God's Not Dead: A Review

There is a popular urban myth[i] that tells of a young Christian who just started at a unnamed prestigious university. He excitedly goes to his first class but becomes rather concerned when the professor demands that all the Christian students stand up. He and several Christians stand up only to have the professor quickly and efficiently convince them all that God does not exist. Finally the professor gets to him, but this kid was secretly Albert Einstein[ii] and is able to destroy the professor’s argument very easily. The professor then cries and converts to Christianity on the spot. Well, apparently someone was inspired by this story and decided to make it into a movie.

             This is movie is so bad that it’s actually very hard to even talk about it. It has about seven plot lines all of which come together in the most irritating way possible. It quickly establishes several main characters most of whom never meet but are all connected in some way. For this reason it is very difficult to explain the plot of this movie, as it has several fragmented story lines that are only connected in a loose sense. A good writer and director could have made this work but this movie clearly had neither so instead it became a jumbled mess of bad acting and poor theology. 

             I’ll attempt to explain this by introducing our characters. The protagonist is a young evangelical named Josh Wheaton[iii] who wears Newsboys shirts and goes to Newsboys concerts and has a Newsboys poster on this wall. This means he’s a good Christian[iv]. He goes to his philosophy class where he meets Professor Radison (Kevin Sorbo)[v] who announces that his class is not an easy A and will be very difficult to pass. He then goes on to explain that as long as everyone declares that God is dead that they will all receive an automatic A on 30% of their grade. The class of eighty all eagerly write “God is dead” on pieces of paper, but not our hero who declares that he cannot betray God that way. He then agrees to “put God on trial” with Professor Hercules[vi] as the prosecutor and the class as the jury. This plot line is the least insufferable part of the movie as they at least put a modicum of research into their arguments so, while hardly great, they are at least not totally embarrassing. 

           We then meet our other players and I really don’t care enough to look up their names. The problem with all these characters is that they are not people but rather caricatures of types of people. We are first introduced to an atheist blogger who interviews famous Christians in order to show how terrible they are. At the beginning of the movie she interviews Willie Robertson[vii] who gives her a sermon on how good people are Christians, eat meat, and say “y’all”[viii].  She then goes to the doctor and discovers she has cancer. Her boyfriend (Dean Cain) breaks up with her because their relationship is apparently based off of what they get from each other and getting cancer was against the rules. Next we are introduced to a Muslim girl who iss secretly a Christian and is beaten by her dad, a Christian pastor and African Missionary, and the atheist professor’s Christian girlfriend. These subplots go on throughout the movie and mostly are unconnected except in order to preach the movie’s message.

           Ultimately Wheaton proves to the class that God exists and embarrasses the professor. Radison’s girlfriend dumps him and he goes into his office and reads a message from his mother where she says that she knows God has a plan for him. That night all the characters go to a Newsboys concert including Radison who goes there in the hopes of finding his girlfriend. At this point the Atheist reporter meets the Newsboys and they convert her to Christianity. Radison rushes to the concert and is hit by a car, but the evangelical pastor is nearby and converts him to Christianity. He dies and the pastor smiles as the missionary explains that death is nothing to be sad about because their brother has gone home. We then see that the car that hit the professor was in fact driven by Dean Cain who is the only atheist in the movie not to convert. The movie finishes with Willie Robertson telling the audience to text their friends the phrase “God’s not dead” followed by the Newsboys playing their song of the same name.

          The problem with this movie is not how badly written, directed, and acted it is. The problem is how angry and preachy it is. The movie consists of characters saying they don’t believe in God and characters explaining that God is real and loves them, and then two of the Atheist characters die. This is the problem with movies like this; it comes across as a propaganda piece meant to convince all people who watch it of its message. Worst still is the revenge fantasy that the movie seems to have. Two of the atheist characters die and no one is particularly sad about this. In fact they are happy because God used their death to bring them back to Him. There is a certain smugness in the movie wherein the non-Christians are punished for not believing in God and the Christians are all rewarded with praise and fame.

          I’m not actually of the opinion that Christian movies have to be bad nor do I think that the story concept had to lead to a bad movie. The problem with this, and many Christian movies, is that it’s not trying to tell a story. What it is trying to do is be meaningful and convert its audience even though its audience mostly agrees with it already. It’s only going to be watched by people who agree with it so it should instead focus on telling a story that will be meaningful to its audience. Maybe instead they should tell a story about a kid who goes to college and meets a reasonable and friendly professor who does not share his religious beliefs thus leading him to doubt those beliefs and ultimate choose whether he wants to remain a Christian.[ix] I’m not saying that would be a great movie but it would at least be telling a story about something that actually happens and it might even mean something to some people.

