The Big Picture: Waterworks - Darren Aronofsky's Noah

Strain42

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I will not be seeing Noah. Not because I'm one of those Christians who somehow finds this blasphemous, and not because I'm an Atheist who avoids any movie even slightly associated with religion like it's the plague.

I will not be seeing it because I am a poor college student, movie tickets are expensive, and I'm already getting ready to dip into my wallet for Winter Soldier and Godzilla.

On another note, hey Bob, can we maybe get a different kind of episode next week? These have been fun, and I actually really liked the Godzilla and GotG ones, but I mean the past 4 episodes have all been about upcoming films. I get that's your job and that's what's going on in the world, but can we try mixing it up a bit more? Maybe dive back into an obscure cartoon show or something? Thank you (assuming you're reading this, which I'm guessing you might be)
 

Gorrath

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Jman1236 said:
I'm a lutheran and I didn't know about this whole debate about stories set before noah's flood were metaphors.

National Geographic did a show about what would happen in a noah's flood senario in the modern age however they brought up the point that there isn't enough water on earth to flood the world. There answer, a giant ice asteroid hits the moon forming a disc of debris around the earth that over 300 years falls to earth as rain causing the oceans to rise to over 13,000 feet. You can find it on youtube under "How to surive the end of the world" and they also have done other sernaios but they set the bar WAY too high with there first project Evacuate Earth about trying to save a faction of humaninty from a collision with a rouge neutron star 75 years from now.
I've heard some interesting theories that deal with how water enough for a global flood might have gotten here, but few seem to take on the more difficult proposition of where the heck it all went. Did the NatGeo show deal with how the water receded and where it receded to?
 

castlewise

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Jul 18, 2010
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The "Dead Sea Scroll" version of the flood actually sounds kinda sweet. Maybe they can use that in the next D3 DLC.
 

Gorrath

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lockgar said:
Yeah I agree Bob, modern day Atheism is pretty bad. "This movie isn't about pissing off Christians? Trash!"
Can we actually have even a single example of someone saying this about this movie before we pretend like it's totally true?
 

rcs619

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PedroSteckecilo said:
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...
Honestly, a lot of it is more fantastical than you'd expect. Most of the 'mainstream' biblical stories and imagery has been heavily sanitized and revised over the years. You just don't hear about a lot of the wars (a few of which ended in the people on God's side slaughtering every man, woman and child in said conquered land/city), or the sex, or even the monsters. You can argue that nephilim and such are non-canon because the people who decided what went in the bible decided they were, but there's a good bit still in there. A lot of angels are downright lovecraftian in how they are described. There serephim are just these huge balls of wings used to keep their true bodies hidden, and then there are the Thrones, the most powerful of the angels. They're described as flaming wheels within wheels, covered in eyes. And that's not even getting into the clusterfuck of WTF that is the book of Revelations.

The idea that Jesus is a blue-eyed white guy, angels are these beautiful winged humans, that Satan is some sort of goat-man, and that the bible has less weirdness and violence than any other religious text are more modern constructs. Largely as an attempt to try and sanitize it all.
 

Transdude1996

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Jman1236 said:
I'm a lutheran and I didn't know about this whole debate about stories set before noah's flood were metaphors.

National Geographic did a show about what would happen in a noah's flood senario in the modern age however they brought up the point that there isn't enough water on earth to flood the world. There answer, a giant ice asteroid hits the moon forming a disc of debris around the earth that over 300 years falls to earth as rain causing the oceans to rise to over 13,000 feet. You can find it on youtube under "How to surive the end of the world" and they also have done other sernaios but they set the bar WAY too high with there first project Evacuate Earth about trying to save a faction of humaninty from a collision with a rouge neutron star 75 years from now.
I'm a Christian that does take the whole Bible as fact (7 literal days of creation), so here's my belief on it. Before the flood, the world was only 1/3 of water and majority of the Earth being covered in land. When God sent the flood, not only did it rain for 40 days and nights, but also the earth cracked open letting out multitudes of water causing lots of things to be buried in the huge amount of water (The main cause of fossils), and to be a main factor of continental drift.



Also, in regards to how Noah is made. I have two things I want to give my $.02 on. First, I'm glad that they're painting the sins as being something more than just doing simple bad things because the whole reason for the flood was because everyone on the Earth was evil in God's eyes and Noah was the purest on of all and was still devoted to God. It was nothing like the "Killing a fly with a cannon" picture that some people tend to make. Second, as far as infancies go, I hope this is on par with Dreamwork's Prince Of Egypt. Though, if it isn't, oh well, hope the movie is still good.
 

vdrandom

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Dec 18, 2013
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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.
 

