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| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/God%27s_Not_Dead_(film) |
Opening
The
2010s have seen a rise in Christian films.
Some people may feel that this is something new, but religion has had
its proverbial hand in media as far back as time millennia. It has been able to gain more steam with the
rise of technology. Aimee Semple
MacPherson was able to reach out to the United States through the radio during
the Inner-War Period (1919-1939) and I like to think that had she not died in
1949, she would have been part of televangelism movement after the Second World
War. As a kid, I remember coming across Veggie Tales and other Christian
programs on CTS. The point of this
rambling is that Christian programing has been around for a while; we are only
just starting to notice it more now after the success of films like War Room, Old Fashioned, and – the topic of this blog post – God’s Not Dead.
God’s Not Dead is the story of Josh Wheaton
(Shane Harper), a first year college student who is pitted against his Atheist
philosophy professor Jeffery Radisson (Kevin Sorbo) after refusing to write on
a piece of paper saying “God is Dead”.
For disobeying his professor, Josh has the task of presenting to his
class the existence of God while facing the scorn of not only Radisson, but
also those around him (Cronk 2014) . Now this sounds like an interesting premise;
it may come out as one sided in the end, but as long as the story, characters
and other aspects are good the movie should be at least enjoyable, or so I
thought. This post is going to examine
the film God’s Not Dead and determine
how well this movie holds up.
Story
Though mainly about a college student defending
his faith, God’s Not Dead also
features several storylines. For ease of
use, I listed them in order of importance.
1.
Josh having to debate with Radisson about God’s existence.
2.
Radisson’s partner, named Mina, having issues with her relationship with
Radisson vs. her faith in God.
3.
Amy, a leftist blogger, having to deal with a sudden terminal cancer
diagnosis and her faith.
4.
Ayisha, a Muslim student who secretly converted to Christianity.
5.
Martin, a student from China, who converts to Christianity at the end of
the movie.
6.
Mina’s brother – who is also Amy’s boyfriend – Mark, wanting to
concentrate on his success rather than his relationship and his and Mina’s
mother, who suffers from dementia.
7.
Two pastors, the Reverends Dave and Jude, plan on taking a vacation to
what sounds like Disney World, but their plans are prevented when they keep
running into car trouble.
Though multiple story lines are doable in a
film, it does not work out in God’s Not
Dead. Part of this is on the part of
editing but I will leave that for later; the other is that these plots don’t
really meet, come to much of a resolution or not enough is shown for those
plots to stand out. Mark’s storyline
shows this lack of resolution. Mark is
seen as an arrogant, self-obsessed, avarice individual who cuts off anything
that isn’t in his best interest (Cronk 2014) . Toward the end of the film, Mark visits his ailing
mother and mocks her for her faith and his mother replies (in a moment of lucidness)
that his financial success is only because the Devil wants to keep Mark from
God (Cronk 2014) . We don’t really see Mark after this scene
except in the montage of people receiving the text message saying “God’s Not
Dead”, which he casts his phone aside (Cronk 2014) . It would have been better if there were more
of a sign that Mark had either been shaken by his mother’s remark or had just
shrugged it off and continued on his way.
Another
thing that could be done was to cut out some plot lines. The best examples of this would be Martin,
Ayisha, and the two reverends. It would
be better to have them just as straight up supporting characters. Martin and Ayisha could become friends with
Josh and help him in his research in facing off against Radisson while also
starting to have feelings about Christianity.
In the case of Reverend Dave and Reverend Jude, I would just scrap the
whole Disney trip and just have them interact with what is going on.
Characters
Unlike
my other reviews in the past, I am not going to look at each character individually. This is because I can easily sum up all the
characters as one-dimensional. In the case
of the main plot, Josh is the Christian hero while Radisson is the bitter
Atheist; the same can be said for the side characters Martin and Ayisha, whose
plots represent stereotypes. In Ayisha’s
case, she is secretly a Christian in a very traditionally Muslim home and is
disowned by her father for having an opposing faith (Cronk 2014) . I would be more okay if it was apparent that
there was confliction from her father for doing kicking her out or something to
understand the situation. The writers
thought it would be better to have Ayisha be hit by her father in a very
uncomfortable to watch scene and just throw her out into the street. It just plays on stereotypes and just makes
for something uncomfortable to watch.
Despite
the poor design of the characters themselves, it is apparent that the actors
did their best with what they were given.
The best example is Kevin Sorbo, who the Herculaneum task of portraying Jeffry
Radisson. I was most convinced my Sorbo’s
performance of being a bitter professor who wanted his way of thinking to be
the rule at the end of the day (something many of us can relate to having to
deal with). I was convinced that I was
watching Jeffery Radisson and not Kevin Sorbo playing some professor named
Jeffery Radisson.
Editing
This was something that made the multiple plots
in the film difficult to follow. The
film kept jumping between the different
plots midway through a scene so the audience would not have much of a chance to
appreciate what is going on between Josh and Radisson because suddenly the
Reverends Dave and Jude have more car trouble shenanigans to get into .
One
of the most infamous examples of editing trouble is after Josh has given his
first presentation and is quickly blown out of the water by Radisson and the
whole class is laughing at Josh for his failure. In the immediate scene that follows, Radisson
is bullying Josh and telling him that Radisson will not be made a fool in his
own class (Cronk 2014) . There are two problems with this: (1)
Radisson can be reported for harassment and assault for grabbing Josh and (2)
Radisson has clearly won that round. It
would make sense for this scene to be used at the end of one of the later
presentations.
Closing Remarks
Overall, I thought God’s Not Dead was not that great.
The acting was good enough to keep me engaged but the poor editing and one-dimensional
characters made the film hard confusing and hard to be considered good. Despite these shortcomings, the film earned
$9,244,641 US on its opening weekend in 2014, grossing $60,753,735 by August 1
of that year (Internet Movie Database n.d.) . It is enough for a sequel, which comes out
April 1 and will be the topic for my next review.
Bibliography
2014.
Gods Not Dead. Directed by Harold Cronk.
Internet Movie Database. n.d. God's
Not Dead. Accessed March 30, 2016. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2528814/.
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