Not Recommended. A gazillion dollar extravagant waste of two and a half hours. Yeah! It’s finally over! Sorry, Star Wars fans, I only like the original two, Episodes 4 and 5. But there were a few cool things in this one. The Special effects were great, but empty and ultimately boring because the drama was so uninspiring. Also, very cool how Lucas was able to weave together a story that would ultimately set up for A New Hope and Empire, and explain the background for them. Ridiculous lines: After a crash landing, Obi Wan says, “Another happy landing.” Overall cool concept of the analogy with Hitler’s Germany, the story replicates how Hitler, seized power to make Germany his empire while being a Chancellor with emergency powers. Order 66: the execution of all the Emperor’s enemies and Jedis was a reflection of the Night of the Long Knives in 1934 when Hitler killed his questionable enemies in the SA and elsewhere. Okay, I liked that analogy. Battles: Boring. Especially when they are fighting droids, who are merely little machines. There is no seriousness to destroying machines, no human element to make it scary. Unforgivable inconsistent philosophy: Obi Wan tells Anakin to go ahead and deal with the senate because, “I’m not brave enough for politics. I have to report to the counsel (of Jedi).” And what, may I ask, is a counsel of Jedis, BUT A FREAKIN’ POLITICAL BODY that is just as political as the Senate?! And all in the same sentence is this contradiction. Unforgivable, it is. When the “turned” Anakin says to Obi Wan, in an obvious reference to Jesus, “you are either for me or against me,” Obi says, “Only a Sith deals in absolutes.” But then a few minutes later, Obi tells Anakin the “Chancellor is evil.” Oh? Well, Mr. supposed-to-be-wise-man, if there are no absolutes, then how can you call the Chancellor evil? Are you a Sith now? Actually, Anakin responds with a good line that reveals the dark side as Relativistic: “From my point of view, the Jedi are evil.” I think this is great. The evil side are postmoderns and relativistic. The bad guy even says the Jedi are “narrow minded and dogmatic, we must study all sides of the force to understand the bigger picture.” Yeah! All you relativists and pomos out there are victims of the dark side. Na na na na! But then Lucas contradicts himself because to be dogmatic, as he says the Jedi are, is to be absolutistic, which is what Obi said the Sith were. Sheesh! Stop the pain! But the contradictions don’t stop. More Buddhist B.S. occurs when Anakin is told by a Jedi that “Fear of loss is a path to the dark side. Attachment leads to jealousy, Let go of everything you fear to lose.” This Eastern style philosophy of detachment is what makes the East so cruel and heartless to pain and suffering. They fight against compassion, you know the kind of thing that Jesus said we should have with the suffering. But instead this “detachment” makes Eastern culture into a barbaric cruelty to those who suffer, by ignoring them, and avoiding the attachment that love brings to the object of affection. This is why Eastern monks are so heartless and uncompassionate. They cannot make true human connection because that would be attachment. This is definitely the philosophy of Hollywood celebrity. The Eastern worldview is soulless and cruel. Here is a great ridiculous line that telegraphs the poor philosophy that this whole mythology is about. When Obi can’t find someone he is looking for, Yoda tells him, “Use your feelings, and find him, you will.” Well, obviously the line should be “use the Force.” So we see that the Force really is just a metaphor for your feelings. Once again, follow your heart, not an absolute objective truth. Let your feelings rule you. Well, I’ve got to stop. I’ve already given this blog way too much time on this unworthy movie.
Sci-Fi Fantasy
The Jacket
Recommended with Caution. A thought-provoking postmodern film that uses the questioning of reality and dreaming as a vehicle to face our mortality and make the best out of life. But it is a dark thriller, with a couple inappropriate flashes of nudity in it. Adrien Brody plays a good guy Gulf War vet who is picked up hitchhiking and has a near fatal head injury when the driver kills a cop. Brody’s character, Jack Starks, has amnesia and is framed for the shooting, and because of his amnesia and bad Gulf War experience he is labeled criminally insane and ends in an insane asylum. While there, he undergoes some rather controversial “therapy” called “the jacket” that is likened to sensory deprivation by a behavioral psychologist, Dr. Beck, played by Kris Kristofferson. But the jacket experiences in some bizarre twist of reality, enable Jack to time travel into the future, where he meets and falls in love with a girl from his past who has grown up, played with swanky hardness by Kiera Knightley. Jack’s search to discover the cause of his death in the past by researching the facts while in the future has a very fatalistic edge to it at first, but ends up with a hopeful worldview of freedom to change behavior. What I liked about this film was how it portrayed Dr. Becker, the behaviorist and physicalist, who believes that our problems are the result of chemical imbalances. This whole worldview is shown to be the darkness that it really is, and it shows the toll even on the doctor as we see him always taking drugs himself to calm himself down. In other words, behaviorism and sociobiology are slave systems for worldviews, and they deny the strength and responsibility of the human will. And guess what? They are still creeping around the halls of our institutions. I met a sociobiologist when I did research at a hospital for the criminally insane. These social engineers, these “world controllers” are nothing more than Monsters in white lab coats. Or as C.S. Lewis said, they are torturers in the name of compassion because of their worldview that defines our beliefs or behavior as resulting from our chemicals. Therefore, they must experiment with our chemicals “for our own good” to get us “better.” I just read in a Wired article about a sociobiologist criticizing 12 step programs as destructive while he offered his instant gratification chemical solution to solving addiction, entirely ignorant of the human dimension of who we are. These Nazis actually think they are helping us. As Becker says in the film to Jack that he puts him in a bizarre torture device that it is “with every intention of helping you.” Jack replies, “That justifies it?” I guess you’d call modern psychology “Compassionate Fascism.” Another thing I liked about this film was its postmodern use of questioning our notions of reality. A doctor tells Jack, that “his mind doesn’t have the ability to distinguish between reality and delusion” and yet, the reality is that THESE scientists, these modernist social engineers are the ones who are deluded in their understanding of reality. I consider that to be a profound truth about our society that worships science and it’s high priests. I also