July 6, 2013
NOTE: From now on, all “Coming Soon” entries will appear on the home page.
Trailers preceding “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey”
AFTER EARTH
“After Earth,” which is due to come out in June, explores a question that has been on the minds of many people in our time: What if nature, in response to the pollution and destruction she has suffered at the hands of human beings, intends to get rid of us?
From a Christian perspective, this question reflects something of the truth. I touched on this subject in my review of Joe Carnahan’s “The Grey” — which can be found at https://intothedance.wordpress.com/2012/11/30/wolves-and-whales-man-and-nature-in-the-grey-and-big-miracle-part-two/ — but I will offer a quick summary here: Nature, at times, acts as a sort of “witness” against man’s departure from the will of his Creator.
A Biblical illustration of this is when the King of Assyria exports foreigners into the Holy Land after his conquest:
A report reached the king of Assyria: “The nations whom you deported and settled in the cities of Samaria do not know how to worship the God of the land, and he has sent lions among them that are killing them, since they do not know how to worship the God of the land” (2 Kings 17:26).
Mankind is the crown of God’s creation, and as such will continue to exist because of the Lord’s mercy and faithfulness. But hopefully fictional scenarios such as the one presented in “After Earth” will give us a chance to think about the Reckoning we will, in fact, have to face one day, about how our actions affect the rest of the created order, and about how we should amend our ways in the meantime.
MAN OF STEEL
I know what you’re probably thinking…”Do we really need another superhero movie?”
On the one hand, it’s possible that this genre is being overused to the point of becoming more of a franchise than a form of storytelling (if that hasn’t happened already).
But in terms of the latter, hero tales have been part of the fabric of human existence for longer than memory can tell. Heroes represent the aspirations of a culture and of the human heart. Their stories help us to recognize our potential while at the same time holding up a mirror for those areas in which we need to improve.
I was thinking of our culture’s fascination with superheroes as I watched this trailer, but it particularly struck me when Clark’s father (Kevin Kostner) told him that he must decide what kind of man he will be, because that man “will change the world.”
We all want, to varying degrees, to venture beyond the narrow confines of mediocrity. We want not only to walk the paths of this world while we’re here, but to make a “mark” that will ensure we leave the world a better place than when we found it. I think that’s probably part of why we are so enamored of superheroes.
But we seem very prone to the mistaken notion that only a super-human from another planet with unusual powers can impact the world in such a way; the rest of us just have to “go with the flow.”
Indeed, each one of us can make a difference. It requires effort, but we all have it in us to become, in motivational speaker Matthew Kelly’s words, “the-best-version-of-ourselves.”
Indeed again, from a Christian perspective, we have had a “superhero” come down to us from above so that this could happen. Those who allow Him to affect this change in them we call saints.
May we all become “supermen” and “superwomen” not in the Nietzschean sense, but in the saintly sense.
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