Warning: Spoiler Alert the Noah Movie by Darren Aronofsky might as well be called: The Story of Snakeskin blessings, Gilgamesh, Jack and beanstalk with a mix of Tolkien’s Ents meet the Stone Giants with the history of how God sanctions gendercide! Wait that’s too long of a title, let’s just call it what it is……Heresy Let’s start with the pros from the movie. The acting was high quality as expected. The direction was clever and innovative in some parts but overall typical of a big budget Hollywood film. God was presented as the creator. Noah gets drunk and then rainbows. That’s it. That is the list of pros from this debacle. Before we begin our detailed review let’s start with a summarized version the story of the Biblical Noah and the Ark from Genesis Chapters 6-9. It begins with a world gone wrong through human wickedness. The world was populated over 10 generations and 1600+ years since creation. God saw that all of mankind’s thoughts were consistently and totally evil. God was heartbroken and had regrets from ever making men. Then we find Noah who found grace in the eyes of the Lord. See Noah was a righteous man who walked in “close fellowship” with God. Noah was a husband and a father to three sons. Noah heard the voice of God telling him that judgment was coming in a flood that would kill everything on earth, but God wanted to reboot creation with Noah’s family and 2 of all the wildlife and 14 of certain animals for eating, sacrifice, etc. He gave Noah directions to build an ark of safety from the flood. Noah did everything exactly as God told him Noah’s family 8 people in all (a wife, 3 sons and 3 daughters-in-law) entered the ark and the loving God closed the door behind them. The flood came, and everything happened as the Lord had told Noah. God was mindful of Noah and all those on the ark, he sent winds to blow across the earth and the water receded. About 1 year later the land was completely dry and God told Noah they could finally leave the boat so them and the wildlife could be fruitful and multiply with God’s blessing. So Noah built an altar and offered sacrifices that pleased the Lord. The Lord told Noah, He would not flood the earth like this again sealing this promise and His covenant with Noah with a rainbow. Noah did get drunk, Ham saw Noah naked did not cover him but went back and told his brothers that Noah was drunk and naked. Shem and Japeth averted their eyes and covered their father as a sign of respect. Noah rebuked Ham for his disrespect and blessed Shem and Japeth for their respect. Noah lived to be 950 years old. It is noteworthy that not once but twice we are told that Noah did everything exactly as God told him (Gen 6:22 and again in Gen 7:5). In Hebrews Chapter 11, it lists Noah (11:7) as one of the heroes of faith. Then it says the World was not worthy of these heroes like Noah (11:38). The world was not worthy of this hero of the faith! Now, for the Noah Movie Review: It goes dreadfully off scripture early. During the initial narration we are told that after mankind sinned some angels rebelled against “the creator” to help Adam and his descendants. “The creator” curses these angels because they wanted to help mankind. “The creator” turns them into six armed rock monsters. Cain kills Abel then he flees the scene. The fallen-angel-six-armed-rock-monsters help Cain to establish a great powerful civilization. The Descendants of Cain become increasingly evil to the point they even start killing some of the fallen-angel-six-armed-rock-monsters. Methuselah, who provides the only comic relief of this movie, protects the angels with his magical flaming sword??????? Cut to Lamech (Noah’s dad), he begins to wrap a relic snakeskin (from the snake in the garden who deceived Eve) around his arm. Right as Lamech is going to give Noah his snakeskin blessing, the dad is killed by the King of the descendants of Cain named Tubal-Cain in the story. BTW- Tubal-Cain was a real man mentioned in the bible. However, the bible does not mention that Tubal-Cain was King of the bad guys. The narration tells us that Noah was righteous, but we are not told that he walked in close fellowship with God as the scripture says. In fact, we never get the sense that he is all that righteous either. Instead Noah has a cryptic dream of a world-wide flood and is directed Methuselah’s mountain??? On his way to Methuselah’s mountain with his family he finds a wounded girl (in fact she if barren from the wound), she is the lone survivor of a village that has been attacked. They bandage the girl named Ila and then