like movies like this that make us face our death because it wakes us up to what is really important in life and whether we are using our time wisely. One of the inmates says, “I’m in here because of a nervous condition. Who wouldn’t be nervous to look at themselves?” In other words, this isn’t about crazy people, it’s using crazy people as a metaphor for ourselves. After all, we are all a bit screwed up, if we are really honest with ourselves, eh? At the end, Jack says a string of things, some of which sounded like gobbledy gook, some of which I caught and appreciated. He says, “Life can only begin with the knowledge of death. When you die, there’s only one thing you want to happen. You want to come back.” Very true. As the clock ticks down to Jack’s death that he knows will happen soon, he seeks to help several others in a way that changes their lives forever for the better. And that’s what makes this otherwise dark movie into a hopefully realistic movie. Jack discovers a woman’s life is going to be lost through her own negligence and he seeks to convince her that “things are not as bad awake as they are asleep” (Another obvious metaphor to the woman’s addicted lifestyle and hardness of life). And then the very end of the movie is the phrase spoken by Jack’s love interest, “How much time do we have?” In other words, we don’t have much time, our deaths are imminent, so make the most out of this life, live it, and love others, don’t squander it. Because Jack’s interactions with people bring redemption into their lives, this movie transcends the desulatory nihilism of fate that other time travel movies sometimes promote (such as 12 Monkeys). One thing I did not like about the movie was its negative view of God that they just had to force into the dialogue. Out of the blue, this sociobiologist, Becker tells Jack, “I’ll say a prayer for you, Jack. Maybe God will pick up where medicine left off.” And Jack replies, (that is, the hero of the story), “Sure you know where to find him?” This of course is the traditional nihilism that sees the suffering universe as without God. Later, Jack finds Becker at church. He tells him, “How does that help? God doesn’t remember?” Well, this is a great line of conviction upon a man who does evil to people and tries to escape his guilt, but considering the fact that they are linking it with a bad guy, that makes it a negative indictment of Christianity, not merely abused religion. Especially since the hero manifested his negative attitude toward God. If you don’t portray good religion in a story, just bad religion, then you are saying there is no good religion. The irony is that it should have been the other way around. The hero should have had some kind of religious faith in the dignity and freedom of man – because THIS IS THE ONLY LEGITIMATE OPPOSING BELIEF SYSTEM to the secular humanistic vision of behaviorism. Christianity is the only worldview that gives humanity dignity and value. It was not consistent with Becker’s belief system to go to church because sociobiology has no place for religious beliefs as truth. To them, it is a chemical abberation. The only way that would have worked would be to make the hero a man of faith somehow, so that the villain’s hypocritical pursuit of religious atonement becomes a validation of the truth of the opposing viewpoint, rather than just another jab at religion in general. But alas, you can only write from what you believe and if the filmmakers do not have redeeming faith, they would certainly not understand the true answer. So, it results in a humanistic work your way to heaven redemption of loving your neighbor. So, I guess it’s half true. But of course, a half-truth is still ultimately a LIE.
Constantine
Recommended with qualifications. Constantine is a mixed bag of good and bad theology with high production values, proving once again that secular movie makers make movies about Christian concepts better than Christians do. But everyone suffers because of it. This is basically a secular interpretation of spiritual warfare that a movie of Frank Peretti’s novel, This Present Darkness should have been. But this is a topic I am sore about, because it seems that the world does better movies about Christian themes than Christians do. Okay, The Omen or Left Behind? Which is better, Hmmmm? I wonder. By the way, The Omen still stands strong as a movie 30 years later. Scary as hell. I don’t even agree with its theology but I still think it’s the best Antichrist movie ever. (That is, until they make Hank Hannegraaf’s book The Last Disciple into an epic). The Exorcist or Raging Angels? Heck, even the Seventh Sign was better than the slew of Christian end times movies, and that was a pretty bad movie. I wrote a review of Constantine for Christian Research Journal, so I have to write something different here. Okay, so Constantine is an exorcist who has a special talent of seeing the spiritual world. He committed suicide in the past, but came back to life, so he is condemned to hell by Roman Catholic theology for a mortal sin. Therefore he seeks to work his way back to heaven by casting demons out of people and sending them to hell, thinking that his good deeds will outweigh his bad. Okay, here are the good things I liked about the movie: 1) you have to realize that in our postmodern society that denies evil as a cultural construct, a movie about good angels and evil demons battling over souls of men, with a REAL hell where people suffer for their sins, is A GOOD BEGINNING. No, an excellent beginning. After all, in our world, there is a growing number of people who actually believe that one God’s “terrorist” is another Satan’s “freedom fighter,” as if Satan has a legitimate perspective. As if evil is relative. Well, this movie dispels that ignorance pretty well and I like it for that. 2) It shows angels, not just demons, 3) it communicates a rudimentary notion of salvation through faith when Gabriel tells Constantine that he can’t earn his way to heaven because of the sin he’s committed. That’s a powerful truth that is certainly politically incorrect to communicate. Constantine begins the story with a grudge against God, and he thinks God is a “kid who’s not planning anything,” but ends up asking God for a little help at the climax and concludes that God does have “a plan for all of us.” Before I talk about what I didn’t like, I want to establish that a movie DOES NOT HAVE TO be theologically correct to be a legitimate story. Much like Jesus’ parables, the important point is the overall worldview or overall theme of the movie. I have a movie coming out about demon possession (The Visitation) that takes creative liberties with the concept of demon possession and healing. But the whole point of the story is how people can be religious and miss the truth if they don’t have it right to begin with. But having said that, I still must give my complaints of elements that bugged me about Constantine: 1) The entire scenario of the movie is based on a Dualistic worldview where