Well, you read the headline, and the headline doesn’t lie. In an interview with the New York Times, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn waxed about their new Netflix Christmas franchise The Christmas Chronicles, in which the actually married duo play Santa and Mrs. Clause (who are also actually married, of course) and presumably get into all sorts of holiday shenanigans. Pretty classic Christmas stuff so far but Russell let loose with an extraordinary detail that really puts the entire movie in a different Christmas light by comparing it to Mel Gibson’s infamous crucifixion blockbuster The Passion of the Christ.
You see, Santa’s elves in The Christmas Chronicles speak a fake Yulish-Elvish language which, to Russell, is sort of like how Gibson’s actors spoke Aramaic in The Passion? We’ll let him explain.
It’s not to be taken lightly. I’ll never forget when I saw “The Passion of the Christ” and went, “Mel discovered something that nobody figured out for all this time we’ve been making movies.” If you do anything that’s historical, especially the Bible, and you do it in an original language, it gives it a sense of authenticity. And when I saw that, and I read this script, I thought, elvish will give this a sense of authenticity.
“A sense of authenticity,” says the man. Because if there’s one thing you’re looking for in a Santa movie, it’s that ring of truth. For comparison, here’s how the elves sound in The Christmas Chronicles.
Cute stuff! Extremely authentic.