From the “John Wick” team: This Christmas classic was the inspiration for the crazy Santa action
Andreas Rivera
November 29, 2022 2:42 am
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3 min read
In an interview, director Tommy Wirkola spoke about his action festival “Violent Night” and the Christmas classic that he used as a model.
There are only a few weeks left until the Christmas holidays. The Christmas markets are already open in many places, the radio stations have pulled out their playlists with the most popular Christmas songs and true fans are back to watching Christmas films to get in the mood. One of the most popular is undoubtedly “Home Alone”. The film, directed by Chris Columbus (“Happy Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone”), is about a little boy (Macaulay Culkin) who is accidentally left alone by his family and sets himself up against the nasty burglars (legendary: Joe Pesci and Daniel Stern) Harry and Marv has to fight back.
But honestly, haven’t you ever wondered how it’s possible that the “wet bandits”, as Marv and Harry would love to call themselves, can still be chasing after Kevin after all the traps and pain? Basically, they should have died several times. And that’s exactly the premise of director Tommy Wirkola’s next action festival “Violent Night” with “Stranger Things” and Marvel star David Harbor as the quick-witted Santa Claus – hard action and childish naivety (via CBR):
“I loved ‘Home Alone’ as a kid, but as you get older you’re like, ‘Oh, [the burglars] would die if he did those things to them.’ So that was basically that approach to the scenes. We set traps very similar to those in Home Alone and see what it does to a human. I think what also makes it so funny is that the little girl doesn’t understand that he (Santa Claus, editor’s note) is hurting them. She just thinks he’s doing it like in the movies, that it’s fun and games…”
You can see how brutal and definitely X-rated the action is in the trailer for “Violent Night”.
“Violent Night” is like “Die Hard” – only with real Christmas cheer
The 42-year-old was known for bloody works like “Dead Snow” and “Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters” and is considered a specialist in uncompromising brutal action of the bloodiest kind. When he accepted the offer, “Violent Night” for 87North, the production company of the “John Wick” films, Wirkola knew that the original idea of the real Santa Claus fighting terrorists alone would not be enough. In contrast to other genre representatives such as “Die Hard” and “Deadly Christmas”, which take place on the holidays but do not integrate the festival into the plot, the filmmaker wanted to take a completely different approach with his action film:
“We asked ourselves early on, ‘How can we make the action unique? How can we make them stand out? How can we make the fights stand out? And the answer was, ‘Oh, yes, Christmas! We have to incorporate Christmas into every aspect of this film – including the fights.’ […] That was part of the fun of coming up with the storyline. That’s how we differentiate the action from other films: We just have to really get into Christmas.”
And the action fans who can hardly wait to see “Violent Night” in German cinemas from December 1, 2022 should be told that there will be a few more surprises.
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