Come All Ye Faithful back to the Movies?

Has Hollywood finally decided to celebrate and not eviscerate Christianity?

By Greg Rabidoux

Ironic, isn't it?

This past weekend, while Snow White was getting buried in an avalanche of bad reviews, bad box office, and bad karma, two films that cost a small fraction of Disney's cave-dwelling fantasy, A Working Man, and The Chosen: Last Supper were proving to be more popular and much more profitable.

Legendary film director Cecil B. DeMille, as in "I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille" (Sunset Boulevard 1950) made a lot of movies in his day. Early on he showed a sensitivity and deft touch with King of Kings (1927) about the rise and fall and rise again of the "One, true King," Jesus. Over the years, an estimated 800 million have viewed this masterpiece. He went on to make another biblical epic in Samson and Delilah (1949) which was the surprise hit of that year taking the top box office spot with audiences, while being largely ignored by film critics and Hollywood's elite. This was an early pattern in the making. When DeMille, an Episcopalian, pitched his next religious project, The Ten Commandments, with the star talent of Charlton Heston (1956) studio executives and Hollywood power brokers balked. No way, they countered. Simply not what the paying movie-goers wanted. It was the mid-50s and Hollywood was still in its post-WWII Noir malaise. Femme-fatales, fast-talking gangsters, and even faster-shooting Tommy-guns. Toss in a Maltese Falcon or two and you get the picture. Literally.

So, it was by no small cinematic miracle that The Ten Commandments was not only made but went on to become one of the top grossing films of all-time. Not just a Christian film, but one of the all-time biggest box office films ever, Christian, pagan, or otherwise.

So, then Hollywood quickly realized the error of its ways, recognized how hungry so many people of faith and their families wanted more films rooted in values, belief, and a strong moral compass between good and bad, right and wrong, and delivered the goods, right?

Wrong.

The Cinematic 60s and 70s meant new freedom from the big film studios and lots of rebellious, counter-culture films like Easy Rider (1969) with its dope, full-throated, Motorcycles, and even dopier script, well, lack thereof. But films like this were undeniably popular and relatively cheap to make (no parting of the Red Sea on screen) and audiences wanted more. So, Hollywood got behind films which showed a rotting of our culture, a decaying of our morals, and graduates like Dustin Hoffman who couldn't say no to Mrs. Robinson while proposing marriage to her daughter all the while songs like "Hello darkness, my old friend" filled the movie soundtrack. The Bible and all those "Bible thumpers" who had foisted the "Code" onto Hollywood were out. It was time to "let it all hang out" and when Hollywood did touch on religious themes in film it was either about Devil-Worship (Rosemary's Baby) or possessed girls who found new and horrific ways to desecrate crosses while being exorcised (The Exorcist 1973). And audiences couldn't seem to get enough of these stories either.

And then decades passed. Rather than overt films about organized Christianity, and I don't mean those that focused primarily, if not exclusively on abusive priests and nuns who have abortions, Hollywood addressed the roots of faith by tackling good versus evil and darkness versus light in secular film franchises. So, Star Wars continued the biblical battle over crossing lightsabers, while lots of filmmakers chose to embrace the uncertainty of purgatory and hell with a myriad of "there is no good, no God" films about the Vietnam War.

When Mel Gibson (talk about a fallen Hollywood angel) made the courageous and phenomenally successful The Passion of Christ (2004), which grossed $375 million on a budget of $30 million, it seemed that Hollywood was poised to open the door and checkbook once again to the Cecil B. DeMilles and Mel Gibsons of the world and the forgotten faithful moviegoers.

Not so fast.

With Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ (1988) still leaving a terrible taste in the mouths of many Christians, Hollywood zagged. They went full-on DaVinci Code film franchise and peddled visions of Christ marrying Mary Magdalene. It helped make for a blockbuster box-office but then it wasn't a film for the faithful, was it?

But a mere ten years later, faith-based films started to again exert their biblical muscle. In 2014 alone, films like God's Not Dead and Exodus again surprised the studios with their big box office and small budgets. Miracles From Heaven (2016) with Jennifer Garner, an unabashed actress of faith, and I Can Only Imagine (2018) with Dennis Quaid, an actor of faith, made close to $150 million with combined budgets of only $30 million.

Pretty strong argument about making more films about faith since they keep showing us they are both inspirational and good business, right?

And not just on the big screens, long before The Chosen franchise, Roma Downey's Touched by an Angel (1994-2003) again should have shown, if anyone was paying attention, that faith-based films didn't suddenly become trendy, they always have been.

Sometimes, even in Hollywood, ya just gotta have faith.

Greg Rabidoux is an award-winning filmmaker, author, and screenwriter, and co-founder of ValMar Films.

For more check out www.valmarfilms.com