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Terrible Christian Films

Discussion in 'Films' started by TheImportantFart, Mar 29, 2017.

  1. TheImportantFart

    TheImportantFart Jet-powered fish

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    The Christian film industry is an umbrella term for films containing a Christian themed message or moral, produced by Christian filmmakers to a Christian audience, or even some films that are just marketed to Christians.

    I'm not a Christian, so my exposure to these films has been limited. There may be some good ones out there, but the only ones I've been exposed to are the bad ones, and given the theme of this site, they'll be the ones we're discussing.

    Here's a list of some particularly infamous ones:

    The Left Behind series

    Based on the book series of the same name by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins, Left Behind: The Movie is an end-times film released in 2000 starring Kirk Cameron (the kid from Growing Pains who grew up to be an Evangelical Christian). His wife, Chelsea Noble, also appears in the film. The film received a 16% rating among reviewers on Rotten Tomatoes and was described by The Washington Post as "a blundering cringefest, thanks to unintentionally laughable dialogue, hackneyed writing and uninspired direction." The film made $4.2 million at the box office, barely surpassing its budget. Despite this, two sequels were made, with Cameron reprising his role in both. There was also a remake made in 2014 with Nicolas Cage in the title role. While more successful at the box office, it didn't do well with critics.



    Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed

    A 2008 propaganda documentary film by Ben Stein in support of intelligent design. Regardless of your thoughts on intelligent design or evolution, the documentary is badly made, dishonest and really, really boring. It's actually less about advocating intelligent design then it is about shitting on the theory of evolution and atheism - the film does very little to explain what intelligent design is on a scientific level, being more interest in saying: "Look at these evil atheists!" Additionally, Stein (a Jew), used footage of Jews being exterminated during the Holocaust and directly compared this to scientists being told intelligent design was stupid. Classy.



    God's Not Dead

    Probably the most famous recent example of a Christian film (and one of the most financially successful), God's Not Dead is a 2014 film based on a popular Chick tract about an evangelical student debating an atheist professor and winning in front of the class (who then applauds). It stars Kevin Sorbo (Hercules from Hercules: The Legendary Journeys) as said atheist professor who tells his philosophy class they must sign a declaration that "God is dead" to pass, only to be challenged to a debate by one of his Christian students (Shane Harper). The cast members of Duck Dynasty also make cameo appearances. The film is every bit as cringey as it sounds, and I can only surmise that whoever wrote it based their portrayal of atheists on trawling r/atheism for a few minutes. It was successful enough to spawn a sequel starring Melissa Joan Hart, which was every bit as bad as the first one.



    Kirk Cameron's Saving Christmas

    Kirk Cameron's back, with a 2014 Christmas comedy film. Saving Christmas stars Cameron as a fictionalized version of himself. In the film, Cameron tries to convince his fictional brother-in-law that Christmas is still a Christian holiday. The film combines a comedic narrative with educational elements, in order to "put Christ back in Christmas". The film received a 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It was nominated in six categories for the 35th Golden Raspberry Awards and won four, including Worst Picture. It also reached #1 on the IMDb Bottom 100 List within one month of its theatrical release. Cameron blamed the film's poor reception on atheists (surprise, surprise). He posted on Facebook after it was released, encouraging fans to "storm the gates of Rotten Tomatoes. All of you who love Saving Christmas – go rate it at Rotten Tomatoes right now and send the message to all the critics that WE decide what movies we want our families to see." The attempt backfired spectacularly, with Internet users travelling to the Rotten Tomatoes page to condemn the film.



    There are plenty more than the ones I've mentioned, so let's get discussing.
     
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  2. Luna

    Luna Well-Known Member

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    This film is a pretty incredible work of pandering. From the Reagan quoting, to the dead soldier worship, to the war on Christmas, to the persecution complex. It's like they tried to work in everything that could possibly appeal to American evangelicals' worldview, and the scene at the end where the kids hijack the Christmas pageant to show their father's last message to the community is just :ok:
     
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  3. Alan Smithee

    Alan Smithee Well-Known Member

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    This is one of my all time favorite topics! I think bad Christian films, and the vast majority of them are utterly terrible, form a special sub-group of bad movies. 'Why is that?' you reply grudgingly. Glad you asked!

