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The Book of WTF
The Book of WTF?
Subtitle: Can I have those two hours of my life back, please?
I was in town with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
werenerd the other day, and we had a couple of hours to waste, so we decided to see what was on at the nearest cinema, and picked what looked like it might be a fun 'exploding movie' - The Book of Eli, with Denzel Washington playing some kind of 'one guy against the world' gig. Well we were right about it being a 'superhero' film, but fun? Boy, were we wrong.
The Book of Eli is two hours of insane christian propaganda with no apparent idea quite what it's trying to say, and the most fucked up moral message I have ever seen in a movie. I'd love to say it was 'so bad it's good' but frankly, it was just so bad it's embarrassing to watch.
The film opens on Denzel Washington's character stealing boots from a corpse (a beautiful, heartwarming scene), and then eating his distinctly feline dinner. There is a wonderful book about screenwriting that talks about helping audiences to connect with your characters - because if your audience doesn't give a crap about your lead it will almost guarantee your film being a flop. This book is called 'save the cat'. At the start of this film Eli not only doesn't save the cat, he kills and eats it.
Then he starts out on his day's journey, killing a criminal gang as a by the way, the first demonstration of his entirely unexplained superpowers, and - I love this bit - having demonstrated that he can kick the asses of several gang members in one go without breaking into a sweat, he then stands by and does absolutely nothing while a young woman is raped and murdered by the roadside. What a hero!
Great, so we're watching a sociopathic asshole walk across the post-apocalyptic Unites States. This is going to be a fun couple of hours.
Cue the arrival of the 'bad guy' - the 'charismatic leader' of this small town who is sending men out in search of one particular book. The Book, he declares (in probably the only realistic moment of the movie), that will make it possible for him to control the minds of the population, which will enable him to become leader of everyone and bend anyone he desires to his will. Not really sure what they were trying to achieve with that one - clearly the film has some sort of christian promotional goal in mind, so are they trying to say that in the wrong hands the bible can be a tool for evil?
Nice going, crazy christian screenwriters! I have a bible, I can control your mind!
At this point, vague allusions are made to a religious war of some kind that tore the ozone layer away (the reason everyone in the film just happens to be wearing cool sunglasses all the way through), and that somehow every single copy of the Bible in the world was burned after the war. Seriously - every single copy from every hotel room, and none managed to get missed. Oh, and for some supposedly linked, but equally unexplained reason people have started eating human flesh, which apparently makes your hands shake.
Of course, Eli just happens to have a copy of The Book - they harp on about it being a King James edition, because apparently that's important y'know, the most 'powerful' version, maybe - which is discovered by the 'bad guys' thanks to his one moment of actual moral behaviour, when he declines to rape a young girl who is sent to his room to persuade him to join the gang ("He's killed half our men, clearly he ought to be one of us, maybe if we get him laid he'll see how cool we really are!"). She spots the book, and gives Eli away when the evil leader pulls her mother's hair (no, really) "Look, I'm hurting your mother!" I found myself chuckling at the five-year-old's line spoken entirely straight-faced. A more thoroughly convincing torture scene probably wouldn't have helped the film much, on the whole, though.
Cue much chasing around the countryside, (since Eli's managed to walk out of the door of the evil stronghold while nobody was looking) during which our amoral christian 'hero' demonstrates a miraculous ability to shoot snipers of the rooves of buildings without looking at them, using a hand-gun, walk faster than a motor vehicle can keep up with, evade the clutches of a pair of ghouls who are suspiciously reminiscent of the shop owners in the League of Gentlemen (remember, this isn't supposed to be a comedy!), and eventually, survive an almost point-blank shot in the stomach from a rifle. Our psychotic hero is sustained, apparently, by a voice in his head that tells him he'll be unharmed and he must 'go west' (possibly the pet shop boys on his miraculously surviving iPod?). He manages to complete his journey, with an almost certainly suppurating untreated stomach wound, and just happens to last for several more months whilst he *recites* the bible from start to finish, since he in fact did give up the only surviving copy to the bad guys just before they left him for dead (note to all potential film villains: check the goddamned pulse!). The last 'twist' in this tale being that the book is in braille - was Eli blind all along? Who knows... or for that matter, who cares?
Wow, what a moral message that is! You can kill, maim, steal, entirely ignore people in need, possibly even rape people yourself (this one's dealt with rather ambiguously, but he doesn't particularly seem to not sleep with the girl because it's WRONG so much as because he's uninterested), and as long as you happen to be carrying a Bible, God will give you superpowers and make you unkillable. Hey momma, I gotta get me one of those Bible things!
The one saving grace of this entire film was the view: It's gothically pretty, very steam-punk, and full of people wearing cool shades and pretty girls in rags. Watch it with the sound off, or with earplugs in if you have to watch it at all.
One last WTF - it's mentioned as an aside in the film that apparently Eli walked for 30 years to cross the United States... assuming a man can walk 20 miles a day (which is pretty normal), the width of the states is about 2680 miles. A normal man could walk that in 134 days - well under half a year, with a good sense of direction. Thirty years? Really? Apparently being guided by God and having superpowers doesn't get you anywhere quickly!
Subtitle: Can I have those two hours of my life back, please?
I was in town with
werenerd the other day, and we had a couple of hours to waste, so we decided to see what was on at the nearest cinema, and picked what looked like it might be a fun 'exploding movie' - The Book of Eli, with Denzel Washington playing some kind of 'one guy against the world' gig. Well we were right about it being a 'superhero' film, but fun? Boy, were we wrong. The Book of Eli is two hours of insane christian propaganda with no apparent idea quite what it's trying to say, and the most fucked up moral message I have ever seen in a movie. I'd love to say it was 'so bad it's good' but frankly, it was just so bad it's embarrassing to watch.
