Nine Things I Learned from 40 Days (and Nights) of Christian Media. Yes, it’s over.

Media cloud, VLADGRIN / Shutterstock.com

On March 12, I made the decision to consume nothing but Christian media for forty days and to document the experience.  I wasn’t angling for a book deal, or trying to increase revenue by upping clicks on my blog (I make no money off of this blog).  I just wanted to see what would happen if I restricted myself to a steady diet of media created by Christians, for Christians, the kind you could only buy from a Christian bookstore.

Would I grow in some way?  Spiritually?  Physically?  Mentally?  Would it somehow make me into a more sincere and effective Christian?  Would I snap and throw my laptop from my 16th floor balcony?

Well, as of today (due to some international travel that messed up the days a bit) those forty days are finally over, and while I did have to get a new laptop, it was because of catastrophic systems failure in the old one, and not because of a Christian-media-induced mental breakdown.

And that sound you hear is me, breathing.

Deep breaths.

Deep, cleansing, cautious breaths.

My first official non-Christian-made media as I’m coming off the forty days?  Hans Zimmer’s Interstellar soundtrack.

Man, I missed me some Hans Zimmer.

Yesterday, my wife asked me if I’d learned anything over the past forty days, and I’d like to answer her question here, for anyone to see.

LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE 40 DAYS (AND NIGHTS) OF CHRISTIAN MEDIA CHALLENGE

Over the past 40 days…

1.  You take the good, you take the bad…

I have learned that, like with regular media, there are some really good bits of Christian media and there are some incredibly horrid bits.  The incredibly horrid bits are typically the ones that get the most attention and marketing money, and get sold by Christian retailers.  The really good bits are typically harder to find, but it’s worth the effort.

Balaam and the angel, painting from Gustav Jaeger, 1836.

2.  The Balaam’s Donkey Effect

I have learned to my surprise that God even uses the incredibly horrid bits of Christian media to encourage people.  I have no idea why He does this, but I call it The Balaam’s Donkey Effect.

As Rich said, you never know who God is gonna use.

3.  Misuse of The Balaam’s Donkey Effect

I have learned that some Christian media producers take the Balaam’s Donkey Effect to mean that you can produce media with good intentions alone and God will bless it because of those good intentions.

They seem to forget that the Bible has a lot to say about excellence.

4.  The True Salt and Lighters

I have learned that there are Christian producers of media, true “salt and lighters”, working very hard within traditional media companies to produce great work that is not necessarily obviously Christian.

I’ve also learned that these people don’t get near the attention from within the church as do the obvious Christian media producers.

And this is going to be hard to hear, but I think that it needs to be said:  I have concluded that this is really stupid and short-sighted on the part of the church.

Church, pay special attention to the following statement, because it is a message for you: Support Christians working in non-Christian media companies like they are missionaries, because that’s what they are.  

“But my denomination doesn’t send out missionaries to Hollywood or Nashville.  How do we know who they are?”

Easy.  Do some research.  They’re not hard to find.

And once you do find them, support them with prayers and finances.  Have a Sunday School class adopt them, and send them Amazon gift cards.  Remember their kid’s birthdays.  If they live close, invite them out to dinner and let them talk about their projects.  Creatives love talking about the things they are trying to do.  In short, treat them the way you do your missionaries to Africa and Asia and Latin America.  They are in a mission field that is just as challenging in many ways.

And lastly on this point, don’t just find and support the people working in the more visible fields of Christian media (the authors, the singers, the directors, and such), but also the ones who work behind the scenes (the sound engineers, the DPs, the editors, the key grips, and so on).  It’s just as hard to be a Christ-following techie in media as it is to be a celebrity.  Maybe harder.

5.  The Dreaded Christian Bubble

I have learned that our Christian sub-culture bubble is arguably un-Biblical.  We weren’t called to be hermits living in caves.  How can we show we’re not of the culture unless we’re engaged with the culture?

Recently I was involved in a discussion with a somewhat well-known Christian filmmaker, who stunned me when he said that he’d not actually watched any non-Christian movies in his life.

In. His. Life.

Not even the “safe” non-Christian movies.  He didn’t see any need to expose himself to the films of the world, and didn’t think that it affected his own filmmaking abilities.

Romans 14 tells me that I have to respect this man’s convictions on watching films, and so I do, from a brother-in-Christ point of view.  From a filmmaking point of view, I will be really surprised if he ever actually makes an all-around decent movie.  The odds are stacked against him, since he’s cut himself off from the professional influence of people who really know how to make films.

And we see Christians encasing themselves in bubbles all over the place.  We need to pop those bubbles.

6.  The Need for Christian Media for Christians

I have learned to respect the need for Christian-made media that is made specifically for Christians.  It’s quite nice that we can watch television and surf the internet and listen to music, just like non-Christians do, and grow in the faith.

But I do wish a couple of things would happen with this media:

First, I wish that the ones making media for the Christian subculture would just acknowledge they are making media for Christians rather than pretending that their work is making any substantial positive impact on the wider culture.  The Balaam’s Donkey Effect notwithstanding, I’m talking about being honest and open about the demographics you honestly think you will reach.  The majority of non-Christians in the world have a very low opinion of our music, our movies, and our books.  We need to face that fact.

Second, I wish the ones making media for the Christian subculture would challenge the Christian subculture more, and not just hit all the right beats to make it suitably digestible.  Doesn’t 2 Timothy say something about itching ears?

7.  Family Friendly ≠ Faith Based

I have learned that we should – for once and for all – draw a big fat line between “family-friendly” and “faith-based”.  I’ve made this point on the blog before, but over the last forty days I found myself longing for a faith-based film that was willing to plumb the depths of the human condition as well as explore the heights, and only found it with The Song.  Faith-based films should be allowed to go mature and dark in order to truly show the light.

Where is the Christian-made Calvary?  Where is the Christian-made Shawshank Redemption?  Unforgiven?  Schindler’s List?  For that matter, why did we need Angelina Jolie to make a decent (if incomplete) version of Unbroken?

The problem is that we’ve shackled family-friendly and faith-based together, and in the process we’ve cut ourselves off from being able to make really good drama.  Only a non-Christian can really tell our stories well, and then we get upset when they don’t tell them the way we want them to be told.

8.  Fear Not

If I can judge the state of the 21st American Christian church by the state of her media, I’ve learned that we Christians seem to be afraid.  Of all sorts of things.

We’re afraid of homosexuals, Muslim radicals, bad parenting, Hollywood, video games, illegal immigrants, the dark side of the internet, atheist filmmakers making Bible epics, the other side of the political aisle gaining political power, magic, public education, higher education, and losing our American freedoms and rights.  To name just a few things.

Don’t get me wrong.  Of course we should be concerned about the issues.  Of course we should learn what’s going on so that we can pray about things.

But we shouldn’t be afraid.

“For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.” (2 Timothy 1:7)

If we truly believe that God is sovereign, then we should live with hopeful anticipation about what He is doing in the world, not in fear that He’s somehow losing control.

9.  The Heart of the Matter

Finally, the most important thing I’ve learned over the past forty days is the importance of starting the day in God’s Word.  I’ve mentioned a couple of times over these past 40 days that I’ve been utilizing the daily devotional written by Skye Jethani, and I highly recommend it.

If you are a Christian who – like me – loves secular media, I strongly urge you to make it a point to start your day in the presence of your heavenly Father.  This will better enable you to meet the challenges found in trying to swim in the tsunami of secular media, and will infuse you with the grace to step into the stream of Christian-made media with understanding and patience.