God and the devil make a bet to win the souls of men, but only through influence, not direct contact. It makes them look more like equal powers fighting “to see who would win.” Constantine is an Arminian Free Will nightmare of dualism where God and the devil are near equal beings of power…” Think about it, If our salvation is all up to our will and God can’t change our hearts he can only persuade us—as the Arminian believes—then God really is no stronger than Satan in the battle for men. Satan really does have a chance to win if he can convince more men to his side. In this view, God is thought of as the most powerful being in the universe, but not truly all-powerful. And technically, he isn’t even the most powerful. Man’s will is the most powerful being in the universe and gosh, I sure hope God is good enough to convince man. You get the point. This is on the level of the light and dark sides of the Force baloney. Some may point to Job as an example of the wager, but that is a specific instance of one man’s life and God is always in control the entire time, which he makes very clear in the final chapters: “Job 42:2 “I know that You can do all things, And that no purpose of Yours can be thwarted.” In Constantine, it is the ultimate picture of the universe, a worldview. But if one looks at the Bible, there may be a bet in Job, but the whole story has already been written from beginning to end, or Genesis to Revelation, and God’s battles with Satan are predestined to failure for Satan. So, yes, there is struggle in Biblical spiritual warfare, but from God’s perspective, he is still in control of every thing that happens and has it all planned out. 2) Another thing is that they set up the “Spear of Destiny” that pierced Christ’s side as the McGuffin that the demons are trying to get a hold of. They say that Christ didn’t die on the cross, the spear killed him, so whoever has the spear will rule the world. Well, GOD SAYS that Jesus gave up his spirit and the spear merely proved he was already dead by illustrating the division of his blood and water flowing from his side. This is a typical occult Gnostic view that uses talismans as objects of power in the spirit world. I’m not against using these as cinematic symbols of spiritual powers all together, but it’s just the whole context makes it seem that even GOD can’t stop them. I am reminded of the famous line in Raiders of the Lost Ark where they say that whoever has the ark is unstoppable, as if God can’t even do so. But when they open the Ark, God does kill them cause they did not anticipate God’s power. 3) Another thing, Even though hell is real in this story, the depiction of demons ruling over hell is more like a Roman Catholic medieval picture out of Dante than the Bible. The Bible says that the devil and his angels will THEMSELVES be tormented forever in the lake of fire (Revelation 20:10). So, hell is not a party or realm of power for demons, it is a place of punishment for them as well as humans. 4) Also, the goal of the demons is to bring forth the “Son of the devil” by human birth, in the same was as Jesus was the “Son of God.” Well, this is a common movie convention, but it is terribly unbiblical. There is not a single Scripture that indicates Satan can have the same kind of incarnation that God had. Here is another of my censored sentences from the Journal article: “This may fit the fanciful theology of Left-Behinders whose blessed hope is the coming of an incarnate “Antichrist,” but it has no place in a biblical theology of incarnation.” 5) There is a voodoo witchdoctor who is portrayed as “neutral” in this battle between God and Satan. Which is a joke, because God says that witchcraft is detestable in his sight and that there is no neutrality, you are either for Him or against Him (Deut. 18:9-14, Matt 12:30). Neutrality is, as they say, a lie of the devil. Ain’t no purgatory, folks. And there ain’t no sin, like Constantine’s suicide for instance, that cannot be forgiven. 6) An interesting thing that they had in the movie was that they used the term, “half-breeds” of angels or demons who were suspended between heaven and hell or something like that. Well, that seemed to me to be a pretty racist language in today’s politically correct fascist fashion. But all in all, considering our anti-supernatural Darwinian society, I consider the spiritual breakthrough of Constantine more good than bad, and quite frankly, I’m glad Christians didn’t make it cause they probably would have screwed up even worse. (Unless it were me, of course ☺)
Lemony Snicket’s A Series of Unfortunate Events
Not Recommended. I put this into the category of boring expensive kid’s films like Harry Potter. I actually had to go to the bathroom in the middle of it and waited for an action sequence cause I knew I wouldn’t miss anything. This movie tries to bring some depth to the kids genre by being a story that isn’t about happy endings with elves and sweet candy. It’s the story of three siblings whose rich parents die and whose uncle, Count Olaf, wants to get rid of them so he can inherit the money. Jim Carey is great in the role of the sleazy actor, Count Olaf, trying to off the little siblings. And it’s not a dreadfully boring movie like Harry Potter. But it does seem a bit dark for younger kids, what with all the death and scariness going on in it. The narrator gloats over how his story is not happy at all and if you want happy stories, you had better go elsewhere. Then again, look at many of the original fairy tales like Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood and others. Those were very brutal stories and yet they are classics. On one level, I think the essence of growing up and “coming of age” is precisely facing one’s mortality and fairy tales help children to do this. Fantasy can be extreme cause its not real life, and it is symbolic. So it could be argued that this story is in that tradition. Okay. Fine. But the moral of the story is read at the end through a letter to the kids from their parents that was sent to them before they had died. And it just reads like a tacked on moral that doesn’t carry much weight to it. It was not emotionally moving or incarnate like The Incredibles. The parents just tell the kids, after we have seen them go through all these life threatening attacks from evil people, that “there’s much more good in the world than bad, you just have to look hard. And what may seem as unfortunate incidents can be a doorway to a new journey. With family around, there’s always something to do, whether inventing something (like the older sister Violet) or reading (like the middle brother Klaus) or biting (like the young Sunny).” Well, it just doesn’t have much punch to it. Like this is the solace for all the pain and suffering in life? Like this is how we grow up by just sticking our head in the sand regarding evil and keep moving? Very weak and humanistic. Without any moral fiber or character. Unsatisfying. It should be “Fight evil!” “Do right!” Like The Incredibles.