            I have no problem with corny Christian movies, I don’t particularly like them but I’m completely okay that there are people who do. What I do have problems with are movies that are perpetuating terrible world views and movies that are trying to sell a product. God’s Not Dead is not only guilty of an angry vengeful portrayal of non-Christians, it’s also guilty of an insane amount of product placement. There are three things this movie is trying to sell its audience. The first is the Newsboys; every Christian in this movie is shown to be a fan of them, non-Christians hate them, and significant events happen at their concerts. There are posters, t-shirts, and albums with their name on them all over the place throughout the movie. In this case this is product placement, because the Newsboys are not just some group of people, nor are they a non-profit organisation, rather they are a band that sells albums and concerts, and this movie spent an equal amount of time trying to convince me to buy their product as it did telling me about Christianity. The second product was the television show Duck Dynasty; Willie Robertson is in the movie in two significant moments where he delivers the message of the movie and talks about his show. The third product is the movie itself; at the end of the film we are instructed to text our friends the phrase God’s not dead in order to spread the Gospel. The problem is that that isn't an innocent phrase; it’s the name of the Newsboys newest album, as well as the name of this movie. Texting that to my friends is not just annoying, it’s advertising, and if I’m going to advertise a movie and CD then I should at least be paid for my efforts. And that’s the main problem with God’s Not Dead; it’s not a movie, it’s a really angry commercial. 

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[i] http://www.snopes.com/religion/einstein.asp
http://www.snopes.com/religion/chalk.asp

http://www.chick.com/reading/tracts/0055/0055_01.asp

[ii] Most of the time it’s revealed that he’s Einstein at the end of a story. If anyone ever ends a story with “and that kid was [famous person]" then it’s fairly safe to assume that that story is not true.

[iii] Not Albert Einstein; I was disappointed too. I’m not sure if they deliberately named him after Will Wheaton but I’d like to think so. For most of the movie I thought he was named Joss Whedon which was even funnier but alas I heard wrong.

[iv] This is very disappointing for me. If I had known I was saved by the Newsboys rather than faith I would have bought one of their albums. Actually I’m not sure I would have, but I would maybe have thought about it.

[v] It’s a really bad sign when Kevin Sorbo is the best actor in a movie. Dean Cain is in it too but honestly he was just as bad as everyone else.

[vi] I wasn't going to make the Hercules joke but at one point Sorbo does declare that in this classroom he is a god, so it became difficult not to at that point.

[vii] I had no idea who this guy was, but the movie was pretty clear that I should have heard of him so I looked it up later. I guess good Christians probably watch Duck Dynasty.

[viii] Seriously. There is a brief tangent on how great the expression “y’all” is.

[ix] I think Blue Like Jazz is far closer to what this movie should have been. It was far from great (It wasn't even good) but it was on the right track while this movie isn't anywhere near the right track. 

Star Trek Into Darkness: A Review

I have said many times that Star Trek has always belonged on TV, and is at its best in that format. There have been twelve Star Trek films now and three of them have been really good, and the rest have ranged from good to okay to really bad. On TV Star Trek can be about exploring new worlds, but apparently the movies have to be about fighting some sort of super powered spaceship. And that's the real problem with the Star Trek films; they are stale and boring. The first six Star Trek films were all mostly trying to do different things, some succeeded and some failed but they all tried. But at some point they all became a bunch of action movies that tried desperately to be Wrath of Khan. The last five films have had revenge as the primary motivator of either the antagonist or protagonist. The last three films have not only been about revenge, but have also had basically the same plot.

Star Trek Into Darkness has the same plot as Star Trek: Nemesis and a very similar one to Star Trek (2009). All three movies are about some guy with a massive ship threatening the federation. The Federation sends only the Enterprise because that's what the plot needs, and the Enterprise engages the big ship. The villain leaves the Enterprise to go destroy the Earth, the Enterprise chases it down and at the very end manages to destroy the big ship. All three movies have essentially the same plot, just with different jokes, and a different British guy playing the villain. Could we please have a new movie now? Could you please stop repackaging the same boring plot over and over again?