There are plenty of Christians around the world for whom the Bible is literally the only Christian media they have exposure to, and guess what?

They survive.

And in my opinion, they’re probably a lot better off than the rest of us.

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Thanks to all who joined me in this forty day adventure in odyssey.  Come back for my next challenge, The 40 Days (and Nights) of Star Wars Media Challenge.

I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

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Tim Chey’s Suing the Devil • Thimblerig’s Review • Part 1

A month or so ago, I came across a trailer for David & Goliath, a new Christian-made film being released in April.  The film caught my eye because it was a Christian-made film being touted as having an unheard of $50 million budget, and the filmmakers seemed intent on comparing themselves to Darren Aronofky’s Noah, and Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings, making the heady claim that unlike those atheist-helmed endeavors, their film would be “biblically correct in every way.”

Setting aside the “biblically correct” statement for a moment, a few things came to mind as I watched this trailer.  First, why do filmmakers continue to give the people of ancient times British accents?  Second, why do filmmakers persist in hiring caucasian actors to play Middle Easterners?  Third, why – in the age of CGI wonders – would you make a 50 million dollar feature film about David and Goliath, and then proceed to make Goliath seem so… unimpressive?

One of these is a scary giant. The other is a big Canadian. Which is which?

 

But I was curious, because it seemed like the filmmakers were being very persistent and quite verbose in talking up their film.  So, I went searching for more and in the process discovered writer, director, and producer Tim Chey.

Timothy A. Chey is a filmmaker who has been making faith-based films for the past several years.  Some films he has either written or directed (or both) include Freedom (with Cuba Gooding, Jr), The Genius Club (with Steven Baldwin), Final: The Rapture (with several actors I didn’t recognize), and the subject of today’s review, Suing the Devil (with Malcolm McDowell).

Curious, I scoured the internet for anything I could find out about Mr. Chey.  I discovered several print interviews with a variety of Christian websites, and a handful of televised interviews where Mr. Chey appeared on Carman’s talk show (the well-known Christian singer who was quite popular in the 80’s), Christ in Prophecy, and other similar broadcasts.  After reading and watching everything I could find, I was left with a split opinion of Mr. Chey, or at least the Mr. Chey we can see online.

On the one hand, in his video interviews Mr. Chey came across as a good natured and passionate Christian, a man who understands that Christians should embrace cinema, and he seemed like the kind of person I would enjoy sitting around with, talking movies.  I also can appreciate that his movies have reportedly had positive spiritual impact, encouraging believers, and even being a tool that God has used to draw people into faith in Him.

On the other hand, in his print interviews, and sometimes on video, Mr. Chey often played the role of the persecuted Christian filmmaker.   Did he truly experience the sorts of persecution to which he eluded?  Or was this a strategy on his part, to stir up some controversy and make his films more interesting to the evangelical audience?

I really don’t know, but I wanted to address two things that he talked about in multiple interviews, that seem to be a recurring theme in the narrative he paints of David and Goliath in particular, and his career in general:  Hollywood’s response to David and Goliath, and Christian criticism of his films.

In an interview on Godvine, Mr. Chey wrote about the resistance he faced finding distribution in Hollywood for his film, saying “The Hollywood studios have rejected ‘David and Goliath’ for being too Bible-based and religious. One studio executive said, “You mention God in almost every scene.”

The reason why the studios decided they would not distribute David and Goliath was that it was too Bible-based?  It talked about God too much?  It was too biblically correct?

Here’s where I have a problem with this suggestion:  2014, Hollywood’s “Year of the Bible”, was the year that the Hollywood movers and shakers watched several Christian-made projects do quite well, including a little evangelical indie Christian film called God’s Not Dead, which made over $80 million in box office and DVD sales.  Hollywood continued to reel from Mel Gibson’s enormous success with The Passion of the Christ a few years earlier, with most of the studios rushing to create “faith-and-family” divisions in an attempt to exploit evangelical Christian desire for entertainment.

After all, Hollywood is a city built on profit, not ideology.  And considering that neither Noah nor Exodus: Gods and Kings were the box office blockbusters that the studios had hoped they would be, and this was largely because the films didn’t please the evangelical Christian audience, one would think that the studios would greet a well-made “biblically correct” film with open arms.

One would think they would smell the box office cash from miles away.

But according to Mr. Chey, his film was too Bible-based, too religious, talked about God too much, was too biblically correct to qualify for anything from the Hollywood studios but rejection.

Does that strike anyone else as… odd?

Secondly, in one interview, Mr. Chey complained that his films were being mocked by “fellow jealous Christians… saying the acting was bad, script was horrible.”  In another interview he said that one of his personal weaknesses was “not loving those carnal Christian movie critics who continually stab Christian filmmakers in the back.”

“Jealous Christians”?  “Carnal Christian movie critics”?  Ouch.

“The mistake Christian filmmakers make repeatedly,” Mr. Chey continued, “is they give into their fears of being maligned by the carnal, world-loving Christian who drools over Hollywood product…”

“Drooling over Hollywood product”?  Is that just a snarky way of saying Christians who appreciate well-made movies?

Finally, Mr. Chey dropped the bomb.

“One person wrote me and said 7 people went forward to receive Christ after showing ‘Gone‘. I can just imagine these carnal Christians rolling their eyes at the horror of that. But the true horror will be on Judgment Day when Christ says to them, ‘Depart from me for I never knew you.'”

I actually had to read this quote several times to make certain that I understood the ramifications of Mr. Chey’s comments.  If I understood him correctly, Mr. Chey was saying that he had experienced negative criticism from Christians, and that these film critics – because they had been critical of his films rather than just encouraging – were actually “carnal Christians” who would be damned on judgment day.

Because they didn’t like his films?

Having never actually seen any of Mr. Chey’s films, I was now truly interested.  Although as a person who is purposefully critical of Christian-made films, I was concerned that this might lump me into the category of being either a “jealous” or “carnal” Christian.

I ran over to his IMDB page and began looking into his films, especially for the ones available for viewing online (one of the downfalls of living in China).  I passed immediately on his two end-times movies (the most overdone of Christian-made genres), and while his John Newton film looked interesting, I couldn’t find a way to watch it online.

Then this film poster caught my eye.

Suing Satan?  Malcolm McDowell?  A very eye-catching poster?  I was intrigued by the whole idea.  And since Amazon offered streaming rentals of the film, I proceeded to watch.

For part 2, the actual review of Suing the Devil, click here.

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This post is a part of my 40 Days (and Nights) of Christian Media Challenge, where I’m doing my best to consume nothing but Christian media.  This has led me to make some good Christian media discoveries, as well as some real clunkers.

Day 16 down.

 

The Christian Response to Film Critics

Remember last December, when Kirk Cameron put out the call to his fans to “storm the gates of Rotten Tomatoes” and help increase the audience score for his Razzie award winning film, Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas?  It was Cameron’s attempt to balance the critical reviews, which in the case of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, were abysmal.  Thus, the Razzies.

Unfortunately, for Kirk Cameron, his efforts backfired when word got out to those outside of his fanbase.  Having the faithful bring up the audience score was seen as gaming the system by many, and they decided to do some storming of their own.  Suddenly Cameron found his audience score bottoming out (currently 30%), and his reviews filled with all sorts of derogatory nonsense.

The most recent Christian-made film to be released was this weekend’s Do You Believe?, put out by Pure Flix, the same film company that brought us last year’s surprise hit, God’s Not Dead.  As seems to be par for the course, the film has been receiving fairly negative reviews from the critics (currently 10% on Rotten Tomatoes) and overwhelmingly positive reviews from the core audience (currently 82%).

