He knows if you've been naughty. He knows if you've been nice. But just how nice do you have to be? Are you just watching episode 136, Red One? Welcome to the podcast that shares critical thinking for the Entertain Christian. I'm Eve Franklin.

I'm Tim Martin.

And we're going to give you a Christmas gift by, you know, reviewing a Christmas movie. I mean, it is Christmas after all. So we were planning a different movie, but that kind of fell out of the theaters before we were able to, well, watch it.

Yeah, maybe we can do it when it, you know, it hits a streaming service or something.

Yeah, it was Bonhoeffer, right?

Yeah, Bonhoeffer. The story of the German pastor from Pre World War II and World War II who fought the Nazi takeover of the Lutheran church.

Yeah.

Oh, and that Hitler guy.

Well, it was going to be an interesting movie to discuss, but I think from a Christmas, a holiday standpoint, I think this is a definitely a better offering for the season anyway. So we may reevaluate Bonhoeffer when we have an opportunity to actually see it. But it had fallen out of my theater before I was able to get to it due to my schedule, so we'll just have to postpone that one. But we're doing Red One, and it is a movie I had seen trailers for. To be honest, I'm not much of a Santa movie kind of person. There's a great many of them that I just skip. I don't really care for movies that are centered on Santa because as a Christian, I don't really. I really just don't go there. Even if I had kids, I wouldn't go there. So it's just not a part of the secular Christmas. That really rings my bell, but.

Interesting turn of phrase. The Salvation army rings my bell.

But anyway, I thought this movie was actually pretty enjoyable. I liked the fact that it was an action movie and the way they put it together. It wasn't your typical Santa movie. And I really feel like the audience was adults for this one. It wasn't a kid's movie per se. The fact that it's rated PG13 kind of brings it up and the protagonist is a man who never believed in Santa. And so I really feel like their target audience was adults, and kids could watch it. But as I think you want to mention in your reactions, there is quite a bit of bad language in this movie. It's not something you definitely want to sit your kids down in front of it. I do think that they tried to control it a little bit. There was one particular scene I remember where they were communicating, where they cut him off just as he was getting ready to say a bad word. So I was like, that was a quick, easy way to subtract one bad word from the movie.

They only get one as a PG13 movie.

Yeah.

I'm sure that's not actually accurate, but that's what they say.

I think it depends on which words and how many of them show up.

Yeah.

In order to keep the rating. Because I remember researching it when I was talking about Daredevil, the movie, not the TV show. Because Daredevil, the director's cut is rated R and the feature release is PG13. They changed one scene and reduced some of the language in order to get the rating down. Okay, so there's actually quite a few themes that are worth discussing in this movie, but they are all very heavy handed. So I feel like they were introducing a lot of their themes with the subtility of a hammer. So when we talk about these themes, it's not like we had to dig deep to find them because they were very obvious.

Not a lot of depth.

Yeah. But at the same time these themes could be discussed deeply. And that's one of the things I appreciate the movie or it didn't work so well in a second viewing. I watched it twice and I feel like the kind of the gotcha as to where Santa was because you knew where he was when you watched it the second time. It you started really nitpicking the movie at that point. So I really feel like, you know, it's a one viewing kind of movie. But one of the really great things about this movie was the music. And the music was by Henry Jackman. And I've been listening to the soundtrack, and it's a really good soundtrack. So I'm gonna play just a little bit of the music here and then we'll go on to discuss the movie.

You know, I really think that the reason why the music was so good in this movie was because it was an action movie. I think more than it was a Santa movie that they had the kind of action cinematic music and then they had the caper music at the beginning and then when there were softer moments, it allowed for moving and poetic and melodic music. So it really runs the gambit. And then they had these really nice versions of Christmas songs, you know, scattered throughout as well to kind of keep it in the Christmas feel. So I thought the music was very well done in. In fact, I think the music might be what pushed it over the top to make it a good movie because there was some. Like I said, it's a one viewing movie. It's not something you want to watch over and over again.

Yeah.

Probably my biggest takeaway, and you're going to probably run into this with any movie that takes Santa seriously, is that this really departs from the true meaning of Christmas. And there's absolutely nothing in this movie about a messiah coming to earth to save the world or a Catholic saint whose personal mission was to save the poor. None of that is in this movie. It's all mythological. It's all pantheon of demigods. And that's just what Santa is now. It's like he, even Santa has lost his Christian origins in our culture today. And that's kind of sad.

He's been stolen.

Yeah. I don't know that Santa ever was a good part of a secular Christmas. It's one of those things that I was raised never believing in Santa, so it was never an issue for me. Looking back on my childhood, I always knew that when a gift came to me that had Santa on the gift tag, it was either my great aunt or my granny who gave it to me. And my mom and dad, they would put the gifts out and fill our stockings. But I always knew it was my mom that got up before we got up in the morning and did it. So it was not a big deal for me. I never had that belief system to worry about. But, you know, it is a big deal for a lot of children. And I think it's also a really big deal in churches and Christian circles as to whether or not you let your children believe in Santa. But we're actually going to leave that discussion aside because there's so much more in this movie to talk about as to whether or not you believe in Santa that we'll save that discussion for another day.

Sounds good to me.

Yeah.

When we talked about doing this movie because Bonhoeffer was leaving theaters much sooner than we expected, you had suggested it and I was gonna see it anyway because it's got three actors that I enjoy watching. Dwayne Johnson, Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons, particularly J.K. Simmons. He's one of my favorites. He's got a tremendous amount of range. You know, the characters that he plays, everything from J. Jonah Jameson to his character in Whiplash, which he was scary in. I mean, downright PTSD generating scary.

