The new BP article by Mark Kelly, on Hollywood and the new movie Kingdom of Heaven, isn't very interesting, but the opening paragraph is funny to me...
Evangelicals have tried for years to convinceHollywood it is more profitable to make decent movies for normal people than to grind out the gratuitous sex and violence that only sucks society deeper into the sewer. Mel Gibson finally got their attention when his “Passion of the Christ” grossed almost $612 million worldwide -- more than 20 times his original investment.
Please tell me I'm not the only one who sees the irony here. Roger Ebert wrote in his review of "Passion"...
The movie is 126 minutes long, and I would guess that at least 100 of those minutes, maybe more, are concerned specifically and graphically with the details of the torture and death of Jesus. This is the most violent film I have ever seen.
I think this is really, truly funny. But I also think it's sad and revealing.
We say things about movies like "Violence just leads to violence, so let's keep it clean." But how can we say that real violence doesn't tell a story far better? If it did for Passion then why not for Kingdom of Heaven or Gladiator or Braveheart?
The Bible tells bloody stories. It is not a PG-13 book. And if we are going to get our children and teenagers and everyone else to understand the Story of redemption, they are going to have to understand violence because the death of Jesus was incredibly violent.
Is it reasonable for Christians to encourage violence in movies since it reminds us of redemption?