Red One 2024

The film opens 30 years earlier, where a young Jack O’Malley (Wyatt Hunt) is at a family Christmas party. He brings his cousins upstairs to show them that their parents got them gifts, and not Santa Claus. Jack’s Uncle Rick (Marc Evan Jackson) comes upstairs to scold him for his behavior.

In the present day, Jack (Chris Evans) is an expert tracker. He sneaks through security around a mall by creating a distraction (setting a Christmas tree on fire) before going inside and planting a device. For added dickishness, he literally steals candy from a baby.

At the mall, Santa, AKA “Red One” (JK Simmons) is doing his yearly gig with his top bodyguard, Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson), head of the E.L.F. at the North Pole. He looks around the mall and is disgusted by how greedy and obnoxious the holiday shoppers are. Callum sends away an obnoxious wannabe influencer who interrupts a family’s time to meet with Santa, doing it with enough intimidation for him to back off. Everybody seems to know it’s the real Santa, but Callum takes his job super seriously to keep him protected at all costs.

In his apartment, Jack talks to his mysterious employer. They pay him half of what they offered him, and then promise to give him the rest when they have tracked who they needed Jack to track.

Callum and Santa return to the North Pole, which is hidden by a magic forcefield. They greet Mrs. Claus (Bonnie Hunt) before Callum and Santa have a heart-to-heart. Cal tells Santa that he is planning to retire from the job due to his disillusionment with the holiday. Santa tries to reassure him that it’s still worth it. Soon, a team of mercenaries breaks through the forcefield, and Callum notices the lights in Santa’s tower are flickering. He proceeds to investigate and goes to Santa’s room to find that he is missing. Callum spots the culprits and gives chase across the North Pole by using a snowmobile, but he is unable to catch up to them before they get away with Santa. The North Pole is contacted by Zoe Harlow (Lucy Liu), Director of MORA (The Mythological Oversight and Restoration Authority), after she learns of what has happened. Zoe tells Callum that they need to find an expert tracker known as “The Wolf” (Jack), because they have 24 hours until Christmas Eve.

Jack is contacted by his ex Olivia (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) because their son Dylan (Wesley Kimmel) has gotten in trouble at school. He tried to hack into the school’s PA system and got in trouble when a friend snitched on him. Jack chastises Dylan not for doing the crime, but for doing it poorly. Dylan mentions that he has a concert that evening but that he doesn’t care if Jack shows up. Jack has some regrets over being an absent father.

When Jack returns to his apartment, he is confronted by a team of North Pole mercenaries. He fights them off in his apartment before Zoe neutralizes him and brings him back to the North Pole. Jack is confronted by Callum and giant polar bear bodyguard Garcia (Reinaldo Faberlle) since he is a “Level 4 Naughty Lister”. Jack explains that he was paid by someone to do the tracking, but he didn’t know what the job was or who was being tracked. He learns that Santa has been kidnapped, which he finds absurd, but he is told by Zoe that all the mythological creatures that were supposedly fictional are, in fact, real (they witness the Headless Horseman arriving, for one).

Santa wakes up in a cell, where he meets his captor, a young woman (Kiernan Shipka). She hooks Santa up to a machine that siphons off his energy to power up her weapon, which is a magic snow globe prison called a “glaskafig”.

Callum and Jack reluctantly team up to rescue Santa and save Christmas. They start by going through a portal in a toy store and growing a toy car into their ride. They head to Aruba, where they find the man that brokered the deal between Jack and the villain, a guy named Ted (Nick Kroll). After Callum shrinks and grows himself to fight Ted’s goons, they confront him and learn that the villain is Gryla, the Christmas Witch. After Jack accidentally speaks her name (Gryla can hear whenever someone speaks it), Gryla uses Ted to speak to Callum and threaten to punish everyone who is on Santa’s naughty list.