Doesn't he normally play villains?

He does. Well, you know, I don't know if normally is right. But he does, based on what I've seen, it's about half and half. And he does such a good job with it too. But, you know, he can also pull off these sincere role, even though this isn't a sincere movie. He plays Nicholas in here as a sincere person and you really feel it the way he does it. So, you know, I would have seen it anyway.

Yeah.

And the day that we decided to switch to Red One was a day before it was released to go on to Amazon Prime, even though it was still in theaters.

Yeah. We made it so much easier to go see it. Oh, yeah, yeah.

Watch it, you know, in the living.

Room, which was great. You don't have to take notes in the dark.

Have the lights on, nobody looking at you. So I had been seeing, you know, headlines and, and reviews for it. I didn't really pay a lot of attention to it, but generally the reviews, the headlines that I was seeing were negative. You know, they were all saying, how bad Red One is. One of the YouTube channels I subscribed to Watch Mojo. They did the 10 worst movies of 2024. And I think it was number seven on the list.

Oh, wow. Surely there were worse movies this year.

I think there were. I think there were a lot worse movies. I enjoyed the movie, though. I think I didn't enjoy it maybe as much as you did. I had a lot of nitpicky stuff with it. Stuff where I feel like they just didn't quite deliver. But it was what I expected. It was a thoughtless holiday themed romp built around Dwayne the Rock Johnson's personality. Because that's. I mean, of the three actors, I like the personality that Dwayne the Rock Johnson portrays on screen. He doesn't change it. It's always the same personality. It doesn't matter if it's Red with Ryan Reynolds or, you know, Jumanji. He's always the same personality he has on the wrestling stage. Well, actually, I can't say that for sure because I've never watched him wrestle. But it's always the same personality and everything, and I'm okay with that. You know, you find something that works, you stick with it. Chris Evans, he's got a bit more range.

Definitely no Captain America in this movie.

Yeah, this guy was not Captain America. He was in that Knives Out movie where he played a villain. It's sort of a villain. I mean, everybody in there was a jerk. But yeah, he was decent in this one. I think he could have been better. They never said, as far as I know, and you can correct me here if I'm wrong, they never said what city Jack was from, just that the only city we ever got really identified with was Philly in the beginning, because that's the mall where Santa was doing his gig. But Evans is using this vaguely Bostonian accent that sort of grated on me a little bit because it was just off enough to not be enjoyable. But like I said, I enjoyed it, though I found a lot not to like about it. It balanced the good and the bad. Balanced. Little foreshadowing there. And frankly, I didn't know this going in. But it's also one of those ones that takes mythology and sort of overlaps it with the modern age. There's a series of young adult books by Ewan Coffer called Artemis Fowl that. That the kids liked when we were growing up. That does that. And you know, Rick Riordan's Percy Jackson series and all of those.

Right.

I enjoy them. I geek out about them because I love the idea of the crossover. So it really did it for me. I really, however, I sort of wish I had watched this on Vidangel because I thought there wasn't a single scene that went by without a cuss word in it. And 99% of them, if not 100% of them, could have been completely cut from the dialogue or slightly rewritten without any impact to the emotion of the scene.

Yeah.

You know, I was in the army, so I probably know swear words. I probably forgotten swear words that a lot of people have never known. But when it's in entertainment, I want it to serve a purpose, either to serve the character who's using it or to, you know, deliver a little more emotional punch.

Yeah.

And I don't think it did either here.

I felt like they were trying to establish Chris Evans as a real bad guy and. Or his character, Jack, excuse me, is a real bad guy.

Yeah.

And so I think, you know, they probably, like, as I said before, the protagonist of this movie is as a bad adult. So that's why I really feel like this was an adult.

It's despicable.

The issue that I see is that I really didn't notice. The only word that I really noticed was the one that was cut off. It was like he was about to say a bad word, and they cut it off. I didn't notice the ones they left in. So it's very weird. I don't need to watch Vidangel when it comes to language because I just have an automatic bleeper. I just don't hear it. But it's really weird. Unless it's like, like every other word or every sentence, I really don't notice bad language and would really be hard for me to review a movie and keep count of all the bad words because I would miss them all.

I can't imagine trying to keep count on this one.

I didn't really notice the bad language until I started reading quotes and I'm like, oh, yeah, there were some bad words in there.

And you know Johnson's character, the leader of the security Santa. Security force. The elf. Yes. The enforcement, logistics and fortification boy. If that isn't an overworked acronym, I don't know what is.

What big long words can we make to spell out elf?

He used quite a bit too, which I thought was ... seemed very out of character given what Santa's elves are supposed to be. Mission is supposed to be in this movie.

Yeah, I would. I would grant you that it's probably at a level that was inappropriate if it were meant to be a kids movie.

The thing is, it doesn't matter if it was meant to be a kids movie or an adult movie. I want the language to serve a purpose. And it didn't serve a purpose in this. I mean, early on in the movie, you see Jack, let's see, set fire to a Christmas display in order to cause a diversion and steal candy from a baby because he could.

You're getting into our first theme. Come on. Come on.

Anyway, plenty of different ways they establish him as a really despicable person without having to sprinkle in so much profanity. Yeah, but you know, that's just me. I'm okay with a lot of people. It doesn't bother a lot of people. Like you said, you've got an automatic bleeper. I wish I could do that. So for me, it really was a mix of good and bad. But in the end, I enjoyed it and it was pretty much what I expected it to be.

