Lifted from a planned streaming release into theaters, the appreciative audience response has already proven strong for the high-concept Christmas action-comedy Red One. The scenario finds that Santa Claus (J.K. Simmons) maintains a very high-end operation at the North Pole, with security maintained by no-nonsense Callum Drift (Dwayne Johnson). All the preparation wasn’t enough to stop a determined black-ops team from kidnapping Santa on Christmas Eve—and Drift must forcibly corral the help of gifted industrial hacker Jack O’Malley (Chris Evans) to secure the jolly old elf’s timely and safe return.
Looking at Simmons’ Santa, however, he seems like he can more than take care of himself; no bowl full of jelly here, as this cut Claus has obviously put in some serious gym time. Seems par for the course over this last generation of movie making, as it’s become more and more common for cinematic Santas to be a whole lot less benign than the chubby and cheery Kris Kringles of bygone cola ads.
We’ve picked out some stellar examples of tough, modern era movie Santas that may have you considering leaving the whole gallon of milk and box of cookies, if not boarding up the chimney altogether. Whose naughty list do you least want to be on? We’ve passed on the various red-suited slashers and incarnations of Krampus to keep it manageable, but if you want to argue for any of them, feel free to write them in!