So I've Read Armageddon - Spoilers, I Guess

Cafe Society
1

But would spoilers really matter?

I’ve plowed thru eleven of these things. Not a one of them could not have been markedly improved by being cut by at least 40%. This one, although no five hundred pager, is no exception.

But some major characters die. Whoopie do. I finally realized that it didn’t matter in the least which ones died - they are all so flat that it doesn’t really make any difference to anyone.

The minute Choe started being the focus of the plot, I could see death looming. By the time Tsion ben-Judah and Buck died, it didn’t matter.

Even Carpathia is a comic book figure, completely devoid of any real menace, and nobody seems to notice when dreadful calamities start happening, and then, for no reason, stop happening. And no, Jesus does not appear even at the end of this latest in the series.

Nobody died as the result of their character development, or as a necessary part of the plot, or even to set up the final book. They are just using up characters.

They could have compressed the entire sweep of the Apocalypse into about three books, and artistically improved the series manyfold. But no, they had to milk this for far, far more than it was worth.

I am told the last book (there will be a prequel written after that, for heaven’s sake) will take place largely in Heaven. My great fear now is that this series will make Heaven, and the final battle between Good and Evil, as banal and flat-sounding as the Rapture.

Am I just a glutton for punishment? Why am I planning to read the last in this series?

Somebody convince me otherwise. It only took me about a day and a half to read Armaggeddon. Was my time wasted?

Regards,
Shodan

2

But does the baby Jesus cry?

3

I think it originally was only intended to be a trilogy but when they started selling like hotcakes the publisher convinced them to start milking the series as much as possible. That’s one dry cow already. Have actually read all eleven of them? What on earth possesses you to keep going? You’re only encouraging them, you know. Can you imagine what they’re going to do with the character of “Jesus?” I shudder to think.

4

When you say you’ve read “Armageddon”, I assume you mean the latest (yawn) thrill-packed exciting blockbuster in the Left Behind series of books – NOT the parts of the Book of Revelation that talk about the Battle of Armageddon, and NOT a novelization of that awful asteroid-impact movie with Bruce Willis.

Right?

5

Well, I’m reading them too. I started reading them because I was working in a bookstore and was just hearing so much about them and selling so damn many of them I just thought I oughta. Same reason I started with Harry Potter, BTW. In order to justify my reading, I actually started doing little reviews or critiques of each book, but that fell by the wayside after a while – doing a review of even a shitty book demands closer attention to the book than I found myself willing to pay. Anyway, I’m sticking with the series because I just want to see how it ends… well, of course, I know how it ends, but I want to see how this particular ending will look as scripted by Jennings and LaHaye. In particular, I wish to see what their version of Heaven and Jesus will look like. And, I’m hoping for a glimpse of Hell, too.

At any rate, these books are such a quick and easy read – since I’m not doing the reviews I feel free to skim – that I don’t feel I’m hurting myself much by continuing. And I never buy one! Armegeddon I read over coffee in two sittings at my local Barnes and Noble. Others I’ve borrowed from the library. The worst part is being seen either checking one out (horrors!) or reading it in public. I’m always careful to have something less embarrassing (The Anarchist’s Handbook, Mein Kampf, Kicking Puppies for Fun and Profit…) in my stack.

6

tracer wrote:

I am talking about the Left Behind series. I have read the Book of Revelation, but never seen the Bruce Willis movie.

Part of my interest in the series was my feeling that there was a well-developed theology behind it, especially about the Last Days, and that they were actually answering questions about controversies I never heard of (I am Lutheran). Thus I was never aware of the disagreements about the pre-millenial Rapture, the exact timing and nature of all the eschatological calamities, etc.

But eleven books? I have kind of lost interest in that. I got most of them from the library, so I haven’t spent much money on it. But, as Diogenes mentions, I am afraid that when the Glorious Appearance happens in book twelve, it will wind up making our Lord look stupid.

The series isn’t even over-the-top enough to work as camp. It is just flat. And I even know how it is going to come out.

And still I persist.

Regards,
Shodan

7

So, have you seen both Left Behind movies yet? :wink:

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Only the first, tracer.

I shudder to say it, but this series would fit comfortably into a mini-series on TV. About four hours worth. And not a continuing series.

Or at least some kind of character development. Don’t any of these people ever go up and down in their emotional states? Are they locked into the semi-flat affect of a dental office waiting room?

None of the characters who are supposed to be in love ever talk to each other, or display any sign of genuine affection, or act as if they wanted to have sex. None of the evil characters display any more menace than Snidely Whiplash.

Couldn’t we have seen the efforts of Tsion ben-Judah to prevent a personality cult from growing up around him? Couldn’t there be a serious discussion about the ethics of killing the non-Christians? Isn’t there some aspect of the prophecies of the End Times that isn’t so darn cut-and-dried?

For eleven volumes, it has been the fundamentalist version of Waiting for Godot. I am looking for some genuine tension here. Even when people die, I have never seen any reason to care. It is like when Bruce, the original spiritual leader, died. “Oh well, dead from an earthquake. Next!”

Regards,
Shodan

9

I’ve posted this in about every LEFT BEHIND discussion I’ve found here-

Shodan, for a truly inventive look at pre-Trib Rapture fiction, James BeauSeigneur’s CHRIST CLONE TRILOGY is unmatched. It keeps with the essential outline but takes it in some unique twisted directions.

From a post-Trib Rapture perspective, Pat Robertson’s THE END OF THE AGE is amazingly good- my compliments to his ghostwriter.

Mark Rogers THE DEAD- the Rapture takes all really good people of every faith- those Left Behind must face hordes of demonized cannibalistic zombies led by the multi-embodied AntiChrist uber-Demon named Legion. The brilliance of the writing actually makes it work! and even the Christian characters swear realistically on occasion G

I actually did buy the trade PB of LEFT BEHIND- and I got TRIB FORCE at a used book sale- I;ve skimmed the rest in the stores, I gotta say ARMAGEDDON surprised me by how many main characters were being killed in the last few chapters- and yeah, I was actually touched by the main public martyrdom at the end, how the martyr established a rapport with her guard who let her down at the end, and even the angelic intervention wasn’t as hokey as it could have been (I really haven;t spoiled anything there).

10

The lack of tension is the worst, isn’t it? I’ve said from the beginning that this could have been an interesting series if there had been left any chance that the Tribulation Force was wrong. We’ve seen way too much of the Antichrist and his inner sanctum. Wouldn’t it have been better if there was left, for at least the first part of the series, some chance that the disappearances had another explanation? That way, another layer of tension could have been added by having at least a few of the main characters remain unsaved. As it is, it’s very difficult to care about these people (aside from the abysmal way they’re written) – if they die, so what? They’re all already saved. The way the action unfolded – with the Tribulation Force setting up secret safe houses – it would have been really, really easy for them to keep a few unsaved loved ones around. Now, that would have added some tension. This was like a “mystery” with the murderer revealed on the first page.

I do have one question, though. Maybe it’s been answered in the books and I skimmed too quickly through that section: This thousand years with Christ that the saved folks who live through Armegeddon are looking forward to? Will their dead loved ones rejoin them on earth for that thousand years? Or will they be separated until the thousand years is over and everyone goes to Heaven? Because that would kinda suck. I’d be tempted to go on a few extremely dangerous missions (a la stupid Chloe) with inadequate backup in order to move on to Heaven and be with my family.