Yeah. So let's get to where we can talk about the themes and move this on. But before we do, I do want to remind you that our podcast is listener supported and we want to thank Isaiah Santiano, Craig Hardy, Stephen Brown II, David Lefton and Peter Chapman for their generous monthly support. We could not be doing this without them. They have single handedly. Or how many of them are there? Not single handed, but each one of them together has.

Let's see. Hexahandoly.

Those gentlemen have been keeping us going and we really appreciate that. If you too would like to support us financially, we would love for you to go to areyoujustwatching.com/patreon or patreon.com/areyoujustwatching and consider giving us a small monthly gift in order to help us continue to do what we do. We thank you so much for those who have supported us. And if you're not able to support us financially, we would really love for you to share our podcast with friends and family, either on social media or in person, just to let people know that we exist so that we can have more people listen, because we're doing it for you guys and we want other people to hear us.

So, as you were already talking about how extremely naughty our dear Jack is, we want to talk first about the how this movie deals with the naughty list. And I was really interested in that because I think this might be the closest this movie gets to a Christian theme. And by closest, I mean, like, you know, 100 miles away, but close.

It's in the nosebleed sections, really.

Well, I mean, you know, when we're talking about a Christian theme, this is probably about the closest this movie could get to one. But it is interesting that they have to divide it between Santa and his brother. But we're going to get to that in a little bit. So Cal is the, I guess you would call, like the head commander over Santa's bodyguards, I guess. Secret Service. Yeah. So he's responsible for keeping, you know, security up and making sure Santa's safe. And the first time you see him, he's in the mall guarding Santa, who's actually the real Santa, doing his stint as a mall Santa, getting to interact with the real children kind of thing and getting powered up by their belief kind of thing. But it's interesting because Cal is looking around and he's seeing all of these adults being very, very naughty. So you see the, you know, the one guy who's trying to steal a scented candle, and you see the lady that's, like, upset over the essential oils being out and people fighting over the last one of a certain item that they're trying to buy. You're basically seeing all of the selfishness and naughty behavior of the adults in the mall. And that's what we're seeing him see. I mean, he's just looking around and he's seeing all of this stuff going on, and it's obvious that he's very tired of it. And so you find out later on in the movie that the whole point of Santa and his mission is to bring cheer to children, even those who remember that they are children. So there's a scene, and of course we're not worrying about spoilers, but there's a scene at the end where Cal finally gets that ability to see the child inside the adult back. And he looks over and he sees the child, Jack instead of Jack. And that was kind of what he had lost and why he was getting so jaded in his role and supporting Santa. He even told Santa at one point, I shouldn't be around you when I cannot see it. Because he's afraid he'll influence Santa and then Santa will lose it. So, yeah, I think that this naughty list thing, and I think you're gonna bring this up later as well, is, you know, this whole concept that Cal and Santa's associates all seem to pay more attention to those who are naughty than those who are nice. Where Santa's influence and his entire being is about supporting and being near the nice people. And so. And I don't really, you know, Santa actually doesn't get a ton of screen time in this movie. But no, when he is there, you do notice that is completely uninterested in the naughty. He's only interested in the nice. But his associates don't have his ability to shut that off. And so I think that the whole naughty list thing is just a reference to the fact that as we get older, we tend to make the choices that make us naughty in a more obvious way. I guess children are usually naughty just because they are sinful creatures and that comes out. Yeah, but as adults, we typically choose to be naughty more. It's like we have more of an adult way of looking at life. And we make our choices based on selfish reasons. And so our naughtiness is more on us and less on just our nature.

Like we bear a larger portion of the responsibility for it because it's. We make the choice to be it.

Right?

We make the choice to be naughty.

Right. In fact, that's what Cal tells Jack when Jack steals some gold when they're in Krampus's compound. He says, you don't just happen to be on the list, Jack. You put yourself there. You decide to steal gold. You decide to only look out for yourself over everyone else on this earth. Nick always says that every decision, big or small, is an opportunity. And Jack says to be nice and Cal says no, to be good. And so this is obviously more of a works based idea of you can make yourself good. You can make yourself bad, which is a very secular way of looking at the whole concept of sin. We know that according to scripture, in Romans 3:22-24, it says the righteousness of God is through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe, since there is no distinction. For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. So we know as Christians that we're all sinners. And the choice is really to look for that redemption, to admit that we're sinners and confess to our sins and turn away from that sinful nature that, you know, Cal isn't that far wrong by saying that you make it happen. You put yourself on that list by making yourself the priority in life. And Jack has done that his whole life. He's done that. And so I think that this, you know, this movie is really trying to show that adults are naughty. I mean, it's just like everywhere they went. I thought it was really funny because when they come out.

Was it in the German store?

The German store, you see the lady walking by complaining about the essential oils just like there was in the mall.

So it was just like that. That was a funny one.

Yeah, so it was just like this. The selfishness is universal. It's like everybody is focused on me, me, me, me, me. Though in this time of year. It's kind of funny because a lot of that arguing over gifts is because they're trying to buy it for someone else. So it's selfishness in, in their gift giving. I don't.

But I mean that, that's just like with sin though. A non-Christian who is very philanthropic can be doing wonderful, great things, but all for the wrong reasons and right. You know, when I was a kid, I would try to outdo my brothers and sisters on what they were getting mom and dad because then mom and dad would love me more. Yeah, it's really. That's what it's all about. When you live a worldview that accepts morals as important but doesn't believe in a lawgiver, then the morals never really mean anything to you. It all just becomes decisions. And with the character of Jack, what I think we see is we see somebody who's looked at that philosophy and said, this is crap, man. I'm not doing this. So he just embraces doing what he thinks makes himself the best profit or, you know. Yeah, it's all about his purposes. Yeah, it's all selfishness. So. Yeah. Yeah, it's when you take the lawgiver out of the law, then it's incomplete, right?

