Heathen Review #3: Diet Noah

[StealthySkeptic]

Heathen Review #3: Noah

Previously on Heathen Reviews: Upotte!!

SPOILERS FOR NOAH AHEAD! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XIpH-DoRu9o

And then the world was repopulated by...um...let's skip to the kid-friendly part of the Bible. Oh, wait...



It is when it's with Emma Watson.

And they all lived happily ever after until God got pissy at them again. So unless you're a good little Christian, boys and girls, you'll be drowned by a God who still somehow loves you!

Yes, we all know the hilarious and nonsensical original story. So you can probably guess where most of the story of this "movie" goes (I'll explain the air quotes later). But obviously that's not going to fill up a nearly two and a half hour biblical epic film. Intrigued by that, as well as the challenge that director Darren Aronofsky, whom I liked for his work in Requiem for a Dream and Black Swan, faced in making a Biblical adaptation that catered to both Christians and mainstream audiences, I went to my nearest Redbox and rented the DVD of Noah. With a Redbox promo code, it ended up costing me $0.00 to rent it for one day.



Pictured above: Heaven for broke college kids.

I think the nothing I paid was a waste of money. Let me explain why below.

As with all Blu-rays and DVDs that I watch, I'll be reviewing this disc on my Sony BDP-S3100 Blu-ray player, Spectre 32'' 720p display, and Coby two-channel stereo sound bar.

"Movie" Review

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Let's the good out of the way first. The acting is pretty good albeit flat most of the time (although I personally don't care for Russell Crowe's wooden style in particular, nor that of most of the others, it suits the movie's purpose here). My favorite actor is actually the guy who plays the villain Tubal-Cain. The sets are really cool, the props look suitably Bronze Age, and the CGI is at least somewhat convincing (except for the rock monsters, which look and act like Rankin-Bass stop motion puppets, and not the good ones.)



At least they didn't make me sing again. I'm still fending off angry Les Miserables fans.

Yes, you heard me right, there are rock monsters.



I'll get to them (sigh) in the Philosophy Review. (Although, they aren't any more crazy than the nephilim and giants that are actually in the original.)

Let's also acknowledge and then leave aside the plot holes, megalomaniacal deity, flat characterization, simplistic good and evil sides, emotion-based story arc, etc. inherent to adapting from a Bronze Age story written by ancient and superstitious humans, as well as the conflict mentioned earlier between pandering to Christians and pandering to everyone else (again, I'll discuss this in the Philosophy Review.) This movie's unforgivable sin, which caused me to fall asleep an hour in and then not touch it again for two more hours until I felt obligated to finish, is that with all these ideas in the mix, the movie is boring and never decides what it wants to be about.

How could they possibly make Noah's Ark boring? I'll attempt to demonstrate without spoilers. First take one dull script filled with dialogue written by a third grader who's trying to remember his Bible lessons. Next, add a hundred cups of molasses to make the movie's pacing slow to a crawl. Third, stuff this turkey with some pointless, generic romantic subplots, most of them involving Emma Watson. Then have all the actors give their best shot at trying to deliver the material without moving their faces as much as possible except when the script calls for them to put in some Ham.



(Again, they do a good job despite the script, but they don't have a lot of material to work with.) Heat with a budget bigger than the GDP of some developing countries. Serve lukewarm. PROFIT!

Hence why I call this a "movie" and not a true movie. This is more like a series of dull talking pictures with occasional flashy action tossed in to wake up the people in the back.

But seriously, who is this dude who plays Tubal-Cain, and where else can I see him? He was awesome! Infinite kudos to whoever figures it out!

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Disc Review

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The only reason why I rented this on DVD was because my Redbox promo code could only cover the price of one one-day DVD rental. Otherwise, I have no idea why anyone buys these pieces of crap any more other than they're cheap or afraid of technology, plus a lot of people still have old computers or DVD players lying around.

The rental consisted of the first disc, which only has the feature film, basic scene selection and other options, and previews. Really, Paramount? There's LITERALLY AN HOUR of special features on the second disc. I know this because I looked it up. So why have second discs any more if you're not going to bother putting effort into your special features? (There's not even a feature commentary!) You could have made room on the DVD by getting rid of the SIX previews that can't be skipped with the chapter forward button when even Blu-rays, which are made of nothing but DRM coated in more DRM, usually have about three and all of them can be skipped through! Do you WANT people to pirate your films, you morons?!



