YMMV / Left Behind (2000)

• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: Kirk Cameron (as Buck Williams) does his "Way of the Master" routine in the second movie in the series.
• Harsher in Hindsight: In the third movie, the Tribulation Force scrambles to gather vaccines when Carpathia contaminates bibles with anthrax. In the later film Left Behind: Rise Of The Antichrist, part of the rebooted series of adaptations, vaccines are instead part of a plan by Carpathia (apparently as a nod to conspiracy theories related to vaccines held by parts of the religious right members of the audience).
• Took the Bad Film Seriously:
  • You've got to hand it to Gordon Currie, who played Carpathia in the movies. He might have been a B-List actor in a B-List movie series, but he swung for the fences in every scene, making him perhaps the most engaging actor on the cast and portraying Carpathia as a far more intriguing villain than he ever was in the books.
  • Rayford is remarkably much more human and sympathetic in the movies, reacting reasonably to what is going on as much as the script allows and showing much more genuine loss and regret about his wife and child. Fred Clark sums up:
    "On one side are Irene and Jamie, who are cheerful born-again Real True Christians. On the other side are Chloe and Rayford, who are portrayed by legitimate actors."
• Vindicated by History: A very minor case. While you'd be pretty pressed to find a critic who thought any of the films in the Kirk Cameron series were good, it was viewed in a more positive light after the release of the 2014 film, with some considering it more faithful to the story of the novel; especially since the 2014 film was more of an airplane disaster movie while the novels and the Kirk Cameron films were political thrillers. Some also felt that the Kirk Cameron films were more sincere about their religious message while the 2014 film put that stuff on the backburner.

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