Angels and Demons and Religious Politics

Angels and Demons, movie sequel (and novel prequel) to The Da Vinci Code, opened this weekend.

The sequel to one of the most controversial movies in recent memory is opening this weekend. And the collective response is a mild "hmm."

In 2006, The Da Vinci Code was widely condemned by Catholic groups for blasphemy against religious doctrine. Based upon the complex, ultra-bestselling potboiler novel by Dan Brown, starring reliable all-American box office hero Tom Hanks, the movie was probably helped by how seriously religionists took its far-fetched theories. It grossed $217.5 million at the domestic box office. And another $540 million internationally.

This time around, though the ultra-conservative Catholic League has again mobilized to an extent, organized Catholics are taking a different tack with Da Vinci's sequel, Angels and Demons. (Which is actually not a sequel per se, as it's based on a prequel novel of the same name.)

The Da Vinci Code was a huge hit in 2006.

Angels and Demons has actually garnered some (albeit faint) praise from the Vatican. Which probably doesn't please the filmmakers all that much. Director Ron Howard wrote a few weeks ago on the Huffington Post, highlighting the criticism from the Catholic League, denying that he and author Dan Brown "have collaborated in smearing the Catholic Church," as league director William Donohue put it in typically overheated fashion.

But the controversy fizzled, as it was largely re-heated, overheated though some of the rhetoric was.

This time, Hanks's unusual religious scholar action hero character -- he's a professor of symbology, think Indiana Jones, minus the bullwhip, leather jacket, revolver, fisticuffs, wisecracks, etc. -- works with the Catholic Church, kinda, against a plot to use an anti-matter bomb against the Vatican.

Wait, anti-matter weaponry? Is this Star Trek? Nope, even though Tom Hanks is a noted Trekkie, er, Trekker, this is in the Dan Brown novel, which I read, as well as in the movie.

Anyway, the bad guys seem to be the Illuminati, all-purpose boogeymen of conspiracists everywhere, who have a beef against the church from when the church was resolutely anti-science. That apparently set off the ever overheated Mr. Donohue.

But the Catholic hierarchy played this smart, and as a result, there's not much controversy around this picture. Not much buzz, either, with the big scifi franchises -- Star Trek, Terminator, X-Men -- capturing most of the movie-going imagination.

Maybe that's because Da Vinci Code, for all its conspiracists' complexity and derring-do on a European canvass, was a bit on the dull side. I was intrigued enough, after seeing it once in the theater, to buy the special edition DVD. But I've never actually gotten through it.

The Da Vinci Code's intellectual maze made it seem more shocking than it really is.

Angels and Demons isn't boring, it's certainly more action-packed and fast-paced, and will do well. Though not as well as the first. For that, it needed a sense of occasion, that the controversy of religious politics can lend.

Not this time.

So is the lesson that controversy of this nature is only good for a movie?

I've seen a few writers say that. But they apparently have forgotten about another big movie. Which came out, oh, 17 months ago.

Religious conservatives did help shoot down perhaps most controversial children's movie of all time, which opened in December 2007. It's called The Golden Compass.

A good but not great movie, because it's rather rushed and a bit choppy. it's actually truncated from the book it's based on. The Golden Compass -- "Northern Lights" in its original UK publication -- is the first book in an award-winning, best-selling trilogy by British author Philip Pullman called "His Dark Materials." The phrase is taken from a passage in Milton's "Paradise Lost:"

"Into this wild abyss,
The womb of nature and perhaps her grave,
Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire,
But all these in their pregnant causes mixed
Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight,
Unless the almighty maker them ordain
His dark materials to create more worlds,
Into this wild abyss the wary fiend
Stood on the brink of hell and looked a while,
Pondering his voyage"

Not exactly Harry Potter. Pullman, like Milton, entertains the notion that perhaps God is wrong. Or this God isn't real. Or we are worshiping the wrong God. Or that the Church erected in God's name has become perverted.

The Golden Compass, a more radical and accomplished literary property, was shot down in part by religious conservatives.

In any event, neither the books nor the movie have, as Fox News sloppily and erroneously put it, a heroine "on a quest to kill God." That error, incidentally, was repeated in the lead sentence of a story in the Los Angeles Daily News, part of the Media News chain, and a lot of TV coverage.

Pullman, along with the filmmakers, brewed up a heady mix of quantum physics, parallel universes, a young female heroine, a powerful explorer/academic out to blow everyone's mind, intelligent armored polar bears, alluring and kindly witches, a deliciously glamorous and mostly evil anti-heroine, "daemons" (animal alter egos) which accompany humans, and a stunning clockwork alternate England compellingly pastiched from Edwardian, Victorian, Art Deco, and steampunk elements.

For an America in which religion is spread like ketchup over politics and many other aspects of life, the arguably anti-religion elements of the saga were toned down in the movie. The authoritarian Magisterium, to many a dead ringer for the Catholic Church, was essentially stripped of most of its religious overtones.

Which didn't stopped conservative Catholic and Mormon activist groups from calling for a boycott of the movie.

