It's simple. Religion isn't entertaining unless you're a nut.

The nuts boycott anything hollywood because they think it's sinful. That's a market that hollywood can't tap into unless they start making jesus movies.

Fireproof, which was an independent film did really well. That's because churches bought out huge blocks of tickets for that movie apparently. Moar jeebus in the movies more money for hollywood.

But they will alienate patrons (most people) who don't go to the movies to be preached at so they have to find a balance.

I was actually talking about this the other day. At least in television, this is a great time for atheists. There are two highly rated television shows with lead characters who are openly atheists. Both Dr. Gregory House on House and Dr. Temperance Brennan on Bones are outspoken in their atheism based upon rational imperialism. Several of the supporting characters on the show have also expressed similar attitudes. While at the same time, they've both shown characters who do have faith without putting either side in a poor light (Dr. Chase on House and Agent Booth on Bones...plus that Muslim intern that rotates in every few episodes).

It's like people can make their own choices about their spiritual lives and co-exist both professionally and personally with those who make other choices...weird...

log_jammin: I enjoyed The Passion of the Christ

I went for the flaying scene, and I was not disappointed. A cat'o'nine tails with shards of glass tied to the ends? biatchin'!

Or, uh, something a little less bloodthirsty than that.

Abstruse: rational imperialism

heh. Er, do you mean empiricism, rather than imperialism?

jekxrb: heh. Er, do you mean empiricism, rather than imperialism?

I just woke up and I'm hung over...

Abstruse: I just woke up and I'm hung over...

I don't usually bother to correct people; I make enough errors of my own. But that was pretty funny. And I'm sure there'll be some in here squawking about what they see as 'rational imperialism' before too long. ;-)

Tellingthem: I was always curious why people feel the need to see their points of view represented in mass media? If every single show on television only portrayed a christian point of view I could care less. Is it the fact that we need to relate to people on television? Do we need some kind of imaginary role models to look up to? I have always been an atheist and have never cared if anyone else was or not. It just doesn't mean anything to me.

Because I like to identify with the characters in the fiction I read/watch. I want them to have personality and motivations that reflect some part of me as it creates more emotional involvement from me into the show/movie/book. Everyone is like that, and it's something every writer tries to do.

I also like my entertainment to be somewhat consistent with reality. You have a doctor who loathes stupidity and values logical reasoning and deduction who has blind faith in a god? A scientist who studies the root causes of our culture and society who overexamines everything in a rational and intellectual manner also having blind faith? Neither of those make any sense from a character point of view.

Tellingthem: Abstruse: I was actually talking about this the other day. At least in television, this is a great time for atheists. There are two highly rated television shows with lead characters who are openly atheists. Both Dr. Gregory House on House and Dr. Temperance Brennan on Bones are outspoken in their atheism based upon rational imperialism. Several of the supporting characters on the show have also expressed similar attitudes. While at the same time, they've both shown characters who do have faith without putting either side in a poor light (Dr. Chase on House and Agent Booth on Bones...plus that Muslim intern that rotates in every few episodes).

It's like people can make their own choices about their spiritual lives and co-exist both professionally and personally with those who make other choices...weird...

I was always curious why people feel the need to see their points of view represented in mass media? If every single show on television only portrayed a christian point of view I could care less. Is it the fact that we need to relate to people on television? Do we need some kind of imaginary role models to look up to? I have always been an atheist and have never cared if anyone else was or not. It just doesn't mean anything to me.

/not trying to say that you need a role model or anything
//also not trying to troll...just curious

Audiences need characters that they can relate to. It's that simple.

Bead mumblers are just going to have to get used to the fact that their beliefs are not mainstream.

Tellingthem: Is it the fact that we need to relate to people on television? Do we need some kind of imaginary role models to look up to?

Second Abstruse's answer to that, but it's not all about having a "role model".

People who aren't white, Christian, or heterosexual crave some recognition in the world around them, something or someone that soesn't make them feel like a "minority". Having positive portrayals on TV not only gives voice to their feelings, but can even melt barriers in society, both real & perceived.

It's just nice to have a well-written character say the things you want to say, but never get the chance to, or could even suffer consequences for saying. The character isn't a "hero" so much as he/she is an artistic projection we can identify with on some level. That's a good thing for people who can't relate to anyone in their daily lives.

