Extended prologue
The story takes place in a small Cleveland, Ohio town. Assume all the stranger things kids are in this. Long story short, but Santa Claus, played by a scenery chewing Mark Strong, tired of kids being naughty and wasting all of the gifts his elves make, decides to take Christmas into his own hands. He, along with his elves and raindeer, decide to leave the South Pole and occupy Cleveland. This santa seems angrier than most, but the people of cleveland, still in a Cavaliers induced championship hangover, welcome santa with open arms. They feel as though their city is finally getting it’s due. However, once Santa gets to Cleveland, he gets out his ray gun, and shoots Lebron James’ kid straight in the face, killing him instantly. Lebron, noticeably upset charges at Santa screaming “WHYYYYY?!?!?” Santa cooly replies, “He was on the naughty list.”
Title card: FIGHT CHRISTMAS in 3D
The film opens 3 months after the initial Santa occupation. The Quicken Loans arena has ostensibly become a concentration camp. Santa, and his elves have taken to rounding up all the children of Cleveland to place into camps. The camps are designed to separate the naughty from the nice. Parents have been separated from their children and told that they need to stay home. If their kids pass the trials of Christmas, they will be returned. If they fail, they will end up on the naughty list and be shot. Most of the parents, played by adults from Stranger Things, have given up hope of ever getting their kids back, but Winona Ryder, and Lebron James haven’t. They have formulated a resistance predicated on getting information to the kids in the camps about how to take down Santa.
In the camps, the Stranger Things kids, have all been placed on the naughty list. The only way out of the naughty list is if they can find a hole in Santa’s operation. The one with the missing teeth notices that all of the elves seem to fear Santa more that any stories of Santa in the past. After lunch, he follows a few of the elves as they head to Santa’s Workshop. Listening outside of room, he overhears a conversation between Santa and the elves. One of the elves asks Santa, why he chose now to start killing children, when all he cared about before was bringing job to children. Santa tells them, they’ve been wrong about him all alone. He’s never cared about the children. Only their souls. The gifts and the cheer were all a misdirection to hide who he really is. At this point, Dustin (I remember his name now), peeking through a keyhole, watches as Santa throws 5 alphabet blocks onto the ground, with the letters of S-A-N-T and A written on them. His best elf starts to rearrange the letters when simultaneously, he and the peeking Dustin, realize that SANTA rearranged spells SATAN! Because it’s convenient to my movie, Dustin makes a sound and gets caught by the elves, who say that he shouldn’t be here…they begrudgingly take him to Santa, who has now shed the traditional fat physique, and is instead bald, with a 5-o-clock shadow and wearing blood red tuxedo. Santa says that what Dustin does doesn’t matter, because if he kills all the kids he deems naughty in his naughty camp, he’ll create an army large enough to take over not only Cleveland, but the world!
Because Dustin isn’t as stupid as he looks, this whole time, he’s been holding down the talk button of the walkie talkie in his pocket.
Back at the other side of camp, we see that Lucas was on the other end of Dustin’s walkie talkie. Eleven and Mike realizing that they are dealing with the devil tell Lucas that they have to go save Dustin, but Lucas has a cool monologue where he basically says something along the lines of saving Dustin, only saves Dustin. If they are going to come up with a plan they are going to have to find a way to save everyone, hell, save Cleveland, and if that means they’ll have to fight Christmas, they can’t do it alone. They’ll need help. They’ll need his uncle.
We cut back to the adult resistance. Winona has turned a lot crazier by this point and is fully convinced she’ll never see her kids again, but Lebron tells her that he’s always had a plan. The main reason he came back to Cleveland is because he always knew there would be a threat greater than any Warriors of the Golden State. Centuries ago, Santa, aka Satan would play games with the lives of children, and the other gods, not wantng to deal with his wrath would give him one night a year to exact his cruelties out of children. What we now know as naughty and nice lists, was much more cruel. If Santa found you to be naughty in the old days, he would crush your body into a ball and toss you around until you invariably died. King James, took issue with this because he loved the children, and told Santa to stop. Santa said he would stop if King James could beat him in a game of “Toss the children into the basket, and whoever can toss the most children into the basket wins”. Needless to say King James, won and Santa agreed to stop, but the people who watched the game, looked on as James senselessly killed way more kids than Santa ever did by being so good at that ball basket game. Everyone turned on him and he had to move away from what was olden times Cleveland. He wandered the earth for a millenia learning to be the best ball basket player on earth, so that if he ever got a chance to play Santa again, this time he would win, by playing solid fundamental defense and being able to defend against the pick and roll. Lebron takes off his all of his armor, and Winona thinks he’s crazy, but he says, if I’m going to save Cleveland, I’m going to have to do it alone. No armor. No help.
Imagine there is a giant trench between Downtown Cleveland and the Quicken Loans Arena, but Lebron stealthily runs across crushing a few elves, who we now know are pretty much hostages, so it’s sad, and he swipes his arena access card. He gets into the elevator and goes to the owners suite where Santa is waiting. Lebron says that he is ready this time, and no more children need to die over these petty games. Santa disagrees but says, if Lebron can defeat Santa, he will give ownership of all the kids’ souls to Lebron, but if he loses, Lebron will bow to him and become his loyal servant and tool of destruction. Lebron agrees and they head to the court. All the naughty kids are in the crowd, cheering for Lebron, but Santa throws out a curveball. He says that the kids have to play too, and it’s going to be a 5 on 5 game. Dustin, Mike, Eleven, Lucas, and his Uncle Lebron, versus Santa, Rudolph, and 3 elves.
The game starts and all the kids are really bad at basketball because they are indoor kids, and its ruining the game flow for Lebron. Santa is up by like a dramatic amount of points. At the halftime, Lebron gives the kids a speech. He knows that they are indoor kids, but if they are going to win, and beat christmas, they’ll have to find a way to connect to the game. After the break, a bunch of nerdy allusions to D&D and videogames help the kids to play better and assist Lebron, and with 5 seconds left, Lebron fouls out of the game. In order for the kids to win, they’ll have to hard foul Rudolph, hope he misses a free throw, and chuck up a half court shot. Lebron says, that whatever happens, he believes in the kids, and knows that whatever happens to him, he’s proud of how they fought. The movie moves into slow motion now and all of those things that needed to happen happen. Lucas chucks up the half court shot and ends up draining it. The kids win, Santa’s occupation is over, but not before Lebron locks him away in a dungeon under the arena to never be seen again.
We cut to a week later, and there is a parade for Lebron in Cleveland again. He says he couldn’t have saved Cleveland without his team. At this point, JR Smith, Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love head over to Lebron. We know he’s obviously not talking about them, and the Stranger Things kids come out. Lebron says some really nice stuff about the kids, and how we don’t need Christmas. Our humanity is our present to each other every day
The End. (the film is dedicated to Lebron James Jr.)
“Lebron, noticeably upset” is my favorite reaction to a child being killed.