The film is a stunner, as are the books. But unlike the books, the film feels rather choppy, with key sequences hurried through. As you may have gathered, I don't much care about theology. The Chronicles of Narnia made for a terrific movie, and it was shot through with overt Christian ideology. I'm for freedom of thought, and free will, to the extent it does not damage others. This happens to have a cracking good story, as well as some underlying values I identify with. Which happen to be Judaeo-Christian values, whether the author is an atheist or not.

As for the movie, it verges at times on the spectacular. Nicole Kidman is great as Mrs. Coulter, the icily glamorous and brilliant scientist and politician of the Magisterium. Daniel Craig, who was so outstanding as the new James Bond in the Casino Royale hard-edged re-boot of the Bond franchise, is perfectly cast as Lord Asriel. Think a much more ruthless and arrogant Indiana Jones. Eva Green, who also shown in Casino Royale as the ill-fated Vesper Lynd, is a friendly, ageless witch queen. Sam Elliot is again the great Western icon as a Texan "aeronaut" signed on to the Arctic expedition.

And Dakota Blue Richards, as the 12-year old heroine Lyra, is very good. A perfectly charming scamp as she romps about a storybook Oxford, then brave adventurer as she learns a hard lesson in London and embarks on an expedition to the Arctic. Helped along the way by colorful companions and guided by the titular golden compass, actually an "alethiometer," something made in Prague which few can read. Fortunate, perhaps, as it tells the truth and foretells the future. Or, at least, seems to.

The main problem with the picture is that it was truncated. It ends three chapters short of the book. Which means that Daniel Craig's part is cut short. Not because of his performance, but because his character Asriel -- explorer, politician, and Oxford fellow -- does something quite spectacular and controversial at the end of the book.

The Golden Compass, the first five minutes of which are shown here, presented a darkly glittering alternate world.

All that was filmed, however, and was intended to open the next movie. Which hasn't occurred. And probably never will.

These movies are extraordinarily expensive, and the attendant religious fuss, coupled with the lack of awareness in America of the Pullman books, and the somewhat truncated and hurried feel of the movie combined to keep the US box office gross to a disappointing $72 million. The film grossed another $300 million at the international box office, but the studio had sold off the international box office rights, so didn't make money from the film's popularity outside the US.

So what is the real lesson?

If you're going to have a big budget movie that upsets religionists, make sure it's based on a wildly popular novel and stars one of the biggest movie stars of the day. And make sure that that novel and that star are both American hit machines. No "foreigners" need apply.

You can check things during the day on my site, New West Notes ... www.newwestnotes.com.

Comments

[Frank Smith]

So what is the real lesson?

The real lesson is you have to budget defensively when you're dealing with esoteric subject matter.
$72M domestic isn't bad at all. They spent to much on producing the film that only had so much market.

[Retrofuturistic]

I will support anything that is anti-Christian fascism. Anything.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Really?

[LMPE]

Anything that irks religious nuts is just fine with me.

[llisa]

Well, with the Golden Compass, I wonder if the reviews and word of mouth had at least as much to do with poor turnout as the Catholic disapproval.

The movie did not do justice to the book.

[BottomLine2008]

I don't think the reviews were bad.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Reviews aren't all that influential.

[jaysan]

I saw the Golden Compass and enjoyed it. It's a shame that the Catholic thought police were able to mobilize so much support against it among the so-called "liberal media" (who are apparently only religious skeptics when it comes to non-European Christian denominations like the Southern Baptists and Evangelicals)

It looks like the real life Magesterium is more powerful and controlling than the fictional one.

[BottomLine2008]

I don't like a religious thought police. There's too much religion in politics for a country that's supposed to have a separation of Church and State.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Religion is spread over American politics like ketchup over mystery meat.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

I like The Golden Compass quite a lot, as you clearly gathered.

It does deal with very interesting questions about the excessive power of religion in public life, as well as present a cracking good saga and a fascinating clockwork alternative world.

I really regret that it did not become the series it was meant to be based on the His Dark Materials trilogy by Pullman.

[JudgeMoonbox]

When I saw The Golden Compass, a kid remarked that it had too many characters. I thought about that, and it seemed to me that the Harry Potter movies have about as many.

This leads back to your saying that the moviemakers need a best-selling novel to work from. In the Harry Potter movies, the fans already know everyone, but in TGC, they didn't have that familiarity.

[Susan Erickson]

I really regret that too, thanks for the most eloquent refuting of the media and church accusations against this as trying to make kids atheists. " Pullman, like Milton, entertains the notion that perhaps God is wrong. Or this God isn't real. Or we are worshiping the wrong God. Or that the Church erected in God's name has become perverted." I agree strongly with this, his aim was a struggling with these ideas that lead to a more profound thinking. One comment of his I read is that he said he was an atheist if that meant not believing in the dusty bearded remote God that he had learned about in the Church of England. His dust is probably pretty obviously taken from Milton that you quoted, but it also fits in with Process Theology, and ironically (to the crtics arguments) the books are the most theological popularized.

