The Good Book of Bad Movies

[carpathic]

Excellent article. I quite enjoy your reviews, but I hadn't had much of a chance to read your writing until now. Insightful and interesting. Thank you!

 

[Sylocat]

snip

Oh no, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying Book of Eli was some stellar piece of apocalyptic mastery, but alls that I got out of his review was blah blah blah God is in it, therefore they couldn't have come up with anything better.

I also realize that his article doesn't just put the pin on Book of Eli, but many others. However, my point is that since when did God become some unusable piece of storytelling? There are plenty of movies out there where an otherworldly figure is used to progress the storyline. I honestly thought that God was placed very well into Book of Eli and it was tasteless of "MovieBob" to throw so much disdain towards it for the simple fact that he didn't approve of God's use.

I'm glad we can reach some agreement. Yes, there are plenty of movies out there where an otherworldly figure is used to progress the storyline, and this can certainly include the Christian God. However, what I got from Bob's rant wasn't that he was bashing any movie that does that, but rather he was bashing movies that don't do it WELL.

To use God well, or to use ANY unrealistic (yeah, God may or may not be "realistic," but even if He is, I doubt anyone in the audience has ever had Him personally charge them and no one else with a monumentally important task) motivational element well, a story must have some more relatable elements on top of it. We have to have some reason for this character to be doing what he's doing other than "The Phlebotinum/McGuffin/Narrator-Insert-Deity requires it" for the movie to be anything other than a popcorn flick. And there's nothing wrong with popcorn flicks (I like my fair share of them), but when you're using God as the Phlebotinum, you don't want your film to be a popcorn flick, otherwise you're just making a mockery of whatever religion you're using (and I enjoy a fair share of religion-mockery as well, but not ones that take themselves as seriously as movies like Book of Eli do).

 

[wilsonscrazybed]

I read the entire article to myself in Keanu voice.

 

[Dorian Cornelius Jasper]

Yikes are you still whining about book of eli bob???

When videomakers write their follow-up articles, usually they involve some degree of, well, follow-up.

 

[Scrythe]

Ouch, Bob. Don't mention Halo around here. The fanboys will get all "Internet Tough Guy" on you.

 

[Tarkand]

The question is not Christianity, but Religion as a whole. Calling religion an example of lazy story telling is asinine, closed minded and an over-the-top generalization.

Hmm... just to be on the safe side here... who said it was? >_>

I have not seen the movie. But it sounds the me that the Bible and religion in general was not simply 'thrown in to make the movie good'. It sounds like that was the story and the underlying concept behind the entire movie.

Adding a 'splash' of ANYTHING is bad... ANYTHING must be cleverly proportioned, and thrown in in a well conceived and creative way in order for it to be plausible. Did you watch the movie 'Constantine', and say at the end: "Well the movie would have been better without the angel dust, and religious undertones that were splashed into it so people would think it was good.'
No. Take out the religious undertones and the 'angel dust' and you would be left with nothing. That is what the movie is about.
So, to me, it sounds like that is what The Book of Eli is all about.

The Book of Eli is a very uninspired apocalyptic flick that's trying to look deeper than it actually is by throwing religion around. It fails terribly at it and ends up looking stupid because of it. So yes, the movie actually having a religious overtone made it worse.

I pretty much agree with the rest of your post, adding a splash of anything usually won't make the movie work.

 

[ben---neb]

While I disagree with Bob's overall perspective on God & religion (specifically Christianity) I do agree that it's not worth anyone's time defending trashy b-rated movies like The Book of Eli.

Any film can use relgious imagery/commatations but that doesn't mean it's a religious film or one worth arguing about.

 

[ZippyDSMlee]

Yikes are you still whining about book of eli bob???

When videomakers write their follow-up articles, usually they involve some degree of, well, follow-up.

yes but its not a bad movie :X

 

[McShizzle]

Lord of the Rings is the other very obvious example of an evidently Christian story, written by a devout Christian. C.S. Lewis' science fiction trilogy is similar, and Chesterton's Father Brown and Peters' Cadfael both tie the faith of the detective and the situation closely together (cf especially Brown appealing to Flambeau to change his ways). Religious feeling has motivated some of the greatest poetry of all time - Donne, early Wordsworth, Browning, Eliot, to name but a few English language poets.

