Josh Blockwell throws a few ideas out for what Winter’s Knight will be like when it hits our screens.
Today I heard the concerning news that Sony have acquired the rights for Winter’s Knight, which will unquestionably be coming to theatres either this holiday season or the next.
Sony bought the screenplay off untested screenwriters Ben Lustig and Jake Thornton for $1 million, after a week long bidding war with Universal and Warner Brothers. A bidding war of this magnitude is, as far as I can tell, uncommon in the film industry.
This in itself might not be considered news ordinarily, and you’re probably already thinking: “Pipe down Blockwell, go back to writing Memories of Green, you’re shit at this article lark”. But the most bewildering part of this story isn’t the bidding war, it’s the screenplay that had studio execs clamouring over their mountains of cocaine that interests me most. What is the big fuss about Winter’s Knight?
Winter’s Knight is an origin story for fucking Santa Claus. Winter’s Knight is a VIKING BASED origin story for fucking Santa Claus.
To me, this represents a new low for the film industry. Tired of their reboots, sequels and remakes, Sony, Universal and Warner are happy to pay more than I’m likely to earn in a lifetime for the origin story of St Nick.No details on Winter’s Knight have been released yet, so I thought it would be a fun idea to try and cobble together a semblance of a likely plot summary, using recurring themes from other recent origin stories. Here goes.
Winter’s Knight by Josh Blockwell
We begin in Scandinavia, circa 900AD. A great disturbance is brewing in the northern wastes, entire settlements are being swept away by something called “The Naughty”, and the Norse gods are concerned. Odin holds a council with the other gods. If they don’t act soon, the entire kingdom will lie in ruins in the wake of this dark force. An avatar must be nominated, someone to embody the will of the gods, a harbinger of goodwill and peace, who can bring balance to the Nordic lands.
Cut to a Viking longboat fresh from raping and pillaging. Lowly Viking Kris Kringle is passing away the voyage having a go on one of the Viking fruit machines because fuck it, it’s a Santa Claus origin story. If Kris puts one more coin in, he can get a nudge and hit the feature board, then he’ll be set. His hands quake in anticipation, he reaches into his blood stained burlap sack for another gold piece, when suddenly he feels a burning sensation. The gold piece blinds him with an ethereal light, and sears into his hand. He falls to the ground in pain and passes out. When he comes to, his Viking buddies ask him if he’s alright. Confused, Kris says he’ll feel right as rain after a box of Micro Chips and some cheese on toast. Oleg offers to put the grill on. Fade to black.
Kris gets home to his Uncle Ben and Aunt Beru, they ask him how his pillaging went and he dumps his bag of gold on the kitchen table, essentially covering all the internet and heating he’s leeched for the last year. Uncle Ben hugs him and tells Kris that he’s a real Viking now, but asks him to remember that with great power, comes great responsibility. Kris shrugs this off and goes to bed, strangely tired all of a sudden.
Cut to the Northern Wastes, The Naughty, portrayed here by Nicholas Cage, engulfs another village in a cloud of black smoke. The Naughty cackles as the villagers are twisted into vile creatures from the smog. Soon, the Nordic lands will be his. The Nordic gods look on, willing their master plan to work.
Cut back to Kris’s house, the following morning, and our protagonist wakes up from a vivid nightmare. His Scorpion King pyjamas are dripping with sweat, must have been a bad one, he thinks. He looks in the mirror, and notices that a considerable white beard has sprouted overnight. Full bodied and solid, it seems to glow under Kris’s shaving light. It fills him with a sense of power, a sense of strength the likes of which he’s never felt before. He reaches his hand out to grab his dressing gown, and a single piece of coal flies from his fingers and smashes a hole in the bathroom door. Kris, looking at his hand in wonder, ponders the extent of these powers. He reaches again, another piece of coal flies from his fingers, punching a hole in the wall. In his amazement, Kris lets out a jolly belly laugh, the sound of which causes the all the longboat alarms in a ten-mile radius to go off. Could it be that searing gold piece? Kris wonders.
The following afternoon, Kris is on another voyage to rape and pillage a distant land with Uncle Ben and his War Chief, played by Michael Caine. Kris’s beard has already grown to an alarming length, and Kris seems to have put on weight in the space of a few hours. What was in those Micro Chips? Michael Caine asks Kris to come into his cabin after the raid, he has something to tell Kris about the beard. Uncle Ben looks wary: Michael Caine has something of a reputation as crazy hermit back at home. He asks Luke, I mean, Kris, to stay away from the grizzled war chief. He tells Kris that the warchief led Kris’s father off on some “Damn fool adventure” back in the Stone Wars. Kris has always thought his father served on a freighter, so this is news to him and only doubles his resolve to speak to Alfr- the warchief.
