Now having seen Unbroken for myself, I can see what the reviewer was talking about that I linked to in my previous piece from Christianity Today. The problem the author had comes from the tagline, “Survival. Resilience. Redemption.” The movie focuses 99% of its time on the first two, and some words on the screen at the end of the movie about the third. Certainly as Christians we would have made a different movie and given “Redemption” much more screen time, especially because it was the gospel preached by Billy Graham that changed Louis Zamperini’s life.
This as I say in my piece is why we need more directors and writers and producers who work in and are well respected in Hollywood and can get hired to do the work. But in another way, there has been some progress in the way Hollywood portrays religion, especially Christianity, because conservative Christians, be they protestants or Catholics, are a very large portion of the American population and thus bring a lot of spendable dollars to the table. When Christians are respected, they vote with those dollars, and when they are not they spend those dollars elsewhere.
John Nolte at Big Hollywood shows how this is playing out with two movies currently in theaters, Unbroken and Exodus. Through yesterday Unbroken has earned almost as much at the box office as Exodus although it’s only been in the theaters since Christmas and Exodus since December 12. The reason? Exodus, directed by atheist Ridley Scott completely distorted the Biblical message, as did the movie Noah earlier this year. Both movies earned a fraction of what was expected. With Unbroken, although not the movie I and many Christians would have made, religion was treated respectfully throughout. As the title of Nolte’s piece puts it, “If you respect the faithful, the faithful will come.” Angelina Jolie did, and they are coming.
Recent Comments