I couldn’t believe this one was so high, but here is #6 from March 29, 2014.

I went and saw the movie Noah…

She Who Must be Obeyed received some free passes to the movies from her boss at Christmas time, and we hadn’t used them, so thanks to General Jackson, we went and saw Noah this afternoon. I was really curious to see if it is as terrible as so many have reported in their blogs, and now I know.

It isn’t terrible.

It really depends on what your expectations are before you go, or so it seems to me. If you are expecting a really great Bible Study, made into a blockbuster movie, then you will hate it.  If you are expecting a Hollywood movie based around a story from the Bible, you might enjoy it.  For me, I never watch a movie expecting a Bible study.

Did they take liberties with the Genesis account?  Boy did they!  In some ways, it almost reminded me of Lord of the Rings at times.  Did they mock the Bible account of the flood and present the whole thing as absurd and stupid? No, not at all; movies are the wrong medium for that.

Sometimes, I think we Christians expect certain things from entertainment that aren’t realistic, and maybe we might even be irritated when the movie makers add things to the story.  In my view, this is silly.  Take the account of the real Noah story.  Noah and his family are cooped up in the ark for many weeks.  There isn’t a word in Genesis about what they talked about each morning over coffee is there?  Did they have bacon and eggs for breakfast, or did they have Cream of Wheat?  The Bible doesn’t waste space with such things, it tells us what we need to know to understand what the Bible is written for, and it is written to reveal Jesus Christ, not Noah’s favorite mid day snack.  If you are making a movie about the story, you have to fill in those rather large gaps to make the story interesting, otherwise your movie about Noah wouldn’t be much longer than 20 minutes, and it would be like watching a random series of 10 second snippets.  Thus, there is always going to be some creativity involved.

OK, I’ll concede that they were a little more creative than that…

Maybe we should consider a larger question. If you were going to make this movie, would you make it to better educate Christians on the story of Noah and his family, or would you direct it to a much broader audience by making it exciting, dramatic and compelling?  If that was your purpose, I’m guessing it would be unless you have millions of dollars to throw away, wouldn’t you hope to create a movie around a general version of a story that might make a non-Christian curious enough to look in the Bible to get the real story afterwards, maybe for the first time?  Bear in mind now, that millions of non-Christians have only heard the story of Noah and the ark when it is being ridiculed.

Consider what these movie makers have done, they’ve gotten people talking about a Bible story, and they aren’t just making fun of it.  Whatever their movie inventions might have been, I’m willing to take that as a small victory, and look for a chance to share my faith when the topic comes up, rather than just loudly criticizing it, how about you?