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Milking the golden calf
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stealing money from Christians since 2000
I'm not a man that likes arguing about Religion. It's never been a huge factor in my life and I tend to leave it along. One unfortunate truth about Religion, especially the unique American brand of Christianity, is that it's easily exploitable. Past experience has shown that Christian movies/books/bands/occasional video games are almost guaranteed gold mines because despite being niche, the niche is several dozen million.
No one understands this better then Kirk Cameron who's transformed the Left Behind series of Christian novels into a multi-million dollar franchise. The first Left Behind was released in 2000 and was... well... not that great. it current holds a 16% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and generally regarded as a cash grab on the then popular novel series, pulling a Harry Potter a little under a year before the actual Harry Potter, sans the heart/characters/writing skill.
Regardless, the movie made money, had two sequels, and the book series has continued on with an additional twelve volumes. I guess not even the most pious of IPs is immune to greed, so the film rights were handed over to some assholes from Canada, and in 2014 the remake was released, staring the one, the only, the Nic Cage.
Half screams, half whispers
Say what you will about Nic Cage, but the man really gets into his characters. The problem is that he perceives every character as a different version of Nic Cage, and just plays it that way. I know some people don't like Nic Cage, but I think they just don't understand Nic Cage. Watching him is like trying to understand Jazz, you have to try and match the brainwaves in motion to truly understand. Nic Cage can give great performances, as evidenced by his Oscar winning achievement Leaving Las Vegas, or even his less intelligent roles like Face/Off or Con Air. Hell, Nic Cage circa 2014 can give great performances, stealing the show in The Croods, Joe, and The Frozen Ground. Yes, he's done some JUST HORRIBLE THINGS.
You know what, here:
Nic Cage really is the best when he's being just another version of Nic Cage: i.e. an insane psychopath willing to do anything for almost no reason. Unfortunately that's exactly what he's not in Left Behind.
Only the stupid are left
If you're blessed with ignorance about the Left Behind series here's the breakdown:
On a random, unassuming day God does a rapture and all the pure of heart (Christian) people are spirited away to Heaven while the rest of the world has to suffer for seven years of Satan's wrath while waiting their turn. This is a LOOSE translation of certain passages in the Bible, particularly some stuff in the admittedly crazy book of Revelations. The series follows a group of people that survive the rapture, and seek God. Then it gets weird.
Nic Cage plays Ray Steele, an asshole of an airline pilot who's sneaking off on his daughter's birthday to see U2 in London with his flight attended (Nicky Whelan) Cassi Thompson is his daughter Chloe who returns home, finds out her dad's an asshole, then argues with her super religious mother (Lea Thompson). Chad Michael Murray is Cameron Williams -whom the Wikipedia page calls Buck, because that's what the books and original movie calls him, I think there's a joke about that but it didn't make sense when I was watching- a cool, level headed investigative journalist that tells people that every time they meet.
Chloe is trapped in New York and Ray and Cameron are trapped in a plane when the Rapture occurs, leading them all to try and get back together, by any stupid means necessary. Placing much of the "action" on a plane was probably a bad idea, since, in the face of other recent disaster movies taking place on an airplane, Left Behind doesn't hold up. None of the asshole passengers get any personality beyond "I'm a mother" "I'm a midget" "I'm a business guy" or "I'm a Muslim". The characters in general are so boring and 2D, that they all but turn to the camera and announce their entire archetype the second they step on screen. Even Airplane VS Volcano was better and that's... well... this:
There will be weeping there, and gnashing of teeth
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What happens when you put this movie near a church
Left Behind (2000) wasn't a good movie, not by any stretch of the imagination. But it's one saving grace was how balls-to-the-walls insane it really was, actually turning into a conspiracy thriller with the anti-Christ at the end. It had crazy people, a crazy plot, and crazy set piece moments that made it so dumb you had to watch it to try and understand why it was doing what it was doing.
Left Behind (2014) doesn't have any of that. It doesn't have the classic charm of a bad movie, nor the laughably bad acting or dialogue, save one scene involving a distressed mother and some real leaps of logic, and is so obviously pandering that I'd be offended if I watched it as a Christian. Splitting the story between Chloe walking around and Ray flying a plane means that neither story properly develops, and they both lack any memorable scenes. The drama with the passengers on the plane could be interesting, but none of them have any personality or character that you sometimes forget they're even there.
Perhaps none of this would matter, but the special effects and camera work are so second rate that you can't even loose yourself in that. To their credit, some of the more explosive effects are, at least to some degree, done practically, with an actual burning plane crashing into a car, but they're done so slowly and methodically that you can almost see the wires guiding them. At one point a bus drives off a bridge for some reason, and it's done so slow that you can tell it's just dangling from a crane.
Left Behind is an amost offensively bad film. Like God's not Dead before it, it's a quick hack job, put together to suck money from Christians because it's a "true Christian film" unlike all the "secular filth put out by the Hollywood left". I don't care what you believe, be it God, Allah, or a giant insane space monkey. What I do care about is that no one, regardless of faith, should watch Left Behind, and that's something we should all agree on.
No, I don't know what the last paragraph is in white.
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