Red One is a newly released action-comedy Christmas movie starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, Chris Evans, J.K. Simmons, and Lucy Liu. In this movie, Santa—played by J.K. Simmons, codename “Red One”—has been kidnapped. To recover him, the protagonists bring in “Level 4 Naughty-Lister” Jack O’Malley, played by Chris Evans: the best tracker in the world. Jack discovers that the mythological world is real and, with a little intimidation and payment, is willing to help rescue Santa. Audiences will get what they have come to expect from films starring The Rock: action, some laughs, and some real heartfelt moments. What they won’t expect is an introduction to Aristotle’s Ethics, otherwise known as “virtue ethics.”
The Rock plays Callum Drift, Santa’s Commander of the ELF (Enforcement, Logistics, and Fortification), who hands in his letter of resignation with a heavy heart. He’s happy doing the job for the sake of the kids, but he can’t take the adults anymore: The naughty list is higher than ever. Being nice doesn’t matter to the adults anymore. Santa reminds him they do it for the kids and the kids in the adults—more on this later.
Shortly after this conversation, Santa is kidnapped by the very same people Jack unknowingly helped. It turns out they were hired by Gryla, a witch set on punishing and imprisoning the naughty so that the world may belong to the “righteous.” (Previously, she and Krampus, Santa’s adopted brother, attempted to scare people who acted naughty into acting nice.) We see here at play the first line of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics: “Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action as well as choice, is held to aim at some good.” Here we see the good aim of punishing real immoral behavior—in other words, enacting justice. Even Gryla’s plan of imprisonment (understood as a remedy for injustice so that people may become good) aims at justice and a good world. Her previous attempt was misguided, however, as she pursued her goal through fear instead of appealing to the good. Worse, her intention now is to eliminate naughty behavior of any degree from the world via imprisonment for life. What she misses, or perhaps is simply tired of waiting for, is that people can still become good through their actions—a key element of Aristotle’s Ethics.
It is through each and every free action that we become either more virtuous or more vicious.
In a scene between Callum and Jack, the former tells Jack, “You put yourself on the Naughty List.” He specifies that it is through “each and every choice” that one becomes naughty or nice. Callum even clarifies for Jack that what is meant by nice is “good.” It is clear then that the Naughty and Nice Lists are not superficial but describe people’s character. Aristotle makes this same point: It is through each and every free action that we become either more virtuous or more vicious. Through our actions we put ourselves higher or lower, if you will, on Santa’s Naughty or Nice List: a Level 1–4 Naughty-Lister or a Level 1–4 Nice-Lister. The important point Callum makes is that one is not stuck on the Naughty List. Rather, through one’s choices he or she can move off of it—the list simply recognizes one’s character. This suggests that there is an already existing objective moral order. Santa, indeed, has to check the Naughty and Nice Lists. If Santa was the one to put people on the lists, he would not need to check them, since it would have been by his hand that names were assigned there in the first place.
The recognition of character in reference to a previously existing objective moral order is highlighted in the scene where Jack and his son Dylan—imprisoned in magic snow globes—reconcile. Dylan expresses the pain of Jack’s absence in his life, and Jack explains he thought he was doing his son a favor since he wasn’t a great guy. Jack admits he hasn’t been a good father, but seeing how mistaken he was in being absent, he commits to being a father to Dylan. Through their reconciliation, the snow globe releases them—a feature probably unknown to Gryla. Why is this? Through their choices they have committed to the good life, and their characters have changed. Additionally, this scene is a suggestion of the coterminous realities of freedom and goodness. In being good, they are set free. Goodness is understood to be constitutive of freedom.
In the final fight scene with Gryla, Krampus comes to the aid of Jack and Callum. He chooses to defend Santa because he knows what his brother is doing is good: Santa “has somewhere to be.” Ironically, Gryla ends up trapped in her own snow globe. Her actions have been found worthy of blame and led to her punishment. We can only hope this imprisonment leads to her own conversion of heart and thus her freedom.
