Much of the humor of RedOne It’s based on Dwayne Johnson wishing his co-stars a “Merry Christmas” with the most serious face in the world. He’s supposed to be Santa’s bodyguard and there’s nothing he’s more interested in than the joy of children – “Save Christmas” is another thing he says often – so his intimidating physique sets a contrast somewhat “hilarious” with his martial attitude. The humor is therefore based on the complicity of the public and on this media image that The Rock has been methodically constructing for almost twenty years. Image where precisely the mixture of ferocity and affability is combined, and image on which it depends RedOne with despair. If it didn’t work, the film would have nothing.
It’s this combination that has allowed Johnson to emerge as the natural successor to Arnold Schwarzenegger, as they both know how to laugh at themselves. With some nuances however. Johnson, for example, began performing a little more quickly with the impression he was creating among audiences: while he was still far from being a total star, he was performing for Tales from the South (2006) to a character inspired by his silhouette. And, unlike Schwarzenegger with Terminator or Conan the Barbarian, we don’t know Johnson for having “characters”, but he is always him. Dwayne Johnson, The Rock, former WWE wrestler, takes on new and interchangeable identities.
So in RedOne He plays a certain Callum Drift – Santa’s bodyguard who discovers that his boss has been kidnapped on Christmas Eve – but he mainly plays Dwayne Johnson. Additionally, he is producing the film with his Seven Bucks label: a company that owes its name to the measly “seven bucks” he had in his pocket just before trying his luck in WWE and starting to win the love of the States -United. This is an anecdote that you surely know if you have seen Young Rockthe series produced by Johnson himself, based on his own life and extended to three seasons. A monument to his ego? That may be the case, but it’s a monument that was only possible because people love it. Almost as much as he loves himself.
Only in RedOne something strange is happening. Johnson rehearses his gestures, balances with the usual care the number of smiles his character has and the tone with which he must deliver his pithy sentences, he remains determined to make everything synonymous with great family entertainment… and even then, this n is not the case. work. Actually RedOne It’s a horrible film, capable only of stoking indifference and boredom, and of proclaiming with savage splendor the loss of all charm.
Something’s going on with The Rock
There is a clear bridge between RedOne and a film called Red alertbeyond the similarity between the titles. The original title of this action film in which Johnson starred with Gal Gadot and Ryan Reynolds was Red Noticeand it might just be the most emphatic triumph of The Rock’s career. Exactly three years have passed since its launch in streaming And Red alert It remains the most viewed film in Netflix history: more than 364 million hours viewed. A wild thing which perhaps had a less good consequence for the platform, because Red alert It was also the most expensive film on Netflix at the time. It cost $200 million, no less.
How he ended up “compensating”, since Red alert Netflix has reinforced the habit that its blockbusters They have absolutely crazy budgets. The invisible agent —with the same Chris Evans responding to Johnson in RedOne– cost an additional 200 million, and on March 14, Netflix premiered electrical state with Millie Bobby Brown and Chris Pratt covered by an investment of, let’s breathe, $320 million. It is up to Netflix to assess whether this budget increase is profitable, but what should matter to us now – beyond the fact that in these films we don’t see the money anywhere – is that at the end of 2021, there were compelling reasons to confirm Johnson as a total star. Everyone really loved it, so much so that you forget the box office disappointment it suffered not long before. Red alert.
Jungle cruise It was a Disney film that cost the same as Red alertand that in the pandemic context, he could barely cover his budget thanks to cinemas. Although it was forgotten that it existed, it was a watershed film for Johnson because of its connection to an important project that had been brewing for years: perhaps aware that he needed an iconic character to be the new Schwarzenegger, The Rock wanted a superhero. Jaume Collet-Serra, director of Jungle cruisehe was going to rehearse with Johnson for Black Adam. The film that was the beginning of the end. The one who is responsible for breaking Johnson’s love story with the public.
Black Adam was originally intended to be the villain of Shazam!a film released by DC in 2019. But Johnson thought this character deserved a film of his own and also didn’t consider Zachary Levi’s character a worthy foe. These self-parodied narcissistic judgments set off a real storm: Black Adam materialized at a time of power vacuum at DC, Johnson was therefore able to orchestrate through Seven Bucks the return of Henry Cavill in the role of Superman, promising in the post-credits scene of Black Adam an epic confrontation with his antihero. Everything went to hell when James Gunn was promoted as the new leader of DC Studios in late 2022, with his own plans for Superman. Cavill’s return failed to materialize and the adjacent box office collapse of Black Adam It made everything even more awkward.
