This season when Christmas movies are seemingly streaming everywhere, every day, “Red One,” only in theaters Friday, stands apart.

A massive, elaborate $250 million action extravaganza teaming global superstars Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans, “Red One” has an original, ingenious reworking of Santa Claus tropes that include monstrous relatives, an evil witch and the kidnapping of jolly old St. Nick (JK Simmons) himself.

Yes, Santa disappears just 24 hours before he’s to take to the sky, reindeers pulling his sleigh so he can begin sliding down chimneys.

Only Johnson’s stoic security chief Callum Drift can find, rescue and restore Red One – Santa’s security code name. That’s possible only if Drift enlists Evans’ cynical bounty hunter Jack O’Malley who is also: A) the world’s greatest hacker, and B) a terrible, absent father.

“It starts with the material,” acknowledged Johnson, 52, saluting Hiram Garcia’s original story, Chris Morgan’s screenplay and the fleet-footed direction of Jake Kasdan for this their third film together. “This lent itself to a big action scale which you don’t usually see in Christmas movies. My favorite part is when JK reminds me to look beyond the Who’s Nice and Naughty lists and look at the kid.”

“Luckily for me, I didn’t have to figure out how to balance action with a classic holiday movie. We had a great team who could crack that code with so much Christmas folklore, creatures, stories and mythology,” a bushy-bearded Evans, 43, said in a virtual Berlin press conference, the day after the “Red” world premiere.

While selfish and a scoundrel Jack, Evans believes, can become a better person, a fine father. “It’s a lovely message — that we all deserve a second chance,” he said. “The film says you should approach life with heart and humanity, which especially is the idea of the holiday season. It’s about remembering priorities and how certainly if folks around you are looking for forgiveness, then perhaps they should have that second chance.”

For this Boston native, memories of his own childhood holidays bring only joy.

“I’m one of four kids. We’d would write letters to Santa on Christmas Eve,” he began. “My siblings” – Carly, Scott and Shanna – “and I are close in age, so we’d decide whose room to sleep in.

“There would be that old TV in someone’s room with the VCR. We’d get out our old copy of ‘Crocodile Dundee’ and watch it until the wee hours. The most fun was just deciding what Christmas movie to watch.

“I would lean towards ‘Rudolph’ after ‘Crocodile Dundee.’ The rest of it was trying desperately to fall asleep with the goal that all four kids would wake up at the same time. Which never happened.

“Someone always woke up first and yelled, ‘It’s Christmas!’”

Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans star in “Red One.” (Photo Amazon MGM)