The Scimitar...  I mean the Narada... Um... The Vengeance! That's it. 

Before I start talking about this film directly I'm just going to say what I did like about it since I have a lot more complaints than compliments, and once I start going on about it's flaws I will probably forget to mention its positive aspects. I thought the Enterprise crew were considerably better than last time around, and they mostly all had their chance to shine. McCoy was as good as he was last time, and most of the others were improved. Scotty was funny without being too over the top, and Kirk and Spock both seemed much closer to their original counterparts. I also thought the humour was pretty good this time around. In the last film the humour was campy, annoying, and distracting, but here it seemed much more natural and just fit into the film better. The special effects were good of course but I kind of wish they weren't. If they had a lower budget then maybe they would try to write better scripts since they would be less concerned about attracting everyone to see it.

Star Trek Into Darkness starts with a terrorist attacking the Federation and then running off to Qo'nos (spelt Kronos for some reason) by using a magic teleporter. Why he chose to go to the Klingon home world is never explained in any way, but get used to that since the writers preferred to not even pretend to explain all the stuff that happens. Kirk is given 72 torpedoes by the federation so he can fire on Qo'nos, which Kirk doesn't seem to think is weird at all. Eventually Kirk is persuaded by Spock to capture the terrorist rather than kill him. He captures him only to discover the "shocking" twist that I am now going to reveal so that I can rant about it. If you want to not be spoiled than please read no more.

There are two villains in this film. One of them is Khan and the other is Admiral Marcus. It turns out that Admiral Marcus decided to wake up Khan early so that he can help him build a massive ship in order to attack the Klingon Empire. This whole massive ship plot seems to have become a Trek staple so of course they had to have one. The ship is huge, can go to warp nine, and has massive weapons. It can also be piloted by one person, and they explain that these are attributes they only put in warships since there is no reason an exploratory vessel would need to go fast, or be piloted by one person. The real problem I have is that there is no explanation for how the Federation could have made a ship this powerful, and there is absolutely no reason they wouldn't start using it in all their ships. But this movie does not believe in explaining things but rather they just put stuff in because they think its cool.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Khan

So I'm going to rant about Khan for awhile now since it seems as good a spot as any. There is no reason to think this guy is Khan Noonien Singh other than that the movie tells us to. First of all he's very clearly English. Yes, I get that Ricardo Montalban was a Spaniard playing an Indian but I missed the bit where people being racist in the past made it okay to be even more racist now. Khan Noonien Singh was an genetically engineered Indian Sikh, but this movie casts an English guy with no explanation whatsoever. And the reboot excuse does not work since the previous film made it very clear that this was not a reboot but rather an altered timeline that veers off directly at Kirk's birth, meaning that a man born in the 1990s should be no different in any way.

Ricardo Montalban as Khan

The other excuse for this casting is that Benedict Cumberbatch was so good that they decided to go with the best actor rather than the correct race. There is obviously the problem that is clearly silly since there are many Indian men who are equally good at acting to Cumberbatch, but let's ignore that so that I can talk about Cumberbatch's performance. I know that it is a crime to ever criticize Cumberbatch these days but I honestly thought he was pretty bad. Cumberbatch has great stage presence and always seems very intimidating but that's about all he brought to the role. He had no emotional range at all, he had no depth, and he over enunciated every syllable so much that sometimes I wondered what was going on with his face. At one point his character cries but he had showed so little emotion at all that it seemed almost laughable to see a tear fall down his cheek. I honestly do not see what every one saw in his performance, I thought it was easily the worst in the movie. When Montalban played Khan he clearly showed a depth and sophistication  as well as a clear intelligence and charisma, with an anger and pride hidden behind his more friendly charade. Cumberbatch's Khan was really strong, and seemed angry all the time, but that was about it.

Ricardo Montalban as old Khan.

I also didn't get why they changed him so much. Khan used to be very strong and very smart, but here he heals, is super strong and has magic blood. In Original Star Trek, Khan desired to rule over all people, he was described as an Alexander or a Napoleon. He was a cruel dictator but he was not insane. In this movie Khan apparently desires to stamp out all life that he considers inferior to himself. In original Star Trek, Khan is described in the following way:

Kirk: They were hardly supermen. They were aggressive, arrogant. They began to battle amongst themselves.
Spock: Because the scientists overlooked one fact: superior abilities breed superior ambition.
Kirk: Interesting, if true. They created a group of Alexanders, Napoleons...