Yeah.

For me, you know, it's not just this movie. I want to drive that home. I grew up with a semi-belief in Santa. I grew up in a mixed Christian home where my mom was a Christian, my dad was not. And when we raised our kids, we waited for them to broach the question of is Santa real? And we talked about St Nicholas of Myrna and what he stood for and how he became a, you know, a revered figure. And then we talked about how that became the idea of Santa Claus. And, you know, we. We walked them through the logical question, but we always made sure to stress that it's up to every parent to choose whether or not they let their children believe in Santa Claus because it, it does serve a purpose. Not always a good purpose.

Yeah.

But it does serve a purpose. And we wanted to make sure they didn't ruin the idea of this magic for their friends or their, you know, the people they associated with. Yeah, but I have terribly digressed. The idea of this naughty and nice list. The more I understood basic theology, the more I realized that, you know, that is completely off the mark. There is no naughty or nice list. There is only the Book of Life.

Right, the saved list.

Yeah, the saved list. And here's the kicker. And this is the thing that nobody, that non Christians never seem to understand, every single person in the Book of life is every bit as naughty as the people who aren't.

Right.

The only difference is that we have been saved by our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. That he hung on a tree and was divorced from God for a period of time as he paid the penalty for our sins. And it goes back to Revelation 20:15 that says anyone whose name was not found written in the book of life was thrown into the lake of fire. That is a binary situation. Either your name is in the book of life or you are going to hell. It doesn't matter how good a person you've been, because you can never be good enough. You can never be nice enough.

Yeah.

So for me, it's, you know, the naughty and nice list. It, it, it helps children start to understand their place in societal structure, really. The idea, the concept of being nice and the concept of being naughty and, you know, it adds a reward element to it, just like the stupid elf on the shelf thing does. If you're good, Santa will reward you.

Yeah. If you're bad, you'll get a coal in your stocking.

Yeah. But as parents, we never. We Nowadays, as parents, we never really penalize the children.

Right.

But it does still happen a little, I guess. But yeah, naughty and nice lists is a wonderful concept that has absolutely no bearing on reality.

Right. And I wanted to take this because, you know, they made such a point in this movie of divorcing Santa from the naughty list. I thought it was interesting from a standpoint of if we look at Santa as a godly figure, like he's supposed to be a stand in for God, that there is this judgment versus punishment theme that's kind of through here because all of the creatures that want to punish are the bad, the evil. So Krampus and the Winter Witch, their philosophy, and I'll actually read them because they both kind of say it for themselves. So the Winter Witch says, "The same thing I have always wanted for hundreds of years to make them behave. The time has come to punish the naughty. All of them. Everyone who is on the list, everyone who has ever been on the list, from killers to jaywalkers, anyone who's ever lied or littered, anyone who's ever been rude or late." And Cal says, "but you're talking about almost everyone." And then Krampus tells them that he "spent 700 years menacing the naughty, trying to scare them into decency." So this is the world according to the Winter Witch and Krampus, that they cannot abide naughty people. They want them to behave, they want them to be decent. And how is that evil? How are they the evil characters then? If they just want people to behave.

And be good, that's how they go about it.

Yeah, exactly.

That's what makes them evil.

Yeah. And then Santa is not portrayed as a just God because he spreads cheer to everybody regardless of whether they're good or bad. And so Cal says that "Santa is a singular force in the universe. He knows when you're sleeping, he knows when you're awake, and he knows that about every single person on this planet. He has a list the size of Rhode island and he checks it twice. If you were to try to read that list just once, it would take you a decade. But he does it twice." I think that implied every year. "And the reason why he's able to do any of it is because he is Santa Claus, the one and the only. And no one else can execute his mission, which is," and I put this in parentheses because it was further on the conversation "to spread cheer." So this is not. Santa is not representative of a just God, a just and holy God. The whole movie is portraying a good God theory. And this is what you hear mostly in the world, when you represent, when you try to, to give the gospel to an unsaved world, a lot of times they believe, well, a good God wouldn't send me to hell. I've been mostly good. You know, this whole idea of karma where on balance, I mean, if you were to weigh my good and my bad against each other, I'm more good than bad. And God wouldn't send me to hell. A good God wouldn't send me to hell. They always put the good in front of it. A good God wouldn't send me to hell. And that is so far from the truth of who God really is. I mean, he is a holy, just and loving God. He's not just a loving God, He's a holy and just and loving God. And so he's holy because he cannot abide sin. Or actually he cannot abide sin because he's holy. I got that turned around.

Yeah, backwards.

He's just because he cannot abide sin, he must punish sin, because that's the justice part. And he's love because he's provided a way for those of us who have sinned to not be judged under that standard that we can't meet. So in Romans 2:1-11, and this is a long passage, forgive me, but it really fits. And it must be said, "Therefore every one of you who judges is without excuse. For when you judge another, you condemn yourself, since you, the judge, judge, do the same things. Now we know that God's judgment on those who do such things is based on the truth. Do you think any one of you who judges those who do such things yet do the same? That you will escape God's judgment? Or do you despise the riches of his kindness, restraint and patience, not recognizing that God's kindness is intended to lead you to repentance? Because of your hardened and unrepentant heart, you are storing up wrath for yourself. In the day of Wrath, when God's righteous judgment is revealed, he will repay each one according to his works. Eternal life to those who by persistence in doing good, seek glory, honor and immortality. But wrath and anger to those who are self seeking and disobey the truth while obeying unrighteousness. There will be affliction and distress for every human being who does evil, first to the Jew and also to the Greek. But glory, honor and peace for everyone who does what is good first to the Jew and also to the Greek. For there is no favoritism with God." That's Romans 2:1-11.

