The Big Picture: Waterworks - Darren Aronofsky's Noah

[jklinders]

I was going to give this a pass as I really don't care much for Russel Crowe, but Darren Aronofsky is behind this with full creative control. I still cringe a bit in my nightmares at his his singing in Les Miserables, but aside from that I will just be seeing Russel Crowe dressed up as Noah rather than an actual performance.

Someone mentioned an movie about Paradise Lost. I would watch that shit (by the right director and cast) in a heartbeat...more than once.

 

[RiseUp]

Maybe someone can follow this up with another big action "Bible Movie" based on "Paradise Lost". There are a lot of scenes in the poem that would be absolutely epic, especially the war in heaven stuff. If I remember right, at one point someone drops and entire mountain on Satan's head.

So you're saying we'd get an Asura's Wrath movie starring Satan? Someone needs to make this happen. Now.

 

[seiler88]

Allow me to give everyone a little insight into the Christian Insider's Club.

The group of people who are generally called "The Christian Right" here in the US is really two groups:

The Literalists: This is my group. You might call us "moderates" but we do believe what is recorded in Scripture is true. We go off of what is written no more no less.

The Fundamentalists: Or as I like to call them 'Hyper- Literalists'. These are the morons everyone has a problem with, and rightfully so! They love to load down Scripture with crap that is often completely made up and more often than not heretical. You can shut these people down by asking them to show you what in the Bible supports their position and make sure they can look it up and show you!

 

[Shamanic Rhythm]

Based on the form of movies like Robin Hood, I was disappointed that Russell Crowe doesn't kill the dinosaurs :/

 

[Story]

Welp, I'm not interested in the movie in general. Not, because of the story it tells either, in fact I actually rather like the story of Noah's Ark, but rather because it looks like just another grim dark, over CGI'd movie set to Noah's ark.

Also, I'm unfamiliar with Darren Aronofsky's work as I haven't seen any of his movies, so that's not going to convenience me either.
Sorry Bob. Maybe initial reviews might convenience me otherwise.

 

[SnakeoilSage]

Okay, I'm sufficiently informed now to say I would see this movie.

 

[Trololo Punk]

I, like may others it seems, were honestly not aware of what EXACTLY this film was or who had directed it. Similar to what Bob said, I was pretty much just gonna pass it off as some Christian story I'd heard a million times but with some dark and gritty Hollywood stuff to interest some people in seeing it.

Now... Well I'm not rushing out to see it in theaters, but I will at least pay attention to the early reviews and critiques.

 

[lacktheknack]

Thanks for making half of this episode impossible to understand for non-native English speakers. T_T

I'm even not sure if native English speakers can understand those quick asides.

No, they were easy to understand. Comparable to old Yahtzee, really.

OT: Well, if I go in with the right mindset, it does look pretty interesting. I wanna read the apocryphal accounts now to see how they compare.

 

[Storm Dragon]

I've always been intrigued by the idea of "Christianity/Judaism as straight Mythology" so despite being one of those irreligious types I intend to check it out... so like Moviebob I'm hoping that this is something at least thought provoking...

Though last time Aronofsky worked with a budget we got The Fountain... and that was weird...

I think I saw that movie, the one with Wolverine's a Spanish conquistador; but also he's a man living in modern times whose wife is dying of cancer; but also he's travelling through space in a glass bubble with a tree in the future, right?

Yeah, that was weird.

 

[RealRT]

I'm going to try to make this as short as I can.

My problem with religion comes mainly from not only that they might take the most evil & maybe even false claims that they declare good & must be real to them. But they then try to force their political beliefs on everyone too.

To put it this way I now believe Spider-Man is real. And With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility! I take that in a political way that declares if you have the power to make babies then it's your responsibility to make babies. By doing that I probably angered Homosexuals & Pro Choicers who probably don't want to have babies (or would rather adopt). So by then even if they find Spider-Man to be fake I now have a group of people who now hate Spider-Man no matter what.

On a brighter note.... I like God Gundam even though the dub changed it to Burning Gundam....

Only it's not the problem with religion, i'ts the problem with religious people. At it's core Christianity has a good set of rules - love thy neighbour, thou shalt not kill, thouh shalt not steal, et cetera. And as all good things it's being used by nutjobs to control other people. But it's not the religion's fault, it's the fault of said nutjobs.

 

[K12]

I think that people not wanting to see this for reactionary anti-religious sentiments should probably be placated just from the fact that it isn't being funded by religious groups. I'm no fan of religious as something to follow but I absolutely love it when it comes to fiction.

You don't have to assume that every film about the bible expects or forces you to believe that it's all true and all good.

The sillier, literalist Christians wouldn't see this anyway because they only watch things that their pastors have specifically told them to.

As for the rest of us, it looks like a badass and original (as in right back to the original) take on a story everyone is familiar with. I am definitely interested.

 

[Veylon]

No it just dealed with how the world would deal with this scenario but one thing I notice is that the show has an attitude against the 1%, in Evacuate Earth, the super rich built there own ship to save themselves and it used an anti-matter engine and it blew up on the launch pad.

I also had a problem with this! There's a trend to bifurcate between the "good" Socialists who work together and the "evil" Capitalists who don't work together (they do, but not in the approved Socialist way) who get their comeuppance. A more reasonable plotline might have been the 1% working to co-opt the international program and place themselves or their relatives aboard, but at the same time needing enough real crewsmen to actually get where they are going. So you'd end up with a lot of compromises between a optimally functioning spacecraft and one that the current social structure would be willing to build.

