Walter Hobbes is a true elf hero and doesn’t deserve to be on the naughty list
By Joshua Taylor | Published
Will Ferrell’s Elf is the most-watched Christmas movie of the modern era and one of the best holiday movies of all time. It’s a simple story told in such a simple way that Walter Hobbs, Buddy Elf’s father, is the only character in it who has a character arc.
We’re told early on that Walter Hobbs (played by James Caan) is on the naughty list. When Buddy meets him, everything seems to be about confirming that he deserves to be there. It’s Walt’s character arc that drives the story, not Buddy’s. Buddy is the same person at the end of the movie as he is at the beginning. But Walt is said to have transformed from a villain to a loving father who embraced the spirit of Christmas.
But that’s not the case. Walter Hobbes was never a bad guy. He shouldn’t be on the naughty list. He is the real hero ElfI will prove it.
First, we will give one example of each of the supposed miserly behaviors.
Walter Hobbes only cared about his job
Early on, we learn that Walter Hobbes was a workaholic who spent all his time on his career and neglected his family. At one point, his son belittled him, accusing him of only caring about money. His wife also attacked him, accusing him of neglecting their son.
But that’s not what’s happening on screen. Walter Hobbes as we see him Elf Get home on time for dinner every night. Of course, one time, after he’d had a really rough day, he wanted to eat in his man cave. This guy is under a lot of pressure. Clearly, this is not the norm, as his son reacts to his decision to eat alone as if it’s a novelty, asking if he can replicate his father’s behavior.
Eating alone one night doesn’t make Walter Hobbes a devil.
In fact, it’s clear that Hobbes doesn’t care about his job at all. The quality of his work is absolute garbage. He was caught intentionally signing poorly printed documents, which clearly showed that he didn’t care and hated working there.
Every time we see Walt at his desk, he looks like he’s begging to die.
So why is he there? Someone has to pay the bills.
Walter Hobbes got up every day and went to work at a job he hated in order to support his family. He would come home every night for dinner, and apparently, he would almost always eat at the dinner table with his family. What a monster.
Walter Hobbes doesn’t accept friends
When Buddy Elf shows up in Walt’s office, he’s understandably confused. Shocked by it all, he threw Buddy out several times. He had no reason to believe him. The guy was dressed like an elf and was talking about Santa Claus. Apparently, he’s some kind of mentally ill lunatic. Any reasonable person would think he might be dangerous.
To make matters worse, Buddy’s way of convincing Walt that he’s his son is by sending him sexy lingerie. This must have made Walt wonder if there might be some weird sexual undertones to Buddy’s true purpose. Almost anyone would call the police, but not good-natured Walter Hobbs. Instead, he decided to give Buddy a chance.
Walt paid to bail Buddy out of jail, took him to a clinic, and examined him. It’s a smart thing to do when a 40-year-old man you’ve never met shows up on your doorstep claiming to be your next of kin. The moment the test proves Buddy is his son, Walt does a U-turn and invites this man he doesn’t even know into his home.
This all happens while Buddy continues to engage in strange behavior that would most likely lead him to commit if he claimed his father was a less kind and compassionate man. Of course, it’s not Buddy’s fault. His intentions were good, but Walt had no way of knowing.
Despite Buddy’s strangeness, Walter sees through his heart and decides to trust him around his family. Walt is so forgiving that, aside from joking about how much Buddy loves the snow, he doesn’t even flinch when Buddy starts destroying his house.
His solution to Buddy’s destruction was not to throw him away, but to find a way to take care of him. He asked his wife to stay at home with him and supervise him. When she couldn’t, Walter Hobbs took his adult son to work.
Walt puts his friend in the mailroom
Buddy Alf is an unemployed adult with no place to live and no future. He needed a job, so Walter Hobbs used his influence in the company to get him one.
Buddy has no work history and no experience, which means he is not qualified to work anywhere other than the mailroom. Walter found a job for him there.
In a sense, this was successful. Buddy had a great time in the mailroom, making new friends and earning a paycheck. However, he also embarrassed his father by drunkenly dancing on the table.
Walt wasn’t overreacting. He lowered his head and tried his best to continue living.
Walt yells at his friend
Walter knew his job was in jeopardy. He’d been slogging through a thankless career for years in an industry he was clearly not cut out for, and it was starting to take its toll.
Walt’s employees are useless and lazy, but he has a solution. He spent a lot of money to hire a great writer to give them the publicity they needed to write a best-selling book.
If Buddy hadn’t been drunk, he would have been busy working in the mailroom, earning his own wages, but burst in at the worst possible moment. Then, Walt discovered, he started insulting Walt’s guests for no apparent reason. Soon, things stopped being shouting and became a full-blown physical confrontation. All Walt could do was stand and watch in horror.
Walter’s pitch party is now destroyed and his son is involved in an attack on the company’s premises, all in front of his employees. Adding another workplace disgrace to his reputation.
Until that moment, after days of humiliation, abuse, and downright creepiness from a grown man he barely knew, Walter Hobbs finally got angry. He yells at Buddy to get out, and then after Buddy leaves, he tries to find some way to save his reputation and career.
Walter Hobbes working on Christmas Eve
Okay, but what if he’s not interested in Christmas? Things really fell apart when Walt went to work on Christmas Eve.
Walt didn’t want to go there at all, though. When his boss tells him he has to work on Christmas Eve, Walt immediately objects. He tried to refuse, but his boss threatened to fire him. His options were to keep working or take a gamble on finding another job to support his children. No one wants to be out of a job at Christmas, so he does his job. This is not naughty behavior, but a responsible adult behavior.
Just then, his youngest child bursts in, roars Buddy Elf and runs away. Despite feeling humiliated in front of his boss, Walt remained calm. When his boss spoke rudely to his son, he defended him.
Meanwhile, Buddy Alf has come of age. A grown man proves he can take care of himself by walking from the North Pole to New York. He’s wandering around New York again, for the fifth or sixth time in the movie, and there’s no reason to think he’s in danger.
The kid had eaten too much, and Walt knew it. He also knew that his son was worried, so he told his son that he would take care of it and calmly asked him to wait outside until he was done. His son refused to obey his father and started yelling at him, adding another work-related disgrace to his resume.
After that tirade, any other parent would have kicked their son out of the room and grounded him for a year, but the compassionate Walter caved. After weeks and weeks of being humiliated and humiliated by them, he gave up trying to make a living and quit.
The real villain of the elves
Walter Hobbes is not a villain. He is an introvert and doesn’t share his emotions, but that doesn’t make him a bad person.
Walter Hobbs was abused, humiliated, yelled at, and touched inappropriately by a grown man in a tight suit who decided to give him an unwanted tickle. Walt never breaks down. He kept it together and kept going. After weeks of abuse, he had a small outburst and immediately tried to make amends.
Elf Full of terrible people. Miles Finch is a delusional megalomaniac. Walt’s excellent writing team are lazy sycophants. His secretary is a psychopath who kills kittens. His boss is a jerk.
And Santa Claus, who always knew who Buddy’s father was, but instead of telling Walter Hobbes that he had a son, he sent him to be raised by elves. To add insult to injury, Santa puts Walt on the naughty list and spends decades letting the elves trick Buddy into thinking he’s one of them, while placing some coal under Walt’s tree every year.
There are bad people inside Elf. Walter Hobbes was not one of them.
