Happy New Year (again)!
I don’t think I have ever posted an end-of-the-year round-up of my most-viewed blog posts before, but I see lots of other blogs doing that now, so hey, why not?
I’ve compiled two different lists. Check ’em out below:
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The 10 most-viewed posts in 2015, regardless of when they were written:
1. How the movie Heaven Is for Real contradicts the book (April 2014)
This post was fairly popular when the film came out in theatres almost two years ago, but page views surged again when it came out on DVD, and they kept on surging…
2. Watch: The first trailer for next year’s David and Goliath (September 2014)
Interest in this post spiked when the film came out in April 2015.
3. Review: Exodus: Gods and Kings (dir. Ridley Scott, 2014) (December 2014)
The film came out in theatres just a few weeks before the year began, and then it came out on DVD, so there was a lot of interest in this film throughout the year, and in the many posts I wrote about it before and after it came out. (Three of those posts — all written in 2014 — are in the top ten list for 2015. See below for the other two.)
4. A.D. The Bible Continues — season one, episode three (April 2015)
I have no idea why my recap of the third episode got so much more attention than my recaps of the others. Maybe because this episode had more viewers than all the episodes that followed, and this episode was the one in which the series transitioned from the much-filmed gospels to the not-filmed-all-that-often book of Acts.
5. The death, resurrection, and second death of Lazarus (June 2013)
I also have no idea why this post became so popular this year. It wasn’t last year.
6. Cornelius and Caligula: biblical and secular history come together in two shows called A.D. (February 2015)
I wrote this one over a month before A.D. The Bible Continues premiered, and it didn’t get that much traffic at first, but after the Caligula subplot kicked in — somewhere around episode seven — people got curious and checked it out.
7. First look: The Young Messiah, based on Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. (And yes, the film has a new title.) (September 2015)
It helped that Anne Rice herself linked to this post from her Facebook page!
8. History and tradition in movie depictions of the cross (April 2013)
This one’s a perennial.
9. Our first look at Moses’ wife in Exodus: Gods and Kings (July 2014)
One of three Exodus-themed posts from 2014 that made the top ten list in 2015.
10. Exodus: Gods and Kings: no “parting” of the Red Sea? Also: Christian Bale says Moses was “likely schizophrenic”. (October 2014)
And this is the third.
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The 10 most-viewed posts that were actually written in 2015:
1. A.D. The Bible Continues — season one, episode three (April 2015)
See the top 10 list above.
2. Cornelius and Caligula: biblical and secular history come together in two shows called A.D. (February 2015)
See the top 10 list above.
3. First look: The Young Messiah, based on Anne Rice’s Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. (And yes, the film has a new title.) (September 2015)
See the top 10 list above.
4. Review: David and Goliath (dir. Tim Chey, 2015) (April 2015)
My friend Martin Stillion reviewed this film for me — and his write-up is still the only review of this film posted at Rotten Tomatoes. I still haven’t seen the film myself.
5. A.D. The Bible Continues — season one, episode one (April 2015)
This was the recap that got it all started.
6. Clavius gets a new title — Risen — and a release date! (April 2015)
Seems hard to believe I wrote this nine months ago and the film still hasn’t come out. (I have seen the film, though.) It opens across North America on February 19.
7. X-Men: Apocalypse buzz: Is God the villain? Is Nightcrawler no longer a Catholic? Here’s why I’m not worried… yet. (July 2015)
Currently the most popular post at Patheos Entertainment, I wrote it last summer but it didn’t really take off until the film’s first trailer came out a few weeks ago.
8. Over three dozen new character profiles, and a few new videos, for A.D. The Bible Continues (March 2015)
I wrote a lot of blog posts looking at the various photos and videos that were released in advance of this series’ premiere. This was one of the bigger posts.
9. Is Hugh Jackman really starring in a movie about the apostle Paul? (March 2015)
This was one of the more surprising Bible-movie news stories of 2015.
10. Joanna gets a speaking role in Killing Jesus and A.D. (March 2015)
I must say, I was really happy to be able to spot this mini-trend before either show had aired. I love it when Jesus movies focus on some of the more obscure characters in the Bible, especially when those characters have been all but ignored in earlier films — which is often the case with the female supporting characters, in particular.
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And there ya go! It will be interesting to see how next year’s lists turn out.
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