{"id":23797,"date":"2014-08-08T18:49:56","date_gmt":"2014-08-08T22:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=23797"},"modified":"2014-08-08T18:49:56","modified_gmt":"2014-08-08T22:49:56","slug":"lets-all-watch-the-trailer-for-the-new-left-behind-movie","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/08\/08\/lets-all-watch-the-trailer-for-the-new-left-behind-movie\/","title":{"rendered":"Let’s all watch the trailer for the new ‘Left Behind’ movie"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

First, let\u2019s all watch the new trailer for the Left Behind<\/em> reboot<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/iframe>\nSome initial reactions:<\/p>\n1.<\/strong> The first thing we hear, the first thing we see, is a ringing telephone<\/em>. This is as it should be. Yet we never see Buck Williams using his favorite thing in all the world, which is a big departure from the book.<\/p>\n2.<\/strong>\u00a0There are many departures from the book to notice here \u2014 the Rapture of co-pilot Chris, for example. That\u2019s a nice change from his fate in the book, where his family gets Raptured, he gets left behind, and then commits suicide. That also lets the movie somehow arrange to have Buck Williams in the co-pilot\u2019s seat for the big Emergency Landing scene. (You know, because when the co-pilot disintegrates mid-flight, the standard procedure is to get on the PA and ask if there\u2019s a journalist on-board.)<\/p>\n3.<\/strong> There will be a big Emergency Landing scene. That\u2019s Old School. Tension-filled <a href=\"http:\/\/tvtropes.org\/pmwiki\/pmwiki.php\/Main\/CrashCourseLanding\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Emergency Landing scenes<\/a> were once a staple of movies and television. Even <a href=\"http:\/\/www.dvdtalk.com\/reviews\/31455\/laverne-shirley-the-third-season\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Laverne & Shirley<\/em><\/a> once had to land a plane. Airplane!<\/em> effectively ended that, but it looks like Vic Armstrong is hoping to bring it back. (And now I\u2019m mentally recasting this movie with Leslie Nielsen as Rayford and Robert Hays as Buck. \u2026)<\/p>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2014\/08\/LBPoster22.jpg\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright wp-image-23799\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/52\/2014\/08\/LBPoster22.jpg\" alt=\"LBPoster22\" width=\"350\" height=\"441\"><\/a>This can\u2019t possibly be Nic Cage\u2019s first<\/em> Emergency Landing scene, can it? I saw Con Air,<\/em> but I\u2019ve repressed all memory of it, so I don\u2019t remember if he was ever at the controls of the plane in that one.<\/p>\n4.<\/strong> The bit with the \u201cThe End Is Near\u201d sign altered to read \u201cThe End Is <del>Near<\/del> Here\u201d is borrowed from several earlier apocalypse movies, some of which involved\u00a0zombies. American pop-culture has served up more than a century\u2019s worth of popular \u201cBible prophecy\u201d apocalypse fantasy adventure stories. And for the past 50 years, we\u2019ve had a cornucopia of zombie apocalypse adventure stories. What\u2019s lacking, of course, is a good zombie-apocalypse\/\u201dBible prophecy\u201d-apocalypse mash-up.<\/p>\nIn this trailer, it seems to me, the zombies should make their first (sudden and violent) appearance right in the middle of Bruce Barnes\u2019 lecture to Chloe about how everything is unfolding just the way the Bible foretolllllllgggh<\/em> (Chloe flees as zombies consume poor Bruce).<\/p>\n5.<\/strong> That Bruce\/Chloe scene sets up a possible reprise of one of the worst flubs in the book. The trailer shows Cassi Thomson\u2019s Chloe raising the objection that the horror show of death and destruction raining down on humanity seems incompatible with the loving benevolent God her mother taught her about. Book-Chloe raises this same objection, and I was pleasantly surprised to see it there.<\/p>\nThis is a substantial theological critique of Tim LaHaye\u2019s \u201cEnd Times\u201d mythology \u2014 that it denigrates the character of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. It surprised me to see LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins acknowledge this objection and I was eager to read how they would respond to it.\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2006\/11\/04\/lb-enchanting\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\">But then they never responded to it<\/a>. In the book, Bruce never has an answer to Chloe\u2019s objection. Chloe never gets an answer from anyone, she just kind of \u2026 drops it.<\/p>\nI\u2019m actually intrigued to see if the movie will follow the book, dismissively shrugging off this objection without explanation, or if the film will actually attempt a response to Chloe\u2019s point here. I\u2019m not hopeful, though \u2014 Bruce\u2019s \u201cHe took them to protect them \u2026\u201d line is just horrifying on so many levels.<\/p>\n6.<\/strong>\u00a0I\u2019ve learned a lot from the book Left Behind<\/em> about How Not To Write. The scene of a school bus falling off a bridge in this trailer has much to teach us about How Not To Use Slow Motion and How Not To Switch Angles Away From The Character\u2019s Perspective.<\/p>\n7.<\/strong> Perhaps the most absurd and hateful single thing about the book is the way it disintegrates every single child on the planet, then completely ignores that, portraying every character in the story completely ignoring that as well. Every parent, sibling, aunt, uncle, grandparent, teacher, mentor, neighbor, coach, etc., on the entire planet has just lost every child<\/em> they know, but no one grieves over this for more than, say, 12-24 hours. It changes nothing. It changes no one. It\u2019s one of the most astonishingly inhuman accomplishments in all of literature.<\/p>\nThe trailer offers a brief glimpse of a weeping woman in an empty hospital maternity ward. \u201cIt\u2019s all over the world\u201d she says.<\/p>\nSo will the movie acknowledge this? It can\u2019t, really. Acknowledging the effect of a suddenly childless world would involve\u00a0more than a few tweaks and adaptations to the plot and the characters in the book. It would require a completely different story about completely different people.<\/p>\n8.<\/strong> I\u2019ve really dropped the ball on Left Behind posts here of late, for which I apologize. (Excuses would include a few months of full-time work at the store and all the graduation\/admission busyness with Y.D., but you don\u2019t need to hear excuses.)<\/p>\nLet\u2019s set a firm date and mark our calendars. Nicolae<\/em>-blogging will resume on Tuesday, Sept. 2.<\/strong> Pinkie-swear.<\/p>\n9.<\/strong> It seems that all the links are broken in my Left Behind indices. I\u2019m working on fixing that while I do the massive cut-and-paste project of attempting to turn some of this into some form of e-book-type-thing that won\u2019t run afoul of the copyright lawyers at Thomas Nelson.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Let’s all watch the new trailer for the “Left Behind” reboot. Oh, and also too, let’s plan on getting back to poor Buck and Tsion in the magic school bus and resuming our journey through the neverending story of the Last Days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[238],"class_list":["post-23797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-left-behind","tag-left-behind"],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Let's all watch the trailer for the new 'Left Behind' movie<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Let's all watch the new trailer for the "Left Behind" reboot. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Let's all watch the trailer for the new 'Left Behind' movie","description":"Let's all watch the new trailer for the \"Left Behind\" reboot. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23797"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23797\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}