And predictably, the Rotten Tomato plea has gone out from the folks at Pure Flix to the faithful.

In spite of what the anti-Cameronites thought about Kirk Cameron’s efforts, I don’t see anything wrong with encouraging your fans to rate and review your film.  It’s grassroots campaigning, and say what you will about their films, but Christian-owned film companies are experts in grass roots campaigning.  Pure Flix in particular has been hitting the core audience pretty hard these past few months.  They’ve been using all sort of methods to get people excited to see Do You Believe?, posting pictures on Facebook, hosting several advanced screenings for big fans, doing interviews all over the world of Christian media, all in an effort to build word-of-mouth excitement.

It’s a given that the people who make up Pure Flix’s core audience are Christians.  I think it’s also a pretty good bet that they are Christians who primarily interact with Christian media – watching mainly Christian-made films, listening mainly to Christian-made music, and reading primarily Christian-written books.  Therefore, it stands to reason that Pure Flix would help nudge that grassroots audience in the right direction to increase the legitimacy and reputation of the film in the eyes of the world.

After all, don’t most of us feel like the critics are rarely right?  If the critical score is low but the audience score is high, most of us will accept the audience score, because we’re audience, too.  This means that if someone is on the fence about seeing a film, a high audience score might be just what it takes to nudge them into buying the ticket.

Having established that I don’t have a problem with the strategy of encouraging fans of a film to rate and review a film on a site like Rotten Tomatoes, I will say that I do have a problem with the attitudes that many Christians show to the reviews of secular critics.  While Do You Believe?’s Facebook page is full of glowing comments about the film from the die-hard fans, it’s also sprinkled with the victimized viewpoint that the disagreeing critics are either evil, blind, or ignorant.

Here’s an example:

Please go to Rotten Tomatos and Post the Same review there as right now Only a couple positive ones are posted the majority have a Anti-Christian bent/agenda.

And another:

I can’t be surprised that critics knocked it. They are blinded by the ‘angel of light’ the counterfeit. However I thought it was incredibly impacting even a step above God’s Not Dead and I thought that was an awesome movie. These critics need a lot of prayer because I’ve watched movies they destroyed and I enjoyed them and those they rated so wonderfully absolutely horrible. Don’t give up the message will reach many.

And another:

I loved it. Go see it and decide for yourself dont be turned away by the ignorant critics reviews

I do believe that critic bias towards Christian-made movies exists.  I’ve seen it with the reviews of Mom’s Night Out, The Song, and Believe Me, three films that were – in my opinion – the most accessible Christian-made films of 2014.  These three films deserved to be judged on their merits, and not the fact that they were being marketed to the faith-based audience.  But if you read the reviews, it doesn’t take long for the anti-Christian-film bias to become evident.

Incidentally, even The Passion of the Christ only has a Rotten Tomatoes score of 49%, and oddly enough, the highest ranked Christian-made movie is Phil Vischer’s Jonah: A Veggietales Movie (69%).

The problem is, if a bias does exist, then it’s a bias of our own making.  Christian-made and Christian-subculture-marketed films have been so preachy, so poorly made, and so Christian-subculture-focused for so long, that I don’t know when secular critics will be willing to give our films the benefit of the doubt.

We’ve made our bed and now we have to lie in it.

But here we are, living in an interesting time when our films are starting to become mainstream, playing alongside secular films.  This is vastly different than the story with most of our books and music, which tend to stay firmly entrenched within the subculture walls that we build for them.  Our movies have such potential to burst the Christian bubble, but only if we Christians don’t screw it up.

So far, it’s not looking good.

But I’m a hopeful person by nature, and so Christians, rather than calling foul or lamenting the spiritual deficiencies of people you don’t know, I have a few things for you to understand that can help you become an intelligent player in the conversation, as our films gain legitimacy in the eyes of the world.

1)  Film critics know their business.

Get it?  Critics are – by and large – professional journalists.  While there are exceptions, most of the critics you find represented on an aggregator site like Rotten Tomatoes have spent years studying and learning film.  It’s their job, just like it’s the job of the elementary schoolteacher to know 6th grade Mathematics, or the job of a endocrinologist to know hormones.  To dismiss their criticism outright as some form of religious persecution or spiritual blindness is – in and of itself – ignorant, and in doing so you miss out on an opportunity for growth both for yourself and the filmmakers you are trying to support.

The fact is, if the movie has artistic or cinematic merit then the critic will usually acknowledge that merit, regardless of the agenda of the film.  We can actually see this in the current reviews for Do You Believe?, and the fact that most critics are saying things like the movie is well-filmed, Mira Sorvino’s performance is effective, and the car crash at the end is impressive.

However, their job is to look at films critically (thus the name of the occupation).  This means that they will clearly point out bad writing, plot holes, structural difficulties, unbelievable characterizations, and so on.  Again, Christian filmgoers, understand that this is their job.  And guess what?  They actually don’t only score Christian-made films in the low range.  Currently, the number one movie of the weekend was Insurgent, and it only has a 32% on Rotten Tomatoes.  Sean Penn’s The Gunman has a 14% (and he’s *gasp* an agnostic liberal!), and Accidental Love (a film with a star-studded cast and extremely worldly subject matter) has a bottom-scraping 6%.

2)  Practice contextualization.

Paul preaching at the Aeropagus

In missions, contextualization is the process of learning a new culture so that you can learn the best way to present the Gospel message to that culture in a meaningful way.  Christian filmmaking, while not new, has become a new force in the cultural landscape, and we must learn that landscape – both as audience and artist.

How do we do that?  We learn about quality of film by watching acclaimed films that aren’t necessarily Christian.  Since our films are playing alongside secular films, we must understand what makes secular films good so that we can make our own films better.

If you’re comparing the Christian film you’re watching to other Christian films, then you’re making the same mistake of those biased critics I mentioned above.  You aren’t understanding the culture, and you’ll continue to find yourself both rejecting and being rejected by that culture.  Sure, Scripture tells us being rejected is a part of being a follower of Christ, but that doesn’t mean we actively seek rejection by not learning the craft.  Imagine if a doctor was proud that he was rejected for having patients die on his table, saying, “Jesus was rejected, and so am I!  What a happy man I am!”  It’s a ridiculous example, but it’s what happens so often for Christians regarding filmmaking.

I’m not suggesting that a Christian watch hours of R-rated material (although the rating should never be the sole arbiter of your decision process), because there are plenty of critically-acclaimed PG and PG13 rated films.  Watch those films and pay attention to why they’re good.  Read the reviews after you’ve watched to see why they are appreciated.  Disagree if you will, but understand the critic point of view.

In other words, actively watch acclaimed films so that you can understand why people appreciate them, then you might come closer to understanding why our films get reviewed the way that they do.

3)   Let the story be the message

blaineglobal.com

I’ll keep my final point simple.  As you accomplish #2, I would hope that you would learn the importance of wanting more than just a good message in the films being made for you.  Love the message, sure, but don’t stop there, demand well-told stories.

The clarion call is, “Support Christian movies so that we can send Hollywood a message!”  But here is the problem:  if the message you’re sending Hollywood is that we don’t care what you make for us as long as you include the message, then all you will get will be message movies, poorly made.

That should bother you, especially as you think about my first two points.  But the point has been made over and over again on this blog, as well as other places, so I won’t belabor it.

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Finally, with regards to Pure Flix’s latest call for improving the audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, the people that love the film should absolutely go and review and rate the film.  But when you do, be prepared for two things:

First, don’t be surprised if the word gets out, and the haters do the same thing to Do You Believe? that they did to Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas.  Just be prepared.

