Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn understand what the Christmas season needs this year: “an up-to-date Santa, who’s kind of sexy,” as Hawn describes Russell’s take on Santa to the New York Times. The married couple star in Netflix’s upcoming The Christmas Chronicles 2 opposite a bunch of fuzzy CGI elves that are clearly going for that whole Minion thing, but Russell compares these elves to something much weightier in the new interview. He believes that their fake Yulish-Elvish language, which is written out phonetically for the actors to deliver, is akin to the Biblical Aramaic used by rival Santa Mel Gibson in The Passion of the Christ. He says:
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.
Lofty words, but for reference, this is what Elvish sounds like:
Goldie isn’t fooled, though. She says, “He says it’s a language, but in my mind it’s just sounds.” We wonder if Russell has ever read The Lord of the Rings, or seen the Dothraki on Game of Thrones. His mind would probably explode.