Speaking of the 99%, it looks like this will be one of those movies that's not at all concerned about the fact that God's about to drown every last child on Earth, isn't it? Christians tend to handwave that moral quandary aside, but Aronofsky can just roll with it. And how can everyone be wicked, anyway? Don't you need victims to be wicked to, or are we supposed to go, "Eh, they'd be just as bad if they were on top."?

 

[Aardvaarkman]

Yeah I agree Bob, modern day Atheism is pretty bad. "This movie isn't about pissing off Christians? Trash!"

Except, of course, that doesn't represent modern-day atheism at all.

 

[Bradeck]

I'm going to try to make this as short as I can.

My problem with religion comes mainly from not only that they might take the most evil & maybe even false claims that they declare good & must be real to them. But they then try to force their political beliefs on everyone too.

To put it this way I now believe Spider-Man is real. And With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility! I take that in a political way that declares if you have the power to make babies then it's your responsibility to make babies. By doing that I probably angered Homosexuals & Pro Choicers who probably don't want to have babies (or would rather adopt). So by then even if they find Spider-Man to be fake I now have a group of people who now hate Spider-Man no matter what.

On a brighter note.... I like God Gundam even though the dub changed it to Burning Gundam....

Only it's not the problem with religion, i'ts the problem with religious people. At it's core Christianity has a good set of rules - love thy neighbour, thou shalt not kill, thouh shalt not steal, et cetera. And as all good things it's being used by nutjobs to control other people. But it's not the religion's fault, it's the fault of said nutjobs.

Only no it does NOT. At it's CORE, Christianity is vile, hateful, and atrocious. It fails to condemn slavery but say's if you fail to honor your father you go to the worst possible hell imaginable. It fails to say rape and torture is wrong, but says if you worship anyone else but the right God, you are raped and tortured in Hell for eternity. At it's core, it says you must kill a woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night. It says you must condemn gays and homosexuals. And the Bible explicitly condones, not condemns, owning other human beings, and teaches how to beat them. Fuck the Bible, fuck the Quran and fuck the Torah.

 

[KazeAizen]

I've always been intrigued by the idea of "Christianity/Judaism as straight Mythology" so despite being one of those irreligious types I intend to check it out... so like Moviebob I'm hoping that this is something at least thought provoking...

Though last time Aronofsky worked with a budget we got The Fountain... and that was weird...

I'm one of those snarky, atheist, intellectual sorts and I freakin' love mythology. Abrahamic mythology is some of the best and most interesting out there. Also, I enjoyed The Fountain thoroughly, the critics be damned.

OT: I don't think the snarky atheist sorts give Christian based movies a miss because they are snarky atheists. I think they do it because of the fact that they tend to be sanitized, preachy works that are more about message mongering than being entertaining. That may be fine for the audiences they are intended for, but I'm not spending cash to be bored by a Sunday sermon. This is Darren Freakin' Aronofsky though, who is one of my very favorite directors. I'll be seeing this.

Still some of the message mongering ones can be entertaining. Not sure if condemning my point but Evan Almighty comes to mind. Yes it was a PG "be kind to all" type of story but it had Steve Carell who is rarely not funny. Morgan Freeman is God as he rightfully should be (seriously only him and Liam Niesan have voices that I would call godlike). It was a fun romp with a good and to me at the time clever message in the ARK. Yet apparently the "super-christians" that Bob talked about in his video took issue with the movie. "You can't take a biblical story and turn it into a family comedy!" Me and my family were just all shaking our heads and we all consider ourselves pretty devout catholics. If the movie gets a message you want spread across the world anyway why take issue with it?

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

I don't think this movie will be good, because the original Bible story is just 2,000 words long, so obviously there would be a lot of padding. Secondly, this is Darren Aronofsky's biggest movie to date. His previous biggest movie was The Fountain, which is also the worst movie of his to date. It could be that, as a director, he's better if he works with smaller budgets.

 

[C.S.Strowbridge]

Only no it does NOT. At it's CORE, Christianity is vile, hateful, and atrocious. It fails to condemn slavery but say's if you fail to honor your father you go to the worst possible hell imaginable. It fails to say rape and torture is wrong, but says if you worship anyone else but the right God, you are raped and tortured in Hell for eternity. At it's core, it says you must kill a woman who is not a virgin on her wedding night. It says you must condemn gays and homosexuals. And the Bible explicitly condones, not condemns, owning other human beings, and teaches how to beat them. Fuck the Bible, fuck the Quran and fuck the Torah.

That's the problem with religions, you have to take all of it, even the evil. You can't believe the Bible is the holy word of God, but still ignore the parts of the Bible that are inconvenient for your faith in an all-loving God. As vile as Fred Phelps is / was, he could back up his claims with the Bible.

 

[Canadamus Prime]

Meh. I look at a movie about Noah the same way I look at a movie about Hercules.

 

[pearcinator]

Both the overly religious and the antagonistic atheists (the atheists who would rather blame religion for everything that is wrong with the world) are frustrating people that really get on my pecs.

They may be at opposite ends of the spectrum but they are the same person. I say just believe what you want to believe and stop trying to perform 'inception' on everyone who believes differently. It's really annoying and just causes arguments.

With that said, I am interested in Noah even if it isn't true to the story depicted in the Bible. It's just a fucking movie! Get off your high-horses (especially those atheists with a superiority complex).

 

[Xman490]

You know, even if this will end up blatantly pandering to the specific kind of Christian who Bob described, this movie will still have its fair share of epic moments as shown in the trailer. Also, it stars Emma Wattson, a celebrity lauded for her beauty on websites including 9Gag.