Let me jump in real quick that one of the reasons that I think it's important that they use mythology here, and I think this holds true for most of the cultural mythologies that we look back on in history, is almost all of them are pantheons.

Right, Right.

They're a group of divine beings where each divine being represents one or more aspects of creation. Like, you know, Poseidon was the sea and horses for some reason, and Zeus was sky and lightning and something else. Who knows?

Yeah.

And I think that's what they were doing here. They were making Santa part of a mythological pantheon where he was, you know, part of this divine set that included his half brother.

No, his adopted brother.

His adopted brother. Yes, yes. Krampus. And I can't remember her name all of a sudden.

The witch Gryla.

The winter witch Gryle.

Yeah, I said her name. Oh, no.

Oh, yeah, she heard me. That's all right. I'm not scared of her. I think that's important because it helps to explain how hard it is to comprehend how God can be both loving and just. The ancient peoples, they all broke these aspects out into different beings in order to make it make sense to them. You look at it and you're like, oh, that's a paradox. He can't be just if he's also loving, because a loving God would never send anyone to hell.

Yeah. Or, you know, the other one is, you know, why the the "Old Testament God" is always so judgmental, and yet we turn around and have a "New Testament God" who gave his son to die on the cross for us and prove that he is love. And people don't think they're the same God, but they are the same God. He is the same God.

The modular theory of God.

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Or the modal theory. I think it's a modal theory. Yeah. I feel like that's why they broke it out. Now, honestly, I don't know if Krampus and Santa Claus have pre. Existed as a yin and a yang before this movie. I've never encountered it, but I've never watched any of the Krampus movies either because they're all horror slashers, so. But I feel like that's what they're trying to build. And frankly, I also feel like the whole creation of Lucy Liu's character and the ... I can't remember what Mora Stand stood for, but this mythological protection agency that she works for, I sort of feel like they were trying to lay the groundwork for a cinematic universe there, but I don't think it's gonna take.

No. Well, it'll be a Christmas oriented one, which is very weird.

But yeah, it wouldn't necessarily be Christmas because the first mythological creature you see in the entire.

Yeah, yeah.

Not counting Santa.

Not counting Santa. Yeah. It's an interesting secular take on something that we. Well, I wouldn't even call it a secular take. It's more of a pagan take. But I mean, I understand what you're saying that, you know, that they were developing a pantheon. But in my opinion, this is one of the things that the movie, in a way, is I'm trying to figure out how to say this. It's not that it does it wrong, it's that it accurately portrays a misunderstanding of what God is in our culture today. And it's an accurate portrayal because whenever you're witnessing to the lost and the unsaved, that's usually the biggest problem they introduce about the God of the Bible is that he's supposed to be a God of love. And they equate punishment with not being loving. And yet, as you know, a parent, and you're more of a parent than I. I've never actually had children. But we understand that discipline and punishment go hand in hand with love for your children. Because if you don't love your children, absolutely, as a loving parent, you have to restrict their bad tendencies. And if you don't do that, then you are not properly loving them. Because that is what a good father does, is, you know, this is naughty. You shouldn't do this.

Discipline is part of loving your children.

Right. So I think that in dividing away the just and the holiness from God and saying he's only a God of love, which is what our culture keeps trying to do, they keep trying to rewrite the biblical God as, you know, "he wouldn't want me to not love the person that I love, you know, not be with the person that I love."

Exactly. Love is love after all.

Love is love after all. So all of these, you know, these platitudes that we get in our culture today that God would allow me to do this, God would allow me to do this. It's like, no, God is holy. He's just.

It's not allowed.

Yeah. And the fact that he loves you, despite the fact you do those things and say, you know those, you dishonor him by saying that he would allow you to do those things. He loves you even though you are bad. But that doesn't in any way mean that you're not slated for punishment if you don't repent and turn away from the things that make you bad. And so it's a complete and utter misunderstanding of who God is. And I think this movie, you know, very accurately portrays that because they divide their good character, Santa, completely away from anything having to do with punishing the bad.

And they make. They're reinforcing it.

Yeah, right.

And they make the punishers look evil.

Right, exactly. Krampus has a little bit of a redemption arc at the end, but the Winter Witch does not. So it's very softly done. But I really feel like they're saying that you shouldn't ever be punished. But at the same time, I just had this thought. It wasn't until Jack was punished that he came to his redemption arc. So in a way, he and his son were both redeemed by being punished. So in a way, they prevented all of that opportunity.

Could they have had it right all along?

Well, you know, maybe Gryla had it right and they stopped her from giving the opportunity for redemption to all of the naughty people in the world. Because they didn't.

It's like you were saying, Greely and Krampus had at least part of it. Right. The only thing that was wrong with hers was she wanted to do everything. Which actually is more biblically accurate.

Right.

Because she says jaywalkers. Okay, come on.

Littering and lying are the same. Yeah. And see, that's the thing is that as mankind, we rate the level of sin. She just saw that everybody was naughty, and that's the way God sees sin. If you are a sinner, it doesn't matter the level of the sin that you've done. And I said, if we are all sinners. And that's what Romans 6:22-23 says. "But now, since you have been set free from sin and have become enslaved to God, you have your fruit, which results in sanctification. And the outcome is eternal life because or for the wages of sin is death. But the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

And we're all sinners. And we have, as I said before, for all of sin. Romans 3:22. We're going to do the Romans Road in this episode. But in Romans 3:22, it said, "for all of sin." And then in Romans 6:23, it says, "but the wages of sin is death." And so you know that we've offended a just and holy God with our sin, but he didn't leave us in our sin. He sent Jesus to die on the cross to save us from our sin. But we have to repent. We have to admit that we're sinners, which is what Jack does. And all of these themes kind of blend. Blend together.