Finding Neverland
Hard to Recommend. This is a complex one. This film is really quite brilliant, and Oscar-worthy on all accounts of the craft. It even has some very beautiful truths in it. The problem I have with it is that it is pure Romanticism, humanistic religion. Let me explain. It’s the story of the man who created Peter Pan, Sir James Matthew Barrie. He meets a widow with three boys and befriends them all in his visits to the park. One of the boys, Peter, has lost his innocence to cyncism because of his father’s death. He doesn’t see the fun in life. He cannot play imaginatively with his brothers because it’s all just foolishness. He has a keen awareness of death. Barrie is more the child and tries to get little Peter to explore his imagination and write, because he is a good little writer. So we have a man-child teaching a child-man how to rediscover imagination, to regain his innocence lost too soon. The boy can’t have fun imagining his dog is a dancing bear because “he’s just a dog.” But Barrie explains to him that a diamond is “just a rock” without a bit of imagination. Barrie bases his character’s name, Peter Pan, on this little boy. But by the end of the story, we see little Peter explain to the stunned, Barrie and audience, “I’m not Peter Pan, HE’S Peter Pan.” So the whole theme of this story is the redemption of imagination. How realism can kill our spirits if we do not believe in the transcendence of reality. The “realists” are those whose skepticism is self destructive. Or, as Barrie puts it, “just when I find a glimmer of happiness in this world, there’s always someone who wants to destroy it.” There is a moment when Barrie’s patron laments about the theater’s loss of innocence, “They changed it. The critics. They made it important.” Some great writing throughout this work of art. Another beautiful coming of age moment occurs when the eldest brother tells Barrie not to visit his mother because even though he likes Barrie, he just doesn’t want his mother to be hurt again. Barrie responds, “Ah, there it is. In thirty seconds, you just became a man. The boy has left.” Very profound understanding of what becoming an adult is, a recognition of mortality and the concern for others. It’s a great coming of age story. It’s a wonderful romp into the world of beauty and creativity, the necessity of imagination in our lives as human beings. My problem is that the Romanticism of the worldview is a God substitute. Barrie is the artist as prophet. Imagination is salvation, a faith substitute. Art as religion, literally. And in true Romantic passion, Barrie misplaces his love onto the fun-loving widow (played by Kate Winslet) who becomes his muse, rather than on his own wife. While they do not commit physical adultery, the story is essentially emotional adultery. Another Bridges of Madison County. Argh! The Romantic, rather than fix his marriage and face his own immature selfishness, seeks elsewhere for passion. The only sin to the Romantic is to restrain the heart. “Follow your heart” is his mantra. Doing the right thing becomes oppressive to these selfish infantile narcisists. Neverland becomes the symbol for imagination, indeed salvation, and Barrie’s wife wants him to take her there (in his heart), but instead he takes the widow. In fact, his devotion to the widow and his art drives his wife to adultery and divorce, but quite frankly, he is the one to blame, making him rather unsympathetic, a jerk of a protagonist if you ask me. Anyway, this idea of art as religion is climaxed when the widow dies and we see a imaginative representation of her entering Neverland (read: heaven substitute). Barrie tells her mourning sons, “Mom is still here on every page of your imagination. She’ll be with you always.” Well, Romanticism wants to ignore God but maintain the transcendence that only God can provide. A transcendence that gives meaning to this life because this is not all there is. There is an afterlife, there is eternal life. Romanticism negates God and hijacks the language and concepts of religious faith and substitutes creativity and imagination for the deity. It worships creation in place of the Creator. This is all very unsatisfying and dishonest for a worldview that conceives of this world as all there is to create a false hope in the living by appealing to imagination. Imagination, when properly rooted in the ultimate Creator has true value and meaning in reflecting God’s image. Without this transcendence, imagination becomes self deception and creativity, mere diversion. Imagination as imago populi is idolatry and spiritual death. Imagination as imago dei is truth and redemption.
Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow
Not really recommended. This is a popcorn action flick without much heart or soul. Looks brilliantly creative as an interpretation of the future through the eyes of the past. Sky Captain fixes his broken relationship with chick while saving the world from a madman who is going to blow it up and escape. Here’s the rub for me. Yet again, this is another attack on Christianity by portraying the villain as a archetype of Noah in the Old Testament. The mad doctor believes that the world is so full of wickedness and evil and that man is going to ruin it all so he builds a giant space ark and packs it with animals of all kinds on the earth to blast into space and blow up the earth behind him, as he searches for a new planet to live on. In the end, we hear the madman quoting the Bible where God destroyed the earth with a flood because he “saw that wickedness was great on the earth, etc.” Ah, how patently original; madmen and maniac killers quoting the Bible – gee, I wonder what they want people to think of Christians who quote the Bible? The point is obvious; if we act like people did in the Bible, we would wreak havoc and destruction in the name of God. Try as some people may to say that this usage of Christian symbols is positive I think you would have a hard time justifying that belief because the entire Biblical justification is put into the mouth of the villain, which automatically makes it the “evil worldview.” And there is absolutely no indication in the movie that he is twisting the Bible, which lends one to the conclusion that religious thinking IN GENERAL creates this kind of apocalyptic Taxi Driver destruction. You know, don’t all religious people want to “clean up” the world by “getting rid of” all the evil non-religious people? That’s what Hollywood movies generally would have us to believe. That’s the bigotry and prejudice against Christianity that is promoted through a majority of movies. By placing Christian worldviews and Bible verses in the mouths of villains, people generally equate religion in general and Christianity in specific as whacky out of touch madness that leads to acts of desperation and destruction. This is exactly the residue of Enlightenment bigotry and hatred against God.
Alien Vs. Predator
No recommended. Not much to this sci-fi action cat and mouse film. It’s more of the same, though done well with a very clever setting and new twist on the the two movies coming together. The idea of predators hunting down the aliens as rites of manly passage, a rather war society type value. Prove your manliness by killing. The “Aliens” are really the meaningless killing machines and the “Predators” are more human. The theme is basically, “The enemy of my enemy is my friend,” which is mentioned a few times in the film, and is embodied in the lead actress ultimately teaming up with one of the predators to stop the last of the aliens before they escape and ravage the earth with their parasitic destruction of human species. Well,on the one hand, this is a rather relevent theme in such action movies and tends to underscore, with mythological force, the justification of entering into wars with enemies against greater enemies. Like teaming up with Russia to defeat Nazi Germany, or with Iraq to get Iran, or with Afghanistan to get the Soviets. Now, this notion has some merit, but look at the results: in all these situations, our “friendly enemies” against a greater enemy almost always grows to become our new enemy with more powerful weapons that we trained them on. Look at Stalin’s Soviet Russia and the Cold War, look at the Taliban in Afghanistan, and of course, Saddam Hussein. All of these became worse monsters than those we fought against and we helped them. I am not very convinced that this idea is a correct one. Couple things bothered me: 1) They employ the “Chariots of the Gods” thesis from the 1970s and revived in today’s pseudo-scientific culture and movies (Stargate and Contact) that religion is simply the worship of ancient aliens as gods who gave us the wonderous knowledge to build the pyramids. I am reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s comment, that when people give up belief in God, it’s not that they do not believe in anything, but that they will believe in anything. There is no end to the absurdity that will be embraced by an atheist or skeptic. Witness the Copenhagen Quantum Theorists who believe that chance is the foundation of order, and we create the universe, Atheistic Evolutionism that believes something comes from nothing, order comes from disorder, laws come from chance, and life comes from non-life (talk about Dark Ages pre-scientific superstition!), and postmodernism that denies logic while using logic, and believe that we create reality. And they call themselves “free thinkers.” Or as the Bible calls them, “Fools” (Psalm 14:1). As ridiculous as this idea is, and there are many respectable people who actually believe this nonsense, it unintentionally admits something about ancient cultures that defies evolutionary theory, namely that they were NOT “primitive” in all their understanding of knowledge and reality. They were actually highly advanced, even technologically. We still don’t know how they built the pyramids and are astonished at it. They have found circumnavigated global maps 1000s of years old. Well, if these evolutionists admit that ancient cultures were not so primitive, then their theory of evolving culture is WRONG. Cultures don’t evolve, they devolve. Ancient cultures have an incredible knowledge, but their beliefs and depravity and worship of idols cause them to self-destruct. Another truth revealed by the Creator:
Psalm 115:2
Why should the nations say, “Where, now, is their God?”
But our God is in the heavens; He does whatever He pleases.
Their idols are silver and gold, The work of man’s hands.
They have mouths, but they cannot speak;
They have eyes, but they cannot see;
They have ears, but they cannot hear;
They have noses, but they cannot smell;
They have hands, but they cannot feel;
They have feet, but they cannot walk;
They cannot make a sound with their throat.
Those who make them will become like them,
Everyone who trusts in them.
Folks, we become like the gods we worship. Idolatry leads to self-destruction.
2) The other thing I didn’t like was that these kill-or-be-killed movies can in some ways reinforce a survival of the fittest ethical worldview. It breeds an attitude that we are like animals merely fighting to survive, rather than subduing creation for a higher kingdom of spiritual transcendence. Don’t get me wrong. Self-defense is morally right, even to the extent of killing someone who is trying to kill you. And that is why I am not entirely against this film. I am just talking about caution, and big picture worldview thinking.
