NOAH -- directed by Darren Aronofsky

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/darren-aronofsky-paramount-spar-noah-648777

Mark Joseph, who has consulted on the marketing of films including Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and Ray, says he hasn't been to a screening of Noah but fears it is "an example of a director not listening to those voices that would have been warning of the dangers of veering too far away from the biblical text. The director is there to serve the studio and the audience, not veer off into directions that go against the core audience's beliefs -- at least if the goal is to get them to come to the theater."
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The story is an interesting undertaking due to it being from the bible and the obvious religious nature of it. But it will still be subjected to the same formulaic praise or scorn from the "fans" of the book and how far it strays within or without their understanding of the material. From what I've seen, it strays heavily from the book, which can make films or break them I guess. The poor test screening reactions mentioned in the article seem to indicate it isn't even a religious "fan" rejection so much as just not a very good story perhaps.

We'll see....
 
In general I'm not bothered in the slightest by other peoples religious beliefs even if its a different interpretation of the torah (what Christianity considers the old testament.)

I remember when The Prince of Egypt (Dreamworks animation) came out. In my private school (Jewish) we watched and discussed what we believed were the accuracies and inaccuracies, we didn't really discuss anything else to do with the film. That being said, when I'm on DVXuser I'm really not here to discuss religious beliefs.

Trying to discuss a films historical accuracy is normally fine, but unless the intention is to have a debate, it's a moot point to even bring up since even within the same religion there are different sects that interpret what actually happened differently.

So end-eth my 2 cents.
 
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Sticking wiht the book isn't as important as pleasing the "fans". If you veer from the book but the fans love it, you're golden. If you veer from the book but the fans don't like the direction you are taking, they will pitch a fit. I mean, look at the Passion of the Christ. There's no such amount of torture porn in the Bible, but the fans really liked it.
 
My Facebook feed has been covered in heated conversation about this movie. I've been called a coward for suggesting people see it for themselves, etc. Just insane. I can tell you that for a ton of people, changing absolutely anything will get your film a big scarlet B for boycott painted on it. Unfortunate really. In the case of the Son Of God movie and The Bible series, the portion of the Gospels where Jesus calls Lazarus forth from the cave, they shot it with Jesus going into the cave instead of him calling Lazarus from outside it and people wigged out. What they didn't know is weather forced the production inside the set instead of shooting it as planned. Instead of giving the film some grace (and its makers) they get "biblical accuracy shouldn't be soiled for the sake of time/budgets." I'de love to see them give filmmaking a shot for a single day...

I'll be there to give the film a shot. I'm not going in expecting a faithful telling of the story. I never was really. I'm there to see a good movie, bottom line. If it falls short there, then that's where the majority of my negativity will come from.

I wonder how many of the folks bashing the film have ever written a script or bothered learning about story structure? Without shifting or adapting certain things in almost any novel or story, it can be hard to craft a well structured screenplay perfectly faithful to the original source. The story of NOAH has certain key elements to it, but beyond that it's very vague on the deeper human elements.

Meh, whatever.
 
I found the film interesting but tonally a bit awkward. The Watchers seemed like they belonged in a Lord of the Rings film. The only reason they seemed to be there was to make Noah being able to build this massive ark with just a few hands more plausible, but adding fantasy rock creatures to the story added nothing to the plausibility of it all. And the story is not lacking for spectacle either with the great flood, so I'm puzzled by their inclusion. Just seems like a bad idea that cast a pall over the whole film. When the film worked, it was in the more grounded moments and the spiritual/ethical dilemmas the characters face. Not a disaster but a beautifully shot misfire for me.
 
Nice thing about having friends that work at the theaters is that I get free movies. I wasn't about to pay for this one, based on the script. So I gave it ago, and Bible accuracy aside, as a movie, I thought it was one of the worst films I've seen in a while. I started laughing when the watchers came out. Reminded me of the old Ray Harryhausen stop motion flicks. By the time the flood hit, I had completely lost interest and found myself screwing around on my phone.
 
Probably won't be seeing this in theaters. We sort of burned up our 'bible' film viewing a few weeks ago with the remastered BD versions of the "The Ten Commandments"(1956) and "Ben Hur"(1959)... it was a Chucky sort of week... the humor for me was when the wife said... (ten minutes into "The Ten Commandments"...)... 'Gee I guess this is an appropriate film for Passover Week'...

In terms of recommended viewing I'd recommend "Ben Hur" for an example of an Epic Movie. Shot in 'super wide', in the credits listed as "MGM Camera 65". From the wiki, it was a 'spherical' process, rather than 'anamorphic'.
 
j1clark@ucsd.edu said:
In terms of recommended viewing I'd recommend "Ben Hur" for an example of an Epic Movie. Shot in 'super wide', in the credits listed as "MGM Camera 65". From the wiki, it was a 'spherical' process, rather than 'anamorphic'.
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Saw it in 70mm at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood. The screen was immensely wide, 2.76:1 ratio or something. And the print was pristine and sharp. Truly epic presentation. One of my all time favorite movie going experiences.
 