    I contend that Christian films, sometimes called "faith films" by fundie wackos pretending to be movie reviewers, almost always contain high levels of sincerity. Sincerity, as we all know, it a vital ingredient in bad movie making. (Along with Humorlessness, Talentlessness. Hubris and Too-Much-Moneyness.) Christian flix tend to have all these traits in the trump suit of your choice. All of the above reviews are excellent examples - to which I'd like to add a personal favorite:



    This one has it all. Cringe-inducing writing. Ear-bleed level Christian pop music. Lousy FX that look like they were done on an Commodore Amiga. Acting talent straight out of bible school. Clunky directing and editing. It tics ever box and a few that aren't even on the list!
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2017
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  4. ICanFeelTheCosmos0704

    ICanFeelTheCosmos0704 friend of little cat

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    I like watching the Bible Reloaded make fun of the movies.
    There was a fairly good one - Dark Dungeons, based on a Chick tract. They mocked the tract for the most part, but played the end when Debbie gets saved and renounces the evils of RPGs seriously. If there were any smart Christian filmmakers they would follow suit - lampoon goofy Christians and give a sincere salvation message at the end.
    The best Christian movies off the top of my head are probably Ben-Hur with Charlton Heston and Chariots of Fire, which are a sword and sandal epic and a movie about the Olympics, respectively. Jesus is in Ben-Hur and there's a crucifixion scene. Chariots of Fire depicts Christians very sympathetically and makes a hero out of real missionary Eric Liddell. They also happen to be two of my favorite movies.
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2017
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  5. king kong... with wings?

    king kong... with wings? Snek doesn't like being manhandled

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    in God's not dead, the people in the movie don't call an ambulance or deem to really do anything when the atheist professor is hit by a car. they actually seem to gloat about it which makes me think "are these the bad guys?" I do have to say that if there are good christian films out there, they are being drowned out by the shitty ones.
     
  6. TheImportantFart

    TheImportantFart Jet-powered fish

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    Here's a new one - Loving the Bad Man. A young woman gets raped by a guy and not only keeps the baby, but starts to make friends with her rapist!

    Sorry if people aren't too fond of Cult of Dusty, but he does an excellent job summarising and ridiculing this:

     
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  7. ICanFeelTheCosmos0704

    ICanFeelTheCosmos0704 friend of little cat

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    I like this one - Crime of the Age, where the crime is taking a book about knowing Jesus as your savior from the camp director's office without asking because you don't want to be embarrassed. It backfired.

     
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  8. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    I remember seeing this movie where this guy in the 19th century builds a time machine and travels to the modern day. The dude is appalled by modern fashion, runs out of a movie loudly complaining that the Lord's name was taken in vain, tries to teach creation in a high school class and gets in trouble for it, and is tempted to look up his date of death on the Internet at a library (but decides not to). The point of the movie was pointing out how wicked America has supposedly become compared to the 1800s (as seen by the film staff).

    I don't know if it was terrible, but it was still... interesting. Anyone know the title?
     
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  9. king kong... with wings?

    king kong... with wings? Snek doesn't like being manhandled

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    the only way a woman would willingly do that is when hell freezes over
     
  10. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    I personally think that based on what you just said about the film, it kind of ridicules itself. It almost doesn't even need to be criticized because a short one sentence summary of the film will allow anyone to form an opinion of it.

    Funnily enough, there was an episode of Moral Orel called 'Alone' where at least 1/3 of the episode was about a woman who was raped by a guy in her home liking the rape, fantasizing about it happening again, and seemingly falling in love with her rapist.

