Ben-Hur — the word-of-mouth screenings have begun

Today is June 19. Ben-Hur comes to North American theatres August 19. So there are now just two months to go before the next big Bible epic hits the big screen.

And as of last week, the word-of-mouth screenings have begun.

So far, as far as I can tell, no one has revealed anything about the film that we haven’t already seen in trailers etc., but some positive buzz has started to circulate.

For example, Brian Godawa — who famously led the charge against Paramount’s last Bible epic Noah — gave Ben-Hur his seal of approval in a recent blog post:

Ben-Hur is a movie that is what Christians have been asking for. A real Hollywood epic with a legitimate Christian worldview. It has some fantastic action sequences that rival anything in recent blockbusters, and in ways far more human and interesting than most of those gluttonous orgies of overspent excessive CGI comic book world destructions. Ben-Hur is more like Saving Private Ryan and better for it.

Meanwhile, Diane Howard of the Austin Movie Examiner has run three pieces on the film already, all of them very light on information, starting with this one:

AXS/Austin Movie Examiner has screened the new “Ben-Hur” and interviewed Roma Downey, Mark Burnett, the directors, as well as leading actors and can easily predict that this film will be the seminal movie for this summer, as it serves in stunning locations with real, powerful action and great depth of heart.

This was followed by a set of “interviews” without any quotes, e.g.:

Jack Huston talked about a simple but pivotal moment when he as Judah Ben-Hur tightly held a rock with bare knuckles and then released it. This became a moving, timely, relevant, visual metaphor of the important need to release vengeance and violence to move towards healing forgiveness, restoration, and redemption. This moment has come to visually communicate some of the heart of what this movie “says” in actions big and small.

And this was followed by a third article that didn’t say much else that was new.

Meanwhile, Lisa Hendey of CatholicMom.com tweeted this image of the costumes:

#Instagram: Varya the #benhur @benhurmovie costume designer shows us the real wardrobe from the film. Cool to see i… pic.twitter.com/ydQkGjInyK

— Lisa Hendey (@LisaHendey) June 14, 2016

No doubt there will be more advance “reviews” in the next few weeks. Stay tuned.