Reactions to The Da Vinci Code Movie
by Tim Chaffey
Dan Brown’s best-selling The Da Vinci Code has hit the big screen. After its $77 million opening weekend, the movie has had modest success in the United States ($145 million) but has been extremely successful worldwide ($317 million) - figures are after eleven days. Outside of Ebert and Roper, the critics have been pretty harsh in their treatment of the film. Perhaps this is largely due to the difficulty of making a movie that can live up to the high expectations of a successful book.
I went to see this movie last week and will share a few of my thoughts about it (please see The Paradoxical Nature of The Da Vinci Code for a review of the book). My first reaction was in agreement with many of the critics - the movie was rather dull and boring, especially compared to the action-packed book. I understand that a two hour movie could never include all the detail of a four hundred page book so I will refrain from critiquing that aspect. Nevertheless, I will cite some differences between the book and the movie.
First, Tom Hanks' character, Robert Langdon, is portrayed in the movie as being rather sympathetic toward the church until the alleged evidence is overwhelming that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene. He even got into a heated argument with Sir Leigh Teabing when talking about the alleged evidence. In the book, Langdon went right along with Teabing in attacking the church, the Bible, and Jesus Christ.
Second, the movie seemed to have a slightly different emphasis than the book, although this may be due to the emphasis I placed on certain subjects while reading. In the book, it seemed as though the attacks on the church, Bible, and Christ were heavily stressed. The movie, while still attacking these subjects, seemed to emphasize the alleged connection between Jesus Christ and His alleged descendent, the movie's heroine, Sophie Neveu. Of course, this is still attacking the person of Christ.
The movie still contained many of the blatant lies and distortions from the book. Hopefully, viewers will not be fooled by Dan Brown's nonsensical claims. As has been demonstrated by numerous books, The Da Vinci Code is full of revisionist history, false theories, and outright lies. For more on this subject, see the following book reviews: The Da Vinci Deception, The Truth Behind The Da Vinci Code, Breaking The Da Vinci Code, and Cracking Da Vinci's Code.
Overall, the movie was quite boring and probably confusing to those who had not read the book. The acting was fine but the screenplay failed to deliver the goods. While the disappointment of the movie may help to quell our culture's fascination with this heretical work, its success has opened the floodgates for countless similar attacks. Needless to say, Christians will need to be on their toes as the culture takes another huge step away from a biblical worldview.
(5/30/06)