Leodiensian said:
Hyena, Moviebob's complaint wasn't that the Book of Eil was a Bible; he mentioned how it could be awesome and still have a Bible. His problem was that it was handled in an unimaginative, predictable way. As in, "if you've seen a trailer for this movie, or even just know the title, and haven't figured out that it was a Bible, you might want to remove yourself from the gene pool".
Speaking as an atheist, I have no problem with including religious messages in movies, but as long as it's done well and not just pointless moralising - which you could get from any nutjob with a cardboard sign boycotting funerals - that uses the rest of the movie as an excuse to exist. Including God, as Bob says, as an active participant rather than just an abstract concept occasionally referred to, kind of removes the tension.
I'm probably not going to see this film; I think I'm apocalypsed-out for now. After Fallout and so on, it seems almost everything takes place in the ruins of a deceased civilisation. There's probably some really interesting sociological points to be made about our modern fixation with the end of the world, like that maybe on some level we're all anticipating the fall of the Western Empire or something, but I'm not in the mood for that right now. I want some entertainment that's actually entertaining.
I didnt take that away from the review the way you did. I heard someone rant on for about 3 and a half minutes about how the fact that GOD was involved in the plot and not in some sort of metaphorical sense completely ruined the film for him. I'm going to have to see it myself to really make a determination, but honestly, just because GOD tells him to go do something and it's ACTUALLY GOD TELLING HIM to go do it, so he goes to DO it isn't going to ruin the movie for me.
It's like they say, it's not the destination it's the journey, and the movie seems to serve up enough emotional images of a torn asunder world, a desolate, violent and brutal existence for the survivors, and genuinely exciting action sequences, and frankly, that alone would be enjoyable. I wouldn't care one bit if at the end of it all, he reaches a door in the middle of the desert, walks through and ends up at the pearly gates with Ernest Borgnine playing Saint Peter going "Ah, about time you arrived, let me welcome you to heaven!"..
I don't need some deep philosophical ending where the book turns out to be something OTHER than exactly what it's said to be, and a twist ending where it turns out that everything we learned about the main character is not what it seemed. Just like I'm not going to flock to see it just because it praises GOD, yippeee!
It just looked like a cool movie and lord knows, I've tossed away money on other movies with less substance (Transformers, Terminator Salvation..). I think I could still enjoy this.
Of course it's not the first time Movie Bob and I have been at odds on a film.. I thought the Road was great and Punisher War Zone was as terrible as Hitman.
Perhaps if he had concentrated on the film itself, and exercised his vast knowledge of cinema to point out flaws that brought the movie down, but the only thing I took away from this review about why it's a bad movie is because it involved a "REAL BIble" and "God".
He never really gets into WHY the characters don't work, NOTHING about the camera work, little description of the action sequences, the art style, the atmosphere, the dialogue, the on-screen chemistry of the actors, the set pieces.. you know, the stuff a movie SHOULD be based on. Instead we get "He carries a bible cause GOD told him too! This movie is crap! Who would do something so stupid as to have FAITH in an apocalypse?!"
Like someone else said earlier, it smacks of elitism and an obvious disdain for Religion and anyone "stupid enough" to believe in them.