Superior ambition. Not a desire to wipe out all inferior life, but rather a desire to rule it. Why change it? Why is Khan now a Hitler rather than an Alexander? The only reason I can come up with is that they thought it would be cool.

The main writing style for this movie seemed to be that they would try to come up with stuff that they thought was cool and shove it randomly in the movie.  Qo'nos is shown at one point with an exploded moon? Why would its moon have exploded 30-40 years early? Because they thought it looked cool. Why do the Klingons look different again? Because they thought it would be cool. Why is there a super powerful ship? Because they wanted there to be one. Why does Carol Marcus take off her clothes in one scene? To please their predominately male audience. Why is the Enterprise under water? Because it looks cool. Nothing in this movie is explained properly because there never was a reason for anything. The majority of events in this film were simply done for the sake of doing them, without even pretending to have a reason. The whole film was just a series of action sequences and cool explosions with no thought behind it.

Klingons have pointy ears now for some reason.

I'm trying to finish up here but it would be wrong not to briefly talk about the end. I will spoil it since it would be difficult to discuss it without doing so. Kirk dies in the same exact way that Spock dies in Wrath of Khan. They even include most of the same lines that are in Wrath of Khan. There is a thin line between homage and direct rip off and in my opinion this crosses it. Its not their own writing, its sloppily inserted and it has little reason to be in the movie. Kirk is then resurrected five minutes later with pretty much no reaction from anyone. And how do they resurrected Kirk? By using Khan's blood. Apparently Khan's blood can raise the dead. So there had better be a reason in the next film for why Star Fleet does not have warp nine capabilities, Starships that can be manned by one person, and the secret to immortality. Because there is no way people would find a way to resurrect their officers and not start to immediately synthesize and mass produce it.

What I would have done if I had to do a film adaptation of Space Seed, is actually adapt Space Seed. I would have had the Enterprise encounter the Botany Bay floating in space and bring the leader of the cryogenically frozen crew aboard. I would have them at first think maybe Khan could be trusted and then have Khan turn against the crew and take over the ship. I wouldn't do the terrorism angle, or the massive conspiracy plot. But what I would rather them do is neither. Why reuse plots that already worked? All I ask of them is that they try to write their own stuff. Come up with your own ideas and create your own stories. Use Kirk and crew but don't have them flying through a series of the greatest hits of Star Trek.
I have been told many times that if I want more Star Trek then this is the only way I can have it. People say constantly that the franchise would be dead if it wasn't for these movies. But the truth is that this movie was dumb, sloppy, and stale. And people should feel insulted that this is apparently the only way everyone will like Star Trek. If its this or nothing then I would gladly take nothing.

Katniss Everdeen + Hawkeye + Batman: A Review of Arrow: Because I have to do something with this blog...

In 1949, DC comics developed a Batman ripoff called the Green Arrow. Oliver Queen was a millionaire playboy with no superpowers who decides to take up crime fighting after a devastating accident. Basically he was what would have happened if Batman was obsessed with Robin Hood instead of Zorro (and bats). In 1969 Neal Adams decided the character was a poor man’s Batman substitute so he decided to change him. He took away Green Arrow’s fortune, gave him a goatee, and made him into an outspoken advocate for the poor as well as left wing politics in general. This made Green Arrow actually interesting, if not a bit preachy. But he still used trick arrows and refused to kill. In 1987 DC comics published Longbow hunters which saw an even darker Green Arrow. In this series Oliver murdered a group of people who kidnapped Black Canary. After this Green Arrow was the gritty street hero. Other DC heroes didn’t show up, Ollie stopped wearing a robin hood hat, and he killed people with his arrows. After this DC did the normal things that comic writers do. They killed Green Arrow and didn’t resurrect him until 2000 in which they brought him back in the weirdest way they could. The real problem was that someone let Kevin Smith write Green Arrow (a mistake DC keeps making despite the bad results). Basically it is discovered that Ollie is in Heaven and he likes being there so he sends back a soulless version of himself (I didn’t make that up) who doesn’t remember any events that happened after 1987 because Kevin Smith didn’t like that era. After that DC gave him back his fortune ('cause continuity sucks) and retconed pretty much everything they could from the last 20 years.


