Noah: Hollywood Warps Noah to Push an Agenda
February 21, 2014
By Sara Noble
Noah1
In the biblical story, Noah, God warned Noah that a great flood would come to destroy humanity for their sins and their sexual immorality. Hollywood nixed that story in the making of their new movie about Noah. Hollywood’s version of Noah has man being destroyed because of overpopulation and global warming.
Hollywood noticed that there is a resurgence of interest in religious movies. For instance, Roma Downey and her husband Mark Burnett produced “The Bible,” a mini-series for National Geographic, and it became the station’s most watched series in their history. Downey and Burnett are now bringing it to the big screen as “Son of God” and they hope to continue the success they had on TV.
Paramount Studios just poured $125 million into the movie Noah, hoping to capitalize on the renewed interest in God. They are now concerned that their movie might not be as popular as they thought. It’s six weeks until launch and they are finding out that their wacky version of the Old Testament story might not sit well with Christians.
Variety posted an article two days ago about a survey from Faith-Driven Consumer that reported 98% of the people who took the survey were not interested in seeing the movie Noah.
They posted this information about the movie for people to read prior to taking the survey:
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Noah has been criticized for depicting Noah as a “crazy, irrational, religious nut…fixated on modern-day problems like overpopulation and environmental degradation.”
Importantly, the movie’s director appears to have replaced the Bible’s central point of God’s judgment on man’s inherent sin with a story focused on a contemporary environmental theme.
In an effort to appeal to Faith Driven Consumers, the studio tested several versions of the movie. This seemingly upset the director as an effort to “appease a small but vocal segment…Those people can be noisy.”
Paramount claimed that the survey was invalid because it made almost no reference to Noah and was actually very general. If you look at the survey, it is clearly about the movie Noah.
Paramount claims their research shows that 83 percent of pastors would recommend the movie to their flock.
Allegedly, Paramount wanted to make a film more biblically-accurate but the director Darren Aronofsky wanted to instill his vision of the flood as punishment for man’s disrespect for nature as opposed to sins. In the end, he won. Supposedly, several versions were filmed and screened but they fared no better than the warped version. As it turns out, they never tested Aronofsky’s version according to Aronofsky himself: “They tried what they wanted to try, and eventually they came back… My version of the film hasn’t been tested … It’s what we wrote and what was green lighted,” Aronofsky told THR .
Aronofsky said he was upset that the studio screened different versions to cater to a small but vocal segment. He said, “These people can be noisy.”
Faith Driven Consumers comprise 15 percent of the population – 46 million Americans – and spend $1.75 trillion annually. It’s a lot of money to tap or not.
The message of Noah is anti-consumerism and anti-population. To Hollywood, consuming, competing, owning, populating too much are all sins. There is nothing worse.
This is the scenario as I see it: Hollywood makes a movie about Noah. Hollywood distorts the story. Paramount freaks when they realize Christians don’t like it. Paramount attacks the messenger. Film flops.
http://www.independentsentinel.com/noah-hollywood-warps-noah-to-push-an-agenda/
