Thursday, March 7, 2013

Bit o' snark about The Bible

Now don't you worry, all you evangelical types.  I don't plan on getting snarky about THE Bible, so you can put that dander right back down. I just have to say a few things about "The Bible", the miniseries. Not The Bible, the novel based on the miniseries based on the Bible.  Try not to be confused.

So...we all love Jesus around here and once we heard that the History Channel was doing a miniseries that spanned the entire Bible, we thought, "Cool!"  We've all seen the Charlton Heston version with it's overly dramatic characters and 1950's special effects.  But this is 2013!  A modern movie about the Bible would have awesome effects, realistic dialog, and an accurate storyline...right?  Whew, exciting stuff!

Last weekend we had some friends over for dinner and the first episode.  It quickly became obvious that this was like nothing we'd ever seen.  Take Moses, for instance, one of the heroes of the faith who is typically known for his humble spirit while leading the Israelites out of slavery in Egypt.  I never realized how wrong we were about him!  Wow, thanks Bible miniseries for showing us the real Moses...smug, attitude aplenty, creepy (the kind of creepy where he looks at you like you are a kid walking down the street and he is the guy in the 70's van who wants you to make a movie.  You know...Chester.)  I had no idea that when Mel Gibson yells, "Freedom!!!" in Braveheart, he is really just quoting Moses.  I also didn't realize that Moses had skulked around behind the bushes while performing miracles like turning the water to blood.  Silly me, I was under the impression that God would've wanted Ramses to know why these things were happening. Oh and speaking of Ramses, did you know that all he ever really did was yell, in a guttural sort of yell, "NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!  MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSS!" Well, now we know.

Some things were changed from the original story.  While it is true that many of these things are inconsequential, we all found it to be rather annoying. For instance, at one point we find Abraham and a much-too-young Isaac on Mt Moriah, awaiting the sacrifice that the Lord would provide. I'm preeeeeetttyyy sure that the Bible says a ram was caught in the bushes by it's horns, but in the movie version we see a tiny little lamb with it's foot stuck.  See what I mean???  Annoying. Why not just get it right?  Were there no rams with big cool horns to be found?  We have lots of them here in Montana, had they needed one.

Now about those awesome special effects....yeah...not so awesome effects would be more appropriate. Maybe they didn't want to upstage the effects in the Charlton Heston movie.  A bit of a bummer, I must say, and I am a huge fan of British television, a Whovian even!  I know my bad special effects.  Unfortunately, the makers of The Bible bring cheese to a whole new level.

I suppose I should say something nice about the show. We did kind of enjoy the kick-ass angels that helped Lot and his family leave Sodom.(There were no smart alecky sort of remarks made at all about how the angel that did all of the cool martial arts types of knife stunts was an Asian angel. Really, not one remark.) The consensus was that none of us had ever given thought to how Lot actually got out of Sodom without coming to harm. So thanks, Bible miniseries!

Ok, I'll stop now. The crazy thing?  We're watching it next week with the same friends. Thank goodness they are a smart aleck, snarky lot themselves. We choose our friends wisely. 
In case you've yet to see the novel based on the miniseries based on the book.





4 comments:

  1. Oh my gosh this made me laugh so hard!

    Even Entertainment Weekly was like "Ummm... this is terrible and nothing like the bible..."

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    1. I made myself laugh, actually. The show was just so bad, I couldn't help myself.

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  2. Hahaha!! This cracked me up. I have to admit that I am really enjoying it though. It is fun to see what Hollywood comes up with (and great to have friends we can make fun of things with!) and it is better than some of the stuff I've seen in the past. Plus it is awesome to see even our kids pulling out their Bibles and fact checking. Can't wait till next weekend!

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    1. That's what my mom said, too...it's a teachable moment. :) She said we did the same thing when we were kids and we watched The Ten Commandments. We laughed and we checked the Bible story to see what was accurate and what wasn't.

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