3 Awful Movies

I don’t enjoy ripping on bad movies. Sure, it’s definitely cathartic, getting my pent-up energy out. But it dampens my mood. Additionally, while I’m often critical of movies people love, I try and recognize redeeming qualities. It also takes a lot to make me hate something, as I’m easily-entertained. Still, every-so-often that threshold’s breached, and here are three examples. I apologize if anyone likes these films:

1. Super:

James Gunn’s oeuvre pre-Guardians of the Galaxy was atrocious. He never seemed to strike that balance between bizarre and sincere outside of Slither, a movie I haven’t watched. I know his early work has a cult following, but I’m not sold. Yet while I could’ve included “Beezel”, the short he directed for Movie 43, as a double-whammy, I’ll let that one slide because while it’s upsetting and disgusting, it’s only a few minutes long and gets lost in the movie as a whole. I can’t say that for Super.

The premise is interesting enough: a Christian man loses his wife to a drug dealer and takes the law into his own hands. Along the way, he adopts a superhero-like mantle and beats up people for breaking laws, all while saying his catchphrase “Shut up crime!”. He even acquires a sidekick in the form of Boltie, a sadistic 20-something with anger issues. In the hands of someone like Paul Verhoeven, this could’ve been a black comedy poking fun at how disturbed superheroes are. Then again, that’s what The Boys is for…

There’s a lot to dissect here. Like how the main character feels it’s his “Christian duty” to exact vengeance against wrongdoers. Or how he smacks people in the head with a wrench, potentially giving them concussions. Or how Boltie gets even with someone by, and I kid you not, having him run-over by a speeding car. This all has potential to be funny, but Gunn appears to use Super as a vendetta machine. At least, that’s how it reads.

Perhaps the worst part is that the “Super” mantra doesn’t mesh with the protagonist’s main goal. We see the drug dealer inject a needle into his wife’s foot, and for that moment we feel bad. But it’s brief. The “inciting incident” is forgotten about for most of the runtime, instead dedicating itself to antics that would’ve led to arrests or lawsuits. We don’t return to “saving my wife from a drug dealer” until the finale, by which point my patience has run out. Oh, and Boltie’s face gets blown in half with the most-unconvincing practical effect I’ve ever seen.

Speaking of Boltie, let’s talk about her. I hate her more than the protagonist. At least he did everything out of misplaced justice. Boltie, however, is a sadist. She not only maims and attacks people, she enjoys it. For her, being a superhero is a way of releasing her inner sociopath. She even calls waiting for crimes “boring”.

Of course, I must mention the elephant in the room: the rape scene. I feel guilty judging Gunn for that, knowing what happened to him in real life, but that was all kinds of awful. What’s worse, it was my first realization that I’d buried longstanding sexual assault trauma for too long, even if I didn’t understand why yet. Seriously, what gives?! I know that rape can be an effective tool for storytelling when done properly, but it requires some sensitivity that this movie lacks.

That’s what Super is, though. It’s so tasteless that when Marvel chose Gunn for the Guardians of the Galaxy franchise in 2012, my heart sank. “How could Disney allow this man to direct that?”, I thought. Thankfully, this ended up being a great choice, beginning Gunn’s change into a more thoughtful filmmaker. That doesn’t make Super any less-awful, though.

2. Exodus: Gods and Kings:

I’ve covered this movie in greater detail before, so retreading here feels a redundant. However, Passover recently ended, so I feel like traumatizing myself. Why? Who knows, but I’m dragging you along with me!

Essentially another retelling to the Exodus story, as if there weren’t enough of them, Exodus: Gods and Kings is Gladiator if it were set in Egypt, tried to “update” Scripture and went on for longer than necessary. In other words, what if Ridley Scott actively crapped on the story? I know that sounds mean, but you sit through this and not feel the same! I dare you!

What does this movie do wrong? What doesn’t it do wrong? Moses is a gladiator, for some reason. I’m sure that Biblical Moses would’ve engaged in several wars, he was an Egyptian prince, but that mentality never leaves. Moses doesn’t become a shepherd who wields a staff, he remains a conqueror. He even has a sword. That’s a…choice, and it ruins his character!

