Reviews

A couple years back, I watched a movie called *God's Not Dead*. And I hated it. All the Christians in the movie are flawless saints, all the non-Christians in the movie are worse than Hitler, the "argument" it gives for the existence of God at the end has more holes than Swiss cheese on a firing range, and it's overall completely biased and manipulative in its message. It remains the most insulting movie I've ever seen.

Which is why, when making a film about a topic as sensitive as religion, you have to be careful. If you have a message to send which you see as important, it's so easy to make your side the good guys and the opposing side completely evil. But that's not the case in reality, and that's not the case in Stanley Kramer's 1960 movie *Inherit the Wind*.

This story is loosely based on the Scopes Trial of 1925, where a Tennessee schoolteacher got in trouble for teaching evolution in the classroom, which was against state law at the time. It revolves around the trial, the questions it raises about religion and morality and law and government, and its human repercussions. And while it clearly seems to favor the side which believes scientific fact has a place in education, it shows both sides in a fair, sympathetic light. The trial in this movie, as in reality, takes place in a small town where the locals have a deep fundamentalist faith. But, it doesn't treat them as stupid. It shows how their faith gives the people meaning and purpose in life, how they'd naturally feel defensive if anyone challenged it, and how they're susceptible, like everyone, to human blunders. The movie's sympathies clearly lie with the modern viewpoint that public schools shouldn't base their curriculum on a Christian worldview (who would disagree?), but rather than demonizing the other side, it presents them as well-meaning but misguided.

The movie also criticizes the other side - namely, any atheist who tries to shatter people's beliefs for no reason. One character, a journalist named E.K. Hornbeck played by Gene Kelly, is a slimy city-slicker and cynical atheist who constantly has a condescending remark about the uneducated townsfolk and the "fairy tales" they believe in. He rightfully gets a verbal slap in the face at the end. The defense is Henry Drummond, who's more quiet about his atheism and respects the beliefs of others, only lashing out when the separation of church and state is being undermined, so I identified with him the most. The teacher himself is actually a fairly minor character, but he's shown to be what I think most people would identify with - a Christian who doesn't take the Bible literally and has moments of doubt when times are tough, but takes to heart Jesus' message of love and tolerance. The prosecution is Matthew Harrison Brady, who's probably the most interesting character. A loud-mouthed politician and fundamentalist who's a nationwide celebrity for his preaching, kind of the equivalent of a modern-day televangelist. He's charismatic, eloquent, and larger than life. It's interesting how conservatives and reactionaries tend to rally behind confident men who are great at public speaking and telling people how to think, act, and live. It was William Jennings Bryan back then, and nowadays it's Ben Shapiro and Jordan Peterson. Still, unlike Ben Shapiro, Brady in this movie has moments of humanity. He has a strong, loving connection with his wife. He's shown to be former best friends with Drummond, making their arguments in the trial all the more gut-wrenching. He's firm and convincing in his arguments for his faith, coming across not as a strawman but as very much how a modern fundamentalist talks. But even he can acknowledge when religion goes too far. In the most chilling moment in the movie, a pastor damns his daughter to Hell for supporting the pro-evolution teacher (her husband), and Brady, visibly shaken, interrupts the sermon, gives a Bible verse which suggests being kind to your family (and gives the movie its title), and tells everyone to go home.

One of the main complaints I hear about this movie is that it doesn't really follow the events of the Scopes Trial, and alters them quite a bit. But it never claims to be a portrayal of real events. As a History major, I can say that the real story of the Scopes Trial is a lot more boring than this one, and would've made for a worse movie. The differences were all conscious decisions, not mistakes. Hell, they even changed the names! It's pretty easy to figure out who's who if you know your history, but they clearly wanted just to get at the *spirit* of what the Scopes Trial meant for our culture, without worrying about getting every single tiny little detail right so condescending critics wouldn't point out the inevitable goofs. And yet they did anyway. It seems to me that the changes they made, or rather that the two playwrights made for the play this was based on, was meant to make it a more flowing, meaningful narrative. I support all the changes, and it's really cool to see the parallels and differences. It'd be incredibly easy to go on Wikipedia and fact-check every unimportant detail they got "wrong" in this movie. But I'd like to see those smug critics try and type up a better script than this one.