Second, when that happens, remember the message of the cross that the Pure Flix guys were trying to convey in their film, and respond to those haters the way that Christ responded to you when you came to him.  Not with more hate, not with hostility, not with complaints of persecution and abuse, but with love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness.  Same goes for the critics who may seem as hostile to our message as they are to the medium in which we present it.

Because when you think about it, it’s not our movies that will ultimately transform the cultural landscape – it’s when Christians truly act like Jesus to the rest of the world, especially in the face of rejection.

Unbroken: The Alternate Ending

[Read to the bottom to find my faith-based alternate ending to Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken.]

The 40 Days (and Nights) of Christian Media Challenge is on Day 7, and I’ve been pleased by some aspects of this journey (starting a daily devotional habit, discovering some interesting music, connecting with lots of fun people), and disappointed in others (that Christians have this weird fascination with copying the world’s fads, that the big players in Christian media like perpetuating a pretty myopic view of the world, that if our stories don’t have specific “come to Jesus” moments, the Christian media marketers won’t touch them).

Ultimately, I’m finding that I don’t like or appreciate the various machines that exist in Christian media, but I don’t doubt that each machine represents lots of people who are doing their best to live faithful lives for Jesus.

One happy surprise I found was that Angelina Jolie’s Unbroken is sold by Christian retailers.  This surprised me, because it was a film made by a filmmaker who doesn’t appear to be a Christian, and (spoiler alert) it lacks a conversion sequence.  My family sat down to watch the film last night, and like so many, we were touched by Louie Zamperini’s amazing life experiences, and the strength that he exhibited time and time again.  The film handles issues of faith carefully and respectfully, which throws a bit of cold water on the idea that the movers and shakers in Hollywood have it out for Christians.

After the past week, I’d say that it’s more likely that the movers and shakers in Hollywood have it out for the corporate, industrialized, politicized Christianity that is so prevalent in America these days.  And with good reason.  Corporate Christianity can be irritating, holier-than-thou, out-of-touch, unintentionally and imminently mockable.  Corporate Christianity (like it’s secular brothers and sisters) loves to stir up controversy, to sensationalize for profit, and they love that the vast bulk of the faithful will eagerly swallow whatever pills they ship out to the neighborhood Christian bookstores.

The problem I have with the corporate side of my faith is that it runs so counter to the faith we’re called to in the Scriptures.  Christianity is supposed to be relational, but Corporate Christianity is driven by profit – not people.  Christianity is supposed to be about humility, but Corporate Christianity is about putting our stars up on pedestals to be loved and admired.  Christianity is about loving your enemies, but Corporate Christianity is about building bubbles so that we don’t have to interact with those who believe differently than we do.

Keep in mind, once again, I’m talking about the machine, not most of the people behind the machine.  My interaction this past week with some of the people behind the machine is that they are doing their best to follow Jesus.  Many of them are incredibly creative, and are just looking for ways to express that creativity.  They are intelligent, passionate, and concerned for those people outside of the Christian faith in a sincere and loving way.

But back to Unbroken… watching Jolie’s film got me thinking, what if some film company that produces films for the typical Christian audience had gotten their hands on Louie Zamperini’s story?  A version that would have pleased the machine?

Just for kicks and giggles, I decided to imagine how that faith-based version of Unbroken might have ended.

View this document on Scribd

In case the PDF doesn’t show up on your screen, you can also click this link:

Unbroken Alternate Ending

9 Things Hollywood Can Do To Make The Perfect Faith-Based Film

Dear Hollywood,

I know something about you.

Don’t worry, it’s not about a new scandal, and you haven’t been hacked again, as far as I know.  It’s simply this:  you have been trying desperately to figure out how to crack the faith-based film formula, and while you have had moderate success here and there (even a broken clock is right a couple of times a day, right?) you’ve also had plenty of misfires.

I know that you are frustrated.

It must be so disheartening!  After all, everyone knows the formulas for your non-faith-based films that have served you so well:  Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey; Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat; Robert McKee’s Story, but like Indiana Jones in his hero’s journey, you’re staring at a pile of amazing treasure, and you have the enormous obstacle of a great chasm in the way.

And you don’t have a whip.

The wealth you could accumulate with that formula in your hands is unimaginable, and I know that you’ve thought about it.  With the knowledge of how to successfully tap into those middle America faith-based box office ticket sales, you could finally add the new wing to your beach house in Malibu.  You could finally buy that new candy apple red Jaguar F-type R you’ve had your eye on and park it in your driveway for everyone to see.  You could finally get that plastic surgery you’ve been dreaming of, ever since Renee what’s-her-name got so much publicity for making her big face change.

But you just don’t have a whip.

Well, breathe a sigh of relief my friends, and schedule your consultation with Dr. Grossman, because after months of research by the tireless staff at the Thimblerig Institute for Faith Based Film Studies©, with untold hours spent watching a variety of faith-based film successes and failures, guess what?

We’ve done it.

We’ve cracked the formula.

We know what you need to do.

And we’re giving this information away, for free.

This won’t be as earth-shattering as the mythical memo sent by Christopher Vogler while he was working for Disney, but these nine things might be just what you were looking for.

So get your assistant to take notes.

9 Things Hollywood Can Do To Make The Perfect Faith-Based Film

1.  The Perfect Christian Film needs to look good.

This first point seems pretty obvious, but the history of faith-based film may lead you believe that Christians like films that aren’t shot and edited well.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Recent films have proven that Christian audiences want their films to look as good as Hollywood’s best, so don’t try to save money by hiring a kid just out of film school.  Pony up the dough and get competent, experienced people to shoot, sound, and edit the film.

Don’t worry.  You’ll save money on acting, as the mass of faith-based audiences don’t seem to mind amateur actors, especially if said actors play supporting characters, and they are outspoken Christians in real life.

Save more money and get your cousin who went to music school to compose the soundtrack on his Yamaha MOX6 keyboard.  The score is inconsequential as long as you can get a few songs by current contemporary Christian musicians to play over the opening and closing credits.  That’s the stuff the audience will eat it up.

Look here for some recent popular CCM options.

2.  Message is King.

Good news!  You can also save money on screenwriting, as typical faith-based audiences are mostly concerned about the message rather than the story.  That being said, it’s important that you run your message by a few friendly Christian leaders to make certain that it’s kosher before releasing the film, which will also probably get you some good bullet point quotes you can use to further promote your film.  And while certainly the film should have some entertaining moments of drama and comedy to keep the audience engaged, ultimately you can forget Samuel Goldwyn’s Western Union quote.

It’s all about the message!  Say that to yourself a few times to let it sink in.

3.  How to Write Characters for Faith-Based Films.

Since we’ve established the importance of the message in faith-based films, we should take a moment to explain what should take place in the creating and writing of characters, so as to avoid confusion.

The protagonist should be noble with few flaws, and the flaws he or she has should be pretty minor.  We don’t want any Lester Burnhams (Kevin Spacey in American Beauty) or Colin Sullivans (Matt Damon in Departed) sneaking into the casts of our faith-based films.  And if you make the bold choice of having the protagonist wrestling with his or her faith, something miraculous should happen to help convince or reassure the hero that he is following the right spiritual pathway.  Forget suffering servants, the faith-based audience wants the hero to live in victory!

As to the antagonist, it is helpful if the antagonist is written to be fairly one-dimensional, with underdeveloped motivations for being opposed to the hero or the faith that the hero represents.  The antagonist exists solely to stand in opposition to the protagonist, and we needn’t spend an inordinate amount of time on the motivations.

Also, seriously consider having the antagonist pray the prayer of salvation at the climax of the film, possibly even right before he or she dies.  Yes, that would be a big encouragement to the audiences, even if you have to sort of force the situation.

Such an ending is highly recommended, and should not be considered hacky or manipulative.

4.  More on the Writing…

I know, for something that doesn’t seem to be so important for faith-based films, we are spending quite a bit of time on the subject of writing.  Isn’t that strange?  But research is research, so we continue.

There are several things that you may be used to having in feature film scripts that you don’t need to spend too much time worrying about in the faith-based scripts you will develop: symbolism, metaphors, allegories, subtlety, structure, interesting narrative, poetry, innovation, creativity, ambiguity, unanswered questions, analogies, euphemisms, paradoxes, satire, irony…

oh, you get the idea.

Just avoid being provocative, and focus on being on the nose and didactic, and you’ll do well.

5.  Christians like their celebrities, too.

If you can get a celebrity to cameo in your film, it will be a sure draw to the box office.  It can be a singer, an actor, a sports star, a reality TV star, a journalist, or even a pastor!  As long as the celebrity is an inoffensive household name in Christian homes, they don’t even have to act well!

Christian or not, having a pseudo-famous name attached will somehow make the film seem more legitimate, and if there is some question about the faith of the celebrity, it will also get the faith-based audience talking about the film as they wonder hopefully if the celebrity is a Christian, too!

More publicity for your film, right?

6.  Faith-based = Family Friendly.

A faith-based film should always be viewable by all members of the family, which means that it should avoid rising above a rating of PG.

That being said, you can potentially get away with a PG-13, but that should probably only be for scenes of mild violence, or a mildly bad word or two if you’re being really edgy.

But you should definitely avoid the temptation of making a film that shows the unfiltered ugliness of sin or the unbridled passion of love, so that you might earn the coveted Dove Seal of Approval, the earning of which indicates to all of your potential audience that you have successfully made an absolutely inoffensive movie.

7.  Movies Based on Bible Stories

Don’t do it any more.

Trust me on this.

Just don’t.

8.  Speak the Language.

If you were going to make a film for a teenage girl audience, you would make certain to use current idioms and expressions in your film to help make the film more accessible.  In the same way, make certain to pepper modern Christianese throughout your film, and you will be loving on your faith-based audiences, showing them true fellowship, even in the buckle of the Bible belt.

To help you with this, I refer you to the excellent online resource, The Dictionary of Christianese.

9.  Help the Audience Spend Money.

If you’ve been to ComicCon, you know that those fans love to spend their money on merchandise that ties into their film obsession, and faith-based audiences are the same.  So make it easy for them!  You might not be able to make an action figure of your movie’s characters, but you could always have a well-known pastor write devotional materials connected to your movie which will be sold in Christian bookstores all across the fruited plains, and would sell like autographed dancing Groot Bobbleheads at ComicCon!

In fact, if you do the devotional material first, you can write your movie based on the material and not the other way around.  After all, don’t forget that it is the message that matters.

Does your main character wear a special piece of Jesus jewelry?  Merchandise!  Does he or she (usually he) say some sort of catch phrase?  Slap that bad boy on a t-shirt and make it merch!  Get that merch into Lifeway and Family Christian Stores!  But don’t just stop there, also get it into WalMart, Target, and other major retailers who will sell anything to make a buck.

Everyone makes money, and everyone is happy!

—

There you have it.  If you are a clever, intrepid, go-getting Hollywood producer, you should be able to take these tips and blaze the trail for conquering the faith-based film market.  The heavy lifting has been done for you by our crack team at the Thimblerig Institute for Faith Based Film Studies©, and now all that’s left for you to do is to take it and make it a reality.

Shhhh… can you hear it?  Is that the purr of a Jaguar’s engine?

 

 

 

 

The Thimblerig Do You Believe? Little Cross Challenge

Keep reading to see what the Thimblerig’s Do You Believe? Little Cross Challenge is…

I just watched the trailer for trailer for Pureflix’s upcoming new film, Do You Believe?, and after the success of God’s Not Dead, it looks like the filmmakers are attempting to up the ante, going from a film with four separate stories that eventually interact to perhaps as many as twelve.

Christian filmmakers continue trying to establish themselves, and continue their attempts at being taken seriously by non-Christian and cynical Christian moviegoers. To help with this, Pureflix has taken part of God’s Not Dead‘s $60,000,000 (edit, now being reportedly close to $100,000,000) worldwide box office and invested it in casting some familiar faces (Mira Sorvino, Sean Astin, Cybil Shepherd, Lee Majors).

I wish Pureflix all the best with this new film, and only hope that the filmmakers took some of the constructive criticism of God’s Not Dead to heart when developing Do You Believe? (including the critiques in my own review).  As I’ve said before, Christians have the greatest story ever told to tell, and we should be making the best films on the market.

That being said, I find myself rather unsettled by the end of the trailer, and the focus on the tiny little wooden crosses.  Knowing that a huge part of filmmaking these days (Christian or otherwise) is merchandizing, I fear that come March 2015, the tiny little wooden Do You Believe? crosses will be mass produced in China or Venezuela and sold in Christian bookstores and Walmarts all across the fruited plains.

This fear has led me to create “The Thimblerig Do You Believe? Challenge”, and I invite anyone to join me in this challenge at any level.

The Thimblerig Do You Believe? Challenge

So here goes:  I officially state here and now that if the makers of Do You Believe? do not sell little Do You Believe? wooden crosses as a part of the merchandising of this film, I will personally donate $200 to the charity of David A.R. White’s choosing.

Also, if the makers of Do You Believe? use some of that 60 million to make the crosses but give them away, or even if they sell the crosses but give all the proceeds to charity, I will donate the money.

I know $200 is not much when compared to the potential revenue of what could be the next WWJD bracelet, but to me, it’s pretty substantial.  I feel particularly strong about this since Do You Believe? apparently focuses on the importance of the cross, and it would be particularly distasteful and even despicable if they turned the cross into just another avenue for building profits.

Hopefully that won’t be the case.

Anyone want to join the challenge?  The more people that join, the more likely the message will get back to the folks at Pureflix.

(Special thanks to Doc Benson for posting about this on Facebook, and drawing my attention to the trailer)

The Depressingly Low Expectations Of Christian Filmgoers

This morning Darren Doane, the director of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas, posted the following tweet:

https://twitter.com/TheDoane/status/535594602338983937

What’s happening for Doane and Cameron’s movie at Rotten Tomatoes is similar to what you’ll find if you look at many of the recently released so-called faith-based films: extremely low critic ratings and unreasonably high audience ratings. Let’s look at some of the results of other Christian-made films:

What exactly is going on?

Is there a secular critic bias out there that says if a film is released with a hint of “faith-based”, it will be treated differently than a movie of a different genre?

Even if the movie is brilliant, it will not get a fair shake?

Is there a faith-based audience bias out there that says if a film is released with a hint of “faith-based”, the quality of the movie will be given a free pass as long as it portrays Christians in a good light, talks positively about Jesus, or has Scripture passages used in a semi-appropriate fashion?

Even if the movie is terrible, it will be received positively if it meets the criteria?

Personally, I think there is a bit of both going on.  Yes, there are secular critics who will not approach a Christian film without adding the caveat, “…for a Christian film”.   But one hopes that a critic will be able to separate that particular bias from what they experience on the screen and write a candid review that explores the positives and the negatives of the film.