Yeah, they do. They do indeed.

So I think that, you know, moving on, the two redemptive arcs in this movie because of repentance and turning away from sin, both have to do with families, which is really interesting.

Yeah. Anybody who's listened to us for any length of time knows that I love a good redemptive arc. I can forgive any amount of despicable behavior if at the end there's a satisfying redemption arc and you at least start to see the character take steps in the right direction. And Red One was a little lacking in that regard for me. There's two main redemptive arcs in this. The first one is Jack and his biological son Dylan, and. And the other one is this supposed relationship between Santa and Krampus as adopted brothers. Yeah, they didn't put enough screen time into the Santa Krampus one to really get me to get any sympathy for it. I actually, after Callum's description of Santa, I was actually sort of rooting a little bit more for Krampus. He seemed to be a little bit more in tune, but they were trying to strike this idea of balance, of the balance of nice and naughty, of good and evil. There was this hint that a treaty, actually, they mentioned that kept Krampus in a hidden dome, and as long as he didn't come out, you know, nobody would bother him. And Callum and Jack, of course, violate this treaty by sneaking in, thinking, well, Krampus must be working with his ex girlfriend, Gryla the witch. So let's sneak into his hidden dome, violate the treaty and rescue Santa. And of course, that didn't go out, so it turned out to be stupid.

But at the same time, they let Krampus know what was going on. He didn't know.

They could have done that to start, though. Has anybody asked Krampus if they'd seen Nick? Yeah, but, you know, you know, the plot had to move forward, so they needed this to happen. But the thing is, at the end of the movie, Santa and Krampus sort of make up, but there wasn't enough really there for me to. To really latch onto it. It's sort of funny. Santa's like, you want to stay for maybe some cookies and hot chocolate afterwards? And Krampus is like, don't push it.

And it's important to pay attention because Krampus makes eye contact with Cal and Cal shakes his head and before he answers, don't push it. So it was Cal telling Krampus, no, don't stay. But, yeah, I think that it was obvious that they had been at odds for a very long time. But when it counted, Krampus came back on the side of his brother, which, you know, against his girlfriend, which I think was enough of a redemptive arc for that. I mean, they are, I guess, in context of the movie, they're both forces of nature. So it's like, how much of a redemption arc can you have for somebody who is literally who he is because he is a force of nature? So it's not like they can change much. But the Jack and his son story, I think, was really the focus of the redemptive arc in the movie.

It definitely was. One thing I wanted to comment on, though, is, you know who the character of Krampus reminds me of in the Marvel Cinematic Universe is? The Russian super soldier.

Oh, yeah.

I can't remember the name of the actor or the name of the character. Of course, Krampus was a little bit like a discount version of this guy. But like you, Jack and Dylan's arc is really the meat of the redemptive arc, even though it was quite a bit overshadowed by the desire to see superhero action and magic CGI happening and all that. And I was so. What's the word? Displeased. I was so disgusted with Jack's behavior by 20 minutes into the movie. My first thought when Olivia called him to say, would you pick Dylan up? Was like, there is no way this guy ever had a girlfriend serious enough to get pregnant because he is just so abhorrent a person. So I was so hoping that Olivia was his sister or something, but it turned out not to be the case. So they pitch Jack as Dylan's biological father, and throughout the course of the movie, you learn that Jack has never tried to be a father figure to Dylan. And the impression I got. And I don't know if you got the same thing, but the impression I got was that Olivia was trying to force Jack into Dylan's life.

No, I think it was more of. And I could be completely wrong on this, but I really felt like it was, you know, where Dylan was old enough to know that he had a biological father and she wanted him to be a better influence on his son because you kind of get that when he picks him up at school, he's, like, teaching him how to be a thief and a mastermind, and he's not the greatest influence. But I think most children who are in split families, they kind of teeter back and forth between their parents. And in this situation, I think that she wanted to give her son's real father an opportunity to have influence on his life. Not necessarily she was shoving them together, but because Dylan desired it. And it's something, I think every boy, everyone that I've known that has come from broken homes, it's like they want both their parents in their lives. And it's a hard thing for a mom who has a husband who's not their child's biological father to have that child constantly leaning towards the biological parent that is not there. So I think that was really more.

Based on what Jack said, though he had never been part of Dylan's life, and Olivia's husband had been there since the very beginning.

Right. I think it was more because of Dylan, because Dylan wanted it.

Yeah. I didn't consider that. I was thinking Jack has made it clear he does not think that it's a good idea for him to be around Dylan. I wasn't sure why Olivia was pushing it on him, but if Dylan was the one who was pressing it, then that would make a lot more sense to me.

Yeah. Yeah. I think Dylan wanted it, and I think that she was taking advantage of the fact that he was at least somebody she could call on when she was busy and her husband wasn't available to, hey, you know, he's your kid, you know. So in a way, it was selfish on her part because, you know, it gave her an extra free caregiver that she could shunt her son off onto. None of the adults in this movie are necessarily ones that you would hold up as being. And I think that's one of the realistic things about the movie is because adults, we're adulting. We're not role modeling.

Role models.

Yeah. So I don't know that Olivia was in the right or in the wrong. She was just being her. And I think that in this instance, because that's really all we see of her is just her occasional communications with her son. But she's not an important role in the movie. It's more Dylan and his father that is the important relationship there.