How about Moses’s relationship with God? That’s even worse here! Firstly, shame on this movie for making God a child with anger issues, even if he’s the best actor in the film (which is embarrassing given the casting). And secondly, that no one else can see Moses arguing with this child makes Moses schizophrenic, which is tone-deaf because he was the progenitor of a major world religion. It also trivializes schizophrenia.

Perhaps the movie’s biggest sin is the “Scientific Plague Theory”, which both misses the point and is an example of fitting modern sensibilities into a society that believed in omens and curses. Ancient Egyptians weren’t people who debated the logic of The Nile River turning red, they simply viewed it as deicide! And it grinds the movie’s pacing to rationalize this. But it does this with all the plagues, as if we need them spelled out. Bite me!

That’s the problem: the movie takes a fantastical story, one rich with meaning, and makes it into a flat, uninspired end-product. I haven’t even gotten to the casting, because that’s issue #40. Yeah, having Egyptians played by white people isn’t even this movie’s biggest offence. How does that work? Can someone explain it to me please?

This movie sucks. If you want a retelling of the Exodus story that respects your intelligence, watch The Prince of Egypt. Sure, it’s animated and a musical, which might be a turn off to some, but it does in roughly 90-minutes what this movie can’t in over 2-hours. And before anyone complains, this movie cribs enough notes that they warrant comparing. I’m not taking any questions.

3. The Passion of the Christ:

Now we get to the big one. I can go on forever about my previous two entries. I can rag on Super for being incredibly tone-deaf. I can drag Exodus: Gods and Kings for insulting me as a religious person who understands the source material. But they pale when compared to The Passion of the Christ. At least both movies have stories, however poorly they’re told.

The Passion of them Christ doesn’t. Or, at least, it doesn’t for most of its runtime. It starts out decently, involving the selling of Jesus to the Romans, but then it turns into a movie about Jesus being whipped and tortured. And it never lets up. I remember watching this as an ancillary source for a university class, and my younger brother decided to watch it with me. By the time it was over, we understood why our Jewish community had been warning us about this film. Because we both felt miserable.

I’m being serious. It’s one issue to depict the last day of Jesus’s life. There’s plenty I can say as a Jewish person, and I fully-admit my biases. But this isn’t about that. No, it’s a torture porn movie. I wish I were kidding.

Perhaps the film’s biggest crime is that it shows, in graphic detail, Jesus getting beaten and whipped in the streets of Jerusalem. Jesus gets flanked and falls so frequently that it becomes monotonous. The whole time, I feel guilty and uncomfortable. And then I get angry that I feel that, leading to exhaustion. But it keeps going, so I’m experiencing emotional whiplash constantly.

The only times the movie isn’t that are when it flashes back to moments where Jesus expresses his Divine perfection. Whether it’s fixing a broken table, or healing a sick man, these are welcomed because they aren’t about someone being beaten. But they’re brief. Because God forbid a movie actually be interesting, right? I’m already exhausted writing this…

The torture ends when Jesus is pierced by a spear in the finale. Even then the movie tosses one last insult by correlating his death with the destruction of The Temple. Setting aside all the Antisemitic imagery prior, be it Jewish kids with horns, or Satan watching from the shadows, Jesus’s death leading to The Second Temple collapsing is the worst offender. It’s not only ahistorical, it guilts the Jewish people further by connecting torture porn to a major tragedy in Jewish history. Why?

Ignoring my Jewishness, which is hard, this movie isn’t exciting or compelling. When it’s not Antisemitic, it’s uncomfortable. The torture Jesus endures is so graphic that it’s unsettling, and it becomes a chore because it drags. I appreciate that the movie strives for period accuracy, including Jesus speaking in Aramaic, but that’s blindsided by one of the most-miserable filmgoing experiences I’ve endured. I don’t even care if it’s “true to The New Testament”, because if that’s true, and I doubt it, then The New Testament’s a hateful text.

If any good came from this movie, it’s all indirect. I appreciate that The Passion of the Christ began an interfaith dialogue between Jews and Christians. I also appreciate that many devout Christians despise it. But the damage is done. And while I rarely get offended by reviews from the late-Roger Ebert, him giving this one 4-stars is the exception. It doesn’t deserve that.

Anyway, that’s it for hating films. I need to detox badly…