So I'm going to stop talking about mainstream comics since they make me sad, and instead fast forward to today. In 2012 there were three major hits; The Avengers, Hunger Games, and The Dark Knight Rises. None of these were surprising. The Avengers and Hunger Games both had non-superpowered superheroes who really like bows. And Dark Knight Rises had Batman. Not to mention that both TDKR and Avengers had really popular millionaire superheroes. Add to that the breakout character Green Arrow on CW’s Smallville and it becomes pretty clear why they made this show. But to prove that they are not Smallville they deliberately got things wrong. First of all Oliver Queen now has black hair (I know thats a petty complaint but I really do wonder if CW has some rule that all their leads have to look the same. I haven’t seen that many of their shows but, judging by commercials and posters, their lead actors could all be the same guy.) Also Green Arrow is just the Arrow. Why? I don’t know. But they even call him that in the show. I wonder if this is going to catch on and if we are now going to get the Bat, the Lantern, and Super. And finally Star City is now Starling City. Why? I don’t think they even know.

Clearly they are marketing this show based on its writing. Yes. 

Arrow starts with Ollie stranded on an island and shooting an arrow into some wood which cause them to explode. I wonder if he somehow had gasoline on the island. A boat rescues him and brings him back to society. This is all we see of the island but throughout the episode we do see flashbacks to him before his boat crashed. I can only assume that we will see flashbacks to the island throughout the first season. We then cut to a news station announcing Ollie's return to civilization. This is when we realize that this Oliver Queen is as much like Nolan’s Bruce Wayne as they could make him. He’s dark and brooding and seems almost psychotic sometimes. He doesn’t talk or show any emotion until he sees his sister at which point he tells her that she was with him the whole time he was on the island. Maybe that’s meant to be sweet but it really comes across as creepy. 

I mostly just included this as proof that he actually wears clothes in the show, despite what the above picture wants you to think. Holy long Caption, Batman!

He then meets all his other old friends including his old girlfriend Dinah Laurel Lance, who goes by her middle name so that it can be shocking at the end when she says her full name. Also she is now a lawyer and working to take down the corruption in Starling City. As far as I could tell this was just so that she would be as much like Rachel Dawes as possible. Anyway, she doesn’t like Ollie because he cheated on her with her sister.

Shortly after all of Ollie’s fun reunions he is kidnapped along with his old friend Tommy Merlyn (who interestingly enough shares a name with a Green Arrow villain). The kidnappers, who are clearly Marvel fans since they are all wearing red skull masks, ask Ollie if his father told him about them. Ollie says “Yeah, he told me to kill you” and then kills them just to prove that he is a darker edgier kind of hero. I’m fine with Ollie killing if he has to but this show so far hasn’t given me much evidence that he isn’t some kind of psychopath who likes killing people. Merlyn clearly sees this but doesn’t tell anyone and Ollie tells everyone that some guy dressed as Robin Hood saved him.

Then we are told in a voiceover that he didn’t lie; there was a man dressed in a green hood and he will come again. Suddenly he creates a superhero identity and goes out doing vigilante stuff. This aspect of the episode felt really rushed to me, and I wish they could have spent more time on it. Also, oddly enough, he saves the day using computer skills rather than a bow and arrow. I can only assume that he was taught computer skills when he was on that deserted island. The episode then ends with three cliffhanger game changing moments because one is too traditional. And then it closes off with a shot of the island he was trapped on, showing us that that earlier Lost reference was meant as foreshadowing and that we will see flashbacks to this island throughout the season.  I’m guessing he will meet Ras Al Ghul there and be trained to fight corruption.

My problem with this show is how much of a Batman wannabe it was. Its as though the writers said “You think the original Green Arrow was a Batman ripoff...” and then proceeded to prove us wrong. That being said it does keep a lot of stuff from the Green Arrow comics and is a decent adaptation. It has that classic CW soapy melodrama to it but it also has a guy shooting criminals with a bow. But not nearly enough of it. Hopefully later episodes would make this more about Green Arrow and less about the Queens, the Lances, and rich people partying. My other complaint is that Oliver Queen is kind of like a psychopath in it. He’s really actually quite scary and doesn’t really seem all that much like the Green Arrow that I’m familiar with. I did like the idea of the voice overs, but they just didn't work somehow. They felt added on and lazy, like they couldn't think of another way to give us this information. Overall it was a mediocre pilot. But it was much better than any other pilot I’ve watched this year (which shows kind of how bad they all were). So its not terrible but it hasn’t really convinced me that its anything more than Batman with a bow.