I apologize for ranting on this for three posts now. I think that Christian movies lower their standards and get excited about low quality movies and that bothers me.
My bitterness started back in 2001. The two biggest books of the year came out with movies. Harry Potter and Left Behind were both massive hits as books. When the movies came out Harry Potter made over $300 million. Left Behind made $4 million. That is ridiculous! It started when instead of having a major company produce Left Behind they settled for Cloud Ten Pictures. Instead of hiring a top notch Director or Producer they hired people I have never heard of. To top it all off they got really excited because they hired Kirk Cameron as the star. At the time Kirk hadn't done anything for years. When the movie came out I received promotional material to promote the movie in my church. I did. Against my better judgement I promoted the movie. I even took a bunch of people to see it. I told the students to invite their friends. I should have known better. At the time I think Left Behind was one of the most expensive Christian films ever made. Compared to Harry Potter it sucked!
I'm not saying that you have to have huge stars to make a movie big. But you do have to spend money. Case in point The Passion of the Christ. It didn't have any major stars, but the production value was top notch. Granted it had Mel Gibson attached to it, but he wasn't in it. It's just embarrassing to me because Christian movies typically are low budget, low standard, low quality films. I grew up hearing dc Talk sing that "If it's Christian it ought to be better...Omit a bit , it should be the best." Just because you can make a film doesn't mean you should. If the message of the movie is great then the production needs to be great so it can reach the most people. I would rather a company not make a film then to settle for a cheap movie. That is just my opinion. What do you think?
