David (Home Improvement) McFadzean, a rare Hollywood producer who’s an active Christian says that all the recent “Christian” films he’s seen have something in common: “They’re just like porno movies. The acting is terrible, the budgets are tiny, and you know EXACTLY how they’re going to end.”
Perfect summary. I’m a Christian, and you couldn’t pay me enough to watch most “Christian” films.
Sadly true. I wish Evangelicals would stop flocking to crappy movies like God Is Not Dead and the like. It only encourages more to be made.
It’s persecution porn, preaching to the choir all the non-sensical, largely non-existent unfairness that the poor oppressed majority experiences by the evil, godless secular humanists.
Christian Fundies are often hung up on content–bad words, especially–so they can’t embrace a spiritual message if it’s surrounded by “secular” elements. My mom and sister are perfect examples. They need Hallmark production values with squeaky clean, one-dimensional characters, requiring little imagination and plenty of spoon-feeding.
Of course, it’s a relief when you see a Christian writer recognize that values and role models can be found in popular works and not just Kirk Cameron projects, and that is what makes something Art rather than just pablum.
The trouble is Christians are trained from childhood to pretend to like poorly-written drivel if it will curry favor with teh Jesus.
It’s not like God is Not Dead is less entertaining than church.
Paint with a broad brush much?
Speak for yourself. Some of us enjoy church and mine at least is filled with art that is actually good.
Or, to paraphrase Hank Hill, “Can’t you see you’re not making christianity any better, you’re just making movies worse.”
Its also similar to porn in that a lot of Christian films take some currently popular in secular media, and try to make a (usually low budget) “Christian version” of it. Sort of like the porn industry ends up making porn spoofs of popular non-porn titles.
Rather too bad. Some of the most beautiful art and drama in history is inspired by Christian themes, so its not like you can’t make good Chrisitan media. But the particular culture of American Evangelical Christianity seems to lend itself to producing dreck, not just the 90% dreck predicted by Sturgeon’s law, but pretty close to 100%. I think the reasons are:
a) A guaranteed market: It’s pretty obvious a lot of Christians will buy stuff produced as Christian media regardless of its quality. This lowers the incentive to make good stuff.
b) The aforementioned trend to try and mimic secular culture, rather than doing their own thing. Trying to shoehorn a Christian theme into a knockoff of a secular movie is a recipie for disaster.
c) Message before art: Its pretty clear the people that make this stuff start off with a message they want to convey, and than make a movie around that. This is almost always a bad idea*.
*(you see this a lot in political media. The comic strip Doonesbury, for example, started as a strip about college life, and while its “liberal”, that’s because it reflects the views of its author, not because its author set out to make a “liberal comic strip” (and indeed, Doonesbury is least funny when Treadeau gets overly concerned about cramming a message into the strip). Mallard Flimore, on the other hand, started as an attempt to do a “conservative Doonesbury”. The authors primary goal was to convey his poliitical ideas, with humor and characters added as an afterthought, and the result is…very unfunny).
(sorry for the long post. I had a friend when I was growing up who was very Christian, and so while I was an athiest, I’d occasionally hang out with him and his youth-group friends, so I ended up watching a lot of this stuff. And since it was terrible and I was stuck watching it, I had a lot of time to spend thinking about why it was terrible)
Well, at least after watching a porno movie, you’ve got something to show for your time.
Around 1999, I attended a conference that had a seminar called “Why Christian Music Sucks”. It was about music, but pretty much applies here as well. It suggested that:
The talent pool is way smaller, since there are less super-dedicated Christians in the world than there are non-Christians. It was a numbers game.
There was a lack of heavy scrutiny and criticism. Christians, in the speaker’s view, were hesitant of heavily critiquing Christian artists because it would look like they were attacking their ministry.
Now, I would heavily critique Saving Christmas.* I assume it sucks big time and is made by incompetent people churning out incompetent work that will only appeal to a stupid audience. I say this as a Christian. I expect and hope for better. There is no reason a Christian film can not be as good as a non-religious movie.
There are Christian works of art that are great. I’m not sure I can name a Christian movie that rates higher than a C-grade, though. Can anyone?
*Full disclosure - I have not seen the movie. I just have heard such terrible things, I would be shocked if it was a great movie. It sounds totally bottom barrel.
Agreed. Not that their plots are exactly ‘bad’, but the writing and direction is just…yikes.
I’m also a Christian and yeah, I stay away from them as well. I mean, I don’t know…I kind of feel like a jerk when I do, but I’m such a big movie buff and critic that I can’t sit there and put all the mediocrity behind me and enjoy the movie. It’s impossible for me. So it’s really nothing personal against Christian films, just that I can’t handle the awfulness. Lol
The Veggie Tales stuff is good for what it is, if you’ll count direct to video movies for kids.
Yes, easily, but probably none in the last 50 years. Ben-Hur comes to mind.
The Catholic Christian movies from a half-century ago when I was little were pretty cool: Barabbas with Anthony Quinn had that neat mine cave-in scene and swordfighting gladiators. The Cardinal had the Church confronting the Klan and the Nazis (perhaps with inaccurate historical veracity). There was an honorable clergyman whose tragic subplot was in the novel though not the movie Elmer Gantry
The problem with the new Kirk Cameron movies vs the Biblical epics, IMHO, is that suburban dads aren’t facing down evils that compare with Nero and Caligula (and Hitler, to give Deitrich Bonhoffer and Sohpie Scholl the respect they deserve). And it’s not like the valid problems they do have are unresolvable by any alternate philosophies.
Ah, of course. My kids love them and while they are not perfect, they are a quality production from a quality team. Thanks.
I guess that is a Christian movie. Though I am not sure it comes from a Christian production team or anything.
If we expand to books, Narnia would count. CS Lewis wrote them from the Chrisitan perspective and they are great(well, most of them). Some might suggest Lord of the Rings, but I don’t think Tolkien was writing them with Christianity really in mind.
Admitedly the exact definition is probably kinda debatable, but I think “Christian Movie” in the OP’s sense usually means ones developed specifically to target the Christian market and convey a Christian message. Not just one that deals with biblical themes.
I doubt the Jewish director of Ben Hur, or the largely Jewish owners of MGM were particularly concerned with Ben Hur delivering a Christian message to the masses.
Well, let’s be fair. We, as adults, are trained to act as if we actually enjoy children’s singing/solos to keep from antagonizing proud parents. Talk about a bitter pill to swallow…
Another Quinn film, based on the Morris West novel, was The Shoes of the Fisherman. Quinn played a new made cardinal who was elected Pope, after spending many years in a Soviet gulag. Kiril Lakota was a very principled man, who chose his own name as his reigh name. It was, as he said, the name of the saint who first brought Christianity to his country.
My local newspaper’s movie reviewer is a Christian, and she HAS to watch them. She says (and I agree) that they do not reflect the realistic lives of anyone she knows.
Her reviews always remind me of a story in my old town’s paper about a young pastor who self-published his faith journey, and said that when he was in college, before he went to seminary, he would sometimes watch TBN while high, and thought, “I was raised in the church, and I have never known people this weird.”
As for a “legitimate” Christian movie, what about “Passion of the Christ”?
I’m a Christian as well, and I agree. Jesus would be appalled:eek: