Posted on 03/31/2014 4:56:23 AM PDT by RetiredArmy
The pre-release advertising promoting the movie Noah made a point of stating that while the director took artistic license in the production it was still faithful to the biblical story.
Early theater previews were carefully edited to appeal to people of faith, but this is the least biblical “biblical film” of all time! However, to be charitable, the bare outline of the Flood story is present, but after that artistic license has taken the film so far afield of anything resembling the Bible that it is offensive to people of faith. To say that the biblical story was watered down (pardon the pun) is much too mild.
Those who know the Bible were aware of how little the script followed Scripture. Those who didn’t know the Bible still didn't know it when the final credits appeared. It is to the movie studio’s credit that they chose to even make a film with a biblical theme, but the torturous fiction that was the final cut partly written and directed by an atheist is a discredit to both the studio and the actors and is, in result, worse than having not made it at all. Remember the old adage of making a bottle of poison look nicer by removing the ugly skull and crossbones label and replacing it with one that read “essence of peppermint?” The bottle now looks pretty, but is even more deadly because of its deceptive label. To a generation that already rejects the Genesis account as pure fiction, mixing a little Bible with a film of impure fiction is even worse – and certainly more dangerous to faith. For those who have not seen the movie and may think my judgments too harsh, please consider the following.
The film presents the sole purpose of Noah and the Ark as the preservation of the innocent animals. The pre-Flood world is portrayed as barren and denuded as the result of human corruption. What could be more evil and deserving of judgment in ecologically-minded Hollywood? Therefore, as Noah interprets God’s purpose, mankind – all of mankind, including Noah and his family – are supposed to die so the new world can continue with only an innocent animal population.
The Ark has nothing to do with the salvation of mankind, but with its punishment. Noah was only chosen to save the animals, and he is so intent on fulfilling his task to see humanity destroyed that he announces to his family on the Ark that they must all die, for “the Creation is only safe when mankind is dead.” For this reason, when Noah learns that Shem’s wife is pregnant, he declares that he will murder her baby, if it is a girl, as soon as it is born! The ensuing drama aboard the Ark has Mrs. Noah trying to help her expectant kids escape, a crazed Noah stalking his newly born twin granddaughters, and Shem and Ham trying to kill their father (especially after he sets fire to the couple’s escape raft). Add to the drama the evil meat-eating king of the old world, Tubal-Cain, who sneaked on board and remained hidden throughout the voyage, only to finally die in a knife fight with Noah when the Ark lands and breaks in two.
In the end, Noah spares his family because of “love.” Mankind is not so bad after all, for as Mrs. Noah explains, “all the heart needs is love to be good.” God, who has remained silent through the drama on the Ark, despite Noah’s pleas for divine guidance, is shown to have stayed away because, as Noah’s adopted Cainite daughter (the wife of Shem who had been miraculously cured of bareness by a healing touch from Methuselah) states, God wanted to let Noah chose whether mankind should live or not. So, in spite of the ecological hype, it is about humanism in the end. The film closes with newly sober Noah brandishing his snake-skin phylactery (a relic from the serpent in the Garden of Eden) and telling his kids to be “fruitful and multiply” as a rainbow appears (sans the Noahic covenant). Yet this summary reflects the best part of the film. To get the real flavor of the added fiction one must consider the four-armed giant rock men, who are actually imprisoned fallen angels (“Watchers”) created on the second day to help mankind and aid Noah by building the Ark. For their good works they get redeemed and taken to heaven (and their wings restored) in explosive shafts of light as the rain starts to fall, but only after slaughtering the masses of mankind who were trying to kill Noah and take over the Ark. At the same time Methuselah eats a berry and is killed in the first wave of water from the Flood (he did die in the same year that the Flood occurred, but not as a result of the Flood). On board the Ark Noah’s family pleads with him to let in the screaming people scratching on the door of the Ark because “there is room,” but Noah as judge and jury says there is no room for such people, and then follows this with the aforementioned announcement to those on the Ark that God wants all of them dead as well. If you ever wondered where the wood for the Ark came from, the film depicts a whole forest magically growing up around Noah’s family camped at Methuselah’s mountain from a seed from the Garden of Eden that Methuselah had been keeping all this time. And as for the innocent animals, they mostly come by the thousands (same species), mostly snakes, birds, and insects (more dramatic for the special effects guys), following a magic waterway that sprang from the Edenic seed and had spread over the world. Sadly, some species were made extinct on the Ark since Tubal-Cain kept himself alive by eating the animals on board the Ark. They were easy prey because Noah had drugged them all to sleep with sedative-laced incense. Other fictional elements include a Zohar stone that instantly bursts into flame when struck, no wives for Ham and Japeth so only six people in Noah’s family go on the Ark (though eight get off), big windows staying open during the Flood (compare Genesis 8:6) and the family running around on top of the Ark while it rides out the Deluge, and the inclusion of evolutionary development on the fifth day of Creation (which is implied in the succession of creatures and landscapes as lasting for millions of years).
