An Almighty Flop

The word is out: Evan Almighty is a flop. While once worldwide numbers come in, it should come close to breaking even, it’s not the success that was dreamed of by Hollywood. After the success of the Passion of the Christ, Hollywood began to see big dollar signs around the Christian Community, but their efforts have been hit or miss.

When a movie like Evan flops, there’s the question of whether it’s “worth it” to reach out to Christian audiences always comes up. The truth is that Christian audiences are like everyone else. To get us into movie theaters, we need movies that we actually like. I’d consider the following points:

1) Avoid Modern Retelling of well-known Bible stories. These stories rarely get it right and when you reinterpret and retell a story like Noah’s ark in a way that’s not faithful to the original, the most orthodox of the faithful are likely to stay away as happened with Evan. Also the modern retelling of Noah is not all that original. It was done in 1998 as a Disney Channel original movie starring Tony Danza as Noah. In that film version with many positive elements, an angel of the Lord declares God a woman and and Danza’s character basically declares himself more righteous than Noah of old. The problems with a modern ark story from a logical point of view are many. Most of the time, we’re not dealing with a worldwide flood, only a localized one that will wipe out a small area. Thus, it’s not really necessary to have two of every kind of animal, as God’s purpose for that was to preserve different species.

2) Distribute Independent Christian Films: No one can deny Sony got a good deal with its distribution deal on Facing the Giants. The film cost Sherwood Pictures $100,000 to make and made $10 million at the box office. Evan Almighty cost $175 million to make. Targeted releases of well-made Independent Christian films should yield good results even if they don’t make big budget numbers.

3) Make films that serve as object lessons. Christians aren’t looking for a sermon on the silver screen, but many of us love sermon illustrations. Such was the case with Spiderman III, which despite its slow beginning had powerful images of forgiveness and a great illustration of the damage that sin can wreck on our lives. Of course, the film should be kept as clean as possible (as Spiderman III was) while remaining real.

4) Make films by sincere people. Contrary to popular belief, Christians are not stupid. We know when we’re being pandered to. We can tell if a film is being made to placate us, rather than a movie being made out of genuine belief. I can’t help but think that over the top marketing helps rather than hurts movies like Evan. Films like “The Passion of the Christ,” and “Facing the Giants” spread by word of mouth and word of blog, not be critics or big advertising campaigns.

5) Quality: Reviews indicate that Evan was far less funnier than the original. Don’t think because watchers are Christian that they’ll swallow any movie that has religious content in it. They’re concerned about production quality. While I sometimes think this focus can become unhealthy, hey, Hollywood, you’re in it for the money.

Of course, Hollywood’s desire to make these films should signal to Christians and the church in general, that it’s time to become involved in this arena in a way that glorifies God and provides great works of truth and beauty that can point their way to Christ.