    Looking back, atheist cartoons (Moral Orel, Family Guy) and perhaps atheist films (I don't know any) generally seem to be just as cringy as christian films, just in the exact opposite way. While christian films are usually pretty terrible due to the earnestness and wholesomeness of the films (there's an episode of Metalocalypse that sums up why christian television shows are bad pretty well), atheists tend to attempt to go in the direction of being edgy, with an air of smugness that turns off a lot of people. Personally, I blame Dawkins for making a career out of being an atheist and converting others to atheism while being respected as an intellectual, because that just opened the floodgates for millions of people to attempt to imitate him.

    The weird thing is, both atheist films and christian films are preachy as fuck, which is why they both tend to suck. The ones that don't are the ones that are at least a little bit subtle in their message. Narnia comes to mind as an example of a good christian film, but I think that might be debatable.
     
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  11. Another Fellow

    Another Fellow the unwanted one

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    I have no idea what the title is, but I've written a screenplay almost exactly like this (minus the religious element), and therefore I'm intrigued to see how they did it.
     
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  12. ICanFeelTheCosmos0704

    ICanFeelTheCosmos0704 friend of little cat

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    @ToroidalBoat

    It's The Time Changer - I unironically liked it when I was in teen group at church. Aside - my computer auto-corrected unironically as moronically and I chuckled.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_Changer
    The Bible Reloaded guys lampooned it -

    TBH a guy from the 1890s would be pretty shocked by pre-9/11 America - it would be like if we were in the 2120s (we will all be dead by then, lol)
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2017
  13. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    Thanks for finding the title. I knew it was something like that. I think it's more modern propaganda that the 19th century America was all innocent. Although Americans back then probably kept any controversial views or practices private, as opposed to today where people make Tumblr pages about fetishes they like. For example, atheists weren't really outspoken back then.

    I would probably be very disappointed if everything is the same, aside from better computers.
     
    Last edited: Mar 30, 2017
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  14. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    My belief is that eventually we'll make robots we can have sex with and reproduce with that were built with artificial intelligence that's advanced enough to have a conversation with (robot waifus, wouldn't that be great!) then all human endeavor would basically stop. We won't have to learn to do anything because by then robots will have become advanced enough to do literally job we need, so all of our human attention will go towards the arts (for the creative), fucking our robots (for the non-creative) and fucking our robots when we're not working on art (for the creative with any libido whatsoever).

    This would eventually lead to the world in Idiocracy.
     
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  15. ToroidalBoat

    ToroidalBoat ¿qué?

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    What if it's like The Matrix and everyone lives in virtual reality then?

    Would Christians still make films? Subpar films even?
     
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  16. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    Hell, if that was the case, Christians would get their own little reality to live in, Atheists would get their own reality and so on. Then, those two groups would have to find things to argue about and start wars over amongst themselves.

    I imagine it would go something like this, just replace 'Bart' with 'Jesus' for Christians, and 'Dawkins' for atheists.



    Also, yes they would still make terrible films.
     
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  17. Vexing Devil

    Vexing Devil pokes you for 4 whether you like it or not.

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    another movie based off a popular chick tract just awful all together

     
  18. TheVoid

    TheVoid Well-Known Member

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    I'm pretty sure someone already mentioned that one.
     
  19. Luna

    Luna Well-Known Member

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    I've seen a few. Though my metric for what I'd consider a "good" christian film is directly proportional to how hateful it is; films like Last Ounce of Courage, or God's Not Dead, or anything Kirk Cameron cranks out where they focus more on how terrible non-Christians are and how Christians are just innately better than non-believers rather than anything positive about Christianity are always going terrible. That's why no one really harps on shit like VeggieTales because it's more about upholding christian values (i.e. be kind, tell the truth, always do what you feel is right, help the needy, etc.) and they don't typically touch on other belief systems.

    It's also worth keeping in mind that most christian films are amateur productions directed by people without formal training in film making using crews made of other amateurs from their church or hired on from other low-budget semi-professional studios. Like there's a lot of crossover between people make exploitation films and people who make Christian films.
     
  20. NotAriel

    NotAriel Well-Known Member

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    Anything with Kirk Cameron in it.
    I miss the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. :(
     
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