Why the Movie Version is Always Terrible

Why the Movie Version is Always Terrible April 30, 2017

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It is always very hard for us to come up with a family movie that doesn’t send one or more of the children into a tailspin of despair and whining. Not being a person who likes movies at all, I’m not usually very helpful. Matt likes movies but is powerless to conjure up anything that two adults, two boys, the teenage thing, and little girls will all be able to bear. Plus the combined sarcastic impulses of all of us make family movie night a Trial to be endured. (Do not fear, this isn’t going to be about how to find a good movie the whole family will love.)

But there is one genre of film that is always enticing, that you feel Ought to be wonderful, no matter what, but that One Hundred Percent of the time never fails to disappoint. That is the film based on a book that you love. As in, you love the book more than anything, and you’re wandering around the vast wasteland of Amazon and Netflix, and you see the shiny, cheerful flash of recognition, and think, what could possibly go wrong, so you turn it on, and lean back, and within thirty seconds you are screaming in rage and sorrow at the screen, and crying with misery because now you are back at square one.

Some movies that we’ve tried to watch based on books that we loved, but immediately regretted trusting those movie people who have Never Done Anything to merit our approbation are
The Terrible Paddington Movie,
The Hideous Secret Garden Horror,
and, more lately,
The Completely Moronic My Family and Other Animals Disaster.
There are more, of course, but I can’t think of them all right now.

One child tearfully asked, ‘What would it take for them to make a movie as good as the book?’
To which I replied, ‘The book has to be pretty bad, and then the movie person, whoever he is, can improve it. That’s the only way.’

But the fundamental point, the deep and true problem that stretches out towards a subject more critical and far reaching than any other problem that humanity endures (and I bet you can guess what it is because it’s Sunday) is that Hollywood, just like all of fallen humanity, Thinks It Knows Better.

Essentially, people who make movies are human, and the human way is to look at something and without pausing to consider, to wonder, to inquire of anyone, think, ‘that’s wrong and dumb, I will fix it.’ Humanity is always fixing things that aren’t  broken. Eve, for example, took it upon herself to fix her relationship with good and evil. Saul fixed em by offering that sacrifice when it was taking too long for Samuel to come and do it. Uzzah fixed everything by sticking out his hand to touch the ark. And every single Hollywood producer, trying to toil his way through a book, thinks, ‘You know what would make this better? Changing everything and making all the characters into irritating caricatures of the thing I have in my own mind instead of in anyway trying to understand the nuance and beauty of this work or even asking myself why so many people have loved it for so many generations.’

The posture is one of distrust. I must fix this because the thing in itself is not good enough and no one will get it unless I beat them all over the head with my interpretive boxing gloves. And it’s completely the posture of all humanity before the Bible. Really, the human person (and too often the preacher in the pulpit…not to question the humanity of the preacher) faced with the Bible is exactly like the Hollywood maroon faced with Anne of Green Gables. You open it up, you think, ‘well, there’s some stuff here that can stay, but not much, not much,’ you shake your head sadly and then start ‘fixing’.

But the Bible doesn’t need to be fixed. It doesn’t need to be made More Obvious with terrible songs, terrible terrible movie renditions, and sermons that try to make it more palatable by essentially shoving it into a PowerPoint slide and hoping that no one will double check to see if it really meant that. The Bible is good literature, and understandable. You can read it and jolly well comprehend what it is clearly saying. And, saying well. If you don’t trust it and don’t read it enthusiastically and unapologetically it’s hard for me not to classify you with the wreckers of the age who hate all beauty and only want to make everything about Finding Your Purpose, Finding Your Brave, Not Letting Anyone Hold You Back From Your Dreams. Honestly, not every book bows to the creeds and gods of now. And certainly the Bible doesn’t. Read it on its own terms for its own sake. And, for heaven’s sake, don’t bother with the movie version.


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