Please remember that these are just my opinions and I encourage you to form your own. I also encourage you to wait till it comes out at Redbox so you are only spending a dollar on it!
Yesterday we took the youth group to see Noah because we have been talking a lot about the story of Noah this year during youth group. Our theme this year has been stepping outside of the box. We have talk about how we need to step outside of our boxes of our comfort zones to try new things and go out into the world and be the hands and feet of Christ. We talked a lot about how Noah did this by following God and building the ark. This was a huge step for Noah knowing everything that was going to happen with the great flood.
The youth were really excited about seeing the movie and the ark on the big screen. I will say however that this movie is an "outside the box" interpretation of Noah. I believe that it had its good and valid points but overall I had a hard time with the movie especially knowing the story from the bible. Here are the things I took from the movie:
The Biblical Parts:
Noah was in the movie with his wife and their three sons, Ham, Sham, and Japheth.
Noah is a descendant of Seth
Methuselah was the grandfather of Noah
The world was depicted as a cruel and sinful place
There was an ark
There was a great flood
The animals came two by two (ALL of the animals came including the snakes!!! Yikes!!!)
A Raven was sent out to find land
The Dove was sent our and returned with an Olive Branch
Noah got drunk and naked (Surprisingly both in the Bible)
There were references to Adam, Eve, and the Serpent
If you didn't know that Cain killed Abel, you sure did by the end of the movie
The creation story was told with parts of it being biblically based
The parts that made it seem like the Lord of the Rings
Adam and Eve were portrayed as glowing alien beings.
There were rock monsters which were fallen Angels that came down to help mankind after they were considered sinful. The creator encased them in earth/rock and doomed them to roam the earth. They were known as the Guardians. They also helped Noah build the ark.
Methuselah had magical powers of healing and making people fall asleep by simply touching them. He was either a hypnotist or based on someone who comes a little later in the Bible who heals the sick.
Methuselah is the gateway between the Creator and Noah. He gives Noah some drugged drink so that he has the visions of the flood and the ark. If I were Noah I would of thought I was tripping on something instead of seeing what the Creator wanted me to do.
There was a protagonist that is able to chop this way through the side of the ark with a small axe and hide within the ark with Noah and his family.
This protagonist eats one of the animals of the ark, which of course makes the animal extinct. He also kills another animal to get Noah to come down so he can kill him. One of the kids said this animal was a unicorn which I found funny.
There are some funky creatures throughout the movie that are mythical
.
There are magic glowing rocks that by simply crushing them you are able to make fire, or put them in a hallowed out tube and you have a rocket.
Since there were no pharmacies we have to rely on the magic tea leaves to tell us if someone is pregnant. (I am still not sure how she knew!)
I don't understand why Hermione Granger pull out her wand, flick her wrist and make a boat appear. Ok I know that has nothing to do with the movie, but she will always be Hermione Granger to me!
Things I just didn't like or get
Sham, Ham, and Japheth were young in the movie and didn't have wives.
Noah was by no means a righteous man in this movie. There were plenty of moments that made you question why the Creator would of chosen him.
Noah did not walk with God or have a relationship with him. He was not talked to directly by God but instead through a dream followed by a drug induced out of body experience.
The movie was based on cleanings the earth and starting the world over. This involved the protection and preservation of the innocent animals. Noah did not believe that the Creator wanted mankind to survive because of its sinful ways. He told the family how they would each bury each other until Japheth was the last man on earth and humanity would end.
Noah's hair style changes about 5 times during the movie but no one else's hair changes.
The movie was very eco friendly which I get in one sense but not at the sake of destroying all of mankind.
Things I thought were Interesting
It was a neat concept that they created a smoke from herbs that would calm the animals down and put them to sleep so that they could survive without them attacking each other.
It was pretty cool to see the flood form and the ark battling the rain and flood waters.
The flash backs to earlier stories of the bible were interesting. Some of them weren't accurate but I guess they don't have to be accurate to be interesting.
The new world after the flood was neat to see.
Final Conclusion
I didn't like the movie which is sad because there was so much potential there. I think there is a lot of ways that Hollywood could of used "movie magic" to depict different things from the Noah story and still keep to the Bible narrative.
As Emily put it as we got up to leave the movie theater, "The book is so much better!" UPDATE: It was Pete that said it, Emily just happened to repeat it louder :) Either way they are both right!
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