And yes, there are plenty of Christians who will gladly support anything as long as what they are seeing on the screen reinforces or promotes what they already believe.  Thus you have hundreds of positive reviews on the Left Behind website from ordinary people who make the movie sound like the best film ever made, rather than the enormous cinematic shamble that it was.

But critic bias is by far the less alarming and less surprising issue of the two on the table.  I’m much more disturbed by the way so many Christians will line up around the block to embrace any movie that builds up their worldview – regardless of the film’s quality.  In fact, I’d go so far as to say that many Christians have become so needy to see their points of view on the screen that they’ve become blind to what makes for a quality film at all.  At least that seems to be the case, considering the way we rally behind so many poor filmmaking efforts, treating them like the best thing since the last poor filmmaking effort.

Yep.  Our expectations have grown depressingly low.

There has been a two-pronged effect on Christian-made films that I see as a direct result of the low expectations of the target audience.

First, the low expectations force the filmmakers to sacrifice good storytelling on the alter of hitting all the right beats to please the Christian audience.  I’ve discussed this point before, in my article What’s Wrong With Christian Filmmaking, so I will move on to the second point.

Second, the low expectations damage our potential to be taken seriously by people outside the church, as they see us vehemently defending films that are so badly produced.

Our films are not taken seriously.  

What did George Costanza say about Christian rock on Seinfeld?  “I like Christian rock. It’s very positive. It’s not like those real musicians who think they’re so cool and hip.”

If George were still around today, he might also say, “I like Christian films.  They’re positive.  They’re not like those real films…”

We did it to ourselves with a Christian music industry supported exclusively by the Christian sub-culture, we did it to ourselves with a Christian publishing industry supported exclusively by the Christian sub-culture, and now we’re trying to do it to ourselves again by building a Christian filmmaking industry supported exclusively by the Christian sub-culture.

And it’s a huge mistake.

This “circle the wagons” mentality does little to help with building the kingdom of God, but does much for building up walls between the church and the greater culture.

In his Salon article entitled, Christian right’s vile PR sham: why their bizarre films are backfiring on them, writer Edwin Lyngar says some pretty damning things about what is happening in American culture as a result of this past year’s Christian filmmaking efforts.  Lyngar says:

The people who create and consume Christian film are neither mature nor reflective. They are at their core superstitious, afraid and tribal. They self-identify overwhelmingly Republican and shout about “moochers” while vilifying the poor. They violate the teachings and very essence of their own “savior” while deriving almost sexual pleasure from the fictional suffering of atheists, Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, Hindus, and even liberal Christians. To top it all off, the stories they tell themselves are borderline psychotic.

Is this what it means to be salt and light to a dying world, that the followers of Christ come off as ‘neither mature nor reflective’?  That we’re seen as ‘superstitious, afraid and tribal’?  That our stories are viewed as ‘borderine psychotic’?  I realize that this is just one man’s opinion, but I don’t think we Christians can afford to dismiss opinions like his, because I don’t believe that his opinion is so uncommon.

And it all comes back to the depressingly low expectations that we have for the art being produced by us, for us, and in our name.

The irony is that Christians would be the first to stand up and say, “High expectations breed high results, and low expectations breed low results!” with regards to most things in life:

Education?  Aren’t Christians known for homeschooling our kids because we have high expectations for their education?

Employment?  Aren’t Christian employers known for holding employees to higher standards?

Ministry?  Aren’t we disappointed when people in positions of ministerial authority don’t live up to our high expectations?

And yet when it comes to filmmaking – as evidenced by the overwhelming support given to many of the not-so-great faith-based films that were released this past year – our expectation for quality Christian art is shockingly low.

And it just doesn’t make sense.

Meanwhile, not only was the director of Kirk Cameron’s Saving Christmas out this morning stumping on the social media platforms for people to speak out at RT, but the man himself, Kirk Cameron, posted this on his Facebook page:

 

I can appreciate the grass roots campaigning of Cameron and Doane, and I haven’t had the chance to see Saving Christmas yet to speak to the movie one way or the other, but what about this…

What if – instead of just flocking to a film’s Rotten Tomato page and putting up happy reviews to support the filmmakers – we showed that we have the capability to use our higher order thinking skills, and write critically honest reviews that discuss both the good and the bad about the film?

What if – instead of just flocking to the Facebook pages of filmmakers who believe the way we believe and gushing about how much we love their movies, or flaming about how much we disliked the movies, as the case may be – we do the same thing and give them constructive feedback so that they can improve the next time out?

What if Christians do the really heavy lifting and raise the bar on our expectations for films made in our name, helping our filmmakers by expecting them to make great movies that even the secular critics would have a hard time dismissing?

Folks, unless we start to adjust our expectations, unless we break the model set for us by the music and publishing industry, unless we start doing our best to pursue excellence in the films we are allowing to be produced in our name, we might very well find Mr. Lyngar’s heartbreaking prophecy coming true.

The fundamentalist community will continue to shrink until they start telling themselves—and those they hope to win over—more honest and humane stories… Christian film with its cardboard characters and heavy-handed messages will only drive an increasingly diverse and media-savvy populace away. Failing a profound change of heart, the best this community can hope for are films so bad no one will bother to watch them.

The Problem with Faith-Based Movies is that they are Faith-Based Movies

I recently read a story over at The Wrap cleverly titled, “Faith-Based Movies’ Box Office Goes To Hell” that reported that the more recently released so-called “faith-based” films did not repeat the box office success of the springtime’s Son of God, God’s Not Dead, and Heaven is for Real.   You can see the little chart that they made over on the right.

Among people, the article quoted  Phil Cooke, who put forward the contention that films made with faith-based themes (as with any films aiming to connect with a subculture) would do better to wave a flag stating clearly that the film contains Christian values, so that the subculture can recognize that the film is okay for them to view.

I respect Phil Cooke, having had some interaction with him over the past couple of years, and I agree that what he is suggesting makes sense from a bottom-line point of view, but (and you might call me naïve) I’m tired of looking at filmmaking by Christians from the bottom-line point of view.

That’s what Hollywood has been doing since Passion of the Christ, and it’s not resulted in many better made films made by Christians – it’s mainly resulted in more and more films that succeed in preaching to the choir.  The sign of whether or not they are successful?  The infernal bottom-line – because the successful ones get the church bottoms in the seats, and that is all that matters.

Church, the fact that we expect this from our filmmakers – and that we don’t support them if they don’t package their films in a way in which we can approve – borders on sin.

Think about it.  One of the clearest commands in Scripture is Matthew 28:19, where Jesus calls his followers to go out into the world and make disciples.  But with our filmmakers, we’re happy for them to keep it in the bubble.  We want our filmmakers to massage us, make us feel good, make the sinful world look bad, and help us in our attempts to ostracize ourselves from the rest of society.

If you are in the church, and that is true for you, I have a few very important reflection questions for you:

When will we (the church) wake up and release our filmmakers to go out into the world?  When will we tell them to get out there and stop worrying about the subculture – just make good movies that draw all kinds of people?  After all, we release our missionaries – and support them financially – to go to the corners of the globe and do all sorts of things – medicine, engineering, teaching, social activism.  We do this because we trust that they will be living out their Christian faith as they serve the people to whom they’re called, that they will be Christ’s ambassadors (2 Corinthians 5:20), that they will represent us – and Christ – with honor and distinction.

But we don’t trust our filmmakers to do the same thing.  When will this change?

When will we stop requiring them to raise a banner that identifies them clearly before we agree to support them?  When will our mission-minded churches start to seek out filmmakers laboring in the fields outside the bubble to see how we can support their vision – and not just our own?

