Have any of you seen 2012, the movie based on the notion that ancient Indian texts predicted the world will end in three years and that those ancient Indians were somehow right? I’ve actually had Christians ask me about that, if there might be anything to it. If any of you would like to report on the movie, I’d be glad for your comments.
In the meantime, another apocalyptic end-of-the-world tale is coming to the silver screen, The Road, based on Cormac McCarthy’s depressing novel about a father and son trying to survive after an unspecified catastrophe wipes out civilization. That’s fine. But what’s intriguing is that the makers of the movie are trying to market it specifically to Christians. They have signed up the same PR firm that has pushed “The Passion of the Christ,” the Narnia movies, and other religious-themed movies, inviting pastors to pre-release showings and setting up special deals for churches. (Pastors, watch for your invitations.)
But “The Road” has nothing to do with Christianity. The R-rated flick features cannibalism, but no redemptive elements that anyone has been able to identify. Are the filmmakers so ignorant of Christianity that they think since Christians believe the world will end someday that ANY end of the world story will do?
Maybe they think the father/son angle will appeal to family values types. Maybe it will. The end of civilization would surely include the end of TV, sports, school activities, the internet, and meetings. Then and perhaps only then could fathers spend quantity time with their sons.
HT: Steve Rabey at Get Religion
{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
I haven´t seen 2012 but am very eager to.
I have loved to see things get blown up since I was a small boy. I guess that is somehow a guy thing?
And the trailers I have seen seem to take that “blow things up” to the ultimate level. Cool! I can hardly wait.
the mayan calendar thing? Fiction=suspension of skepticism= entertainment. cool.
That series “Left Behind”. Totally cool. Nothing artificial gets raptured= tammy faye baker´s makeup becomes a superfund site…. put on those hard hats in the rapture you Lutheran-left-behinds! it will be raining fake boobs like hail on rapture day… awesome stuff.
Given the lectionary readings for this time of the church year, I thought I would see this movie on the off chance that there might be something I could use in a sermon.
This movie is an opportunity for the special effects department to have fun with the usual cast of natural disasters (earthquakes, floods, volcanoes, etc.) as they devour famous world landmarks and cities. Generally speaking this movie does not require a lot of thought, but it does require a heavy dose of the willing suspension of disbelief.
There are the usual characters who find out that when disaster strikes, they are able to rise to the challenge.
There is a brief tribute to the Poseidon Adventure as one of the heroes has a relative who is on a cruise liner.
There is also a bit of a put down concerning evil capitalists who use their money to save themselves and their families.
There is an attempt to give a scientific reason for the end of the world. It is plausible enough for the general public. People who know their sub-atomic particles will struggle to keep from explaining why this can’t happen.
There are many scenes where various cast members are busy healing their personal relationships while the tidal wave, earthquake, fire, etc. is bearing down on them. There are many times I wanted to say, “Run now and live. Make up later.” I find this feature of many disaster flicks to be irritating.
There are a few serious questions that the movie does ask. If you knew that you could only save about 0.0001 per cent of the population of the world, how would you decide who to save? How would you face death if you knew it was inevitable? Is it right for the government to keep such a disaster secret until the last moment?
Of course, this is not really a movie about the end of the world. The world is still there at the end of the movie. It has just changed.
2012 is so bad it’s great. I mean, the destruction and special effects are great, lots of good actors not acting very well, it’s a fun, intense ride. But the science is even more laughable than Emmerich’s other films (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow), and the Mayan calendar thing is just an excuse to pick a date to kill most of the people on the planet, ’cause, you know, we’re all just horrible, parisitic, mother earth destroying insects that need to be exterminated. As usual, there are lots of subtle and not-so-subtle PC/political statements.
But seriously, if you like this kind of “disaster porn”, then it’s a great movie to go see. The plot/explanations/story lines are really just a lame excuse to spectacularly destroy a LOT of stuff.
But it begs the question, why do we like watching that kind of destruction?
I heard the movie was not very good, even as far as movies go. I probably won’t be wasting my money. However I have also heard folks have kind of a perturbed tone at the dismissal of these Mayan claims: “Who are we to say that the people of this ancient civilization didn’t have access to some source of knowledge which we know nothing or very little about?” A non-evolutionary sentiment which I resonate very strongly to in regard to the apparent Old Testament Christian Faith in the Lord.
Yeah, the movie is a standard disaster film, just instead of a particular city getting destroyed, the whole world gets turned to mush. But yeah, I’d definitely not classify it as a Christian interpretation of the end of the world, by any means. Characters pray and are encouraged to pray, but in a particular scene, the faithful, including the pope, are crushed by the dome of St. Peter’s. Also, a crack rends the roof of the Sistine chapel, running between thing fingers of God and Adam. Who knows, maybe it’ll really appeal to the eschatological (is that a word?) types and the Tim LaHaye crowd.
And, as to the Road, I didn’t really get the book, honestly. Rather, I didn’t understand the literary praise that was heaped upon it. I did appreciate the bleakness of the McCarthy’s post apocalyptic world, and the horrors of a moral-less society, but I just really didn’t think it was all that. I wasn’t sold on his grammatical innovations. I don’t find the disuse of quotation marks to be particularly creative, and his extremely short sentences are really nothing new. I feel like the only person in the world that didn’t like the book, though.