Yeah. And, you know, that's where we see that redemptive arc take place, is between Jack and Dylan. And the problem that I had with that was Jack had so much wrong with him and his relationship with his biological son was a symptom.

Yeah.

It wasn't the cause, but that's neither here nor there. At one point, Gryla decides to use Dylan as bait to pull Jack off the table, you know, off the other side of the chessboard, so to speak. And she imprisons them both in this incredibly complicated and unbelievable plan to imprison everyone in snow globes and isolated snow globes.

But still, somehow, they're able to talk to each other when they're next to.

Exactly. They make it a point that it's solitary confinement. It's the worst punishment possible. And then you get Dylan and Jack in snow globes next to each other on the shelf, and they're talking back and forth. Logic was a little lacking here, but, you know, whatever. But it does provide this nice scene where Jack expresses the realization that he really should have been more involved in Dylan's life. And he says, I've been a terrible father. I haven't been around. "I told myself I was doing you a favor, which is BS it was bad for you, and it was terrible for me. I've made some mistakes, pal. I know that. But I also know I can do better. And I know it's easier said than done. I know it's a lot of work, and I hope it's not too late. Every day, every decision is an opportunity, and I want to start taking some of those. So I'm not asking you to believe in me. I'm just asking you to give me a chance. I know I may never be the greatest father in the world, but I know I can do better. And I'm telling you right now that I promise I will never stop trying." And with that, both snow globes break. So Gryla's whole plan was to give everyone on the planet a crisis of conscience. Yeah, so that they might learn and then they can get free, but would be trapped in the basement of the North Pole. Okay.

Yeah, because. Well, that's because originally, the globe stays where it was, and she had to, like, redo the magic in order to bring the globe to her.

Yeah, it's supposed to come to me. That was what she said. Which didn't make sense at the time, but, yeah. Anyway, it was a touching scene, but I felt like it wasn't the payoff, the redemptive arc payoff that I was really looking for. I wanted Jack to realize how much damage he had done.

Well, you know, and I think in a way, he does, but it's not as communicated as obviously. So, I mean, he's. In the end, he's the good guy. He's the one that helps save Christmas, and he gets to ride on Santa's sleigh and all that stuff,

but, you know, you don't really see it. There's no epilogue. There's no.

Yeah, we don't know if his life actually changed, but you make the assumption that it does because a lot of. Basically what they did with that beginning. And once again, I'm going to move myself into my next theme. But what they did at the beginning was show that he was a skeptic from a child and he needed to have his worldview rearranged. And that rearrangement of his worldview would impact his whole life. It wouldn't be just his relationship with his son. It would be everything, because everything that he was. His entire nature about seeing, you know, the bad in people and using it for greed and all this kind of stuff, it was all founded in his misaligned disbelief in Santa. And so his redemptive arc, while it's expressed through his relationship with his son, I believe that they were showing that it was. That entire shift in his worldview would make him a different person. So maybe I'm reading more into it than was actually in the movie, but I thought it was a pretty decent redemption because it showed that it was the thing that I was aiming for. Here was the repentance part. He didn't just say, I'm going to be a better father. He admitted that he was a terrible father. He admitted that he'd done all this. And that's like the redemptive arc that most secular movies miss is there, oh, we're suddenly going to be better. But he had to make the step of admitting where he had done wrong. He had to. That is where we, as sinners, approach the throne of Christ and, you know, lay our burdens down in front of the cross. It isn't the burden of being human. It's the burden of our sin that we lay at the feet of the cross. And so this is the step that a lot of people of faith, when they're sharing the gospel with people, they say, oh, you know, say the prayer. Say you want to invite Jesus into your heart. That's not what saves you. Yeah, it's not the, you know, please, Jesus, forgive me. It's, I am a dirty, rotten sinner. I have done all these awful things, and I repent of those, and I turn away from them. And I want you to help me, Lord, you know, live better and turn away from the sin and honor you with my life and sacrifice my. You know, it's like all of that starts with recognizing that you're a sinner. And I think that that's where the redemption comes in for Jack is that he's, he's able to admit that and repent. And so maybe it may not be the, the, the big turnaround life moment that you were wanting it to be, but I think that it, it was what it was supposed to be.

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't think about the repentance aspect in there. It does put it in a very different light. Yeah.

Well, before we address the last little theme I have, I do want to remind you that you can share your feedback for this podcast. We really, really, really love hearing from our listeners and we don't hear enough from enough of you. So please connect with us. We'd like to know you're out there. You can comment on the show notes for this episode by going to areyoujustwatching.com/156. You could also call 513-818-2959, leave a voicemail or you can text that number. It's Google Voice so you can text it. You can email feedback@aryoujustwatching.com you can send us audio files. If you have seen a movie that we have not reviewed and you want to give us a brief review, we'd love to get that from you know that you're not just watching your entertainment choices and send that review to us. We will actually pin it to one of our future reviews and let other people hear it. You can join our Facebook discussion group, which you can get to by going to areyoujustwatching.com/community and we would highly encourage you to join our Discord group, which you can get to by going to areyoujustwatching.com/discord. That's an invite to our server. Please join us and help start some discussions about movies. We'd love to have you join us. We can also, if you join our Discord server, come in and listen to us record when we record. Because we always record through one of our Discord studios, voice studios, either in the recording stage or in one of our voice channels and you can come and listen to us do that. So we'd love to have you and.

Even interact with us.