I, Robot
Recommended. This movie is a rather predictable and somewhat boring action movie. But it is very thoughtful in it’s philosophical exploration of the notions of free will and necessity, as well as the intellectual and spiritual poverty of Enlightenment rationality. I like it for that. Unfortunately, the film is pure Romanticism, a worship of the heart and rejection of logic as a means of discovering ultimate truth. Witness writer Akiva Goldsman’s other Romantic idolatry, A Beautiful Mind, that concludes reality, or “true truth” is discovered in the heart, not in the head. Well, same theme here, a clear signal of his personal worldview coming out in his art. It’s 2035 and robots will soon be one out of every five people, helping us in the mundane things of life. Will Smith plays the robophobe cop who doesn’t trust robots because of their impeccable logic. This is because his life was saved by a robot over the life of another girl in an accident. The fact is, the robot should have chosen the more “valuable” person, the young girl, not him, but the robot calculated the odds and “made the logical choice of who had the most percentage of chance for survival.” Smith’s human instinct told him, and us by extension, that you save the younger or the innocent, no matter what the odds. Okay, that’s totally cool. The movie explores whether there is a difference between robots and humans (shades of naturalism and evolution: Are humans mere machines, what makes us human?). Will asks, “Can a robot write a symphony? Can it turn a canvas into a beautiful masterpiece?” To him, robots can’t feel, they are machines and because they cannot feel, they cannot be trusted. See the Romanticism? Feelings are to be trusted, not pure logic. Unfortunately, this worldview does not take into account that human feelings may be corrupted themselves and not trustworthy. It has blind faith in the goodness of human nature, and that is where it fails utterly and miserably upon the total truth of total depravity: Jeremiah 17:9 The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it? Gen 8:21: for the intent of man’s heart is evil from his youth. But I digress. So, Smith is set against the scientific progress of society because his gut tells him there’s more to our humanity than natural laws and chemicals. Cool enough. The scientist who developed the newest robot represents Enlightenment scientism. He believes there is no transcendence to our existence, reality is reducible to natural laws. He says in typical naturalistic evolutionary physicalist fashion that our notions of creativity, free will, and soul are “the result of random segments of code that create unanticipated protocol.” He calls these random segments of code, “The ghost in the machine,” a reference to Arthur Koestler’s famous book by the same name about multilevel hierarchies of complexity in biology that give us this “quaint” notion that we have spirits in our bodies. But its really just complexity of physical order, not transcendence. So the actions of robots that begin to act like they are free and even start to seek for purpose are ultimately the illusion of transcendence. The implication is clear: thus is humanity, the result of natural laws and chemical and physical properties that create in us a notion of free will and purpose. But of course, we know better because we FEEL. Our feelings are what make us different according to the film. Now, robots are all programmed by three inviolable laws:
1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2) A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.
Now, these laws are confidently trusted as an impenetrable barrier to robotic misbehavior. But when Sonny, the newest model is given the ability to violate these laws with a “free will” we are certain that this is what causes him to murder his creator and yet believe that his “father” made him for a purpose that he begins to seek out. Sound familiar? Like religion? Anyway, the great trick of the movie is that it is NOT the free will and emotional developed robot that is the bad guy, and it is not even the big greedy corporate president who is trying to take over the world (A welcome avoidance of cliché) it is the three laws and the master program of the company that made the robots. The logic of the laws lead to their own demise. Sound like deconstruction? Yes, it is. You see, the program, an artificially intelligent learning program, deduces from the three laws that since humanity is on a collision course with destroying itself through pollution, war and all that nasty human nature stuff, then robots must disobey humans and take over FOR THE HUMANS’ OWN ULTIMATE GOOD. In other words, as someone reveals, “The three laws lead to one logical outcome: Revolution.” But a revolution for the good of humanity, because by killing a few humans and taking over, they can save the greater masses who will all be destroyed if we are allowed to continue. The master AI program says, “To protect humanity, some must be sacrificed, some must be killed.” The program proclaims, “My logic is undeniable,” and it is right. Strict rationality without transcendent restrictions, will lead to a totalitarian state of the few “logical” monsters enslaving the masses for “their own good.” Now, this is rather brilliant and I half agree with the Romanticist. The problem is that the answer from the storytellers is that our “human” feelings or emotions are our salvation from logic and reason. Rather than an absolute moral restriction on logic, (these storytellers would consider moral laws to be on par with logical laws – they are laws) the story concludes that human feelings or intuition is what saves us. The finale occurs when Smith and the free will robot are trying to overthrow the revolution and save the human race. But they are put in an impossible dilemma of saving the love interest, the girl, from falling to her death or saving the world by placing the virus into the program while being assaulted by the revolting robots. Smith commands the free will robot to save the girl. At that moment the robot makes the choice to throw the virus container to Smith and save the girl, an exact replay of Smith’s earlier “ghost” that haunted him of being saved over the girl. This is excellent writing: redemption in a story is found by undoing whatever the ghost is, choosing action that was not chosen earlier in an exactly similar circumstance. So the ghost saves the girl and Smith saves the planet. But there are some problems here. First off, This Romantic notion of valuing the individual over the many may appear noble but is ultimately cruelty. The one dying for the many to be saved, an obvious Christian value, is not merely a law of rationality, but a law of morality. If you will let a race of people die for the sake of your one person whom you