I loved the movie, even with its minor flaws. The timing for it was at the evangelical heyday and was probably as unfortunate as the Brown book with its underground themes was fortunate. the series could have been a contender. Too bad the studio didn't keep the international rights so they would have got the profits and might have kept going.

[BottomLine2008]

"The Golden Compass" trailer is much more stunning than the trailers for either of the Ron Howard movies. It's too bad the attacks on the movie worked.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Golden Compass did extremely well outside the US, where the conservative religious attacks had no effect.

[BottomLine2008]

Has any other movie made so much more money at the foreign box office?

[BottomLine2008]

The second "Da Vinci Code" trailer is the one that got me to see the movie.

Too bad it was more intellectually intriguing than the movie itself ... :)

[BottomLine2008]

I don't like the "Angels and Demons" trailer much. It looks too generic action-y.

[BottomLine2008]

I love the first 5 minutes of "Golden Compass." It sets up a great parallel world. Daniel Craig is always so good.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

It's too bad the film "failed" -- $372 million global box office, but only $72 million domestic -- as it would have made a terrific series.

[BottomLine2008]

The first "Da Vinci Code" trailer is a lot less frantic than the "Angels and Demons" trailer. They're trying too hard to drum up interest in the new movie.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

It's not working all that well.

[BottomLine2008]

Isn't Obi wan Kenobi in this movie as a priest in the Vatican?

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Yes, Ewan McGregor plays the camberlengo, I believe it's called, senior priest/advisor in the Vatican.

A very good guy ...

[BottomLine2008]

You're kidding, right?

>>>>A very good guy ...

[NCIndependant]

I'll take Shea and Wilson over Brown any day.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

Shea and Wilson?

[NCIndependant]

Sorry for the slow reply.
Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea wrote the Illuminatus Trilogy back in the mid 70s.

[LizM]

I’ll take Nikos Kazantzakis, Martin Scorsese and Willem Dafoe’s unforgettable portrayal of The Last Temptation of Christ. Now, that was a movie about angels and demons...with a healthy dose of religious politics thrown in for good measure.

[BottomLine2008]

Didn't that get hammered by the religious thought police?

[BottomLine2008]

Who are they?

[TennesseeCatfish]

Brown's books, and by extention the movies, are fatally flawed because they are failed history. Not only do they fail miserably in their assessment of religious history, they fail in assessing the history of the Illuminati. The best movie so far, regarding the Illuminati, is Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut". Of course most reviewers and audiences completely missed that this was the central thesis of that movie.

Brown clearly wanted to make some sort of theological and financial hay from making ad hominem attacks on the history of the Christian church and did so through fairly amatueurish conflation of facts. As a long time fan of Tom Hanks and Ron Howard, I have been disappointed by their participation.

As a progressive Christian, I am willing to accept the failures of my religion and the criticism that comes with it. I also readily accept that some it requires acts of faith that are also susceptible to criticism. But some of its critics simply make up false facts and arguments out of thin air. I am not threatened by that. Rather, I am bored.

And this is the problem with the movies. They are boring. Once the books gained fame and credibility, the churcha nd even some television shows shot holes all through the premise. Once people came to understand that, these movies were nothing more than B grade sci-fi movies with expensive production values.

YAWN.

[William Bradley - Huffpost Blogger]

The book worked very well, which is why it's such an ENORMOUS best-seller.

Fiction doesn't have to be true to work.

[Susan Erickson]

The Da Vinci Code by Brown was based on pretty widely read and available counter history books, he even credits them in the back of his book and was obviously charmed by their what-if inspiration that is at the root of most science fiction especially alternative history fiction. It back-fired big time on the Catholic League to give them all the publicity they needed to skyrocket profits, but the church actually benefitted the most as it triggered spirited debate, workshops and seminars that allowed the church to buttress their version of history.

Whats most interesting to me in this was what it revealed about how people respond to unfamiliar ideas, the meme as it were, that threaten their constructs of the past and present reality. Being a reader of SF and strange thinking, the supposedly mind shattering stuff in it was pretty old hat and had been written about better elsewhere.

[Susan Erickson]

But Brown is a an impressive plotter, and while I generally agree with Skarsgaard that he's not that great of a writer the book is intricately woven and that the incredibly poignant life and death of his villain the Albino as he dies in the rain something that stayed with me long after I finished reading it. The book was much more powerful than the movie which was much more one diminensional.

Rather than Brown making "some sort of theological and financial hay from making ad hominem attacks on the history of the Christian church and did so through fairly amatueurish conflation of facts." He took current obscure ideas, probably never dreaming that he'd strike it rich but as an artist he was drawn to wrestle with, and the book deals very compassionately with the humanity of what the modern Catholic church struggles with and the desperation in which people act when their belief system in endangered which was an appropriate metaphor for what was going on with the neocons and the evangelical camouflage they use. That he popularized a strain of feminist theological inquiry struck gold is besides the face that essentially he is writer of pot-boilers.