The 'Christmas Chronicles' Movies Are Pure Madness

As we've detailed extensively in the past, the Santa Clause franchise is completely insane; not only is the first film predicated on the idea that murdering Santa Claus is the gateway to immortality, but its sequels feature contractually-obligated marriages, time travel, and an animatronic farting reindeer.

Happy Birthday, Jesus.

But now there's a new contender in the arena of baffling Santa-based family comedies: Netflix's Christmas Chronicles films. The 2018 original was a fairly straightforward holiday yarn in which Kris Kringle (played by Kurt Russell) ends up lost in the middle of Chicago with two kids, like some kind of a cross between Adventures in Babysitting and Escape From New York ... but with Santa Claus. It's also the rare Christmas movie that features a scene in which Santa's elves attempt to castrate a teenager with a tiny chainsaw.

The recent sequel is somehow even stranger. This one features a "cursed" ex-elf, Belsnickel, who has turned into the form of a human seemingly from a mid-'90s Kevin Smith movie.

Belsnickel kidnaps Kate, the girl from the first movie, sending her through some kind of wormhole and into the North Pole. Santa, meanwhile, is out in his sleigh hunting a "Yule Cat," the mythical Icelandic beast who "eats anyone who hasn't received new clothes by the time Christmas rolls around." Santa brings Kate back to his workshop, where his elves thankfully don't try to eviscerate anyone's genitals. However, they do speak in an incomprehensible Elven language that was, apparently, inspired by Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ.

It turns out that Santa's domain is powered and protected by some kind of magic, Infinity Stone-like object that contains the power of the Bethlehem Star, which Santa has wielded ever since he rescued the few Elves who survived the Elf genocide committed by humans. Yes, there is a reference to an elf genocide in this movie. Belsnickel tries to steal the star thingy but ends up destroying it in a scene so clearly cribbed from The Last Jedi, angry Redditors might crap all over it out of habit. 

And that's just the tip of the iceberg of madness. The Elves are all "poisoned," which makes them "insane," so Mrs. Claus distributes gingerbread grenades to a small child. Later, Santa gets randomly sent back in time to 1990, where it becomes clear that this movie is also part of the Home Alone-verse. Oh, and while they're in the past, Kate flirts with a cute boy who later turns out to be her dead dad. And keep in mind It took the Santa Clause series three whole movies before they ran out of ideas and threw a convoluted time travel story into the mix, so who knows what yuletide lunacy we'll see in The Christmas Chronicles 3.

You (yes, you) should follow JM on Twitter! And check out the podcast Rewatchability.

Top Image: MGM