they all have to flee from some bad guys into the scorched earth wasteland. Once inside the borders of this wasteland, the fallen-angel-six-armed-rock-monsters scare off the bad guys and take Noah’s family captive and leave them in a pit to die. But alas, later that night one of the rock monsters takes pity and helps Noah’s family escape to Methuselah’s Mountain. Noah and Shem trek up the mountain to speak to Methuselah. Methuselah then puts Shem to sleep via the Vulcan nerve pinch???? Then Methuselah drugs Noah (perhaps LSD) so that Noah can have a completed vision from “the creator”. When Noah finishes his trip, he knows that he has to build an ark all thanks to his granddad/drug dealer, Methuselah???? Then a la Jack and the beanstalk, Methuselah gives Noah a magic bean from the Garden of Eden to grow a forest for wood to build the ark????? Noah and Shem, then trek back down the mountain. Noah plants the magic bean that night. The next morning, the other fallen-angel-six-armed-rock-monsters show up to drag the traitor rock monster that helped Noah back for punishment. Noah tries to talk them into helping him at which time the magic bean grows the magic forest and the rock monsters are convinced to help Noah build the Ark. The building of the Ark begins (on a side note: in a pinch, the rock monsters are amazing craftsmen). Tubal-Cain and some of his army shows up. He threatens Noah, saying that Noah cannot stand alone against the horde of bad guys. Then the best line from the trailer comes: Noah says, “I am not alone”. Now, when I watched the trailer I thought that meant that Noah was saying God’s got my back. Not so. In the movie he means he is not alone because he has rock monsters????? The king of the bad guys warns they will come back with a better equipped, larger army and they will take the ark. Shem and Ila are now a couple and Ham is starting to get a little girl crazy himself. So Noah goes to bad guy city and tries to find some wives for Ham and Japeth, instead Noah sees a girl being dragged off for who knows what. Noah does not save the girl. He sees just how evil the people are and that they deserve death, then Noah has a vision that all people are wicked even his own family. He goes back to the Ark without a girlfriend for Ham. Ham is very upset and runs away to find himself a women, Ila feels sorry for Ham and runs after him. After some time passes, Noah sends Shem to bring Ham and Ila back. Meanwhile Ila runs into Methuselah who blesses Ila and heals her barren womb. She then runs into Shem and they hook up to consummate their relationship in the magical forest. Ham finds a girl, living in a pit with a pile of corpses??? The rain starts, Ham convinces the girl to come back to the Ark. Ham and his newfound girlfriend are running through the magical forest back toward the Ark, she gets her foot caught in a bear trap????? It’s raining, the Bad guys are not far behind. Shem and Ila make it back to the ark without Ham. Noah goes to get Ham, Ham pleads with Noah to help him get his girlfriend to the ark. Noah refuses to help the girl, he only saves Ham and allows the girl to be trampled by the hoard of bad guys. Noah and Ham make it back the Ark but Ham is very upset with Noah for allowing his girlfriend to be trampled to death. The rock monsters have created a make-shift chain-link fence around the Ark using themselves as the posts???? The Hoard of bad guys attack, the last stand of the rock monsters ensues. After the rock monsters get in some good punches, the bad guys start killing them one by one. As the rock monsters fall in an act of sacrifice for Noah and his family, “the creator” redeems the fallen-angel-six-armed-rock-monsters and they get to go back to heaven????? The flood gets increasingly worse, Noah is fighting to keep the last of the bad guys off the ark. In the middle of all the turmoil, a severely wounded Tubal-Cain, sneaks in the back door of the Ark???? While they are on the ark, Noah shares the rest of “the creator’s” plan to only save the wildlife and that men will die off with no more children to be born. Ever. Ham slowly nurses Tubal-Cain back to health. Shem and Ila find out they are expecting a child. They ask Noah to give their child his blessing. He freaks out, climbs up the ladder, goes on the deck of the Ark and begs “the creator” not to make him kill the child. Lo and behold, “the creator” wants the child to live if born a boy but to be killed if a born a girl. Enter gendercide. Noah walks around the next nine months with a crazy look on his face waiting to do