Kingdom of Heaven is controversial! No it isn’t!

Kingdom of Heaven is controversial! No it isn’t! May 3, 2005

A few days ago I was contacted by a reporter who was looking for information on a controversy allegedly brewing over Kingdom of Heaven, the Crusader-themed movie which opens this Friday.

Turns out the reporter was following up an article in the Times of London entitled: “Christian right goes to war with Ridley’s crusaders.” The Times article begins by breathlessly stating:

Christian conservatives in America are marshalling their forces against Sir Ridley Scott’s forthcoming crusader epic, The Kingdom of Heaven, claiming the film is insulting and unfair.

It further predicts that “a spate of hostile reviews” is “due to appear in the increasingly influential religious press this week” that will “urge America’s 80m born-again believers to avoid the £100m film.” It also notes that all this will be happening even though there was a “private screening” for Christian journalists last month.

Two slight problems here. The Times quotes only one member of the “religious press,” namely Bob Waliszewski of Plugged In, a teen-oriented branch of James Dobson’s reliably conservative Focus on the Family ministry. Oh, and it quotes a “spokesman” for Patrick Buchanan, who is apparently a “Christian leader” of some sort. So, there’s no evidence here for the alleged “spate”.

What’s more, I was on that junket myself, and while I didn’t take a poll or anything, most of the other religious-press reporters I spoke to were reasonably impressed by the film’s balance and complexity; the upcoming reviews may be critical in a number of ways, but I hardly expect them to be “hostile.” In addition, the junket was for all the media — I recognized a number of secular Canadian journalists — and not just for Christian critics.

The Associated Press is closer to the mark when it reports:

In these uneasy times, you’d think a Hollywood epic about the Crusades would spark a major revival of hard feelings over the medieval religious wars in the Middle East.

Yet Ridley Scott’s “Kingdom of Heaven” is hitting theaters in comparative quiet, without the sort of uproar provoked by President Bush’s post-Sept. 11 “crusade” gaffe or Mel Gibson’s crucifixion saga “The Passion of the Christ.”

The article goes on to quote Joshua Stein, a history professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island, who says:

I would have figured sight-unseen a Crusades movie would create an outcry. It does surprise me that it hasn’t. . . . I can’t account for it necessarily except by my assumption that everyone else assumes it’s politically correct and levelheaded and will not be offensive to religious groups.

No doubt the filmmakers tried to be so “levelheaded” so as not to offend any member of their potential audience. But the ironic thing is, as Mel Gibson showed, controversy might have actually helped them sell more tickets! If, indeed, Kingdom of Heaven is going into theatres without a whole lot of advance hubbub, then it may be that people just won’t have any reason to discuss it around the water cooler; without some sort of buzz, pro or con, it won’t be the “must-see” that the filmmakers certainly want it to be.


Browse Our Archives

Follow Us!