Atheists have House.
Gays have Will & Grace.
Lesbians have The L Word.
Nerds have Big Bang Theory.
Tacky, brash, poor people had Roseanne.
Scots have Craig Ferguson. Latinos have ... I don't know, George Lopez? That bee on The Simpsons?
Morons have Jay Leno.

The list goes on ...

lobootomy: Britney Spear's Speculum: It's simple. Religion isn't entertaining unless you're a nut.

I think it's actually being preached to that isn't entertaining. Handled correctly, a religious person in film can be entertaining.

I just finished watching the first three seasons of The Tudors, and if that isn't entertaining religious characters I don't know what is. People are beheaded all over the place for slight differences in belief. Earthly power struggles routinely butt up against religious belief.

Watched "Jesus Christ Superstar" again recently. It preaches but it isn't preachy, and is one farking entertaining film.

The Bible can be an entertaining read as well. Just don't take it too seriously.

syrynxx: Avatar as a religious-themed movie? Shintoism teaches that all living things, even the Earth itself, have a spirit. This is completely unprovable. But when you can plug your hair into a tree, that's no longer a religious act of blind faith - that's science.

Sigourney Weaver's character says as much. And the whole thing was concocted to have a cute shamanistic, pantheistic-sounding philosophy for the noble savages, without James Cameron having to acknowledge any sort of supernatural when his dei ex Pandora act like, well, divine intervention.

Still waiting for Weenersafarian character in a Hollywood feature.

/Ramen!

Britney Spear's Speculum: It's simple. Religion isn't entertaining unless you're a nut.

Umm...Religion in Battle Star Galactica was entertaining, and looks like it will be entertaining in the new Caprica series. Well up until BSG went full retard in the fourth season.

Anodos: syrynxx: Avatar as a religious-themed movie? Shintoism teaches that all living things, even the Earth itself, have a spirit. This is completely unprovable. But when you can plug your hair into a tree, that's no longer a religious act of blind faith - that's science.

Sigourney Weaver's character says as much. And the whole thing was concocted to have a cute shamanistic, pantheistic-sounding philosophy for the noble savages, without James Cameron having to acknowledge any sort of supernatural when his dei ex Pandora act like, well, divine intervention.

Well... one could say it was "self-preservation" really, since the "world tree" was about to get blown up...

Britney Spear's Speculum: Fireproof,

I sat through that trash. Cameron is barely passable as the fire fighter and the movie more or less trivializes what should have been a very complicated situation for the couple. The film had serious potential, all the elements were there for a real engaging drama with a very real possible conflict, hell you could have even kept most of the jebus in there and used that as a plot device. But the film derails itself about halfway through and becomes more or less a dogma film, only entertainment to those already indoctrinated in the dogma.

Its like comic nerds who love a certain comic only because of the in jokes surrounding it, while it may have potential the rest of us in the majority are left at the edges staring inside and going "WTF?"

Tellingthem: I was always curious why people feel the need to see their points of view represented in mass media?

I don't have a problem with that. It's when people feel the need to see their points of view represented to the exclusion of all other points of view when it gets problematic.

Splinshints: log_jammin: I know I'm gonna get flamed for this but....I enjoyed The Passion of the Christ. I thought it was a very good movie.

Well, I'M not gonna flame you, but I will say I thought it was a pretty lousy movie. I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that it was "torture porn" on the level of Hostel and Saw like some people do, but I do think that the reason everyone focuses on the egregiously violent beating Jesus receives is less because of the brutality of the scene and more due to the rest of the movie being almost entirely unmemorable.

It was far from the worst movie I've ever seen, but I wouldn't sit through it a second time.


It was closer to being a snuff film than torture porn. They spent practically zero time establishing the Jesus character so I felt no emotional attachment to him while he spent the whole movie being tortured. I guess they thought that audiences would automatically love him but that's not how movies and stories work.

log_jammin: Britney Spear's Speculum: It's simple. Religion isn't entertaining unless you're a nut.

I know I'm gonna get flamed for this but....I enjoyed The Passion of the Christ. I thought it was a very good movie.

