Christians, I’m talking to you. And you deserve better than this.
I’m going to assume that you’re the audience who’ll pay for tickets to this movie, a multi-part miniseries chopped down to feature length (with a little new footage), one that already aired on basic cable last year and is readily available on DVD. And I get why church groups have bought out entire theaters for its opening weekend. It’s about representation. Specialty audiences, no matter who they are, are hungry to see their lives, values and concerns depicted on the big screen, even if it means spending money and traveling to see something they could just have easily stayed at home to watch.
But shouldn’t Christian filmmaking, if it’s going to be a regular part of the culture and routinely show up at the multiplex as something more than a novelty event like this, do more than pander and reach for the squarely unimaginative middle? Shouldn’t a contemporary retelling of the life of Christ, one that follows in the footsteps of movies like The Greatest Story Ever Told and The Gospel Road (my personal favorite, thanks to on-camera chaperone Johnny Cash), strive for the kind of artistic quality worthy of its mission? And shouldn’t the high drama inherent in this particular narrative create sparks no matter how familiar the final act?
Maybe you just answered
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