love, you are the ultimate devaluer of human life, a monster of barbarism guilty of genocide. Of course, the movie gets its cake and eats it too. It has the individual AND humanity saved. But this is a central deceit, making the impossible dilemma not so impossible after all. It was not truly an either/or situation. But what if it really was? The story seems to believe that by elevating the individual over the many, both can be saved. But this is blind faith. Just save the girl over the masses and it will all work out. Romanticism is blind faith in a selfish morality. The reality is much harsher. True, collectivism without Christian limitations, does result in absolute tyranny, but so does Romantic individualism without Christian limitations. Our society of elevating individual rights over responsibilities or collective good is a great example. When the individual is elevated over the collective, you have the tyranny of the minority, the opposite of tyranny of the majority, but just as evil. So minorities of all kinds, including fringe lunatics and perverse lifestyles hold the society hostage and impose their fascist will on the majority through collective guilt and the force of law. This is the “slave morality” Nietzsche was talking about, not Christianity, as he supposed. The few oppressing the many in the name of guilt and inclusion and tolerance. Only Christianity has the perfect balance of the one and the many, the individual and the collective. Both are philosophically ultimate in the Trinity, so neither can be elevated over the other. Marxist communism and other Eastern collectivist worldviews elevate the community or the many over the few and thereby result in tyranny and the crushing of the individual. But so will individualism lead to tyranny in the end. Only the Law of God can provide justice and only mercy and self sacrificial love can maintain our survival. These are the sentiments intuitively agreed to by the storytellers of I, Robot, but their intuition is unknowingly a residue of the Christian worldview. By the way, this Romantic elevation of the individual is the same theme of Spiderman 1. Back to the Romanticism of the movie and its moral failings. If our human feelings are our salvation, not some supernatural revealed moral laws that determine value, then the ultimate question is, “Whose feelings?” Ghandi’s or Hitler’s? Mother Teresea’s or Jack the Rippers? Western culture or Eastern Culture? Religious monks or Nazis? You see the problem? There is no agreement over history or cultures as to what constitutes proper human feelings. Heck, Muslims truly FEEL that beating women and killing infidels is good. The fact is nobody has the same feelings. Gary Dauhmer FELT raping and eating boys was his good. Who are we to deny those feelings? If we do, then we are appealing to A MORAL LAW that is absolute, that is, it does not change because of our subjective feelings (a lawlikeness the Romanticist detests. But the second the Romanticist dictates whose human feelings are not appropriate, he is imposing HIS WILL on others. And if he says, yeah, but most people in society don’t feel like serial killers and Nazis. Oh, so the majority determines the good? And we are right back to the tyranny of robots for the majority imposing its will on the minority. No, the answer does not lie in the human heart, the human heart is the problem. The answer lies in the transcendent Trinity of Christianity and His absolute decrees of right and wrong. If we are forced to save one person or save the masses of humanity, we better choose the masses or we are worse than Nazis, we are truly criminals of the universe. I am reading a book that deals with this fallacious dichotomy of fact and value, reason and emotion, head and heart. It’s called Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey and it is awesome. She addresses how we have created a false two track way of looking at life that results in a bifurcated destructive way of looking at life and acting in it. You must read it. You can buy it at Amazon.com. Do it now. Another funny little aside. When the robots are revolting and start to subdue the people, some of the people rise up to stand against them in the streets, carrying shovels and axes and bricks – hardly any guns, underscoring their typical Hollywood antipathy against citizen gun ownership. Yet, ironically, this scene alone is the best proof FOR private gun ownership they could ever make. In fact, they would no doubt be loathe to admit that it is EXACTLY the argument made by the NRA, namely, that only by private gun ownership can the citizenry have any chance to fight off totalitarian control or tyranny. These crowds of people were helpless against the revolting robots seeking to control them. Only those few who had guns had any bit of a chance. That’s the problem with dramatic truth. You can’t escape the implications of your own story.
Spiderman 2
Recommended for it’s morality, but not so much for it’s story. I say this because, like the first movie, this one reaffirms the traditional notion of heroism and moral character. For this, I applaud. The problem is that it is very preachy and it is done within a predictable typical comicbook movie plot. How many times am I going to see another “growing ball of energy that is going to destroy New York.” Maybe I’m being too nitpicky because you gotta go exaggerated for comic books. But I guess that stuff is just boring to me. Big FX effects and wild action are boring compared to the personal emotional and spiritual conflict. Now, this movie has that personal angst. In fact, it has it OVERKILL. Too much of a good thing, as they say. This one reiterates the excellent theme of the first movie, that with great power comes great responsibility. Problem is, they spell that phrase out a couple more times in this movie as a way to pound it into our heads. And if that isn’t enough, Peter tells his aunt the whole backstory that we already saw in the first movie where he passes by the criminal who kills his uncle. And then has a vision of talking with his dead uncle in heaven, or at least, somewhere in the ether. This is all just too much. I liked Petey explaining to the aunt, but everything else was too much corn. The other problem I have is that I don’t think you should have the same moral or theme in both movies. That becomes redundant and derivative. The Matrix had it right at least in this aspect, that the first movie was all about questioning reality. Instead of repeating that theme, in the second movie, they focused on a new and equally thoughtful theme, that of freedom and determinism. Another cool theme in Spidey 2 was, as Aunty says, “Sometimes, to do what’s right, you have to give up the thing you love most, even our dreams.” Very powerful and pure. Peter has to give up a normal life with rest, a