Now, if you are a filmmaker and you are reading this, I have a few important things to tell you:

You need to know that there are lots and lots of us in the church that want you to be the next Christopher Nolan, or the next Katherine Bigelow, or the next Tomm Moore, or the next Steve McQueen, or the next George Lucas.  We want you to make the big summer blockbusters and we want you to make the quiet art house films, we want you to be nominated for best original screenplay or best actress or best director or best picture.  We don’t really care if you are nominated for a Dove Award.  We don’t really care if you get the Newsboys or Audio Adrenaline to perform on the soundtrack.  We will rise up and call you blessed if you don’t involve Duck Dynasty at all.

What do we want from you?  We want you to be setting the standard for excellence in filmmaking.  We want to be able to look up at you and smile with the knowledge that you are one of ours, laboring away in the fields of the film industry, confident in the knowledge that you are where you are because the God of Heaven placed you there.  Praying for you to have an impact on the corner of the world He’s given you to have an impact upon.

And yes, I do understand that you want to feed your family.  I understand that you have to pay your student loans.  And I understand that the Christian subculture can potentially give huge returns to small investments.

But do it the same way everyone else does it – by becoming excellent at your craft.  Let the Hollywood producers worry about tapping into the faith based crowd, because they don’t really care if you are the one they’re pushing or if it’s someone from outside the family (Evan Almighty, anyone?  Man of Steel, anyone?  Did anyone see the way they pushed Aronofsky’s Noah?  And get ready for the push to support the famously irreligious Sir Ridley Scott and his Exodus).

Forget about all of that, and just make really good movies.

Personally, I’m thinking of writing a faith-based screenplay that focuses on a non-Christian Hollywood producer trying to make a faith-based film.  It could be one of the most entertaining comedies of the last ten years, and I could even add “Based on a True Story” as a title card.

Post Scriptum – I am not opposed to films made for the Christian subculture.  I just wish we could give as much energy and support to those films being made for secular audiences by believers as we do to those being made for us.

Post Post Scriptum – I just found out that Willie Robertson is executive producing the upcoming Left Behind film with Nicolas Cage.

I don’t have words.

God’s Not Dead – Thimblerig’s Review – Part Two

In part one of this review, I explained that God’s Not Dead has merit as a movie if you embrace the fact that it was made squarely for the Christian movie-going subculture. However, if you judge the film against other films being made for mainstream audiences, it comes up woefully short. I’d like to take this time to express what I liked about the movie, and where it failed me as a moviegoer.

Warning: abundant spoilers ahead.

What I liked about God’s Not Dead.

1. I appreciated the way the film attempted to take separate stories and bring them together.   This is a film style that can be very effective (thinking of Babel, Traffic, even Pulp Fiction – all films that did this well), and I don’t recall any Christian-made films attempting it before, and so it was a bit of a risk. I’m not sure that it succeeded in the execution, but kudos to the filmmakers for trying to do something a bit different in a faith-based film.

2. The cinematography. In my former two reviews, I complimented the cinematography, and this film was also nicely shot. It seems like one thing our tribe is starting to do well as filmmakers is to hire people who know what a film needs to look like to be taken seriously.  It was a well-shot film.

3. The casting of Shane Harper in the role of Joshua Wheaton. Shane was a good choice, and he did a good job. In fact, one of the things I didn’t like about the multiple storyline idea was that it took away from Joshua’s story, and that was the story I wanted to see more of. I do think there was much more that could have been done with the character (more on this later), but the actor was earnest in his portrayal and he was very likable.

4. As a Christian, the film inspired me to not be afraid to stand up for my faith. For that reason, I’ll probably show it to my children to encourage them as they learn and grow. My guess is that this was a big motivation to the filmmakers for the creation of this film. In that way, they succeeded.

5. The filmmakers didn’t tie up all the loose ends. It is certainly to their credit that they avoided the temptation of having Amy miraculously cured of cancer, Dean Cain’s character repent and have a change of heart, and/or Ayisha’s father seeing a vision of Jesus and taking her back home.

What I didn’t like about God’s Not Dead.

1. The Christian celebrity cameos designed to appeal to evangelical audiences.

This was my biggest beef with the film.

Coming from southwest Virginia, I understand completely that Duck Dynasty is a cultural force. But seeing the Robertsons on the screen in this film just further reinforced to me that this film had been made solely for the entertainment and edification of the Christian audience.

Let’s say for a moment that Willie is the face of Christianity in America these days. Just how exactly did his inclusion help propel the storyline forward? It was an incredibly preachy, on-the-nose scene – from the obviously antagonistic questions asked by Amy to the junior sermon answers given by the Robertsons – it was just completely unnecessary except as a chance for the Robertsons to preach.

And this movie was already more preachy than it should have been, even without the Duck Dynasty scene.

(As a side note, if Amy really wanted to cause a stink then she should have asked Willie Robertson to explain the church of Christ theology on the role of baptism in salvation. That would have made lots of Lifeway bookstore owners a bit more nervous about carrying Duck Dynasty products in their stores! If you don’t know what I mean, just Google it.)

Another example of Christian celebrity overkill was the Newsboys. I like their music, but I found that having a huge Christian band included so intimately in the plot at the end – when they hadn’t been involved up until that point – immediately brought me out of the film. After all, how many people actually get to have private one-on-one prayer times with Michael Tate and the boys? I know it happens (see my story of meeting Rich Mullins), but in God’s Not Dead, it just seemed forced.  Like the filmmakers wanted be able to say, “Hey!  We got the Newsboys!  Come watch our movie!”

Why didn’t they take Amy’s prayer in a more natural direction? It would been truer to the storyline to have Amy hear about Josh’s ongoing battle with Dr. Radisson and decide to interview him. Then, as she did with the Newsboys, she could let it slip about her cancer, and he could have been the one to pray with her. If they had done this, the stories would have been more closely interweaving, and someone we actually cared about could have been the one to do this pivotal action of praying with the dying journalist.

2. The generalized characterizations.

The generalized characterizations were disappointingly predictable for a faith-based film, and seemed designed for easy digestion by a pre-ordered faith-based audience.

Why, in Christian movies, do we so often have Christians portrayed as all good, wonderful people while the non-Christians are all narrow-minded moustache-twisters?

In God’s Not Dead, the exception to this was Josh’s weird and ultimately unlikable Christian girlfriend who breaks up with him for standing up for his faith. This was the most unpredictable thing that happened in the film, but it didn’t make sense based on what we saw of their relationship.

Here’s the thing about being unpredictable in storytelling – it must make sense in the context of the story! The way she suddenly began treating him and the subsequent breakup was out of character from what we saw at the beginning of the film, when things seemed perfect for the young couple.

Back to the portrayal of Christians versus non-Christians…. Haven’t we all known despicable Christians? Heck, I can be the most despicable! And haven’t we all known kind and loving non-Christians? And yet with God’s Not Dead, they were just a step away from dressing the non-Christians in black and the Christians in white to further drive home the point that Christians = good, non-Christians = bad.  This was an unfortunate and easy choice in the writing.

3. The weak writing with regards to Professor Radisson’s character development and arc in the story

This is the part that bummed me out the most, because I really like Kevin Sorbo, and respect the position he takes in public regarding his faith. I really, I really wanted to like his performance in this film.

And I did like him.

For a while.

I completely bought the character during the first and second classroom scenes, and felt like Professor Radisson was an interesting and real person who was simply antagonistic towards theists.

And then we had the ridiculous hallway scene after Joshua’s second presentation where Radisson confronts Joshua and threatens to make it his personal mission to destroy Joshua’s future if he continues to present his arguments. I felt like he was going to point a clutching hand at Joshua and as the kid starts choking say, “I find your abundance of faith disturbing!”

