In Search of Door-Kicker Santa: TF Watches RED ONE
Our last free episode of 2024 involves Riley, Milo, and November watching the Rock in a terrible Christmas film entitled RED ONE. It’s a film in which Christmas is saved by the surveillance state, jacked Santa trains in the gym to do room-clearing and be an operator, and so much more. This is our present to you: we have suffered.
Comments (50)
Santa Segal: I evacuated the Shah of Iran and his family in this sleigh...
Santa Segal: Well I'm sorry to hear that. Because now, Imma snatch every motherfucker presents.
Unfortunately I was forced to watch this movie by in-laws who loved it immediately after seeing this episode post. Just getting around to hearing the crew’s take now
Bay of pigs in blankets
[Lumumba opening his Christmas CIA gifts] “toothpaste again?”
Okay but, imagine Muppets Red One with The Rock as the only human.
The true meaning of Christmas is hitting the gym twice a day
how did November mix up Chantal Akerman and Céline Sciamma
When I first heard about this movie but hadn't done further reading I came up with a better premise, which wasn't hard. On Christmas Eve NORAD loses track of Santa and sends a special forces team to rescue him. Basically Christmas Black Hawk Down.
Not that terrible a movie (nowhere near being good either), but podcasters have to eat so we pardon the performative movie episode. ANYWAY, the thing about Red One I found fascinating was the vestigial Hollywood "best practices" in the writing that no one followed through on. For example, The Rock is set up to hand the baton off to Captain America as Santa's top praetorian, but just decides to go back to work. Captain America never really gets cathartic closure for his childhood that the movie opens with, but again, it's set up to do just that.
This is clearly a heist movie and should have been on Kill James Bond
Jake *Kasdan*? Christ, even the writer is a nepo baby
So who plays Ded Moroz? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ded_Moroz
Control referenced again! 🔺
Mink Tier where you record from Aruba and Milo has to stay in the toff accent >>>
Ok so how about a movie called “The War on XMAS” and it’s pretty much the Expendables but they rescue Santa from North Korea. It has Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan as leaders of North Korea
would
The biggest personal mark against this movie: bringing in Gryla as a villain and completely disregarding her husband, cat, and especially her 13 sons. This movie could have been improved a letter grade by the fucking Yule Lads being there doing their various Deals like stealing meat, slamming doors, or annoying sheep.
Her large adult sons were her goons? I guess they weren't essential to anything.
Listening to this, my boyfriend was like "wait, isn't this just the origin story of robot Santa from Futurama? Too many people on the naughty list?" And he's right for saying it. Also, isn't Cirque du Soleil basically Quebequois Shen Yun?
i can’t believe i’m only now hearing this correct shen yun take
this movie sounds like it has all the hallmarks of a scientology production, but I am wrong
I think we should make 2025 the year in which podcasters only watch good films. If you ask work together then you can defeat this slop. For instance, Riley was slightly disparaging towards the movie where Nicholas Cage plays himself but it's delightful and Pedro Pascal does not phone it in.
I had to watch this movie in a theater for work and I'm glad that I'm not alone in suffering through it
The "There's no film critics at the Lamborghini dealership" came from a rare unguarded Hugh Jackman after being asked if he missed being regarded as a leading musical star or being in non-Wolverine roles
Approximately $1.5 million per minute. Meaning, for every minute “filmed,” you could pay the average New York rent ($1779, according to US census bureau) for approximately 84 months.
I would probably do that instead.
My daughter heard me listening to this and said I have no Christmas spirit then gave me tiny plastic hands so I must announce i now like this movie
she got your ass
Jason Statham can do pretty solid deadpan serious acting for obviously comedic films, he should've been cast for the Rock's role instead!
His performance in Spy carried that movie. The bit with The "Face Off" machine. Gold.
i gotta point out that St. Nicholas wasn't Turkish, he was a Pontic Greek.
I don't know why but there have been several prior examples of the hosts describing Anatolian Greeks as Turks, seemingly collectively forgetting that the Turks didn't really arrive in Anatolia until the second milennium CE and that there were still millions of Greeks in Anatolia until the Young Turks reached for the big red genocide button. TF are secret Kemalists confirmed
Admittedly, I’m doing computer tasks while listening but this entire ep bounced off my brain and it’s completely USMIL Santa movie fault. I forgot to submit a Q but mine is, has Riley decided on a Girl Name
literally listening again while cooking to see if I can learn anything about this movie
I lost my virginity at Shen Yun and they made sure it was to a person the same race as me
Was it Rachel Jake
Surprised you guys didn't catch wind of this insane article where the rock talks about how he was inspired to make this movie by watching Oppenheimer in the imax theater where Christopher Nolan watches his movies and asked Nolan's wife if he could sit in chris's seat, and later he texted the director of red one a picture of his bare chest as an example of a thing that would be cool in imax https://variety.com/2024/film/news/dwayne-johnson-red-one-imax-inspired-oppenheimer-christopher-nolan-1236209576/
Can you explain that using puppets?
This movie just sounds like Violent Night but worse
I WANT THE RUSSIAN SANTA SHIRT!
Being very into space stuff at the moment, the phrase "Krampus has a bunch of orbiters" gave me a very different impression of where the Next Location was going to be
Not sure if he was yoked (his portrait suggests otherwise), but Pope Julius II is probably the closest thing to it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pope_Julius_II “Nicknamed the Warrior Pope, the Battle Pope or the Fearsome Pope”
I will never be able to stop mulling over the phrase "Battle Pope" now, thank you
Well of course Santa is enmeshed with the American surveillance apparatus. How else would he see you when you're sleeping and know when you're awake.
Excuse me but I was reliably informed by the guardian dot com that this film's lack of success was due to some very profound reasons related to What ~We~ Truly Desire At Christmas, I will NOT accept being told that it was just a really bad film thank you very much
Normally they need at least three weak examples to manufacture a moral panic.
Perhaps they call JK Simmons "Red" because their regime change managed to successfully oust Tim Allen, but failed to assassinate him, thus allowing him to maintain a role of Santa-in-Exile in Moscow
I don't know if I'd say Red is part of the joint chiefs, but I'd bet in this universe the North Pole is part of Five Eyes.
This is a weird Fuller film.