the “creator’s” will of gendercide if the baby is born a girl. Finally, after a failed escape attempt by Shem and Ila, the day of the birth comes. Its twins, both girls! Tubal-Cain talks Ham into luring Noah into an ambush. Tubal-Cain is about to kill Noah, when Ham stabs him to save his dad’s life. Noah gets up dusts himself off and goes about the “creator’s” gendercide plan. When Noah is about to kill the twin girls, he falls in love with his granddaughters and kisses their heads instead. He tells “the creator” that he has failed Him because just can’t kill them. The Ark settles on the mountain, Noah gets drunk and naked as a way to deal with his survivor’s guilt and his guilt from failing to commit gendercide for “the creator”???? After he is covered up by Shem and Japeth and sobers up, he has a talk with Ila. Ila tells Noah that “the creator” chose him for a reason, and that it was up to Noah to decide whether or not mankind was worth survival and he made the choice to save the babies. Noah makes up with his family, wraps the snakeskin relic around his arms and gives the babies a “snakeskin” blessing???? Rainbows. Credits. Did I mention Rock Monsters? Or Magical beans? Now though, I could go in to detail of all the MANY gross errors in the Noah Movie, I think you get most of the idea of the problems between the biblical story and the screenplay. I do want to focus on the fact that “the creator” in the movie does not remotely resemble the God of the scriptures. It is an affront to our God. This unloving and unsovereign “creator” presented in the story is a terrible and hateful view of God. This filmmaker Darren Aronofski has added to and taken away from scripture, which I don’t have to tell you is bad. (Proverbs 30:6, Revelation 22:19, 1 Corinthians 4:6, Deuteronomy 4:2 & 12:32) Let’s be clear, I am not talking about creative license like most biblical movies. I have no problem with some creative license to tell a story in a compelling way through the cinema so long as the integrity of the story holds true. This movie deliberately stays away from the word God and instead always says “the creator” “The creator” in this movie is unloving. Never showing any love for people. Not even Noah (a righteous man). “The creator” in this movie is not sovereign, at best it is Open Theism which is heresy. At worst, “the creator” is just plain hateful, distant and not very good. In fact, “the creator” doesn’t make the decision to save people; that is left to Noah. “The creator” isn’t even involved in the decision for mankind to continue; No, He leaves that most important decision to a very unstable Noah. My bible says, “God is Love” and “God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.” Our God is just, but our God is also Love. Jesus is the “Lamb slain from the foundation of the world”. That means that even though God knew we would make terrible choices, He still loved us so much he planned redemption even before the fall. “For God so loved the world, that He sent His only Son” Noah is presented a half-crazed weirdo hippie who doesn’t really know the creator’s voice. My bible says the world was not worthy of Noah. God honored Noah in the scriptures, this movie dishonors him. My bible says Noah walked in close fellowship with God. Many Christian leaders such as, Pastor Brian Houston (Hillsong, Australia), Jim Daly (Focus on the Family), and Andrew Palau (Luis Palau Association) have endorsed this movie. They say it is a great tool for evangelism. I find their arguments to be weak-minded and lazy. Weak-minded because they clearly have not thought this nonsense through till it’s logical end. Lazy because they don't want to have to “go ye therefore” they don’t want to break up the fallow ground, plant the seed and water the ground and await a harvest. They want Hollywood to till the ground, plant the seed and water it. Then, they say we can be ready to swoop in and harvest the field. Harvest what???? The Stoney ground? Why would we think Hollywood would give us a useful tool? My bible teaches that blessing and cursing cannot come from the same source. I think of King David, a man of integrity. He stood up when Goliath had defied God and the Armies of Israel. Will anyone stand today? No, I am not suggesting we need to slay Aronofsky, but we need not esteem him or his work either. Rock Monsters??? Seriously? How dare you Brian Houston, Jim Daly and Andrew Palau? You all should have known better. What was the promised price?
0 Comments
|
Who am I:Bryan Kendrick Blogs that I read:Archives
January 2018
Categories |