ELF
2003, New Line Cinema

I watched Elf over the holidays and realized it features energy, too.  As you may recall, “the best way to spread Christmas Cheer is singing loud for all to hear.”  But, what does Santa fall back on when the Christmas Cheer is too low to power his magic reindeer to pull his sleigh?  He falls back on a 500 ‘reindeer-powered’ jet turbine, of course!  Also, but much more efficiently, powered by Christmas Cheer, I presume.  It’s striking that in our popular culture’s imagination a magic sleigh’s direct back up is a 1930’s technology jet turbine. I wonder what an Elf remake in 20 or 30 years would feature as the magic sleigh’s back up…