This was when the professor slipped from being an interesting character to being a not-so-interesting caricature.

And then there was the confession he made to Josh, about his mother dying of cancer.   I didn’t buy that he would admit that to his adversary.   And I also didn’t buy that the character from the first part of the film would ever admit that he hates God, because he denied God’s existence altogether!  And to admit it to the kid who is showing him up in class?  And to admit it in front of the class? I might have bought it if he’d admitted the fact to his girlfriend, but not Josh. That just didn’t make sense.

And speaking of the girlfriend…

Why did the professor spend so much time humiliating his beautiful girlfriend in front of his colleagues? Why would he bother dating an outspoken Christian in the first place? The dialogue seemed to suggest that they started dating when she was a student in his classroom, but why would she – as an outspoken Christian – date the professor who was reputed to be rabidly anti-Christian? Because of the multiple story lines, we never got to know or really even care about these two.

This was my complaint about the execution of the multiple storyline technique – while I admired the attempt, we didn’t learn enough about the supporting characters to care much about their situation.  The exception to this for me was the story of the Muslim girl who had secretly converted to Christianity.  I bought her storyline, and felt like it was well-executed and acted by both daughter and father.

But back to the professor’s relationship with his girlfriend… this was especially important, because it is apparently Radisson’s realized care for the girl that drives him to make that fatal run to the concert hall (and why didn’t he drive?). As it is, Radisson’s character arc seemed forced and contrived, all to get him to the intersection at that time.

Finally, I was completely dissatisfied with the predictable fate of Professor Radission.   The characters arc seemed so – again – forced and contrived, all to get him to the intersection at the right time to be hit and saved.  I know that he was apparently in the middle of having a change of heart, but if all it took to push him back into faith was a little car accident, couldn’t Josh have just run the professor over ten minutes into the film and we’d have had a much shorter film?

—

In conclusion, while God’s Not Dead did some things right, it still didn’t achieve what a Christian film should – in my opinion – be able to achieve.  I still hold strong to my argument that the reason we keep coming back to this – film after film – is because of the handcuffs and lack of artistic freedom the American church gives to her artists to make a better product.  If an extremely well-made film doesn’t check all the right boxes, we won’t support it.  If a film checks all the right boxes but suffers in the writing or directing, rendering it a film that most non-Christians would never see, we’ll support it.

Church, when will we stop doing this?  When will we release our artists to do what they are trained to do?  God’s Not Dead was a decent made-for-Christians movie, but it could have been a fantastic made-for-everyone movie.  The ideas and motivation behind the film were laudable, but the finished product – being so handcuffed by oversensitivity to the Christian consumer – was far less than it could have been, and that’s a pity.

Christian artists – I know you have to be able to fund your films, and the evangelical American church-going dollar is mighty attractive, but just know that there are lots of us out here rooting for you, and looking forward to the day when you have the freedom to make such amazing, well-written, professionally produced films that we will proudly show them to our non-Christian friends.

And please cut out the Christian celebrity cameos when you make the films. Isn’t the idea of Christian celebrity counter to the whole idea of the Christian faith anyway?

Yes, Christian superstars, I’m looking at you.

But that’s the subject of another blog post.  For now…

God’s Not Dead – 2.5/5 Golden Groundhogs 

 

God’s Not Dead – Thimblerig’s Review – Part One

God’s Not Dead… the movie that started it all for me.

Earlier this year, God’s Not Dead opened wide across America, and made a lot more money than anyone thought it could. This got the attention of lots of folks, including me.

I was in China, and so was unable to see the film. I read a review, and that review lead me to write “What’s Wrong With Christian Filmmaking”, a blog post that has been read over 100,000 times as people have apparently been asking the same question.

Tonight, I was finally able to watch the movie, and I’m extremely bummed to say that things are worse than I thought.

This is the film that American Christendom embraced, buying out countless theaters, taking endless youth groups, and ultimately helping earn the film over $60,000,000?

This is the film that The Dove Foundation calls a “powerful film“, holding it up as a high expression of Christian filmmaking, and awarding it a “faith friendly” seal?

This is the film that won the 2014 Epiphany Prize from Movie Guide and the John Templeton Foundation, a prize that named it the most inspirational movie of the year?  (updated information)

I’m sorry, folks, but if this is the best we can do – if this film is the most inspirational film of the year – then we are in big, big trouble.

On the one hand, I feel bad saying this because I know that the film was made by well-intentioned people of faith, and many of them are highly trained professionals working in the trenches of the entertainment industry, doing the best they can to make a film that will impact the world.  I respect that.  I really do.

I also feel bad saying this because many of my friends who I love and respect as Christian brothers and sisters absolutely loved the film, and I recognize that opinions are like belly buttons.  I don’t think I’m more correct than they are, nor am I coming close to suggesting that they need to change their opinion of the film.

But this film is such a keen example to me of the problem we have in 21^st century creative Christianity and the things that we permit to be produced in our name, that I can’t NOT speak my mind.

I need to pause here, and step back for a moment. A few weeks ago, I was finally able to watch Aronofsky’s Noah . I still haven’t written my review for Noah, but one of the huge things that I walked away from with that film was that Noah was not made for the church. It was a film made by a critically acclaimed atheist filmmaker – and he made it for himself, and for those people who adore him.

Do you hear that church?  Many of you got all upset over a film that really wasn’t meant for you anyway. This was a film made for the filmmaker and his ilk. It was an auteur expression on a blockbuster budget scale.

And this is why you didn’t like the movie.

I don’t blame those of you who were vocal of your distaste for the movie, because you were purposefully misled by lots and lots of people into going to see this film. The studio lied to you, trying to tell you it was just an interesting take on a biblical tale, and that if you don’t give it a chance, you’re close-minded and not savvy enough. Lots of Christian leaders who had advanced screenings misled you (purposefully?  I don’t know.  I’m not going to accuse anyone of being purposefully misleading), trying to convince you that it was made for you and working up resource materials for pastors, making the claim that the film would be a great way to engage the culture.

They were right in this one thing, that the film was potentially a launching point for engaging the culture, but they were wrong to encourage you that the film was for you. Because it wasn’t at all for you. Not even close.

And here’s the crazy thing – if you approach Noah with the understanding that it wasn’t made for Christians – you can find quite a bit to enjoy and appreciate about the film. This, in such the same way you might from other secular films also not made for you – such as Shawshank Redemption, Unforgiven, or Chariots of Fire.

Which brings me back to God’s Not Dead.

Christians, this is a movie that was made for you. It had the right language so that you would easily understand it, it had a conflict that would fire you up to just the right level, it had celebrity cameos that you would love, it had a resolution that might have made you weep with joy and relief, and it concluded with a challenge that – if you did it  – would make you think you were actually doing something meaningful.

God’s Not Dead is a classic example of a movie that was made to preach to the choir, and my criticisms of the film will revolve around that point.

Just like I didn’t mind watching Noah when I realized who it was made for, I found that I could enjoy aspects of God’s Not Dead when I realized who it was made for.  I’ll gladly show the film to my family, and we’ll talk about the merits of the film as well as the things that could have been done better.  However, I was also glad to know that I would be very strategic in choosing to show the film to a non-Christian friend because ultimately, it was a film that was not made for them.

I look forward to the day when we Christians give our filmmakers the resources and support that they need to consistently make films that we can be excited to watch with our non-Christian films.

Whew!  That was a heckuva a long intro to my actual review.  For part 2, click here!