They do miss out. I thought that Saving Mr. Banks was an incredible movie and ALMOST did not go because of the negativity on here about it. What a dang shame it would have been if I had listened to the naysayers here. I also saw 12 Years a Slave and thought it was a great movie…..after I saw it (thankfully) the bashing of the movie started showing up and I just shake me head. I really love Free Republic except for the movie threads….I don’t mind people not liking a movie or even think that it stinks but it is the arrogance that only they are right that gets to me.
Have you seen Son of God? I personally did not write my posts out of arrogance after seeing the movie but rather my impression and how it did not bode well with my spirit.
The problem I have with any film of the ilk of 12 Years is the half-truth which inheres in them. They claim to be "documentaries about slavery" - but treat exclusively of slavery of blacks by American Christians. As Thomas Sowell points out in his wonderful Black Rednecks and White Liberals, nobody ever wanted to be a slave, or to have their own friends or family enslaved. But, worldwide throughout and history, nobody ever attacked the legitimacy of institution of slavery itself until Christians, and primarily Protestants, and most especially the British - decisively rejected and delegimated slavery as an institution in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. William Wilberforce
In fact, the Emancipation Proclamation was motivated in part by the effect Lincoln knew it would have in Britain - making it impossible for Britain, never disquieted by any difficulty encountered by America, to side with the Confederacy. The reason slavery was suppressed worldwide, to the extent that it is or really ever has been, was the worldwide authority and influence of Great Britain, plus the Union Army here.
No other religion/culture ever turned against slavery in principle. Not paganism, not atheism (communism), not Hinduism, not Shintoism, not Buddhism, not Confucianism, certainly not Islam - none of them has any claim to having led the opposition to the institution of slavery. Only Christianity. The Christian slaveowners in the South were uniquely situated to be the last Christians to come to that conclusion. They were an anachronism. So ultimately, any "documentary about slavery" which focuses only on slavery by Christians is a half-truth - and a very great lie.