous judgment. (Note that ‘righteous’ is also a term the witch uses — a jab at us ‘fire and brimstone’ Christians who’d dare to mention that sin has consequences.) The witch wants to punish everybody on the naughty list by trapping them in snowglobes, everyone ‘from first-degree murderers to jaywalkers, anyone who’s ever lied or been rude…’ and she goes on. Curious how that correlates to a political climate in which capital punishment is yelled down and jaywalking is now no longer a crime in NYC. (And a brief note on that — NYC is crazy as it is without everyone walking in the streets. Plus, if you’ve ever watched COPS, you know that it’s often minor offenses like busted taillights or jaywalking that catch a cop’s attention, only for them to uncover dangerous felons that they can get off the street.)

Back to the movie — when the main characters are discussing the witch’s plans, one of them exclaims in horror that that’s ‘almost everyone.’

Almost?

Um, excuse me?

Raise a hand if you’ve never lied or been rude to somebody.

Pretty sure that’s nobody. Everybody is on the naughty list, newsflash. No one’s perfect. But of course the film glazes over that, even though if anyone had given a thought to that line of dialogue, they would have seen the gaping hole immediately. Anyway, the message they’re trying to promote is that everyone was just a sweet innocent little kid once (ignoring the fact that the main character played by Chris Evans was a rude, bratty thief in his own childhood, and that his own kid is going around hacking computers and slashing tires,) and should be viewed that way now.

Children are not innocent. Anyone who’s worked in childcare can tell you that. Nobody has to teach a kid how to be bad. Sure, kids can be cute. But that doesn’t mean they’re all little paragons of holiness. In fact, as Proverbs 22:15 tells us, ‘Folly is bound up in the heart of a child, but the rod of discipline drives it far from him.’

Now — if everyone is truly good at heart, well then, I suppose it makes sense not to punish everybody. I suppose in that backwards world, it makes sense for someone wanting to enact justice to be the villain. Now, is it the witch’s place to go about doing that? Of course not — she’s not God, nor is she a civil authority. But we all know that what the filmmakers really care about is the witch’s worldview, so blatantly vomited out at us through her dialogue. Wanting people to receive justice for their deeds is bad — we shouldn’t keep track of the naughty kids and everybody should get presents. (Though notice that all the screaming woke mobs seem to want is ‘justice’ — ‘justice’ for drugged-up nutjob criminals like Jordan Neely and ‘justice,’ ie punishment, for heroes like Daniel Penny.)

In the end, Evans’s character realizes what an awful dad he is and promises to do better. Promptly, his snowglobe prison shatters as he’s suddenly upgraded to ‘nice.’ Really? He abandoned his wife, he’s a career criminal and a foulmouth — and all it takes is one soppy ‘I should do better, son.’?

Talk about cheap grace.

Santa says in the movie, “It’s not our job to change people, Cal. People change themselves. We just show them that we believe in them. All of them.”

Well, of course you can’t change people. But you can influence them. Seriously, try telling a cop that instead of locking up a criminal, he should, as ScreenRant puts it when praising the movie’s theme, ‘give [them] space and encouragement from the “good guys” to choose differently.’

They already had a choice. They still have a choice. It’s not as if ‘good guys’ is some sort of oppressive category group, sectioning others off and holding them down. Though… if you think about it, that’s kind of what’s lying behind the whole idea of criminals needing to be rehabilitated instead of punished, of evil being not sin but a syndrome, as I heard it aptly put by Bishop Robert Barron. The leftist world just loves that concept of group struggle, doesn’t it? Whether it’s class or race or gender — whatever they can find to wedge between people and set them at odds with one another — they’ll divide the world into two groups of oppressor and oppressed.

But those characters had all the room in the world to change. And yet Evans’ character consistently chose the wrong from his childhood to his adulthood. He didn’t really even chose to rescue Santa Claus, either — his motivation was unclear until his kid got kidnapped at about the middle of the movie.

And how curious that ‘good guys’ is in quote marks. As if good is just a construct — though, in a worldview without a basis for morality, it is. I suppose in the end fight scene, the main characters really should have just walked up to the witch and said, “I believe in you. I see the child you once were.” That would have changed everything. I’m sure she wouldn’t have tried to kill them after that.

Merry Christmas, everyone. Be a better person — just because. There’s no standard, no justice, no God we ought to be glorifying. Just, you know, do it.

OR…

Maybe that’s not what Christmas is about, really. Maybe Christmas is about rejoicing because, while we are all guilty of sin and deserving of punishment, God chose to send His Son to earth and grant us mindblowing mercy if we trust in Christ’s life, death, and resurrection. We don’t solve the world’s problems by glazing over them with false sentimentality and trite messages. In fact, the world’s problems will never be solved, not until its end.

But if we do truly care about reaching people and changing their lives, then that begins with us rejoicing in what God has done for us. It doesn’t mean sparing the parts people don’t like to hear about judgment and punishment. Yes, we shouldn’t go around denouncing everyone and calling down wrath. We’re supposed to speak the truth in love. But part of the truth is uncomfortable, and hopefully there are unbelievers in your life that you have a personal realtionship with, to the point where you can tell them the truth because you deeply care about their souls. My youth pastor makes the analogy: if there was a fire in the building, wouldn’t you go run and tell everyone, even if that wasn’t what they wanted to hear? Of course you would, because you care about their lives! Don’t gloss over justice and punishment. But don’t forget the incredible reality of the Best News Ever, either. Jesus Christ died on the cross for us — He paid the steepest price ever to give us grace, and satisfied justice as our propitiation.

Only in believing that message can we find lasting joy. People will forever disappoint. But our God never will.

Rejoice this Christmas, my friends, because you have been forgiven. You deserved a punishment far worse than containment in a snowglobe. You couldn’t save yourself with some weak apologies and abrupt deus ex machina magic.

But God took your punishment on Himself, and freed you. How amazing.

Hallelujah. Merry Christmas, and God bless.

Cover Image from lastmovieoutpost.com, credit to Warner Bros. and Amazon MGM.