I am a
true fan of the Left Behind book
series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins. They are exciting, thought provoking,
and have a decent Biblical content. LaHaye and Jenkins are also know for
writing other Biblical books, such as Are
We Living in End Times? So when my
friend Laura and I went to see the new Left Behind movie,
starring Nicholas Cage, I expected to see an exciting movie about the Rapture;
about God; about the importance of salvation and a real relationship with Jesus
Christ.
Well,
that isn’t what I got. I don’t want to write this with movie spoilers for any
of you who haven’t yet seen this movie but plan to. However, I will say that I
found most of the acting to be subpar. I am a biased Nicholas Cage fan; he is
actually one of my favorite actors; loved Face
Off and Family Man! But it seemed
like maybe he just wasn’t all that into this role. He normally dives into, and
becomes his character. Not so in this film. I was surprised that “ladies man”
Chad Michael Murray actually gave the best performance out of this cast.
Being a
devout fiction reader, I am used to seeing my favorite books made into movies,
only to be consistently disappointed. The thing that bugs me the most about the
book to screen process, especially for Christian and young adult fiction is the
sexualization and secularization of them. The screenwriters take a book and add things
to it that they think will make it more appealing to today’s audience. Unfortunately
the family sitting in front of me at this film was comprised of grandparents
and an adolescent grandson. I was embarrassed for them because they brought
their young grandson to see a “family friendly” movie and he was exposed to
cocaine use, adultery, heroine use and track marks, oh and an obscene joke.
Don’t get me wrong, Christians sin. We also know these things exist in the
world. My problem is that the books don’t emphasize these things and yet they
were put into the movie.
When the
movie was over my friend and I both said that Left Behind was more an action movie about landing a plane than it
was about God. I would go so far as to say that God was an afterthought in this
film. I can remember watching the original Left Behind series 14 years ago, and
I was much more impressed way back then. I am not sure if there will be a
sequel to this particular remake or not, as there are many books in the Left Behind series, but I pray that for
the sake of our nation, they emphasize God, salvation, and the reality of the
Rapture.
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