The producers tried to keep these details secret from the faith-based public in order to not have a backlash from negative reviews that would affect the all important opening weekend box office. I learned about some of these details last year from a French graphic novel (which I was shown in Germany) upon which the film’s script was based. As far as I know this was not translated or released to the English-speaking market, presumably to prevent these fictional elements from getting out to the faith-based American audience. Now, the secret is out and it is hoped that informed audiences will, like Noah in the film, judge this parody of the biblical account, unworthy of cinematic salvation.
Look for this movie to get fewer and fewer folks coming anyways.
Better yet, witness directly to those of the public who have never read the Bible or been to Church with the witness of our everyday lives. Sadly boycotts end up backfiring.
The poor movie only made 44 million in 3 days. I think that all the publicity was genius for the movie. People love controversy as proof that people flocked to see the movie. Conservatives are their own worst enemy. Nothing like giving the movie a life that otherwise would have made no more than 10 million this past weekend.
Take confort! The movie “Heaven Is For Real” is coming out next month, based on the best-selling book.
Will it make 44 million in 3 days like the hit movie “Noah”?
Oh please, it had nothing to do with the Conservative reaction...More to do probably with people who saw the Trailers a few months earlier who thought, “That would be a great movie.”
Oh please, it had nothing to do with the Conservative reaction...More to do probably with people who saw the Trailers a few months earlier who thought, “That would be a great movie.”
You are absolutely wrong! You could not be more wrong. Controversy sells. This movie would have done about as well as “Need for Speed”. Conservatives could not have sold this movie more if they had tried. Hollywood owes conservatives big time.
Well you got the best-selling book behind it, it cannot hurt.
According to Breitbart, audiences give Noah a “C.” According to the industry trades, a film needs at least a “B” from audiences to sustain its box office from one weekend to the next, and most need an “A” to generate the buzz and return business to keep selling tickets.
In other words, this was Noah’s “big weekend.” Watch for a big falloff over the next couple of weeks. Paramount better hope it sells a ton of DVDs to have any chance of breaking even on “Noah.” Meanwhile “God is Not Dead” had virtually no falloff from its opening weekend. It is doing extremely well, despite being on a limited number of screens and very little in the way of advertising and marketing.
Plus it was considered the “hit movie” for this past weekend by those who did not want to watch “March Madness”.
I do. The only boycotts that have backfired that I’m aware of were the LGBT crowds...
> Wow! This is interesting, the “Noah” movie is placed at #1! Boy I am surprised.
No real competition I’d guess...
Well that is true. lol. I honestly think it is ridiculous to complain about a movie that Hollywood makes. They have tried over and over again to make conservative movies but conservatives do not go. God’s Not Real has only made 23 million and it has been out for 3 weeks....American Carol was a disaster for most level headed people except FREEPERS who thought it should have been nominated for an Oscar...shutter. Conservative are never happy...I am one of the few.
Had read on one of the threads that one of the posters said friends said it is “not worth the money spent” or “waste of money” or something like that.
Remember that the only stats are now the “estimates” that are generated by the movie studios for Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. The “actuals” come out on Monday afternoon, and are not controlled by the movie studios, but are generated by “tickets bought” in the theater.
So this afternoon, check out boxofficemojo.com. If the estimates are very inflated over the actuals, it means that Noah is a big time stinker.
The next big number is production and advertising cost and how it compared to box office gross.
Right now, the official production budget for Noah is $125m. The advertising budget won’t be known until it has ended its theater run. Likewise the DVD and Blu-Ray sales.
Just stating the facts, boycotts fail when tried.
“...shutter.”
As in:
It’s a realy bad movie so shutter down?
The BOOK I am speaking of IS THE BOOK, THE BIBLE!
I wouldn’t say that. They only fail when you don’t get people to partipate in them...: )
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