There's a surprising number of Biblical pictures in the works these days; there's a Noah movie in production, there are at least two Moses pictures in the works and now Paul Verhoeven is developing a Jesus film.
Signs of change, perhaps? Hollywood developing a new-found respect for the faith that built Western Civilization?
Ah, gentle reader, you are laboring under the misapprehension that if someone is making a film about something, that means he's interested in his subject. Perhaps that was true once upon a time, but not today! No, today it more often means that the director in question is interested in a completely different subject and thinks this particular story can be twisted into a useful piece of propaganda for it.
The Noah film looks to be a good example of this: director Darren Aronofsky apparently thinks the best way to deal with the classic flood story, held sacred by three major religions and rich in tradition, meaning, and history is...to make it into an environmental allegory.
Paul Verhoeven's Jesus picture sounds even worse. Apparently, he's hit on the brilliant idea that Jesus wasn't the Son of God but merely a political radical and moral teacher (wow, that's original). Couple this with non-scholarship (he's basing it upon a book he wrote himself, apparently based entirely upon personal speculation) and you have a winner! It's a shame, since Verhoeven is responsible for one of my favorite movies - Robocop - so it's disappointing to see him sink so low.
Not much word on the Moses films yet, apart from some vague rumors that Speilberg will be directing one of them and that at least one will look at the story from a 'demythologized' point of view. Oh, joy.
The thing is, when you take on a project like this you really shouldn't be just sticking your own personal biases or politics onto them. Obviously your private beliefs and preferences will shape the final product, but this sort of work includes a certain responsibility as well: these are ancient, venerable stories that have inspired artists, philosophers, theologians, and ordinary men and women for millenia. A large chunk of the world's population holds them to be divine revelation. Simply deciding you can throw out what you don't like and reinvent them in your own image shows a rather gruesomely narcissistic attitude. Compare, for instance, the Lord of the Rings films, where the filmmakers, while generally not sharing Tolkien's Catholic worldview, respected the author and the work enough to largely allow it to remain in the finished works.
Besides which, it doesn't make much financial sense anyway; who do they expect these films to appeal to? The Christians, Jews, etc who have just been mocked and insulted on the big screen? The atheists who would be skeptical of the whole project from day one? It truly amazes me how Hollywood keeps making high-profile adaptations only to kneecap them by alienating their ostensible target audience (shades of the 1998 Godzilla, which in addition to being loud and stupid was actively insulting to fans of the character). Who, exactly, would be both interested in a Noah film and be pleased to hear that it's been turned into yet another environmentalist scare story?
In conclusion, allow me to summarize my feelings by paraphrasing Pvt. Dick Simmons from Red vs. Blue:
"Hollywood, maybe you should stop making Biblical movies, because you seem to suck at it."
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