While not a great movie, Noah is certainly a good one, and it is certainly the hands down front runner for the title of weirdest Biblical picture ever made.[1] You can’t drag the Nephilim into your story and hope to stay within the bounds of normalcy.
Kudos to director Darren Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel for moral complexity, unexpected plot twists, good restrained acting, and top notch production values. It follows the Biblical story closer than either the 1928 version or the 1966 version but it does add stuff that is not specifically excluded in the Bible story (such as how they kept all the animals quiet on the ark) and ends with a positive statement that we are most like God when we show mercy and love.
The middle portion is much stronger than the beginning and end, Anthony Hopkins steals the show as Methuselah, and the fallen angels vs. human army slugfest has gotta be the wildest scene ever filmed for a Biblical movie.
So why do so many people hate it, sight unseen?
A great many people objecting to it are doing so mostly because it says rapacious greed and treating humans like commodities are evil (there are hints of cannibalism in the film as Tubal-Cain’s army prepares to assault the ark). As servants of Mammon and not God, these critics are appalled at the mirror-like reflection Noah shows of contemporary culture, and as such they feel duty bound to condemn it.
Noah gets more into the why & wherefore of the flood than previous versions of the story, and in doing so casts it in a light that doesn't make God seem to be a petty spoiled child who kicks over the sand castle when things don't go His way but rather a just and loving creator who realizes that humanity is far from perfect but if there is to be any hope of saving us from ourselves it is to save those who desire to serve Him and His creation (including other humans) rather than those willing to consume the planet with their own greed, gluttony, and lust for power. That is what is driving the prejudice against this film.
God (referred to thru out as The Creator) is depicted as just and righteous, yet loving and merciful. The destruction of the world is a human process, the flood is a cleansing one from God.
Noah is willing to serve God, but in the process makes an erroneous but not wholly illogical assumption; he does not act on that assumption but shows love and mercy instead. This leads to his famous post-flood drinking binge because he feels he has failed God. In the end of the film Noah and his family realize the flood was not to punish the wicked but to save the just from the unjust, and that we are closest to the image of God when we show mercy and love.
So far all the objections I've seen have either been from false-flag extremists or nit-pickers who regard any deviation from what they believe to be true and factual as blasphemy.
Does Noah take liberties with details in the Genesis story? Yes, but without undermining the moral & theological core of that story.
Does the film state there is a Creator God who has the moral right to judge humanity? Sure does.
Does the film state mercy and love are the most God-like traits humans can hope to aspire to? Once again, affirmative.
Does the film have the Nephilim in it (referred to as The Watchers in the movie)? Yes, and I think a lot of people are bugged that somebody dared to depict them other than the way they had personally imagined them.[2]
Has any movie ever followed the true Biblical account? Movies are works of fiction using actors performing off scripts that are written and edited to form a dramatic whole; that's why even with historical films we see events and characters dropped or melded together so that the underlying truth of the story can come through even if the actual facts can't be emulated.
There have been hundreds of films based on various stories in the Bible. This is one of three big budget Hollywood productions based in whole or in part on the story of Noah.[3]
What this movie does state clearly again and again is:
- There is a Creator responsible for everything
- This Creator has the moral right to judge His creation
- Even those who believe the Creator has abandoned them believe He exists
- A just God is more interested in saving the just (i.e., those willing to serve Him and His creation including the humans He has created) than in punishing the wicked
- We are never more God-like than when we shown mercy and love
Sounds like Biblical truth to me…
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[1a] Some would argue Godspell deserves that title and I would not oppose anyone who chose to argue that point. But ultimately Godspell is a pretty straightforward adaptation of the Gospel of Matthew set in Manhattan with a troupe of circus performers adding song and dance to the otherwise intact text; it’s odd in appearance, not content. Noah is like the James Tissot of Biblical movies.
[1b] The question also arises as to just what is a Biblical movie? Godspell, despite its odd style, is clearly meant to be the actual story found in Matthew; Jesus Of Montreal, despite being one of the finest religious allegories ever made, is not the gospel story per se but a story about the gospel story; a fine distinction but a real one. And The Sign Of The Cross, the only religious based movie to give Noah a serious run for the title IMO, is technically not a Biblical movie even though it occurs during Paul’s time in Rome.
[2] That's one of the things that makes this movie so weird for a Biblical film: It actually shows stuff that no other Biblical movie has shown before. I think the style of the presentation is what is bothering some folks, not the actual content.
[3] It's certainly closer to the text than the 1925 version (which was forgiven its egregious departures because it was presented in a pious manner)or 1966 version (which was just an all around bad movie, no matter how sincere the film makers were). We shall not speak of the Disney adaptation with Donald Duck as Noah (admittedly a more even keeled Hollywood personality than Russell Crowe).