Can Anything Good Come out of this "Noah" Movie?
If someone is going to make a movie about a Bible topic, it would make sense to actually use the original account. Sure, some embellishments to fill out the characters is reasonable and expected to make a story interesting and entertaining, and it has been done without doing violence to the source material 1, 2. Several biblical movies have been reasonably close to the original narratives, such as The Bible, King of Kings, Passion of the Christ, The Ten Commandments, Jesus of Nazareth and so on. (What if someone did The Diary of Anne Frank: Times Square Hooker Years?) Darren Aronofsky's Noah is proudly anti-biblical. It's better if movie makers actually have some respect for the subject!
The Noah movie has been panned by Christians and non-Christians alike from reading scripts and actual viewing 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 12, though naturally some people liked it 13, 14 but their reasoning escapes me. Perhaps it is the joy of hating something related to the Bible, but I'm guessing on that one. In addition to the movie events being far from the original account, it's considered to be just plain bad.
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| Russell Crowe in Noah - photo by Niko Tavernise, Paramount Pictures-AP |
Can anything good come out of this? Perhaps. God can use odd things that a Spirit-led evangelist can use as a springboard for a gospel-related conversation. It's happened to me. Can Noah be used to spark interest in the real narrative and Flood geology? After all, the ark in the movie was at least a big boat (similar to the biblical record) and not the goofy crowded bathtub image with giraffes sticking their heads up. Who can take that seriously? Seriously! Tas Walker thinks so, especially if people will give up their uniformitarian assumptions. Noah's Flood geology gives better answers for what we observe than uniformitarian evolutionary geology.
The public interest in this film could spark new interest in the biblical account of Noah’s Flood. The global Flood is hugely significant for biblical geology. Mainstream uniformitarian geologists since the early 1800s have worked on the assumption that Noah’s Flood never happened. If it comes into their minds at all, they would dismiss it as mythological or imaginary. Let’s hope this film will raise questions in their minds.
Is the film faithful to the biblical account? It seems liberties were taken in the way the characters and events were portrayed, and in the motivations behind what happened. That is understandable. Aronofsky wants to attract an audience and make a profit from the film.
Some critics have described the film as biblical fantasy — a fantasy story developed around a biblical theme but only loosely constrained by the biblical account. Even still, there is enough in the film to generate new ideas for those who like to think outside the box.You can read the rest at "Aronofsky’s Noah will stimulate biblical geology".