Moments later, an ice cream truck emerges from the ocean. Three gigantic monstrous snowmen come out and go after Jack and Callum. The two try to fight them, but they keep reassembling themselves. Callum knocks the carrot nose off the first one, destroying it. Jack tosses a propane tank onto an open grill and hurls a bottle of liquor to cause an explosion that obliterates the second one. Before the third one can trap Jack in a frozen pool, Callum removes that one’s nose too. Unfortunately, Ted has been frozen and cannot currently provide more information. Zoe meets with the guys, and Callum suggests that Santa’s estranged brother is working with Gryla, and that MORA does not have the jurisdiction to go to the brother’s lair, but Callum and Jack will go in secretly.

Gryla attempts to test out the glaskafig on a jerk named Aaron Able (Matthew Cornwell), who is gifted with the globe and gets trapped inside when he touches it. However, Gryla becomes upset when the globe doesn’t return to her, so she decides to change up her plans.

Jack gets a call from Olivia, who criticizes him for not planning to go to Dylan’s concert. Jack then discusses Dylan with Callum, as he acknowledges that he wasn’t always the best father to the boy.

The two arrive at the lair of Santa’s brother, who happens to be none other than Krampus (Kristofer Hivju). Jack accidentally alerts Krampus and his goons to their presence when Jack tries to take a piece of gold from the lair. They are imprisoned before being brought to meet with Krampus. Callum tries to explain the situation to Krampus and tell him that his brother needs him. Krampus doesn’t care and plans to keep Callum as a prisoner until Jack challenges Krampus to play “Krampusschlap” with Callum, which involves enduring a powerful slap from Krampus. Callum keeps trying to appeal to Krampus’s better nature, but Krampus just smacks Callum so hard that he goes flying. Before Callum goes again, Jack activates an armbrace on Callum that lets him deliver a huge smack to Krampus, allowing Jack and Callum to run. Callum commends Jack for his good idea.

When the two return to their car, they find a package from Gryla addressed to Jack, but he refuses to open it. Jack then gets a video call from Dylan, who is annoyed that he didn’t show up to the concert and was left with his own package containing the glaskafig. Dylan touches it and gets teleported. Jack has no choice but to grab his own globe and go after Dylan while Callum has to go find them.

Jack and Dylan end up in Gryla’s lair, where she gloats over how the glaskafigs are working. After they leave, Jack apologizes to Dylan for being a bad father. Dylan forgives Jack, and Jack’s ability to improve his “naughty” status allows them to grow and break out of the globes.

Zoe had put a tracker on Jack earlier, so Callum finds that he and Dylan are at the North Pole, which means that Gryla never took Santa away from there. What’s more is that they realize that Gryla’s goons, who are shapeshifters, have taken over the North Pole and are disguising themselves as Mrs. Claus and other guards. Callum locates Jack and Dylan, and they join Zoe as they realize that Gryla is planning to use Santa to operate his sleigh so that she can deliver globes all around the world and imprison everyone she deems naughty. The heroes race to stop her after freeing Mrs. Claus, Garcia, and others.

Gryla starts to make her way out of the North Pole, but Callum and Jack catch up to the sleigh. They battle her as they go across a ramp, and Jack manages to unhook the reindeer from the sleigh, causing it to stop flying and send Gryla over the edge. Callum tries to wake Santa up, but Gryla re-emerges in her true form, a gigantic and hideous ogre. She prepares to attack the heroes, until Krampus arrives in his own sleigh to offer his help. Krampus fights back, but Gryla tosses him around (not that he minds). Santa regains consciousness and summons his reindeer to attack Gryla, punching her into the air until she falls into her pile of globes, effectively trapping her inside one. Zoe takes her into custody.

Everybody scrambles to get Santa ready to do his job. Callum, Jack, and Dylan join him as they go around the world, watching Santa deliver presents and bringing joy to kids everywhere. Callum watches Jack and Dylan bonding, even seeing Jack’s inner child for a moment. This is enough for Santa to see that Callum has changed his mind about retiring. Santa then proceeds to fly them home.