My wife and I watched Ben-Hur 2016 last night. I have to mention, too, that Ben-Hur 1959 is one of her top three movies of all time.
We were set to disparage this new movie. But...well, dang, we liked it. In fact, we'd both say it came off better than the original in a whole lot of ways, especially its references and reverence to Christianity (atheists are certainly not going to like it at all--it gets an A for "Christian-friendly").
I'm not going to say it's a "great" movie--but if I had seen Ben-Hur 1959 for the first time last night, I would not have said that was a "great" movie either. This movie comes out very, very good if you're a Christian and haven't seen the first one.
Some faults:
1. Morgan Freeman. Someone likes the sound of his voice too much. His narrations at the beginning and end were annoying and unnecessary. He was too pretentious of a character, and change of his character from a bit role in the 1959 movie to a major role in the 2016 movie was for a reason that leads me to fault #3.
2. Judah and Masala were both presented too juvenile for their ages at the beginning of the movie. Judah was presented (as in the 1959 movie) as the patriarch of a noble Jewish family in the capital city of Jerusalem. In that society, "Today I am a man" was the rule by age 13. The film depicts him as a twenty-something feckless jackass, without anyone noticing much that a grown man who was supposed to be the patriarch of a noble Jewish family in the capital city of Jerusalem was acting like a feckless jackass.
Yes, they were supposed to both go through transformations over the course of the movie so that two childhood friends would become deadly enemies, but the movie could have started them out as friendly adult men (as the 1959 movie did) rather than juvenile idiots.
At that, Masala was shown a much better friend to Judah than Judah was to Masala.
3. The story did too much narration and not enough exposition. IOW, it "told" instead of "showed" 'way more than it should have. The recent movie "Risen" did a much better job showing the oppression of the Jews by the Romans, and it also did a much better job showing what it was like to be a Roman legionary stationed in Judea--how degrading it was to be a morally decent man in the role of oppressor. This movie would have done better to spend five minutes showing that.
The three years Masala spends on the Roman frontier fighting the other various not-yet-defeated Roman enemies was an interesting whirlwind tour, but we didn't really see how it affected his personality. We had to give it the benefit of the doubt as an audience.
The same thing was true of Judah's enslavement. In the 1959 movie, we got a real exposition of Judah being changed and hardened, a deep transformation...and also ample time and believable opportunity to become an expert horseman and charioteer. Because that got severely shortened, this movie had to come up with some other way for Judah to segue from "slave" to "charioteer," which was the role of Morgan Freeman's character--basically a conflation of two characters from the 1959 movie. I don't think they did that as believably, because Freeman blabs Judah through stuff that the 1959 movie shows him learning on his own.
3. Anachronistically, the Jewish women were 'way too casual in their flirtations with the men. In one scene, Judah's lover Esther is riding bareback with him through the city wearing--I swear--white yoga pants. Wut?
4. It about tripled the length of Jesus' ministry. In this movie, Jesus' ministry was at least 10 years long. But at least they did that for a reason.
All that said, the movie did have some stunning visuals. The battle sequences were spectacular, particularly the sea battle (but they were fighting Greeks. They should not have been fighting Greeks at that time).
And that chariot race. Yeah, boy, they did the chariot race.
More importantly: This movie has a different ending. It went as far as the 1959 movie, and then a couple of steps farther to a conclusion that is much more satisfying in a Christian way than the 1959 movie.
They just didn't need to end it with Freeman mouthing a lot of Paul-isms.
We were set to disparage this new movie. But...well, dang, we liked it. In fact, we'd both say it came off better than the original in a whole lot of ways, especially its references and reverence to Christianity (atheists are certainly not going to like it at all--it gets an A for "Christian-friendly").
I'm not going to say it's a "great" movie--but if I had seen Ben-Hur 1959 for the first time last night, I would not have said that was a "great" movie either. This movie comes out very, very good if you're a Christian and haven't seen the first one.
Some faults:
1. Morgan Freeman. Someone likes the sound of his voice too much. His narrations at the beginning and end were annoying and unnecessary. He was too pretentious of a character, and change of his character from a bit role in the 1959 movie to a major role in the 2016 movie was for a reason that leads me to fault #3.
2. Judah and Masala were both presented too juvenile for their ages at the beginning of the movie. Judah was presented (as in the 1959 movie) as the patriarch of a noble Jewish family in the capital city of Jerusalem. In that society, "Today I am a man" was the rule by age 13. The film depicts him as a twenty-something feckless jackass, without anyone noticing much that a grown man who was supposed to be the patriarch of a noble Jewish family in the capital city of Jerusalem was acting like a feckless jackass.
Yes, they were supposed to both go through transformations over the course of the movie so that two childhood friends would become deadly enemies, but the movie could have started them out as friendly adult men (as the 1959 movie did) rather than juvenile idiots.
At that, Masala was shown a much better friend to Judah than Judah was to Masala.
3. The story did too much narration and not enough exposition. IOW, it "told" instead of "showed" 'way more than it should have. The recent movie "Risen" did a much better job showing the oppression of the Jews by the Romans, and it also did a much better job showing what it was like to be a Roman legionary stationed in Judea--how degrading it was to be a morally decent man in the role of oppressor. This movie would have done better to spend five minutes showing that.
The three years Masala spends on the Roman frontier fighting the other various not-yet-defeated Roman enemies was an interesting whirlwind tour, but we didn't really see how it affected his personality. We had to give it the benefit of the doubt as an audience.
The same thing was true of Judah's enslavement. In the 1959 movie, we got a real exposition of Judah being changed and hardened, a deep transformation...and also ample time and believable opportunity to become an expert horseman and charioteer. Because that got severely shortened, this movie had to come up with some other way for Judah to segue from "slave" to "charioteer," which was the role of Morgan Freeman's character--basically a conflation of two characters from the 1959 movie. I don't think they did that as believably, because Freeman blabs Judah through stuff that the 1959 movie shows him learning on his own.
3. Anachronistically, the Jewish women were 'way too casual in their flirtations with the men. In one scene, Judah's lover Esther is riding bareback with him through the city wearing--I swear--white yoga pants. Wut?
4. It about tripled the length of Jesus' ministry. In this movie, Jesus' ministry was at least 10 years long. But at least they did that for a reason.
All that said, the movie did have some stunning visuals. The battle sequences were spectacular, particularly the sea battle (but they were fighting Greeks. They should not have been fighting Greeks at that time).
And that chariot race. Yeah, boy, they did the chariot race.
More importantly: This movie has a different ending. It went as far as the 1959 movie, and then a couple of steps farther to a conclusion that is much more satisfying in a Christian way than the 1959 movie.
They just didn't need to end it with Freeman mouthing a lot of Paul-isms.