Since there was so little material from the Bible to pull from, Aronofsky researched apocrypha and Gnostic sources to fill out the story. Hence the watchers. Surprisingly, most of the negative reviews came from non Religious critics (poor editing, poor script...) many calling it Aronofskys' first big failure. I'll wait for Netflix on this one.
There were some bullies over on FB trying to keep people from watching it, when I found out one of them was also a film maker, I told him the only thing he succeeded in doing was convincing me to never watch any thing he made. Never ever go into a film making group and tell them what they should and shouldn't watch. Ever.
 
If one believes the bible to be completely true, he must have a problem with any bible film that sticks not painstakingly to the book (and its dozens of versions and interpretations in different christian denominations).

If one believes the book is a sample of metaphorical stories remotely based on real events - the mediterran tsunami caused by the vulcanic catastrophy of the island of Santorin or the flooding of the land bassin north of turkey to become the Black Sea - one may have a problem in believing that there is a ship build big enough to transport all animals and that the meat eating animals decided to become vegan for a short time.

If one believes all of that is not important to be taken into consideration he can watch such a film for what it is and may have no problem with the next step Hollywood may take - producing "Samson vs. Predators", "Aliens over Jericho" or a new "Life of Brian".

Lots of people - me included - feel rather queasy with films related to any religious "trueism" - be it christian, jewish, muslim, hindu or else - especially if movies attempt to go really big screen. Charlton Heston-type sandal-movies produce shivers of embarrasment in me while something like the by now classical "The Gospel According to Mathew" by Pasolini with its down to earth approach is a true work of art.

Still in theaters in Germany, first weekend very good, rapidly declining - final result probably so-so.
 
Finally got around to renting the Blu-Ray on this one. I was very hopeful for the movie! But in the end very let down, primarily by the story choices. In a vacuum, if I said that the climax moment of "Movie X" was when the protagonist main character decides not to murder his own one-day-old grand babies, I doubt that would EVER sound like a movie you want to see. And in fact, that's what this movie did. I could get over that IF there was some sort of point, similar to the Biblical story of Abraham & Issac where God shows mercy and Abraham confirms his devotion. But here there is no moment that turns it all around.

The whole latter half of the movie felt pushed, like the movie was trying to have a deeper moral dilemma, but the movie fails in two aspects: 1) Killing babies isn't much of a moral dilemma. Anybody could tell you the right thing to do, which is never kill an innocent baby. 2) It never really resolves the dilemma that was built up. Sure Hermione (lol) has a conversation with Noah that supposes an idea, but that is a REALLY weak capper to the big "kill my babies" story.

The movie took a downhill plung the moment the girl gets trampled by the crowd. In that moment, the audience sides against Noah. As a storyteller, turning your audience against your protagonist isn't something you do without some kind of profound point or reason, which this movie fails to do.

Other than story issues with the last half of the movie, I liked the first half immensely. They made a biblical story into a fictional fantastical story. It's a good idea and premise, which despite this movie's failure, I hope to see attempted again soon. Lord of the Rings is one of the best book-to-movie adaptions, and the Biblical stories need adapted in a similar fashion, where imagination is captured and the stories are more than wrote actions, but human characters in amazing miraculous circumstances. Here's hoping.
 
KyleProhaska said:
What they didn't know is weather forced the production inside the set instead of shooting it as planned.
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Would that be considered an "Act of God" that forced them to shoot inside and change the story and ultimately upset the die hard accuracy folks? Oh the irony. lol

TheReverend said:
The movie took a downhill plung the moment the girl gets trampled by the crowd. In that moment, the audience sides against Noah. As a storyteller, turning your audience against your protagonist isn't something you do without some kind of profound point or reason, which this movie fails to do.
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Agreed. I didn't like that choice. He knew his son needed and desired a wife and it ultimately turned his son and the audience against him. That said, Noah as a charater changed in the middle of this story from being a kind caring man to a man hell bent on doing what he believed to be his goal, which was killing all human beings. But there are a few errors here, like why did they even get on the ark then or for that matter why didn't they jump off of it the first chance they got after everyone else was dead? Why even hatch a plan of who will kill who and trust that his last son would carry out the deed after he is gone? Especially when it was his mission, bestowed upon him.

The other thing that wasn't clear was why he was so bent on the destruction of all humans. I don't think they really sealed the reason for his thinking that. Certainly not from an audience perspective. That ultimately was what made it difficult to follow him in that thinking. We needed to see a stronger reason why he came to that conclusion.

My other major problem is that they seemed to skate around the whole incest thing. She has two daughters and at one point says something like "he has given us what we need" which I took to mean "two wives for your other sons." That's about as close as they got to addressing the incest thing. The fact that Noah never seem to come to this conclusion himself (at least openly) kind of shocked me. It seemed like a "good sign" that should easily convince him to let them live. Certainly much stronger than whatever convinced him that everyone needed to die. But then his one son (Ham?) wanders off into the wilderness at the end, completely defeating that possiblity, at least for him. Unless we are to assume he comes back at some point to take one of his nieces as a wife.

Overall though, I liked the movie and I'm not a religious guy. The story of Noah goes back a long time, predating even Judaism. So even if it may have meant to be based on that, I took it from the perspective that it more open than a single religious tradition. So I didn't have a problem with it not being "accurate" to the judeo/christian tradition.
 
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Took a vacation to the Philippines and finally got to watch some movies I missed in theaters during the long leg of my flight.

Noah was among those I watched and I confirmed what others were saying about it. Good actors and cinematography, Bad storyline.
 
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