Yes, you can interact with us if you would like to. All right. So the last thing I wanted to talk about in this movie is the skeptics loose grasp of truth. And I'd already kind of mentioned the way they pictured Jack at the beginning of the movie as a young child who desperately not only does he not believe in Santa, he wants to make sure that nobody believes in Santa to the point of inviting his cousins up to see his uncle's hidden closet full of gifts.

Not only that, but he bet on him, bet on it, and then demanded they pay up.

There is a really interesting conversation that he has with his uncle. And his uncle's trying to, like, you know, just because, you know, these are gifts doesn't mean that Santa isn't going to bring more gifts. And he's like, yeah, and he's gonna ride a sleigh and go down everybody's chimneys all in the same night. You know, it's got all of these, like, skeptical questions. And I noticed. Interesting that his uncle really appears anyway to be a true believer in Santa. And.

Right.

Regardless of what Jack's reasons for not believing in Santa are, [his uncle] attempts to have an answer and he ends up saying, I can't explain it all, but Santa is real and he really is coming. This reminded me. This exchange reminded me of a lot of the exchanges you see with atheists and people of faith. And it's interesting because I frequent. You're not on Facebook much anymore, but I frequent a lot of Facebook groups. A lot of Christian groups where it's, you know, it's established as a group for Christians hang out. And yet every time a Christian group establishes some kind of a, you know, private group or page in Facebook or any other social media for Christians to hang out, the atheists always flock to it. And they're always, like, wanting to post, you know, like your invisible friend or the. What do they call it? The invisible spaghetti monster or whatever.

Flying spaghetti monster.

Yeah, yeah, something like that. They have all these ways of mocking our God. And it has always puzzled me. It's like, why do they feel like it is so necessary? What is this need they have to come in and spread their unbelief to believers? Especially because they're saving us from ourselves, I guess. I don't know. But what does it harm us to believe in God if they don't believe in God? And I just, I really saw that in the mocie, Jack was trying to prove to his cousins that Santa doesn't exist. It's like, that's what atheists are always trying to do. They're trying to prove to the people of faith that God doesn't exist. And yet it's really hard to do because usually people of faith know that God is real. Experientially, they know that God is real. And so it's difficult to prove otherwise. And it's not enough that they don't believe. They don't want anyone else to believe. And they go out of their way to make sure that, you know, that they're spreading that disbelief. And to me, it's just a reiteration of Romans 1. You know, that once you have rejected God and you firmly rejected God, and you don't want to believe in him, even though he's obvious, that God gives you over to that feeling, and then you are so lost that you want to spread that lostness to everybody else. And I was thankful that they established that background of Jack so that when, you know, he's, like, inducted into this hunt for the missing Santa, that his whole worldview gets a big shift around.

Yeah. Shaken up.

Yeah. He's forced to reevaluate all the things he didn't think was true. And while it is wonderful whenever God saves somebody, you know, when they change their life around, when. When the real impressive ones are when people who have utterly turned their backs on God open up their hearts enough to let him in, and they become completely different people. And it's such a beautiful thing to watch. And it has happened. Doesn't happen as often as I would love to have it happen, because some of these really obnoxiously vocal and public atheists who are so adamantly against God, I just wish more of them would open their heart and see God. But I think, you know, it's possible.

One thing I didn't think about until just a few minutes ago is that Callum's journey is almost the mirror opposite of Jack's as far as his skepticism. Right. He starts out as a true believer. He's been serving Santa for, like. Like 500 years. And he is growing hardened to the core belief of the Santa, that everyone is good at heart. Which, you know, we know isn't true, but.

Right.

It's the mythology of the.

I don't know that it's good at heart, but innocence of a child is in everybody. I think that was more of it. Yeah.

So he is losing faith in the vision of humanity that is Santa's vision in this presentation. And Callum actually comes back to his core belief at the end, to seeing, you know, the young Jack talking to Dylan instead of the old Jack.

And I think it was partly seeing that somebody as naughty as Jack could find that redemption, and that allowed Cal to see it again, what he'd always been able to see before, you know, the child in every person. Because Jack was able to repent and find that redemption, then it helped Cal be able to see the child in Jack again and to. To realize that even as naughty and as awful as adults are, they there is always the possibility of that redemption.

And so, yeah, that's a nobody is past redemption. And that's true.

Yeah.

No matter how bad we see people, it is possible.

Yeah. But nothing is impossible with God.

But that doesn't get them out of the consequences of their actions.

Right. Yeah. Well, I hope everybody has enjoyed this romp through a Christmas movie from a secular standpoint. I think, I think we had fun with it was a good discussion. Yeah. And yeah.

And like I said, I didn't not like the movie.

You keep having to say that I hated the movie, but I did not like it.

Yeah. Yeah. I would have done so much different, but it was okay.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for listening to this episode and I wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year. Or I actually prefer to say, yeah, a blessed Christmas because it is remembering what the true meaning of Christmas is. Not Santa and elves and all of that stuff, but that God sent his son to the earth and in the form of a child to live as a man so that he could understand all of the temptations that we live under as sinful human beings. And yet he was sinless and he died on the cross.

Could not be our prophet, priest and king without having done so.

Right. And so just a reminder to remember what the true reason, regardless of how many Christmas movies you watch as a family for Christmas, that the true reason for Christmas, and we should all remember this as Christians on Christmas Day especially, but every day of the year and every Sunday of the year that Christ came for us and the penalty for our sins so that we could have a relationship with a perfect, holy and loving God. And just a perfect, holy, just and loving God. So anyway, have a blessed Christmas and a wonderful new year and we will be back in January for our 2025 season.

We'll see you next month and next year. Yeah. Oh yeah.

Thank you so much for listening. I'm Eve Franklin.

I'm Tim Martin. And don't just watch.

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