{"id":1379,"date":"2007-09-03T10:39:00","date_gmt":"2007-09-03T10:39:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/09\/is-it-epic-just-because-its-biblical\/"},"modified":"2007-09-03T10:39:00","modified_gmt":"2007-09-03T10:39:00","slug":"is-it-epic-just-because-its-biblical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/09\/is-it-epic-just-because-its-biblical.html","title":{"rendered":"Is it “epic” just because it’s biblical?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

It\u2019s a slow news day here at FilmChat, so for those who follow Bible movies as obsessively as I do \u2014 if not more so<\/a> \u2014 here is an update on Promenade Pictures<\/a> and its plans for a series of CG-animated Bible epics<\/a>, beginning with The Ten Commandments<\/a><\/i>.<\/span><\/p>\n

If you go to Promenade\u2019s official website<\/a> and click on \u201cFilms\u201d, the first thing that comes up is six paintings under the heading \u201cEpic Stories of the Bible\u201d, each of which is labelled like so:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The Ten Commandments<\/li>\n
  2. Noah\u2019s Ark: The New Beninning (sic<\/i>)<\/li>\n
  3. David & Goliath<\/li>\n
  4. Samson & Delilah<\/li>\n
  5. The Battle Of Jericho<\/li>\n
  6. Genesis<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    The first thing that occurs to me on seeing this list is that, with the exception of The Ten Commandments<\/i> \u2014 which will reportedly include not just the Exodus but the 40 years of wandering that followed it \u2014 none of these stories is particularly \u201cepic\u201d.<\/p>\n

    \u201cGenesis\u201d might sound big, but the synopsis says it will concern the story of Adam and Eve \u2014 and apparently nothing else.<\/p>\n

    Every cinematic version of the \u201cNoah\u2019s Ark<\/a>\u201d story that I have ever seen is a short film or a mere segment of a larger film \u2014 with, I think, the single exception of that 1999 mini-series<\/a>, which puffed the story up with a lot of nonsense, or with bits cribbed from other parts of the Bible that have nothing to do with Noah\u2019s Ark.<\/p>\n

    \u201cThe Battle of Jericho\u201d may be \u201cepic\u201d in scale, given that it concerns the conquering of a rather large city \u2014 but it is really just one episode in the considerably larger conquest of Canaan by Joshua.<\/p>\n

    And the lives of Samson and David might be \u201cepic\u201d, if they were depicted in their entirety \u2014 but the episodes involving Delilah and Goliath actually make up a small portion of their life stories.<\/p>\n

    If all of these films are supposed to be feature-length, then most of them will need to be padded out quite a bit \u2014 unlike The Ten Commandments<\/i>, where we have so much data on the life of Moses that any movie about him has<\/i> to leave some<\/i> things out.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    It\u2019s a slow news day here at FilmChat, so for those who follow Bible movies as obsessively as I do \u2014 if not more so \u2014 here is an update on Promenade Pictures and its plans for a series of CG-animated Bible epics, beginning with The Ten Commandments. If you go to Promenade\u2019s official website […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1116,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIs it "epic" just because it's biblical?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"It's a slow news day here at FilmChat, so for those who follow Bible movies as obsessively as I do -- if not more so -- here is an update on Promenade\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/09\/is-it-epic-just-because-its-biblical.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Is it "epic" just because it's biblical?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It's a slow news day here at FilmChat, so for those who follow Bible movies as obsessively as I do -- if not more so -- here is an update on Promenade\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/filmchat\/2007\/09\/is-it-epic-just-because-its-biblical.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"FilmChat\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-09-03T10:39:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Peter T. 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