Getting Beyond ‘Pretty Good for a Christian Movie'

The Atlantic

7 hours ago

Growing up in an evangelical household, I watched films and TV shows meant to teach me about Jesus and the Bible's larger narrative—works such as McGee and Me!, VeggieTales, and various productions involving Psalty, an anthropomorphic book of worship songs. Not all of them hold up, but the ones that do benefit from sharp writing, laugh-out-loud comedy, and an entertainment value that transcends ideology. As a parent who remains a believer, I sometimes mix shows and movies like these into my own family's media diet, but as a culture journalist, I'm looking for artful storytelling as much as educational value. My struggle now, as it was when I was a child, is finding the works that excel without grading on a curve, works that aren't just 'pretty good for a Christian movie'—the ones so absorbing that they could resonate with a broad audience.
The canon's newest candidate is The King of Kings, an animated film that recently surpassed the Oscar-winning Parasite as the highest-grossing Korean-produced film in American history. The movie aspires to reach beyond the faithful—to be, as its director Jang Seong-ho put it, 'something even nonbelievers could enjoy without feeling lectured at.' Jang pursues this objective in several ways: Aside from being voiced by big-name actors such as Kenneth Branagh, Oscar Isaac, and Uma Thurman, the film tells a biblical story through the lens of a historical figure, balances the drama with stabs at humor, and avoids today's sociopolitical landscape altogether.
These efforts can be effective, and have worked before: Bible dramatizations such as The Star, a playful children's cartoon about the Nativity featuring a stacked cast, and The Chosen, a hit live-action TV series about Christ's life, present their stories with winsome verve. The King of Kings goes further, with a post-credits plea for viewers to open their wallets and purchase tickets for friends, encouraging them to watch the movie themselves. But the film's on-the-nose approach seems unlikely to win over viewers who aren't already on board with its message.
The King of Kings is based on The Life of Our Lord, a book that Charles Dickens wrote to explain Jesus's life to his children; the book was kept exclusive to Dickens's family until its publication in 1934, after the last of his children died, at which point his surviving relatives opted to share it with the world. The film version begins with Charles (Branagh) doing a live reading of A Christmas Carol at a packed theater. When his young son Walter (Roman Griffin Davis) and Walter's cat upend the performance with their unruly behavior, Charles's wife, Catherine (Thurman), persuades Charles not to punish the kid but instead to use the opportunity to teach him about Jesus (Isaac).
Although the child is initially, even obnoxiously, uninterested, he soon becomes so immersed in these stories that he imagines himself stepping into them. The movie plays the hits: Jesus's birth in a Bethlehem stable; miracles including walking on water and the feeding of the 5,000; the crucifixion and resurrection. Charles pauses sometimes to explain concepts such as Passover, which was being observed in Jerusalem at the time of Jesus's execution, and substitutionary atonement (how Jesus's death shoulders the penalty for humanity's sins). The bursts of religious instruction help the audience understand the theological basis behind the scenes from Jesus's life—one of the film's more effective tools, even if these moments sometimes come off more like Bible-explainer videos than popcorn cinema.
Many of these lessons, though, are obfuscated by the film's uncanny comedy, which usually involve the boy's cat aggravating Charles while he attempts to narrate Jesus's story. Otherwise, the film strives to convey the gravity of its material by locking onto a dead-serious vibe, at the expense of character development. One might argue that a sober approach befits the epic sweep of the biblical narrative. Yet a key reason a drama like The Chosen (which was once also produced by the King of Kings distributor, Angel Studios) has appealed to so many is that it allows Jesus and his disciples to be funny, annoyed, exhausted. They're real people, and the solemn moments hit much harder as a result.
Evangelistic storytelling doesn't have to be awkward; just look at the Bible itself. The Gospel of John, for instance, offers flashes of amusement, such as when John notes that he ran faster than his fellow apostle Peter on the way to Jesus's empty tomb. One wondrous implication of the Gospels is that the supernatural has intervened in everyday life, with all its petty ego clashes and mundane squabbles; if adapted adeptly, these relatable moments can pop even more on-screen than they do on the page.
Take the 1998 DreamWorks production The Prince of Egypt, perhaps the gold standard for biblical cartoons. That film succeeds largely because of its deft presentation of the story's inherent human drama: Moses and his adoptive brother, Rameses, joke and banter, and when Moses returns from decades in exile, the joy of reuniting and anxiety over how their relationship has changed are palpable. The filmmakers translated the Book of Exodus into a format most viewers would understand—the kind of colorful, animated musical Disney popularized—and trusted that their movie's spiritual themes would resonate. They weren't overtly trying to instruct nonbelievers about how to save their soul, but if they had been, they had a hell of a vehicle for it.
The King of Kings doesn't come close to matching The Prince of Egypt 's power, but it's found an audience nonetheless. In a landscape where most cultural products aren't generated with a religious audience in mind, there is some value in movies that appeal directly to the faithful. My kids are not known for their discerning tastes, but they did enjoy the movie; for a parent like me who wants them to learn about Jesus, maybe that's enough. Still, a movie that's merely a hit among Christians feels like a missed opportunity to open up a genre that has too often been a closed circuit. The Chosen started as a crowdfunded biblical adaptation on niche streaming services; it became a word-of-mouth success among churches and Christian groups by fleshing out its stories with extra layers of character-driven drama. The show has now run for five seasons and become available on a mainstream platform, Amazon Prime Video, where it reaches a much larger audience of people of any belief.
For The King of Kings, telling a story of faith that crackles with life, that connects the Bible to people's real passions and problems, might have yielded more of a crossover smash—a movie that those outside the faith might also have been curious to see. As it stands, I'm still waiting for a film like that.