Wave of Biblical Epics

Honestly, someone needs to make a new Samson movie. Let the foreskins fly!

EDIT: Best page-topper, or best page-topper?

edited 20th Dec '14 3:57:59 PM by majoraoftime

It's David who did the Philistine dick-chopping, actually. Samson was the "thousand Philistines with a donkey's jawbone" guy.

Samson also set 300 fox's tails on fire and set them loose in the grain fields, then left town, leaving his wife/ex-wife and her dad to take the fall.

Wasn't Delilah a jerk anyway?

Some say she was, some say she was pressured to do what she did by orders of Samson's enemies. The Bible is not too clear on that part.

Did not know those existed and I was more thinking Hollywood film. David And Goliath had been retold, more or less, a year or so ago but set it in a contemporary setting.

Last Samson film, that I know of, was Samson and Delilah

@about Moses leading an army: To be fair, the thing the trailers are showing is a battle between Egypt and the Hittites before all the stuff begins to happen. There's still incredibly out of place guerrilla warfare though.

That Cracked article was a little messed up. For instance, Left Behind didn't fail because of its theology. It failed because it sucked. And it's a remake of a series that sucked.

And Christian Mingle probably failed because the very idea of making a movie based off a dating site sound idiotic. No part of that sounds appealing to me, with or without Jesus.

Someone made a movie about a dating site?

That does sound stupid. At least if you stick to existing real-life dating sites.

I'm sure there's someone who could pull it off somehow, but they'd certainly have their work cut out for them.

You could make a comedy short out of a dating site that was really really bad at figuring out good matches, but a movie? Not really.

What would you call "incredibly out of place"? The movie didn't call it guerrilla warfare, but the concept is old.

It's out of place because there's nothing that indicates Moses would know much about it, but he's inexplicably an expert even though he's a noble in the most powerful nation in the known world at the time.

He's a general and adviser. I'd assume he'd come across hit and run tactics once or twice.

Christian Mingle is even worse since the entire plot revolves around her lying about her faith to get a guy on a Christian website (and no doubt finding faith fur realz), instead if just, you know, finding a neutral dating site where she'd meet somebody with the same interests.

They couldn't make their advertising more blatant

Have you ever read about those Apocryphal Evangelies that showed Jesus' childhood, but basically had the boy as some sort of creepy little psycho who cursed other children to death just because they were mildly rude to him, and the like? If not because the Bible Belts would raise in arms, those would make neat movies, in a Damian in Old Israel way.

It's a blatant Out-of-Character Moment for Jesus though (which is why the powers that be consider it apocrypical, because it makes no sense with the rest of the biblical narrative), which would be a sort of Audience-Alienating Premise.

Something worth exploring is the tale of the Saints and martyrs. Like, an Adaptation Expansion Big Damn Movie of George and the dragon, having a crisis of faith as he converts himself to Christianity and later has to save Europe from the wrath of a foreboding fire-breathing beast, alone, outcast from society due his faith.

I wrote a short story adaptation thingy of St. George and the Dragon...except I introduced two other gods who the people of the city worship, and the dragon is way more impressive than the wheezing little thing of the stories. It's kind of its own thing.

Jesus is still Human though. Learning one has all these powers and eventually mellowing out to be a leader should be an inspirational story.

Even that would get backlash. "Jesus is full human and full divine". I can practically hear my former Theology teacher wailing in agony.

Jesus is all together probably impossible to portray. Its hard to make him compelling in cinema because the Bible isn't a narrative really. Jesus isn't a compelling protagonist. He is literally said to do no wrong, so what's the conflict? Even in his childhood days, he does things that no child would do or say and really should be more concerning than its actually treated. He's perfect and anything less will make people angry.

Now, a character study that makes no attempt to being accurate to the biblical works and explores different interpretations and ideas of Jesus could be fascinating. It'll make people angry, but not because your work failed to be accurate if you never tried to be accurate in the first place.

Make a movie about someone during the days of Jesus looking for him, and asking those in his wake for him. Each person will narrate a different story about Jesus and how is he, and those stories and portrayals will vary. Asking a Pharisee will result in a story about a traveling charlatan. Asking a Roman soldier will give a story about a social rabbler. Asking a believer will give a story about a peaceful Messiah, while another believer of a more radical slant will tell a story of a Messiah biding his time for a religious fair revolt. And so on, and close the story with the man arriving at Jesus' execution, leaving it open as for what kind of man he really was. Everyone can draw their own conclusions. Much like the protagonist, it's up to us drawing our own conclusions, but one way or another, Jesus' story still has taught us something.

edited 21st Dec '14 5:57:27 PM by NapoleonDeCheese

Rashomon: The Jesus Story?

Remember Heaven is Real? About that kid who went to heaven, met Jesus and the devil and all that? The kid has come out and said he made it all up.

Not surprised, honestly. Heck, even the Bible itself refutes that type of miracle in a parable Jesus tells, where Abraham says outright denies a guy from coming back from the dead and telling everyone about the afterlife.

All I have to say to that and my Theology teacher who praised the film for bringing Jesus back to cinema.

Ha.