Yo, FoG! What did you think of the movie, “God’s Army?”
FoG: I agree wholeheartedly with the statements on Christian art, and there are many believers like myself that would really like to see Christians rise once again to the forefront in all artistic areas of life.
And what have we got? Jenkins/LaHaye, “God Created Cowboys”, and Thomas-Kinkade-Painter-of-Light? Not to be cruel or anything FoG, but I’m afraid there’s still a long way to go.
Well, possibly - or they could be just another strain of A La Carte Christianity, picking and choosing the parts they think are applicable to themselves, and conveniently ignoring the rest. If they are just milking the fundamentalist craze then, damn, I wish I had thought of it first. 
And also, I think if you read your Bible very closely, you’ll find that indeed it does mention Kirk Cameron.
Is the movie that’s being released to theaters the same one I’ve seen on the shelves in Wal-Mart? I wanted to get it, but was afraid the Wal-Mart offering was just the first episode in a direct-to-video series, and I’d wind up having to buy umpteen tapes at ~$20 a pop to get the whole story.
~~Baloo
Two movies have changed my life:
Joe Vs. the Volcano
and
Groundhog Day.
Fight Club tried, but at the end I was so confused, it didn’t take.
I don’t think so. My understanding of the scripture quoted above is that if try to falsify the account and pass your versin as truth, then you’re in trouble. I have no problem with a fictional novel (or in this case, novels) based on Revelations. They aren’t making a prophecy, but basing a fictional story on the prophecy. If they were trying to say that the story they wrote was a factual account of how the prophecy would play out, then I’d have a problem.
~~Baloo
Drat! I really gotta watch those BOLD tags!
~~Baloo
Hi gang! Well I just watched the theatrical release with six relatives, and we loved it! It was great to see it on a big screen, and they did enhance several scenes that were in the video.
I will try to answer at least some of the questions / comments directed at me:
I’m sorry to say I’ve seen neither, in fact I’ve never heard of “God’s Army.” Wish I could give you a review! The only good quality Christian films I’ve ever seen (besides LB) have been The Hiding Place, The Cross and the Switchblade, and the Jesus film, all from the 70s. It’s been a while to say the least.
Interesting point, and it’s actually a point that some Christians have raised directly to Jerry Jenkins, who posts regularly on the Tyndale Left Behind message board. However, you’ll note the scripture is very clear-cut: it is talking about people who claim to be adding to the Bible. If they wrote Left Behind and said, “Okay, this needs to be a book in the Bible sandwiched between Obidiah and Micah”, then we’d have a problem. But they are calling it Christian fiction, and that’s what everyone’s taking it as.
It might intrigue you to know that I don’t 100% agree with their rapture philosophy. I believe the Bible is clear that the rapture will occur, but like many believers I’m not 100% convinced of the timing. You can make a convincing biblical case for it happening at the beginning of the 7 year tribulation, another case for the end, and yet another case for the middle. I’m about 50/50 between beginning and end. This doesn’t stop me from enjoying the novels at all. Their version is certainly one possibility, and it’s interesting to see how this possibility would play out if in fact it’s the one that actually happens.
No one believes there are actually individuals named Buck Williams or Rayford Steele, etc in other words. It’s fiction. Look at it like historical fiction. If you write a fictional novel set in World War II, you might have your fictional characters brush elbows with actual well known people from that time period. Left Behind is the same way only it’s future historical fiction.
Ah! Got me. Could’ve worded that better. What I was getting at was that some who don’t believe experience doubts about the validity of the Bible (“Those scriptures are so vague, they could mean anything” is one line from the movie, for example), and those who are inching their way closer to God many times begin to see holes in their own belief system and experience doubts in themselves. I should have clarified better :).
It’s not cruel … it’s honest. I agree.
Yup, although it’s been touched up for the theatre. To be honest if I were to recommend one or the other, I’d say see the theatrical version. It’s so much more … jarring on a big screen! I mean, I’ve believed in this stuff for years and it was getting to me tonight! Plus, another reason I’d recommend the theatre is they did touch up and enhance several scenes.
Okay I think I’ve pretty much caught up for now. Intriguing comments by all.
By the way, I was shocked to find out that the theatre where we saw the movie has been sold out ALL DAY! We got our tickets in advance yesterday but I didn’t expect it to sell out yesterday! This might indeed be huge if it’s this way all across the country. We will see!
Well, to give you some idea, when I mentioned “The Rapture” in “Cool movies nobody else has seen” I said it’s about the end of the world but it’s not “Left Behind”. “The Rapture” was a cool, strange, thoughtful, disturbing movie about the implication for real human beings if the legalistic Christian’s interpretation of the world were indeed true.
Believe me, “Left Behind” has no time for Mimi Rogers and her moral struggle. There is no place for sympathy for her at the end. In “Left Behind” she’s damned and should be and anything else is not worth thinking about.
And that’s what wrong with “Left Behind”, even more than the lousy dialogue.
Out of curiosity, what was “Mimi Rogers and her moral struggle” all about? How are you sure there’s ‘no room for sympathy for her’? What exactly is it that’s wrong with LB in this context? I am curious.
Just go rent “The Rapture”- to say anything about it would spoil the movie.
-Ben
Just looked at the Left Behind Page at Rotten Tomatoes movie reviews. it had seven positive reviews - two from the same place: ‘Crosswalk.com - The Intersection of Faith and Life’.