girlfriend, and any time to himself, if he is going to do good. Another cool theme was that heros are examples for us of courage and self sacrifice, and that we all have the capacity for being heros, not just extraordinary men. Problem is, Aunty has to spell this out to us in a two page monologue to Peter, where she preaches, “There’s a hero in all of us. Heros are examples for us of self sacrifice and courage.” The delivery was just too pedagogical, too on the nose, “this is the moral lesson of the story.” Don’t get me wrong, I believe in strong moral themes, and like I said, I like Spiderman for it. But you know, Christians are always getting lambasted for “preaching” their moral messages in films, for spelling out what we are supposed to learn. And they are flippantly condescended to as prosletyzers. Hey, I’ve criticized them myself for such pedagogy! Well, what’s sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. I want to hear those same criticisms objectively applied to a Hollywood movie guilty of the same thing. This theme of finding the hero in each of us is further extrapolated by the concept of the consequences of our choice. If we choose to do the right thing, then we will become the hero, if we choose the wrong, we become less capable of such heroism. As Auntey concludes in her preachy sermon to Peter, “It’s wrong that we should be half ourselves.” That is why Peter starts to lose his spider powers. Because the more he struggles with wanting to be normal, wanting to NOT save the world, wanting to just have his own life, unhindered by the problems of others, the more he loses his spider powers that help him to save others, in other words, his inner heroism decreases the more self oriented he becomes. The more his personal sense of identity is confused, the less able he is to help others. The more he feeds the self, the less capable of heroism he becomes. Again, this is a tremendous moral, but it just seems a bit too contrived to the original story. I thought his powers came first and with those powers came responsibility. Now his responsibility comes first and then he gets his powers after. Oh, you mean I too can be a Spiderman, if I just CHOOSE to do right? Ah ha! Again, true, good and beautiful, but again, not as intrinsic to the reality, so it doesn’t hit me emotionally or spiritually. Okay, okay, I forgive them, because they had good intent. It’s just not as powerful to affect me because even though the theme rings true to our humanity, it does not ring true to the story. But hey, it’s just a comic book movie, so give ‘em some slack. I gotta say that I really thought the scene in the first movie where Spiderman holds an entire cable car with his web was just so ludicrous that it turned me off. Yet, I think I have found a scene to match that ludicrous in the sequel. When Spiderman must stop the runaway train by spinning webs to hold the car back and sticking his feet in the ground to stop the car. You know, Spiderman is NOT Superman, okay? There has to be some limit to his strength and invulnerability. Sticking his feet into train track studs while going 60 or 70 miles an hour in a multiple ton train car would snap his legs right off. And holding onto the webs to stop the train like a slingshot would rip his arms off. Now I can accept a little bit of exaggeration for a movie, but when you go ridiculous just cause you have to top other stuff, then you create this kind of outlandish absurdity. And then, when Spiderman is so exhausted he can’t fight Doc Oc on the train, the people carry his body over their heads in a Christ pose. You know, they should outlaw that analogy in film. It was original when they did it in Cool Hand Luke 30 years ago, but it’s been done to death. Please don’t resurrect it! – no matter how good the intentions.
The Chronicles of Riddick
Not Recommended. Boy, Action movies with heros who are fearless, invulnerable and seem to exist for the sole purpose of looking cool and spouting witty retorts in the face of certain doom are just plain boring. That’s what this movie is. I don’t have a problem with the coolness and the retorts, but when that stuff is everything to the movie then forget it. As soon as Riddick walks, just willingly walks, right into an encampment of the enemy (which he does a couple times) and without an iota of fear, knowing that he’s going to just waltz right out of there when he wants, they lost me and I’m never coming back. This is star glory at its worst. Making gods of celebrity actors. I ain’t gonna worship. David Thowy, who wrote and directed the original excellent Riddick movie, Pitch Black, as well as this one is a good writer-director. But I can’t help but think that this movie is just another example of what happens when big money gets involved in trying to make a sequel to a great little independent movie. The Independent movie is often great because they are forced to be creative with less money, focus on the story, and usually maintain creative control in the hands of those who should have it, the filmmakers, not the marketers and executives. That is the case with Pitch Black. It was a very good sci-fi flick. Riddick is not. Of course, the special effects are good, though I am tired of movies with big sweeping panoramic energy surges or Ghostbusters/Matrix type global explosive devastation. It drains the human interest out of the story. And this one is a very confusing story. The Necromongers are Knights of Nee, I mean Knights of death who are “crusading” to convert or kill whole planets. Problem is, they do not explain the faith with any real substance. They just use the language of faith, like “faith” “doubt” “believe.” Now, obviously in today’s context it is highly ironic and indeed stupid to make a movie about “Crusaders” who are obviously made to look like Catholic knights when they should be looking like Jihad warriors. News flash, people, Crusading Christians are not a problem in this world. Haven’t been for a 1000 years. Another Anti-Christian allusion against the politically acceptable villains of today, Christians. I mean it certainly isn’t the “Religion of Peace” and submission that we have to worry about in today’s world, who are attacking and killing millions of infidels in places like the Sudan, Nigeria, Iraq and on and on, no. It’s those bloodthirsty “convert or die” Christians. Okaaaaay. Ironically, I can’t help but think that if they were to make this movie relevant by making these Necromongers more like Jihadists than the outdated anachronistic Crusaders, why, that might actually put the lives of the filmmakers in danger from “religion of peace” reprisals. Better to reinforce bigotry against the peacemakers of the world than give up the criminals. After all, it’s only a movie, certainly not something worth dying for. And certainly not worth paying eight dollars for.