The film opens on Denzel Washington's character stealing boots from a corpse (a beautiful, heartwarming scene), and then eating his distinctly feline dinner. There is a wonderful book about screenwriting that talks about helping audiences to connect with your characters - because if your audience doesn't give a crap about your lead it will almost guarantee your film being a flop. This book is called 'save the cat'. At the start of this film Eli not only doesn't save the cat, he kills and eats it.
Then he starts out on his day's journey, killing a criminal gang as a by the way, the first demonstration of his entirely unexplained superpowers, and - I love this bit - having demonstrated that he can kick the asses of several gang members in one go without breaking into a sweat, he then stands by and does absolutely nothing while a young woman is raped and murdered by the roadside. What a hero!
Great, so we're watching a sociopathic asshole walk across the post-apocalyptic Unites States. This is going to be a fun couple of hours.
Cue the arrival of the 'bad guy' - the 'charismatic leader' of this small town who is sending men out in search of one particular book. The Book, he declares (in probably the only realistic moment of the movie), that will make it possible for him to control the minds of the population, which will enable him to become leader of everyone and bend anyone he desires to his will. Not really sure what they were trying to achieve with that one - clearly the film has some sort of christian promotional goal in mind, so are they trying to say that in the wrong hands the bible can be a tool for evil?
Nice going, crazy christian screenwriters! I have a bible, I can control your mind!
At this point, vague allusions are made to a religious war of some kind that tore the ozone layer away (the reason everyone in the film just happens to be wearing cool sunglasses all the way through), and that somehow every single copy of the Bible in the world was burned after the war. Seriously - every single copy from every hotel room, and none managed to get missed. Oh, and for some supposedly linked, but equally unexplained reason people have started eating human flesh, which apparently makes your hands shake.
Of course, Eli just happens to have a copy of The Book - they harp on about it being a King James edition, because apparently that's important y'know, the most 'powerful' version, maybe - which is discovered by the 'bad guys' thanks to his one moment of actual moral behaviour, when he declines to rape a young girl who is sent to his room to persuade him to join the gang ("He's killed half our men, clearly he ought to be one of us, maybe if we get him laid he'll see how cool we really are!"). She spots the book, and gives Eli away when the evil leader pulls her mother's hair (no, really) "Look, I'm hurting your mother!" I found myself chuckling at the five-year-old's line spoken entirely straight-faced. A more thoroughly convincing torture scene probably wouldn't have helped the film much, on the whole, though.
Cue much chasing around the countryside, (since Eli's managed to walk out of the door of the evil stronghold while nobody was looking) during which our amoral christian 'hero' demonstrates a miraculous ability to shoot snipers of the rooves of buildings without looking at them, using a hand-gun, walk faster than a motor vehicle can keep up with, evade the clutches of a pair of ghouls who are suspiciously reminiscent of the shop owners in the League of Gentlemen (remember, this isn't supposed to be a comedy!), and eventually, survive an almost point-blank shot in the stomach from a rifle. Our psychotic hero is sustained, apparently, by a voice in his head that tells him he'll be unharmed and he must 'go west' (possibly the pet shop boys on his miraculously surviving iPod?). He manages to complete his journey, with an almost certainly suppurating untreated stomach wound, and just happens to last for several more months whilst he *recites* the bible from start to finish, since he in fact did give up the only surviving copy to the bad guys just before they left him for dead (note to all potential film villains: check the goddamned pulse!). The last 'twist' in this tale being that the book is in braille - was Eli blind all along? Who knows... or for that matter, who cares?
Wow, what a moral message that is! You can kill, maim, steal, entirely ignore people in need, possibly even rape people yourself (this one's dealt with rather ambiguously, but he doesn't particularly seem to not sleep with the girl because it's WRONG so much as because he's uninterested), and as long as you happen to be carrying a Bible, God will give you superpowers and make you unkillable. Hey momma, I gotta get me one of those Bible things!
The one saving grace of this entire film was the view: It's gothically pretty, very steam-punk, and full of people wearing cool shades and pretty girls in rags. Watch it with the sound off, or with earplugs in if you have to watch it at all.
One last WTF - it's mentioned as an aside in the film that apparently Eli walked for 30 years to cross the United States... assuming a man can walk 20 miles a day (which is pretty normal), the width of the states is about 2680 miles. A normal man could walk that in 134 days - well under half a year, with a good sense of direction. Thirty years? Really? Apparently being guided by God and having superpowers doesn't get you anywhere quickly!
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Anyway, it's a common Christian misconception that anyone without religion (or worse still, Paganism!) is amoral. It gets tiring. My boyfriend pointed out that my 'morality' score on okcupid is at zero yet I'm one of the most moral people he's met, which I think speaks volumes!
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Someone phoned the London Ambulance service to report a person lying on the street bleeding, when asked if they could perform some basic checks for the call taker (pulse, breathing etc) the person said they couldn't stop to help as they were late for church!
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Oh, that one's always been true. You know the book of Exodus, right? The one where Moses leads the Hebrew slaves out of Egypt and they trek through the desert for forty years and there's manna falling from the sky and the ten commandments turn up and he lives to be over a hundred years old but still never quite makes it to Israel, the "land of milk and honey"?
Yeah, if you actually look at it on a map, it's about a week's walk.
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As for taking 30 years to cross the US, even on foot ... well, you know how it is when you're taking a trip with some people, particularly if you're in their old neighborhood or something. You have to stop here and there so they can tell you all about the people that used to live there or that funny shaped rock they found in the creek when they were seven. Now imagine this trip with the person that (supposedly) created the world. What with having to stop every few hundred feet so God can ramble on and tell pointless stories it's probably amazing that you'd ever get anywhere!