Why I love Arthur Christmas

Christmas is almost upon us and it’s time to finally look at a Christmas special, as we do every year, but because I’m busy around the holidays, I’m only doing a short piece on this one. This may essentially end up being a repeat of the Nostalgia Critic Editorial on it, but I want to say I love this movie so much… Arthur Christmas

A team-up between Sony Animation: the studio that brought you The Emoji Movie and you know, this abomination

And Aardman most known for stop-motion stuff like Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run, this movie came out in 2012 to a positive critical reception but rather low box office figures, only $142m on a $100m budget, it’s quite possible this movie lost money at the box office.

But I think it really is good enough to be considered a classic, here’s why

Arthur Christmas is the story of the legacy of the Christmas’: the current Santa: Malcom; the santa of old, I don’t think he’s ever been called anything but Grandsanta; the guy who basically runs the show: Steve and the clumsy but well-meaning guy, Arthur.

Malcolm’s age has lead him to become more of a figurehead, with Steve basically running everything in their new high-tech operation, it was expected that he’d retire this year and hand over responsibility to Steve but he decides to stick on, putting a rift between him and Steve. When it’s discovered that a present has been missed, with Steve refusing to budge and Malcolm lacking the knowledge to proceed without him. It’s up to Arthur to find a way to get the present to the child.

First off, I’d like to congratulate the animators at Sony, whilst the movies that come out of the studio have always been of mixed quality, they’re usually very well animated. The designs are a little odd but fit with the movie’s style. There is some real energy in the animation with some really cool visual gags that might not even get noticed the first time you watch it. You know this is the studio that did things like Hotel Transylvania and Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

Where this story shines though is in it’s heart. It’s a relatively simplistic story when you think about it, but that gives a lot of time for good humour and some really neat character stuff. Each of the characters has a set ideology.

Grandsanta is very rooted in the past, he doesn’t like how they’ve advanced things since his day, but is more willing to go out of his way to deliver that last present, even if it turns out there is an aura of selfishness around that decision.

Steven is very much rooted in the future, time has passed and 2 billion presents need delivering over the course of one night (one very long night because Time Zones exist – would some movie PLEASE acknowledge that) so he has idea to make it efficient and 1,999,999 presents were delivered. He feels that the one missed present overshadowed his work and to an extent, he’s right, but although it takes him a while to get over his own issues, he does eventually come around and help. He’s not painted as the bad guy, and lord knows that would’ve been easy to do with this scenario.

Arthur is somewhat of the compromise position. He’s willing to use whatever means necessary to get the job done. But he’s a clutz, he’s scared of quite literally everything, and isn’t well respected by his peers. But he works in letters and wrote back to the child telling her to believe and doesn’t want to see that be for naught. He’s driven, sweet, a peacemaker in many respects but perhaps a little too wide-eyed and blind to reality. It would’ve been easy to make him the person everyone aspired to be but no, he really isn’t.

My point is none of the characters are really portrayed as villains, Malcolm is shown to be somewhat lazy but they do point to his age, he’s not dumb but sometimes a little ignorant of other people’s feelings, particularly of those close to him. Hence his initial dismissal of the one present. And better yet, it’s not one person that has all the answers. It takes a collaborative effort to make this work and that’s heart-warming and a good lesson for children.

And they don’t give us reason to take immediate dislike to a character, they all are identifiable, a lot of them simply get lost in their work and forget what it’s all for, certainly understandable given the scale of their task.

The future still clearly is the way forward, and they don’t shy away from that. The ship that delivers the gifts isn’t replaced by the classic sled in the end, they keep the ship. I do like this technology, it’s never so overboard that it feels too rooted in a particular era, so it shouldn’t date that badly. But the past should never be forgotten, this movie uses that message to create a gloriously animated, well written Christmas classic