Just to be clear, although Tolkien was a devout christian The Lord of the Rings has nothing to do with christianity. If it has influence'd it, it is very little. The inspirations for the story were drawn from Celtic, Norse, and Germanic mythos. Tolkien himself expressed disdain at the allegory used in the writing of his colleague C.S. Lewis

 

[Ayrav]

America is not a Christian country.

I'm talking about culture and media here. Sure greed, corruption, blah, blah, blah is inherent to any society, this however has NOTHING TO DO WITH WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT. Christian morality is heavily portrayed in American media and is used, sometimes in nefarious ways, to evoke cheap or short-cut emotional responses.

 

[Badassassin]

Had you stated THIS in your review of the book of Eli instead of "The Bible?! BOooooooo!" and ranting on about it in a manner that was both unnecessary and poorly supported in the context it was provided, then I don't think you would have received the criticism you did.

There is a difference between critical analysis of something and just straight bashing it because you dislike it. Sometimes that line might become obscured or so hard to see that a person can't cross it, but it's there. To be honest a review of a movie that actually turned out to be pretty darn decent to many people when you looked PAST the religious undertones (or overtones depending on your particular perspective) should have remained in the context of the FILM, but instead you scarcely touched on any OTHER aspect of the film. This aided the impression that you didn't like the movie because it was the kind of film someone of faith might walk away from feeling slightly inspired to continue believing in a God you do not believe in.

But we can all consider such thing, teachable moments. Disagreeing on a subject does not give one carte blanche to ignore or even insult the importance of said subject to others. One can be diplomatic in these things while still maintaining your own personal beliefs and exercising free speech.

I suppose one could call it "tact".

This is exactly what i was going to say. i think that your review was just a fluke, and you usually explain yourself well in your reviews. but that one just reflected you very poorly (of course, internet ppls are worse )

"you are a bigot"

haha woooooooww...

but you are right about lazy story techniques other than god... like there are:
Nazis are evil
Zombies eat brains
Aliens will want to kill you... no one knows why, it's just what happens
Megan Fox nude in ANYTHING will make a highly grossing movies and tight pants

but if that's true than there are lots of lazier ways to make movies.
I mean look at all the movies off novels and comic books... work's done!
That's why i relish any movie that isn't that, cause it's bottom of the barrel time for original movies

 

[scotth266]

My only problem with your review of The Book Of Eli was that you seemed to think that it was dull due to divine agents being a part of the plot (apparently because you think that the involvement of God means that the conclusion of the movie is obvious.)

I draw an issue with that line of thought, because certain movies just HAVE forgone conclusions. I mean, look at most of the stuff Pixar has done. It was obvious that Nemo was going to be found, that WALL-E and EVE were to become lovers, and that the toys would get back to Andy again: but that didn't stop any of those movies from being the epic works that they were. Same goes for Avatar: anyone with half a brain will see the plot points coming from a mile away, but you can still enjoy it.

The fact that you've enjoyed other movies with similar easy-to-predict plots indicates to me that you CAN deal with forgone conclusions: therefore, the only reason that you find The Book Of Eli to be boring is because it implements a religious thematic to drive it's plot, instead of romance, the father/son dynamic, etc. You might be willing to say that there's a difference between The Book Of Eli and all of these examples in that the Pixar movies actually were GOOD movies with inevitable conclusions, but you didn't mention how The Book Of Eli handled the inevitability: you just complained about the WAY it was inevitable. That's why people got out their pitchforks and torches: it made you seem like someone with an axe to grind.

 

[whaleswiththumbs]

The only only only thing i have ever seen pull-off religon tye-ins is Fallout 3, only because that one verse completely got the story. Almost like a inside joke, thats not funny but we tell it because we remember that it might have once been humorous when we first heard about it. I feel like i just sucked something good out of a good game, but F3 is soo goodness filled that it can take it like a man.