Johnson wanted to inaugurate a saga within DC with Black Adamdesigned for your exclusive display. The collection did not allow this and also angered Warner when Johnson leaked false data about his film’s numbers to the press. Since then, we have seen a decline in Johnson’s career. Aware of how his image was ruined in the industry, The Rock was quick to make peace with Vin Diesel to return to Fast and Furiousand got involved with Disney in the simultaneous production of the sequel to Moana (premiere this November 29) and its remake in live action, where it would be Maui again. He also did RedOne. A film from Amazon MGM Studios which, what a surprise, cost 250 million dollars.
Coal for Christmas
The absurd budget of RedOne This is not only due to Johnson’s inertia, but to other, even more shocking reasons. The story is based on an idea from Hiram García, brother of Johnson’s ex-wife Dany García, with whom he founded Seven Bucks in 2012. Hiram had once been The Rock’s personal assistant, but he ended up being promoted to leader of Seven Bucks and is the main producer of RedOne. According to a source The wrap which explained why the shoot had been such a disaster: “I had gone from making his protein shakes to running his company. »
García’s inexperience isn’t the only thing that increased the budget of RedOne. Until then, Johnson had a bit of a bad reputation for his behavior on set, but that was all exacerbated in this co-production with Amazon that Warner Bros. is distributing internationally. Johnson was late every day by default after spending several hours at the gym, and had the annoying habit of urinating in water bottles he left lying around. His attitude took the budget from 50 million to 200 million more, and in short, it’s something to keep in mind to understand why RedOne delivers the dirty experience it offers.
RedOne It is another artifact delineated according to Johnson’s intuitions, according to his way of understanding entertainment cinema. Hiram García came up with the idea of kidnapping Santa Claus as a possible twist on the Christmas imagination, which Chris Morgan (regular screenwriter of Fast and Furious) was responsible for clarifying. This might be one of the few virtues of the proposal, because basically what they wanted to do was “weaponize” everything we associate with the North Pole and bring the associated mythology closer to superheroic coordinates. This is what makes JK Simmons’ Santa Claus (called “Nick”, named after Saint Nicholas) not an obese man, but a guy who spends 12 months fighting in the gym preparing for discipline to distribute all the gifts. possible when Christmas Eve arrives. A typically The Rock event.
In the same vein, the characters from European folklore who border these festivities – like Krampus, or the witch Gryla played by Kiernan Shipka – become interchangeable villains of blockbusterin the same logic which presents an anthropomorphic polar bear as The Rock’s right arm. It is not unreasonable that at some point along the long road RedOne —its pre-production began before its release Black Adam— this movie could have been good, but it is by no means. No one, except maybe a trying-too-hard Dwyane Johnson, seems to want to participate RedOne. Not even the director Jake Kasdan (accomplice of The Rock in the last two Jumanji) nor those in charge of the clumsiest digital effects of the season, spoiling the action scenes always shrouded (or camouflaged?) in darkness.
The cast also makes no effort to dignify a scenario allergic to this monumental idiocy with a minimum of hooliganism. We could talk here about how wasteful Simmons is or how Lucy Liu and Bonnie Hunt are completely lost – there are times when they don’t even know where to look in their shots – although it’s probably more productive to point out Evans for the way in which the script puts on its shoulders the responsibility of emitting the “Christmas spirit”. In other words, the cynical bounty hunter he plays has a dramatic arc to resolve during his alliance with Johnson, destined to be a better father and celebrate Christmas the way he deserves.
As a result, Evans has to deal with the most regrettable dialogues, because in his plea for an essential naivety – the one that drives us to have the best feelings now that these dates are approaching – he keeps accidentally rejoicing over his death . East. RedOne. The film then shows what’s behind Johnson’s media persona all these years. And since it was all math – math that was easy to fail with a few stumbles – well, that’s how unpleasant it is. RedOneand it’s so timely that it comes out with enough time so that when Christmas comes we can forget about it completely.
