Wednesday, November 19, 2014

Batman saves the Jews!



For the most part, I like the fact that there are movies attempting to bring forward biblical stories and themes the last few years.  With the success of movies like the Passion and the History Channel's tv mini-series "The Bible," Hollywood is waking up.  However, there are some challenges to this new direction....

So there's a new "Exodus" movie coming out next month starring Christian Bale. The title is "Exodus: gods and kings" the description is "One man against an empire." In other words, "Batman saves the Jewish people." 

However, the only hero in the biblical story of the Exodus is God. Moses was a broken old man who was a "has been." He was someone who grew up with privilege and even though he had empathy for his people, he still lived in the palace. He was 40 when he killed a man mistreating the Jews and then he ran. He lived in the wilderness as a shepherd for another 40 yrs as God stripped away all vestiges of his former life. He was humbled and undone. At the age of 80, a new beginning at a burning bush that he was reluctant to embrace. He was too old and too broken to rely on his own plans and his own strength anymore; perfectly positioned to be used by God. The next and final 40 yrs of his life were spent putting to use his training as a shepherd (though I'm sure he didn't perceive it as training at the time). He dealt with a bunch of whiny temperamental sheep...I mean people, leading them through the same wilderness.
All this is not to say that Moses wasn't a great man, but I'm just betting the emphasis in the movie is upon the man rather than the God who made, called and empowered the man.

Looks like it will be an entertaining flick though and I'll probably go see it.  The only danger is that with this movie and movies like Noah with Russell Crowe is that the stories are becoming so twisted around so that they are completely missing the point.  I think we all expect a certain amount of creative license when movie scripts are made, but we live in a biblically illiterate culture and therefore truth is lost in the adaptation.  Those that watched the movie Noah are likely to walk away with the message that God destroyed humanity because we were bad caretakers of nature.  What it does is undermine the credibility of these events recorded in the Bible and turns them into myths and fairytales.  I wonder what message will be delivered with this latest movie. 

Maybeeee this one?


KAPOW!  BLAMM-O!