I’m sure that their review was fairly unbiased. :rolleyes:
Also read the link (FreeRepublic.com “A Conservative News Forum” - article by John Lippman) on the funding of this movie ($3000 [each] sent in by churches from all over the place - who will be repaid by box office receipts, and who then get a cut of the gross. I wonder how many of the pastors talking up this film to their congregations are telling them that they also have a financial stake in the thing.
This paragraph really stuck out to me:
“The Lalondes started out making documentaries with Christian themes but segued into filmmaking in 1997 when they produced, for under $1 million, a video movie titled “Apocalypse” that became a classic in the Christian market. Cloud Ten went on to make a series of end-of-time made-for-video movies called
“Revelation,” “Tribulation” and the yet-to-be released “Judgment,” featuring mainstream actors such as Gary Busey, Margot Kidder, Howie Mandel, Corbin Bernsen and Mr. T.”
Howie Mandel? Margot Kidder? MR. T!?!?! Truly ‘A-List’ talent, for sure!!!
FoG, I can honestly say that in my opinion, based on what I know of you and your tastes in entertainment and reading material (i.e., you prefer things that offer a Christian perspective), you would not like The Rapture. While working from a literal reading of the Revelation (much more literal, in fact, than that of Left Behind), it draws conclusions that are 180 degrees counter to yours. Nevertheless, I do recommend the movie for everyone, Christian or not. I believe it takes the Bible and Fundamentalist theology at their words, and is then courageous enough to make heroic the act of defying them.
So to say that simply, you think it is going to happen in the middle:)
lawoot
Minor point. Yes the link is to FreeRepublic.com, but the article is from the Washington Post (times?).
Thanks for the warning. I can see movies without a Christian perspective (um, in fact, that’s nearly every movie in existence that’s been made in the past 30 years). It sounds from the description that it’s more than just neutral however, but it sounds like the movie has an agenda. I wouldn’t mind seeing it just to see how accurate they really are. You can very easily claim to be representing something accurately when, in fact, you’re not.
I think you’re on target, Alessan. If I might add to this, I think that there’s also an element of pandering to fundamentalists, which is part of why the series is so popular.
I haven’t read the LB series, but I read a review which excerpted the books and was struck by how similar their tone was to Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt novels. In the scene from the review, Rayford Steele (IIRC) was, with a steele-y glint in his eye, telling a bunch of simpering unbelievers that the human-headed locusts were on their way, and they could either take that as proof of the truth of Christianity, or they could dismiss it as another fundie trick. (One would think that if Steele would have a little more sympathy, what with him being Left Behind and all…) You see the same kind of thing in the Dirk Pitt novels, where all the good guys are manly, steely-eyed, competent conservatives who are surrounded by whimpering, venal, cowardly, whiny bleeding-heart liberals. The fact is that it’s natural for people to want quick and easy validation, and that’s what Cussler’s novels provide. It’s a lot of effort to study politics well enough to make a case for conservatism. It’s much easier to read political “porn” (not sexual porn, but porn nonetheless) which presents the fantasy that you’re the only one who has his head screwed on straight, while everyone else is an effeminate moron. I’m reminded of the fellow who explained the appeal of racism by saying that no matter how bad a redneck’s life gets, he can always tell himself that at least he’s not Black.
Jack Chick, and the fundamentalist urban legends which he either spawned or plagiarized, is a major element in the fundamentalist porn business. Take the “Big Daddy” comic: a sweaty, short, fat, balding, professor (who, like so many Chick villans, looks vaguely like an anti-Semitic stereotype) gets up in front of the class and ridicules religion. One of the students (a blonde, clean-cut, tall, skinny, Christian boy) stands up and presents arguments which reduce the professor to gibbering imbecility and send him running to the classroom. This sort of story is very popular among fundies. I heard a lot of variations on the theme when I was living in small-town Alabama, all of which involved an atheist professor who ran from the room, after which the Christian kid spoke to the class about Jesus. Why is this sort of urban legend so popular? Because it’s what fundamenalists wish for, but can’t have. In real life, the atheist professor would eat the kid for lunch, because in general the fundamentalists just aren’t smart enough to hold up their end of the argument. And if you can’t have the reality of making atheists look like fools, you spend your time reading fundamentalist porn, just as people read sex porn when they want, but can’t have, the reality of having sex with two large-breasted blondes at once.
The problem with all this comes when the fundamentalists (or, for that matter, anyone who enjoys any kind of porn) lose the ability to distinguish between reality and their self-gratifying fantasies. That’s why people who read Chick comics and Darwin on Trial are so cocky at first when they show up on talk.origins or the SDMB. I’ve seen fundamentalists look genuinely disturbed when the arguments turned out not to work as well in reality as they did in the porn.
I think that this is ultimately why fundamentalist art is so bad. Little if any of it really even attempts to be art at all: either they’re trying to sell you something, or they’re cranking out porn. Michaelangelo was a smart guy. C. S. Lewis was willing to challenge the ideas of his Christian readers. But nowadays when a Christian tries to articulate a non-pornographic statement of his religious beliefs which would actually force people to think, (like, for example, The Last Temptation of Christ,) the fundamentalists run him out of town on a rail.
“Has an agenda”? Don’t you think that’s a little unfair? I mean, is it at all acceptable to you that someone might disagree with your beliefs and try to articulate that disagreement in an intelligent fashion?
-Ben
No, I don’t think FoG would like it very much either. I enjoyed it - and I found their concept of hell (or what I presumed to be hell) to be quite interesting as well.
And for the David Duchovny fans, he’s in it too… although I am more partial towards the woman with the pearl tatoo.
Shudder… I was reading this thread late last night and all I could think of is that creepy scene towards the end where she sings the hymn.
-Ben