In a concluding scene—and this is the critical scene that provides the principle through which we can understand the virtue ethics present in the movie—Santa invites Jack and Dylan to join him as he delivers gifts. On the way back to the North Pole, father and son enjoy loving conversation with laughter and smiles. Callum, gazing at Jack and Dylan, sees Jack as a kid: two kids talking in their childlike innocence. Santa notices Callum and says, “You’re seeing it, aren’t you?” Jack has become a child again. Crucially, this is understood as an improvement—we will return to this shortly. With his newfound sight, Callum asks to retain his post as Commander of the ELF. It is here where we see the key doctrine of virtue ethics: happiness. Happiness to Aristotle is “the excellence specific to human beings as human beings”—what he calls virtue. Virtue brings each thing to its completion. Two other terms to describe this truth are fulfillment and perfactum—“made all the way through.”
What Red One suggests, then, is that the Christmas presents are not ultimately a reward system. What is most telling is the reference to “the kid in the adult.” Childlikeness is thus what is common between the kid and adult; childlikeness is then understood as fulfilling or perfecting the person. This is demonstrated when, after committing to the good life, Jack becomes a child. Goodness and childlikeness are seen as coterminous. In other words, the telos (end, fulfillment, aim) of becoming good through one’s actions—being nice—is childlikeness. The presents are intended to preserve childlikeness and foster it in those who have lost it to some degree. In other words, the presents aim at the fulfillment of the person as childlike. (Alternatively, one could also say the goodness of the child in itself prompts a response, in this case the giving of gifts. One can’t help but want to give a gift in the face of such goodness.) In his Letter to Children, Pope St. John Paul II describes children as those who “instinctively turn away from hatred and are attracted by love.” Is this not another way of describing the virtuous man, one who is totally disposed toward goodness and wants nothing to do with evil? The fully virtuous man is the fulfilled, completed, perfected man. It is then in the child that we see happiness.
Here we can now ponder Santa’s gaze: Santa sees the child. Santa sees what is understood to be one’s first act of being—that is, the objective ontological principle of the human person as human person. Put another way, humans are in the first place humans. The second act of one’s being is the realization of this first act of being. If childlikeness is the fulfillment of the person totally disposed to goodness, then to see the child is to see that person’s first act of being—that which is the human person (first act) and is to be realized by the human person (second act). Santa, and now Callum, thus see the human person in the fullest sense.
In children there is something that must never be missing in people who want to enter the kingdom of heaven.
This principle calls to mind Matthew 18:3: “Unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” Again, “Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs” (Mark 10:14). Approaching Christmas day, John Paul II comments on Matthew 18:3 in his Letter to Children:
Is not Jesus pointing to children as models even for grown-ups? In children there is something that must never be missing in people who want to enter the kingdom of heaven. People who are destined to go to heaven are simple like children, and like children are full of trust, rich in goodness and pure. Only people of this sort can find in God a Father and, thanks to Jesus, can become in their own turn children of God. . . . God wants us all to become his adopted children by grace . . . the real reason for Christmas joy.
John Paul II here affirms the child as a “model” for all—so much so that one must not lose the characteristics of the child, since this is what constitutes those who enter the kingdom of heaven. Thus, to be “perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” necessitates and, by definition, includes childlikeness (Matthew 5:48).
Furthermore, childlikeness is seen here in its full theological meaning—namely, adopted sonship. Man’s eschatological destiny is thus understood in reference to the child. Man was made for union with God via adopted sonship, via becoming a child of God. In his Summa theologiae, St. Thomas Aquinas describes happiness—that is, perfect happiness—as “the perfect good” (ST 1-2.2.8). This perfect good is none other than “God alone.” It is therefore God alone who constitutes man’s perfect happiness. As seen above, in order to attain this perfect good, one needs to become a child. Again, if childlikeness is a total disposition toward goodness, this ultimately means a total disposition toward God who is the perfect good. To use Aquinas’ language, childlikeness is a perfection of the person as it turns us to the perfect good of the person—namely, God. This perfection of childlikeness then allows for and is required for union with God, our perfect happiness. To be a child is therefore to be fulfilled in our unity with God via adopted sonship. Highlighting Christ’s divine sonship to the Father in the Holy Trinity, Jean-Pierre Batut describes sonship as “precisely nothing else . . . than the fact of referring oneself wholly to God in a loving obedience.” We then see here also the element of the child that is full of trust.
For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ—if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Rom. 8:15–17)
Although some may mistake Red One as a simple “actionifying” of the Santa story, I argue the movie is rich in its display of virtue ethics and the fulfillment of the person seen in the child. Enriched by the Catholic tradition, I recommend watching Red One this Christmas season.