You should check out The Saw series and Hostel one and two,

Atheist here, would love forever anyone who did a proper treatment of Paradise Lost.

/The bible could have been really cool if Milton had written it

thunderbird8804: Atheist here, would love forever anyone who did a proper treatment of Paradise Lost.

/The bible could have been really cool if Milton had written it

I agree. Love, love, love Paradise Lost.

marcpen: I saw the big guy and the petite babe and wondered: How the hell does THAT get into THAT?

The site says it's from "The Blind Side," which is described as "an uplifting family picture." So... it doesn't.

Abstruse:
I also like my entertainment to be somewhat consistent with reality. You have a doctor who loathes stupidity and values logical reasoning and deduction who has blind faith in a god? A scientist who studies the root causes of our culture and society who overexamines everything in a rational and intellectual manner also having blind faith? Neither of those make any sense from a character point of view.

Uh, there are quite a few people who match those descriptions. Not so hard to find if you look for a second. Kenneth Miller, that guy Obama appointed to the NHS (or whatever it was, it made a splash around here and now I can't find it). Say they're crazy if you like but they exist in numbers.

if you don't like what's on tv or in the theater DON'T WATCH IT.

sick of people complaining. especially those who run to the government to get laws made that force their views/beliefs on the rest of us.

t3knomanser: browntimmy: They spent practically zero time establishing the Jesus character so I felt no emotional attachment to him while he spent the whole movie being tortured.

The assumption, of course, is that if you've been in Western culture, you know the character and the story. Which is likely true, but knowing it and caring are too totally different things. My experience, and this is purely anecdotal, is that only religious people were moved by the film, even if they were only casually religious.

It's a tortured filled guilt trip. Completely misses the entire point of Jesus's teachings or life.

t3knomanser: browntimmy: They spent practically zero time establishing the Jesus character so I felt no emotional attachment to him while he spent the whole movie being tortured.

The assumption, of course, is that if you've been in Western culture, you know the character and the story. Which is likely true, but knowing it and caring are too totally different things. My experience, and this is purely anecdotal, is that only religious people were moved by the film, even if they were only casually religious.

The plot of the movie can be summed up in one single line:

Jesus suffered for your sins.

That's the only point on the entire friggin' movie. Everything that is in that film is solely for supporting that statement. Character development, story, plot, conflict...all pointless because they had nothing to do with that statement.

/Only character I liked in the movie was Pontius Pilate. His whole character motivation through the whole film is "I just wanna go back to Rome, stop getting me involved in this shiat" and he sticks to that to the end.

aintsobad: Still waiting for Weenersafarian character in a Hollywood feature.

/Ramen!

Ha. Filtered, but I know what you're saying.

Myself, I'm waiting for the first... pastafarian to kill another person as part of a religious war. OK, that won't happen in my lifetime. Maybe three, four hundred years.

You're thinking, this guy's crazy. Pastafarianism is a joke, started to point out the idiocy of creationism being taught in classrooms. Yeah. Scientology was a bar bet.

Give it time. It will happen. You become the thing you hate. If there's one law of the universe I truly believe in, it's that.

browntimmy: It was closer to being a snuff film than torture porn. They spent practically zero time establishing the Jesus character so I felt no emotional attachment to him while he spent the whole movie being tortured. I guess they thought that audiences would automatically love him but that's not how movies and stories work.

Robert Powell's Passion in the 80s-era Jesus of Nazareth mini-series was a thousand times more impactful and emotional than Jim Caviezel's.

Other than overtly religious shows like touched by an angel, the only family on tv I can think of that is shown regularly going to church is the Simpsons.

Invisible Pedestrian: Watched "Jesus Christ Superstar" again recently.

What's the buzz? Tell me what's happenin'!

th0th: browntimmy: It was closer to being a snuff film than torture porn. They spent practically zero time establishing the Jesus character so I felt no emotional attachment to him while he spent the whole movie being tortured. I guess they thought that audiences would automatically love him but that's not how movies and stories work.

Robert Powell's Passion in the 80s-era Jesus of Nazareth mini-series was a thousand times more impactful and emotional than Jim Caviezel's.

And I'd go for the magic that was Jesus Christ Superstar over both; but I did enjoy all three.