‘Violent Night’ and Wasting Ideas
Violent Night is a silly movie, but that doesn’t mean it should throw away the one brilliant idea it had.
Time is a construct, and it’s never been more meaningless than the modern day, what with our ability to time shift entertainments and attend important business meetings in our underwear, sitting on the toilet, with a virtual beach scene projected behind us1. Believe me, Years Ago Jeff would have loved these incredible abilities. All those hours in boring meetings, wasted2. All that unnecessary presence.
These tools have also rendered holidays more or less meaningless, haven’t they? At any moment you feel nostalgic for Christmas, for example, you can bake some cookies, put out the decorations, and fire up a holiday-themed movie marathon to watch while drinking straight bourbon with a splash of eggnog for several hours straight3. And as a result of all this incredible technology, I found myself watching Violent Night in late June, a warm, clear evening with nary a caroler in sight4.
This wasn’t planned. I recall seeing advertisements for the film in December, and made what we old folk call a “mental note” to maybe watch it, possibly, at some undefined moment in the future. And then a mere six months later I noticed it available on my small empire of streaming platforms and I thought, what the fuck; I’ll never remember to watch this six months from now, so make hay while ye can smell the roses or something5.
Violent Night is a master class of high concept, I’ll give it that. On Christmas Eve, the very real Santa Claus (David Harbour)—formerly a violent Viking sort—is experiencing some serious depression. When he arrives at a wealthy compound where the Last Innocent Girl (Leah Brady) has been taken hostage, Kris Kringle has to remember his Warrior Ways and kick some serious ass.
That’s it. That’s the plot.
Now I Have a Machine Gun Ho Ho Ho
So, there are some nice touches in this dumb little movie. I like the idea that Santa was once a murderous Viking raider. I like the idea that he’s almost angry that the One Good Kid6 left is in the compound where he almost has to intervene. But mainly, I love the Bag of Holding.
If you’re at all familiar with the Santa mythology, you know that this bastard somehow travels all around the world handing out gifts to good children. He’s traditionally depicted carrying a sack, a huge bag filled with gifts. If you think about it for one moment, it’s obvious this bag is a Bag of Holding, an enchanted bag that can contain billions of gifts. So far, so expected. And Violent Night has Santa carrying just such a bag, complete with cheesy “magic” glitter effects every time he reaches in and pulls a gift from it7.
Early on in the film, Santa has a violent fight with one of the goons, and in a delightful touch he uses his Gift Bag of Holding tactically. He reaches in repeatedly hoping to get a gift he can use as a weapon (it’s a funny gag that he pulls video game cartridges instead), and at one point weaponizes the Bag of Holding’s void nature, using it to blunt melee attacks. It’s kind of great8!
Almost immediately, the movie works hard to get rid of the Bag of Holding; after Santa is temporarily captured (uh, spoilers?) the Big Bad (John Leguizamo9) contemptuously throws the bag into the fire. And this is a huge mistake, because the Bag of Holding was the one really cool idea this movie had10.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
Great ideas are a curse for writers11. You invent something really cool—a character, a magical artifact, a really unique fictional universe with a terrific mechanic—and then you have to do something with it12. Like, if you come up with a great artifact that gives the hero superpowers, you have to figure out how those powers affect the story. What would any rational person do if they could suddenly fly, for example? You can’t give someone a magic statue that lets them fly and then never have them actually use it.
Alternatively, you can do what the writers of Violent Night (Pat Casey and Josh Miller) did: Throw it in the fire.
This is literally what they do with Santa’s Bag of Holding. After that fun sequence that establishes that Santa can root around in there endlessly seeking useful weapons and use the Bag as a kind of anti-shield that absorbs attacks, the writers apparently thought oh, shit, now the audience is anticipating all kinds of clever fight scenes where Santa finds increasingly surprising uses for this magic! and decided to just delete the Bag of Holding from the film altogether via the simple expedient of having the Bad Guy throw it into a fire, where it ignominiously burns up13.
The Bag of Holding had a lot of promise. I was anticipating some clever riffs on the concept—Santa pulling increasingly awkward toys out of it and being forced to fight with them, maybe at one point stuffing a bad guy into it—and then maybe later having to climb into it himself to hide from someone, and finding that irritated bad guy in there waiting!—and maybe at the climactic battle reaching in and actually getting an ax or a rifle or something that turns the tide of violence, with the parade of useless toys that come before a recurring joke that pays off.
See? I just wrote a better story14. And I’m Day Drunk and wearing nothing but a bathrobe and some socks15.
Deleting a great idea like that is just laziness, frankly. They had a good idea but that good idea made the rest of the story a lot more difficult to tell, so they milked it for one gag and then burned it so they could write the rest of the story on autopilot without having to be, you know, creative.
Look, I get it. I’m so lazy I’m not even really wearing socks16. When I told you I was wearing socks before, I lied; they’re actually just sandwich bags and rubber bands17. So I get the laziness, and I’ve done this before in stories myself. But—and this will shock you—just because Jeff does it doesn’t make it good writing, kids.
Well, maybe I’ll watch this again in six months and see if all that spiked eggnog improves things. I’m kidding: Eggnog is disgusting and improves nothing.
Next week: John Wick: Chapter 4 and the case of the curiously exhausted army of attackers.
In my freelance writing work I often conduct interviews, and the number of people who not only assume I will be on video and then get annoyed when I refuse to be on video — because who in the world wants to be on video? — is astounding.
Although I got a lot of short stories written while pretending to pay attention at college lectures, work meetings, court appearances, my own wedding, and long drives.
The fact that my holiday sense is all about bourbon tells you something. It tells you that I regard family gatherings as the worst way to waste a day off.
To set the scene: I was sitting on the couch in my underwear due to the heat, but my cats all decided that this implied an emergency of sorts and so they all sat on top of me in order to keep me from freezing to death, which resulted in a sweat stain on the couch that may never completely dry out.
I can’t be the only person haunted by the terrific films and TV shows I’ll miss once I die. I mean, haunted.
I was not a Good Kid. I knew Santa wasn’t real when I was 5 years old because I never got punished for all the evil I did.
This is the 21st century, people. We don’t need the sparkle effect to sell magic any more. Suburban moms are reading A Court of Thorns and Roses, for god’s sake.
It’s a fun mental exercise to imagine what you would place in a bag of holding. Me? Whiskey, possibly all the baseball cards I have in a box under my bed that I haven’t looked at since 2007 because I have lost my child-like sense of wonder.
Delightful.
And, no, mashing together Knives Out, Bad Santa, and Die Hard was not a good idea.
That’s why I drink. The sheer number of great ideas. That’s why.
"It's just ... more shit I gotta do now.” - Carl Rodd (Harry Dean Stanton), Twin Peaks: Fire, Walk with Me
In a better movie, revealing an incredibly powerful magic artifact and immediately seeing it destroyed would be a genius move. This is why writing is confounding and confusing.
Sorry. I do this a lot. Just not with my own work, which is frustrating.
Say it with me: DAY DRUNK AND WEARING NOTHING BUT A BATHROBE AND SOME SOCKS is the title of my autobiography.
BAZINGA
I was so lazy I didn’t even take out the sandwiches first.
Your footnotes are the best. And don’t hate on eggnog. It needs to be homemade and not out of a carton. Then add enough bourbon. Bourbon is the secret. It could be the best part of Christmas, actually.