The raid goes ahead as planned. The villagers are beaten into submission and the Vikings go to walk away with their loot. When suddenly, a cloud sweeps over the village, black smoke fills the streets. The staff of a nearby Build-a-Bear try to flee and are subsequently mutated into cackling, deformed demons by the smoke.
The Naughty has arrived.
Uncle Ben rushes in to try and stop The Naughty from slaying the rest of the Vikings. He tells the raiding party to get to the longboat and engages in a swordfight with Nic Cage. Kris can only watch helplessly as The Naughty runs Uncle Ben through with his sword. Our hero falls to the ground in despair, only for the warchief to pick him up and say “It’s over, son.”, before hauling him onto the longboat.
After some slow motion shots of the longboat fleeing the village, and then panning shots of Kris looking out into the ocean while a choir sing unintelligible garbage in the background, Michael Caine puts his hand on our protagonist’s shoulder and asks Kris to walk with him. The war chief leads Kris into his cabin and sits the sullen boy at his desk.
By the flickering light of the candles, backed with the muted sounds of ANOTHER unintelligible choir, the war chief tells our hero of the last time he saw a beard like his. A beard of such power once grew on a mighty warrior eons ago, some said that the longer it grew the more powerful the mighty warrior became. The warrior could turn the tide of a battle simply with a chortle, he could shoot coal and tangerines from his hands, he could control the animal kingdom with the power of his beard. His name was St. Nicholas, and he was the greatest warrior on Earth.
The war chief tells Kris his beard is twice as long as that of St. Nicholas. Kris runs his beard through his hands, accidentally knocking over the war chiefs Wallace and Grommit mug as he does so. Is this the source of his power? Could this be the key to defeating The Naughty?
Cut to the night, the longboat drifts silently. Kris wakes to see a mysterious ethereal being standing over his bed. He throws his Aston Villa bedsheets off and leaps out of his cot. He demands to know the being’s identity. “I am Odin,” says the being in a booming voice. “It is time. Time for you to fulfil your destiny.”
Odin leads Kris onto the deck of the longboat, and raises his staff to the sky. “You are our only hope against The Naughty. We have given you these powers as a gift, use them responsibly. The Gods are on your side.” A glint appears in the sky and a vehicle unlike anything Kris had ever seen before descends from the heavens. “Every champion needs a steed, my son.” Says Odin. “This is your sleigh, your chariot of the gods, and these are your steeds, warrior beasts like none have ever seen before!” Eight black reindeer land on the deck and howl at the sky. Odin feeds one of them a Finish Powertab, and they fall silent.
The spirit of St. Nicholas appears on deck, startling Kris. He offers our protagonist his red robe. “This robe is stained with the blood of all I have slain over the years, in this life and the next. The fate of the kingdom rests with you, Kris. The Naughty must be stopped. It is my gift to you. Now go my son, free us from The Naughty. I bestow upon you the title of our fiercest warrior, our most mighty agent against the forces of darkness. My son, no longer shall you be known as Kris Kringle: you shall now be known as the mighty Santa Claus.”
Kris, now severely confused as to who his father actually is after being called “son” by three different men, dons the bloodstained robe. A mystic aura wraps around him, his beard grows to its full floor length and he lets out a mighty belly laugh as he climbs aboard the sleigh. The longboat alarm goes off, and complaints are heard amongst the crew about “All that fucking racket outside.” Kris takes off into the night sky as the unintelligible gurgles of our unseen choir start to build into an almost Latin-sounding chant of “Ho, ho ho.”. The orchestra builds up, and the sleigh takes off into hyperspace.
On shore, in the village, one of The Naughty’s mutated henchmen turns to Nic Cage. “Sir, you better watch out, you better not cry, you better not pout.” The Naughty turns around, his eyes ablaze. “Why?” he cries.
“I’m telling you why!” The henchman barks. Smash cut to the sleigh, coming out of hyperspace.
“Santa Claus is coming to town.”
Roll credits.
Stay tuned for the dark origin story of the Tooth fairy, where, stranded far away from home, alone, the young fairy has to survive on a diet of human teeth until her inevitable rescue. She returns from her months in solitude with an insatiable craving for incisors and canines, a changed fairy, unable to reintegrate into normal society and oh my god I need to get onto Warner Brothers.
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