Chris Columbus brings Harry Potter ‘scale’ to The Christmas Chronicles 2

MANILA, Philippines — Filmmaker Chris Columbus said that he treated The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two with the same respect, integrity and scale he brought to the Harry Potter films he directed.

The fantastical world he has created in the now-streaming Netflix film was partly inspired by what he deemed as lacking in how Santa’s workshop and village got previously rendered in other films.

“We wanted it to feel like it had been around for hundreds of years. We treated it with the same amount of integrity and respect that I put into Harry Potter. I wanted Hogwarts to feel like a place that’s inviting. I wanted, saying way back then, kids in the audience and families to feel like we’re reaching our hands out and inviting them into this world. That was the mantra for Christmas Chronicles: Part Two,” said Chris, who directed/produced Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, some of the highest-grossing films ever made.

Included in his best-known works is the now-classic holiday favorite, Home Alone. There’s a scene in The Christmas Chronicles sequel that could send the ‘90s kids waxing nostalgic because it will remind them of the well-loved children’s film. Interestingly, it was a merely happy coincidence.

Chris told The STAR and other Filipino press in a recent virtual chat: “I think it’s interesting that a few people have pointed out at the airport sequence, I was trying to do a homage to Home Alone. It was interesting to me because it was never intentional... It’s no secret that Santa goes back in time (in the film) and it’s 1990. That’s the year we shot Home Alone.

“So, when I got to the set, all the wardrobe looked exactly...you know, we have some of the same wardrobe and then I’m shooting the scene where a woman is in an argument with a woman behind the desk at the ticket counter. And I looked at the monitor and I thought, this reminds me of Catherine O’Hara (mother of Kevin, played by Macaulay Culkin) and Home Alone.”

The Christmas Chronicles: Part Two takes off two years after the events in the first film where Kate (played by Darby Cam) and her sibling got to save Christmas. So much has changed since then, but Kate finds herself again in yet another adventure with Santa Claus (plus Mrs. Claus!) with her unlikely companion Jack (Jahzir Bruno), son of her mom’s new boyfriend, when Christmas faces the threat of being ended for good.

Meanwhile, he was all praise for the “tremendous built-in chemistry” that couple of about 40 years, Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn, bring to their roles as Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus in this follow-up to the successful first movie in 2018. If you’ve seen the original film, Mrs. Claus only made a brief appearance, but for Part Two, it has been expanded into a full-length character.

Chris also hopes audiences will find the movie a “fun” break from “the madness going out there” and “awful news cycle we’re in right now” while taking to heart what it has to say about family being the “most important thing in your life”. Here are more excerpts from the virtual chat with the acclaimed director:

On directing and producing the Part Two:

“In the first film, Kurt Russell and I were on the set every day and I really hit it off with Kurt. We got along so well and his commitment to the role of Santa Claus is a little strange, thinking it’s Santa Claus, but this guy wrote 100 pages of a backstory of the history of Santa Claus. Part of it you see in the movie, when you see him in Asia Minor delivering gifts for the first time, but then he went through all of Santa and Mrs. Claus’ relationship, how they first met, how they got married. So, I’ve never seen that kind of commitment from an actor. So, as a director, you want to work with an actor like that who gives you everything, who brings it all to the set.

“When Kurt and I met after the success of the first movie, and I said look, I want to direct you in the second movie, but let’s not do a remake of the first movie, let’s not do another night on the town with Santa Claus, let’s dig deep into the mythology you’ve been thinking about, and open up the world and treat this particular movie with the same sort of scale that I brought to Harry Potter. And that was the goal, and give kids and families, a North Pole and a Santa’s village, something that they’ve never seen before, where we’re actually taking your hand and saying, we invite you into this world.”

On directing the Hollywood couple:

“They are a director’s dream...They have this tremendous amount of chemistry together, but they also are very professional, so when you’re working with them, they come in, everybody knows their lines and Goldie brings a sense of real strength to the character since she’s a strong woman as well.

“You know, they haven’t worked together since Overboard, a movie back in 1987. So, I’m very fortunate to be able to get to work with them, it’s a real honor. You know, it’s something I never thought would happen because they’ve turned everything down in the last 30 years. So, it was, it was really special for me.”

On the most Christmassy scene in the film:

“I think probably the trip, the journey through Santa’s village. We designed a very complicated camera rig to get that particular shot. And I wanted you to have to watch that opening shot of Santa’s village three or four times because there’s so much going on in it like elves are Christmas caroling here, they are delivering there… It was important for me that the audience saw it was the most Christmassy shot in the film, and I don’t want to say what happens to the finale of the movie, but I think I get particularly moved at the finale because it brings about the themes that we need so badly, not only in our country right now, but all over the world — of bringing people together, bringing people who are bringing this divide together somehow. And it really comes down to one line in the movie, Christmas isn’t about where you are, it’s about who you’re with, and with the entire world dealing with COVID at this point, that line has become very poignant to me, you know.”