JenSeven

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Oct 19, 2010
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So, Russell Crowe gets his own Waterworld.
Well, that is interesting.
I do hope this one doesn't flop or blow up in his face.
 

spwatkins

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rcs619 said:
PedroSteckecilo said:
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...
Honestly, a lot of it is more fantastical than you'd expect. Most of the 'mainstream' biblical stories and imagery has been heavily sanitized and revised over the years. You just don't hear about a lot of the wars (a few of which ended in the people on God's side slaughtering every man, woman and child in said conquered land/city), or the sex, or even the monsters. You can argue that nephilim and such are non-canon because the people who decided what went in the bible decided they were, but there's a good bit still in there. A lot of angels are downright lovecraftian in how they are described. There serephim are just these huge balls of wings used to keep their true bodies hidden, and then there are the Thrones, the most powerful of the angels. They're described as flaming wheels within wheels, covered in eyes. And that's not even getting into the clusterfuck of WTF that is the book of Revelations.

The idea that Jesus is a blue-eyed white guy, angels are these beautiful winged humans, that Satan is some sort of goat-man, and that the bible has less weirdness and violence than any other religious text are more modern constructs. Largely as an attempt to try and sanitize it all.
This makes it sound like Bayonetta might be the most accurate version of Old Testament scripture that's available.
 

Jacked Assassin

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Jun 4, 2010
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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....
 

8bitlove2a03

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Mar 25, 2010
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I'm not too worried about Noah's reception. I'm about as irreverent as can be towards religious media of all sorts, and even I looked at the Noah trailer and immediately thought "that looks amazing as FUCK". Hopefully the movie lives up to my hopes.
 

Vault Citizen

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Is it just me or is the disclaimer before Noah almost word for word identical with the one before The Prince of Egypt? Obviously its because they are both adaptations of bible stories I just thought that it was interesting enough to bring up.
 

MatsVS

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Nov 9, 2009
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Yeah, they absolutely should get the benefit of the doubt.

This is Aronofsky for goodness sake, the man who brought us some of the few truly bona fide masterpieces of modern cinema. Sure the context is complicated but when you try to place the film within a grander scheme before even having seen it, you're doing not only the film a disservice, but the art itself.
 

jehk

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I was going to give it a pass because seemed like the same kind of Christian dreck I've been bombarded by for far too long. I live in the bible belt and way too many people believe this story is literal and cannot accept it as mythology.

If Aronofsky's treating it as a fantastical mythological adventure then sign me up.
 

Barciad

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Very interesting piece, your best since your one the historiography of Satanic mythology. Those two asides of yours were of particular interest. As for that reference to Joseph Campbell; well I for one had never heard of the man before, so thanks for that.
 

themilo504

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I?m agnostic but I always liked the mythological aspects of the bible, so a adaptation does sound very interesting.

It does seem pretty likely that the movie will fail even if it?s good, I don?t know if there?s a big market for mythological bible movies made by the guy who did black swan.
 

WarHamster40K

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vdrandom said:
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.
If it's any consolation, VD: I've been a native speaker for more than 30 years, and I didn't get most of the aside on the first playthrough, either. I was really hoping for subtitles at that point, so I could do the timed pauses I do during most of the "Escape to the Movies" credit sequences.
 

Daaaah Whoosh

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I feel like this is exactly the kind of Christian movie we need these days. Something to get the crazier believers to say "Huh, the stories we've come to believe do seem a lot more like Lord of the Rings than we once thought," and maybe something to get the atheists to say "Holy shit, God sounds awesome, I should do some more research on him before I give up on the idea". If we could all come together to watch a good film and not be so damn serious about everything, I think things would be a lot better off.
 

Gorrath

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Transdude1996 said:
I'm a Christian that does take the whole Bible as fact (7 literal days of creation), so here's my belief on it. Before the flood, the world was only 1/3 of water and majority of the Earth being covered in land. When God sent the flood, not only did it rain for 40 days and nights, but also the earth cracked open letting out multitudes of water causing lots of things to be buried in the huge amount of water (The main cause of fossils), and to be a main factor of continental drift.



Also, in regards to how Noah is made. I have two things I want to give my $.02 on. First, I'm glad that they're painting the sins as being something more than just doing simple bad things because the whole reason for the flood was because everyone on the Earth was evil in God's eyes and Noah was the purest on of all and was still devoted to God. It was nothing like the "Killing a fly with a cannon" picture that some people tend to make. Second, as far as infancies go, I hope this is on par with Dreamwork's Prince Of Egypt. Though, if it isn't, oh well, hope the movie is still good.
I am hesitant to engage you on these thoughts as this thread might not really be the place for the type of discussion I'd like to have, but, without trying to stir a hornets nest, I do want to ask you a question if you'll indulge me a moment. If all the scientific data we've collected fails to support, or directly contradicts your hypothesis about the flood, how do you make sense of that? I am just genuinely curious about what you think.