A Comparison

Over the Thanksgiving break, I was able to watch 2 movies with my family. Although the debate wasn't very vocal, it was clear that we greatly disagreed about which was the better movie for different reasons. This class influenced my views when watching both films, which is why I'd love to share this experience via this blog...

The first movie we watched was The Mark (2012). If you haven't head about it yet, it will be hard to avoid it because it's a Christian film. I will say that I enjoyed it more than some of the other discipleship-themed Christian films because The Mark begins to tell the story of the Tribulation, which is an incredibly action-packed story. Still, besides the poor quality of the graphics and special effects, the story was still incredibly focused on a conversion message. It was also disappointing to see how it failed to live up to the hype of its trailer. The film was advertised surrounding a chip implanted into humans—a revolutionary new technology that would change the world. The purpose or capabilities of the chip were really not revealed. As soon as the rapture happened in the film, the entire storyline changed to a mere attempt to survive. Not to mention that the story wasn't resolved—even a little bit. The movie ended with a trailer for the sequel.

The next night, I convinced them to show Midnight in Paris, a film I missed being able to see at Signs and Wonders several weeks ago. My mom lost interest after the first 2 minutes. She complained that they had only shown shots around Paris, with a whole day passing before introducing any characters or plot. My little brother was mainly only engaged throughout the film because I turned on the French subtitles for his French homework, and my dad claimed to have enjoyed it once it was over, but I can't verify that he was awake the whole time; he knew I thought the film was good. A story like this one was well developed with a much more subtle message of contentment. This allowed it to be appealing to more people who might even recommend it to friends after seeing it.

In the end, I was very satisfied with the contentment theme in Midnight in Paris, especially since it was Thanksgiving weekend. I'm also pretty sure that I will watch the next Mark movie anyway, but it certainly won't be on my list of favorite films.