Christian critic, Brian Godawa has an interesting review:
http://www.godawa.com/HW/2009movieblog.htm
My dad saw 2012 and said it was frivolous, but fun, frothy adventure.
For those of you who want the TRUE and ULTIMATE Christian story, try this:
Twilight/Amish/Left Behind all rolled into one!!!
I won’t speak to 2012, I refuse to pay to see formula studio blockbusters in theaters.
But to say The Road has no redemption is a very shallow observation. I have not seen the film yet but I plan on doing so, but I did read Cormac McCarthy’s book of the same name.
The book is a harrowing but moving picture of a father’s love for his son. Some might describe it as existential, since there appears to be no hope on earth and yet the father trudges on down the road with his son, but there is this subtle sense of hope throughout the book.
The book gives no backstory or context – there are two minor flashbacks but not exposition about why the world is in the state it is in, we are simply thrust into this world, with its lack of color and lack of purpose. Because of this, we are focused entirely on the father and the son, and what the father will do to keep his son alive and protect him.
This book is like Flannery O’Connor’s darkest stories – there appears to be no redemption and a surface reading only reveals really horrible things happening to seemingly innocent people. But just below the surface is a rich examination of a facet of existence that becomes so obvious once examined so clearly. Which is to say, where O’Connor was fascinated with the idea of grace, even when grandfathers were murdering their grandchildren in the middle of the woods, McCarthy is fascinated with the love that a father has for his son, a love that provides a clear purpose no matter the horror surrounding them.
Any Christian who claims this film has no redemption is revealing their inability to look beyond the surface of a piece of art to find out what it is trying to examine and understand – the reason films like Magnolia and American Beauty are dismissed for being about sex and drugs. Until we recapture our ability to see beyond the surface, we will always miss the redemption for the horror.
I did not see 2012, but I did have an excellent and fairly funny story about it. I work at a Children’s Homes (residential facility that contracts with the state’s social services to house kids), and some of our kids got to go see the movie.
They came back scared stiff.
But while most kids were talking about how scary it was that everybody died, one kid, who had recently become a christian, just started yelling “They’re LIARS!” And wouldn’t stop. He came over to me with another kid who didn’t get what he was saying and said “Mr Caleb, didn’t GOD tell NOAH, that he would NEVER flood the earth again!?”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“SEE!? DIDN’T I TELL YOU, MAN!? MR CALEB! THEY FLOODED THE EARTH!!! Okay! So WHY are they LYING to us in that MOVIE!?”
“Because made up things make a good movies.”
This exchange continued, and was extremely funny to me because of this child’s (who struggles with pathological lying himself) sudden insistence of fictional fidelity to scriptural teaching. But then he switched gears to evangelism and said that even if it did happen, he was safe, because he was a Christian and his name was written in the book of Life. (My favorite evangelical attempt from a layman: “I’m safe! Cause I’m in the book! You better get in the book, too, or you can just suck it!”) So he takes out his Bible, and with some help finds the passage in Revelation about the book of life. He reads the verse about those who were not in the book being thrown into the Lake of Fire. And because that ALSO happened in the movie, everybody really freaked out again. They especially freaked out when I told them in a tone of “well, duh!” that of course what the Bible says is true!
They freaked out so much, that they started asking how the end of the world couldn’t bother me. Which led to about 45 minutes of talking about God, about sin, about redemption, about the incarnation, about the forgiveness of sin, and about the life to come with people who had no clue. It was the best day at work ever. Who says fire, brimstone, and Ronald Emmerich sermons don’t work?
Kirk @ #5 – You aren’t the only one. One of my book clubs read it this year and we pretty much all disliked it to some extent.
Also we were trying to figure out what kind of disaster would have consumed all of the quotation marks in the world.
I haven’t seen the movie, but I have heard some discussions on it. The interesting thing I heard is that almost everything is destroyed, blown up, whatever, in this movie. The statue of Christ in Brazil, the Vatican, other major Christian symbols. However, Mecca is not touched because the director was afraid of the response. And yet, they are marketing this to Christians?
Until today, I forgot that I saw “2012″ last weekend. I’m not kidding.
*SPOILER ALERT!*
The disaster scenes during the first two-thirds of the movie were worth seeing. But watching the world destroyed by a flood in the last third, and animals being loaded two-by-two into multiple floating arks, was a huge disappointment. Maybe if those arks had been giant rockets that blasted off for another world, it would have been more exciting.
@12 I totally agree. I was under the impression that the ships were spaceships, would have been infinitely cooler. What’s so awesome about giant boats?
*SPOILER ALERT!* again.
Kirk@13, the movie promised us space arks. Remember when the kid saw the arks for the first time and asked, “Why do they have anchors?” And the hero answers, “Because they’re not spaceships.”
Basic movie-making rule: If you lead the audience to believe they’re going to get one sort of ending, but then pull a switch to surprise them, you had better give them something MORE exciting than what you promised – not LESS exciting.
Apropos of my earlier comment, here’s an excerpt of a Christianity Today interview with John Hillcoat, director of The Road. (Found at http://www.lookingcloser.org)