Left Behind, Part I

By popular request, I watched Left Behind so that you don’t have to. Again. That is how much I love you guys. But you know, this is why democracy isn't a cure-all for political problems, I mean, Huckabee just won Iowa. Sometimes the masses vote stupidly.

Anyway. The Left Behind franchise is awful on a number of levels. It's bad art, it's bad politics, and it's bad theology. The next three posts cannot begin to cover just how very, very awful it is. And don't think that it's "just a book" (or just a series of books, or just a series of movies and a video game where you have to kill infidels). It's quite influential (the books have sold over 65 million copies) and there are people who take it as a literal depiction of things to come. Which is why people like Huckabee get elected.

I assume that everyone is familiar with the story of Left Behind? Rod Steele and Buck Bareback* are two unlucky sinners stuck on Planet Earth after God decides to commit the world’s largest genocide by killing off 2% of the world’s population (in the movie; I think it's around 20% in the books), including all pre-pubescent children. God is supposed to be the good guy in this, by the way, so you can imagine how despicable all of the other characters are. Suck and Fuck pretty much spend the entire novel talking on cell phones while the Antichrist rises to power through seizing control of the UN, stripping all countries of nuclear weapons, and standardizing world currencies (no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re as batshit insane as the authors).

The frightening thing is that the movie, craptastic as it is, is actually better than the book. For one thing, it stars Kirk Cameron as Balls Deep, which is pretty funny, and for another, whoever made this movie was clearly aware of how much the book sucked and corrected some of the more obvious pacing and setting problems. It’s a lot easier to depict a September 11th-style Wall of Missing People in a movie than it is for authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins to realistically write a scene portraying actual human grief. So keep in mind that however awful the dialogue and the acting are, what you're about to see is an improvement over the original steaming pile of turdblossom. If you're interested in learning how much the first book sucks, particularly on a theological level, read Fred Clark's series of legendary posts.

( Shall we? )

Next up: Steele finds the firm, hard shaft of Jesus Christ, and becomes even more insufferable.

* Porn star names may not be 100% accurate.

Left Behind, Part I

By popular request, I watched Left Behind so that you don’t have to. Again. That is how much I love you guys. But you know, this is why democracy isn't a cure-all for political problems, I mean, Huckabee just won Iowa. Sometimes the masses vote stupidly.

Anyway. The Left Behind franchise is awful on a number of levels. It's bad art, it's bad politics, and it's bad theology. The next three posts cannot begin to cover just how very, very awful it is. And don't think that it's "just a book" (or just a series of books, or just a series of movies and a video game where you have to kill infidels). It's quite influential (the books have sold over 65 million copies) and there are people who take it as a literal depiction of things to come. Which is why people like Huckabee get elected.

I assume that everyone is familiar with the story of Left Behind? Rod Steele and Buck Bareback* are two unlucky sinners stuck on Planet Earth after God decides to commit the world’s largest genocide by killing off 2% of the world’s population (in the movie; I think it's around 20% in the books), including all pre-pubescent children. God is supposed to be the good guy in this, by the way, so you can imagine how despicable all of the other characters are. Suck and Fuck pretty much spend the entire novel talking on cell phones while the Antichrist rises to power through seizing control of the UN, stripping all countries of nuclear weapons, and standardizing world currencies (no, it doesn’t make a lot of sense unless you’re as batshit insane as the authors).

The frightening thing is that the movie, craptastic as it is, is actually better than the book. For one thing, it stars Kirk Cameron as Balls Deep, which is pretty funny, and for another, whoever made this movie was clearly aware of how much the book sucked and corrected some of the more obvious pacing and setting problems. It’s a lot easier to depict a September 11th-style Wall of Missing People in a movie than it is for authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins to realistically write a scene portraying actual human grief. So keep in mind that however awful the dialogue and the acting are, what you're about to see is an improvement over the original steaming pile of turdblossom. If you're interested in learning how much the first book sucks, particularly on a theological level, read Fred Clark's series of legendary posts.

( Shall we? )

Next up: Steele finds the firm, hard shaft of Jesus Christ, and becomes even more insufferable.

* Porn star names may not be 100% accurate.