Rest in pieces, and good riddance.

Semi-sarcastic mini-rant about ancient technology aside, the video quality (upscaled by my Blu-ray player) was really great. There's definitely a softness inherent to DVDs that meant the upscaling was just putting lipstick on a pig, but that didn't distract from the vibrant colors, detailed clothing, intense action scenes, and all the rest.

The Dolby Digital 5.1 audio, however, had really, really low volume and was tinny-sounding, even on my stereo sound bar, which normally shouldn't have a problem decoding it. Usually even old DVDs with this type of sound have more depth and oomph than that. Oh well, though. I would suggest that if you are insane enough to buy or rent this, go with Blu-ray or digital.

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Philosophy Review (Minor Spoilers)

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The God of the Bible, if he exists, is a dick. End of Philosophy Review. J/K

Well, as much as the original Noah story made me start to realize at the age of eight that Christianity was full of shit, it at least knew what it wanted to say philosophically. It was a supposed demonstration about how, if we believe hard enough, then God's mercy outweighs God's justice. That moral was horrible, evil, and absolutely appalling (and the suffering of women and children who are drowned in this world is hardly addressed in either the book or the movie in my opinion), but again, at least it was consistent.



Pictured above: consistent, objective morality.

Here...what Aronofsky is trying to say appears to be trying at once to sound faithful to the biblical tale while also turning it into an environmentalist parable. From there, you can probably guess what gets God (oops, they actually call him The Creator here, as if afraid that mentioning the word God in a work of fiction will cause atheists to break out into hives) mad this time around.

There's nothing wrong with that idea per se, or any of the ideas in the movie when they stand alone. There's nothing wrong, for instance, with the inherent idea behind the rock monsters, eye-rollingly stupid though that may sound at first, and poorly animated though they may be (once you realize their origin, which is pretty cool so I won't spoil it for you). A lot could have been done to make this into a realistic, non-magical environmental parable (aside from the flooding and the abilities of the ark to have the needed interior space and the...well you know what I mean), or a straight up retelling of the Biblical story. Hell, if all the ideas had been balanced properly we could have gotten something awesome that did do both, as difficult as that sure would be.

But to paraphrase President Millard Fillmore, if you attempt to appease everyone, you are loved by no one. In this case, all these ideas are jumbled together into a bizarre alternate fantasy version of Earth that is still trying to be the biblical antediluvian Earth of the original story with magic that makes no sense, the rock monsters, and pretty literal sounding deus ex machinas (any supposed ambiguity over there being a Creator is removed instantly) "solving" all the problems that us atheists have rightly pointed out in the original story while also introducing new ones that are even more gaping.

Plus, the new tree-hugging motives of "The Creator" STILL don't make sense at all when you think about how a global flood would destroy more of the environment than humans ever really could, even with the movie's bullshit about how Tubal-Cain's evil civilization arose. Sure, humans other than Noah's precious family are seen as depraved, sexually licentious meat eaters (yeah, they really demonize pretty much any non-vegetarians for...reasons not having to do with the real abuses many animals suffer in farm factories, which is why I eat more seafood). But that doesn't seem to be the main reason The Creator so pissed.



You humans are dicks for nearly killing off polar bears! For that I'll kill all of you, and all the polar bears, and...oh, wait, that's dumb. Back to the drawing board.

To be fair, there are some good individual themes here. For instance, of the evil humans states, towards the middle of the film, the perfectly reasonable objection that God made humans work by the sweat of their brow after kicking Adam and Eve out of the garden and then never bothered to call or write. However, this is pretty quickly dropped and not mentioned again, washing away (hah) this and a few of the other ideas, especially those critical of the Biblical narrative, likely due to Paramount's CEO being a Christian. However, I digress. I know that a lot of this portion of the review has explained my objections to the movie rather than its themes more in depth, but I think that the problematic flip flopping on themes and philosophy go hand in hand with failure to launch as a movie.

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Conclusions

TL;DR? Skip it. That is all. I leave you with this piece of awesomeness. Next time on Heathen Reviews, I'll tackle Philomena or The One I Love. If you guys could help me decide that, that would be great!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVRZOJ6IUt4

[StealthySkeptic]

Shameless bump to let you know that I met instead review Hercules after this. End of shameless bump.