 

[scotth266]

You might be willing to say that there's a difference between The Book Of Eli and all of these examples in that the Pixar movies actually were GOOD movies with inevitable conclusions, but you didn't mention how The Book Of Eli handled the inevitability: you just complained about the WAY it was inevitable. That's why people got out their pitchforks and torches: it made you seem like someone with an axe to grind.

That's... erm... not true.

The way you define conflict in fiction is by how large the obstacle is relative to your protagonist. In Nemo, Marlin is a tiny fish who has to go all the way across the ocean to find his kid. In Toy Story, for instance, the conflict is smaller, but because the characters are toys, just crossing a few streets and escaping the neighbour's house to get back to their owner is just as much of a quest. In The Invincibles, however, the superpowered family needs a larger threat, so they're saving the world from a supervillain who not only has his own personal island and army, he has also single-handedly managed to outlaw superheroes.

Here's how you do this wrong: by having your dude be more powerful than his enemies. Here's a surefire to make your dude be more powerful than his enemies: Have him be a godsent warrior.

I don't care what kind of godsent warrior, Christian, Muslim or Na'vi, that's a cop-out.

You missed my point. Yes, while the characters of all those movies have epic quests and trials to undertake, was there ever really any doubt as to how things would play out in the end? The only Pixar movie I've seen that ever really was even mildly unpredictable was Up, and even that was fairly within my expectations.

My point was that while you might KNOW how things are going to play out in a film, you can still enjoy it. That's the premise of most action flicks. You KNOW that GI Joe/James Bond are going to defeat their rivals, for instance: but you can still watch their movies.

Neo, from the Matrix (the ORIGINAL ONE, not any of those damn sequels), is the very definition of a God-sent warrior: a being predicted by prophecy that will hold powers over the very fabric of (virtual) existence. Yet The Matrix is still an enjoyable movie.

Being a God-sent warrior doesn't mean jack shit when it comes to power levels, or whether or not you'll even succeed in your tasks. All it means is that God's sent you to do something. Whether or not you fail or succeed is dependent on your own endeavors: if Eli, for instance, had sat down and said "fuck it, I'm not doing this bullshit any more", that would have been his choice. And yes, God was probably giving him a little more than a helping hand by if some of these spoilers are right, letting him see while he's blind, but that doesn't mean that Eli wasn't pulling his own weight, or that God would pull his for him.

Of course, it's up to the viewer to interpret that. I haven't seen the movie myself, so I can't vouch for how WELL the "warrior of God" bit is done: it's entirely possible that it was done horribly, and Bob would have been more than right to complain about it. After all, while the first Matrix handled the theme quite well, the other two... didn't. But Bob didn't mention the quality of the God-sent warrior usage: he just didn't like that it was used, and claimed that that was what made the movie bad.



EDIT: Hyena had a similar point to mine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/6.170215#4636311], in that Bob's focus on the issue, instead of mentioning other things that made the film bad, was what drew all the criticism.[/quote]

 

[Sewblon]

I understand your point and agree with you. But did you just compare The Crow to The Boondock Saints?

 

[Saarai-fan]

I agree with you to some extent MovieBob on the subject. I won't go into where I disagree with you for now, but the recent movies that had their directors add christian elements into the film itself seem to only do it to avoid making a more detailed explanation of the universe surrounding the movie and looks like lazy storytelling. Even though some of them have done it right, it's being done to death as you mentioned before in your Legion review.

I also thought your review on the Book of Eli was good. Not that I have a problem with characters on a mission from God, but the mission needs to be better explained with the details matter. There's only two characters that were in a movie that an explanation of their mission wasn't in need of much explanation and forgiven. And these were the two...

Spoiler

...and they were indeed on a mission from God. LOL

 

[Doug]

Bob, you shoulda sued the arse off of your boss at the time. Firing someone for believing a film to be anti-jew and for symaphising with them is probably a breach of right to religious freedoms or something.

I've personally not seen "The Passion" as religious films and religion in general doesn't interest me (nor most Brits, if studies are to be believed - we apparently pay lip service at best to religion), so I can't really comment on it. I've heard people say its anti-jews and people who've just said its alright, so who knows.