Oof. Sorry, I just had to rant after reading some of the 1-star reviews for this movie. Anyway, in the same way *12 Angry Men* should be viewed by anyone who plans to practice law, I think *Inherit the Wind* should be viewed by anyone who's religious, or not religious, or...well, just everyone. It really examines all sides (except for religions other than Christianity, but eh, it was the early 60s) and gives them a fair hearing. It seems that American people have been split into not just into two different parties, but two different worldviews which have entirely different values, speech patterns, role models, and news sources: the more secular, liberal, cosmopolitan worldview, and the more religious, libertarian, patriotic worldview. This movie shows what our country desperately needs right now: real, honest dialogue between both sides. Few movies openly and fairly discuss religion nowadays - and I'm excluding those mass-produced evangelical flicks from the likes of Kirk Cameron, which are meant only to reaffirm the beliefs of people who already believe. Not meant to challenge you or make you think in the least, at *Inherit the Wind* does. My hope is to see another movie like this one in theaters sometime before I die. Our country sorely needs it.

Lately, I've been on a "bad Christian movie" kick, and when I watched "New World Order" on Amazon Prime, it managed to crouch even lower than my expectations. While I was expecting this film to have a low budget, it appears that this movie was not only funded by one married couple, Duane and Antoinette McCoy, but also directed and written by them. And this pair, while clearly knowing nothing about filmmaking, decided to make their own Hunger-Games-Divergent-Maze-Runner-esque dystopia while giving it a Biblical spin. Some great films were made on a low budget, but those at least relied on a decent story or interesting characters to make up for their absence of visual grandeur. This film has almost no good qualities to fill the empty void of boring visuals.

The actual Book of Revelations is very interesting. It can be interpreted allegorically in a thousand different ways, and contains some epic, almost psychedelic imagery if taken literally. If you read some verses, it sounds like a great film premise, and could lead to all sorts of creative license. But this movie contains only the bare minimum of what you'd expect: the Beast from the Sea is actually an evil dictator, he demands everyone get a tattoo to buy goods, nations form an alliance to worship him, so on and so forth. The McCoys have probably never heard the valuable phrase "show, don't tell". They squeeze out their exposition in dialogic tidbits as the story progresses, assuming that their tiny budget gives them an excuse not to show some creativity in how they flesh out their world. Indeed, their futuristic dystopia seems to look EXACTLY like our world. Now, this could lead to some interesting commentary that we are living in that world right now. While that seems a bit doom-and-gloom, it's a clever way to get around those budget constraints. But this movie's society is nothing like ours: there's a Supreme Chancellor that rules over the entire population (which seems to be about 20) and he forces everyone to get decal tattoos of some zigzaggy circular nonsense under penalty of death.

Our heroine is a well-endowed girl named Demi, played by Melissa Farley, who wears tight-fitting grey tops to make up for her total absence of personality. Curious that the Christian version of Katniss is more sexualized than Katniss herself. She gets a love interest named Jason, and with her friends Christen and Cedric, forms one of those friend groups that never happen in real life but seem to be "in" after the success of Harry Potter. There isn't enough chemistry between them to fill a thimble. Our female leads spend half the movie playing with their already-outdated phones (Because we need to relate to the young crowd! So let's show teens calling each other rather than diving into their emotional state!) and the other half whining and crying. The girls in this movie are annoyingly submissive, and they always end up an emotional wreck that runs to their man for comfort. Kevin Herrmann as the unnamed villain is at least enjoyably awkward, and one of the only bits of entertainment I salvaged from this film was seeing him walk onto the screen and not even pretending to know what he's doing. The only other bit of entertainment I got was one mid-sentence death scene later in the film, which was so abrupt and poorly acted that I burst out laughing.

The other user reviews criticize this film for taking the Bible too literally and being too Christian. Honestly, it isn't even that religious. They barely even mention Jesus or God, maybe twice or thrice in the entire film. It's never addressed that accepting the Mark means conscious worship of the Devil; the characters just sort of don't like it. They even misquote the Bible at one point: the Beast that emerges to rule the Earth has ten horns, not two. If you're going to make a film about crazy religious doomsday prophecies, at least get them right! Of course, they eventually go for the generic "band of freedom fighters" route. As if dividing society into five factions wasn't silly enough, now we've got Jesus-loving Merry Men fighting against the evil Satanic government. This film has a high death toll, obviously to make it dark and edgy like Hunger Games, but since you don't care about any of the characters, the viewer is left emotionless.

I wasn't expecting much out of "New World Order", but I wasn't expecting it to fall below student film level. In the realms of acting, cinematography, dialogue, and pure storytelling, this movie fails badly. I save the one-star rating for films that fill me with disgust and loathing, and it wasn't able to do even that. I'm open to its premise, but it only trudges along through its clichés, boring the audience and the cast, without the courage to explore any of its ideas on a deeper level.