It was only a matter of time, considering the love of recent sword and sandals movies with virtual backgrounds that biblical tales may not be far behind. “Goliath”, a retelling of the famous underdog battle of the Old Testament, is getting the ‘300’ treatment.
From the good people at First Showing:
Scott Derrickson, behind The Exorcism of Emily Rose and the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, is set to helm Goliath, a period action movie based on the familiar tale of David vs. Goliath. While the movie is supposed to be set in historical times, it will have a contemporary feel not unlike 300 with a spirit that apparently embodies Bourne Identity
…’The Bourne Identity’???? Okay, 300 I can kind of get, although I’d think Joshua at Jericho would be more suitable, but this “Bourne” thing has me worried. One big hill to climb is the obvious: 300 was a fictionalized account of history. It sounds like ‘Goliath’ may follow in the same area, a fictional retelling. Which could mean -reasonably- many people taking up thier own slingshots and attack the project, regardless if they see the film or not.
The other problem area is… well, it’s David and Goliath, a one on one battle in a valley that basically had Goliath coming down from the Philistine camp to talk smack about God and Saul’s army. David hears this moron and gets his river rocks. Goliath talks smack to him and gets TKO’d with a stone between the eyes. That isn’t the ENTIRE movie, is it?
Should I have cause for alarm?
I am going to preface this by saying that I am on the fence about it. As a Christian I believe the stories in the bible as they are written and not as just stories. By making them into a big block buster movie this would seem to put them in the same pile of stories as Greek Mythology. However, I can not and do not expect everyone to believe in them the same way I do. Hollywood is in the business of making money so if they can make money from this then why not. Finally, there are countless movies based on real events which people still know to be real events. Making a biblical story into a big block buster movie or not will not change peoples opinions one way or the other.
I agree with everyone else that David and Goliath is not the best story to use. To make a full length film they would either have to add more to the story or go deeper into the political side of the Soul Vs. David story. Much better stories would Gideon or Sampson. Case in point:
-Gideon: While israel is under siege one man by the name of Gideon receives the divine command to strike back. Against all odds, Gideon defeats the invading armies only to rise up as a new dictator.
-Sampson: Given the gift of unparalleled strength Sampson rises up as champion to defeat the invading armies of the Philistines. However, plagued by alcoholism and womanizing Sampson is finally taken captive by the philistines and has his eyes gouged out. Left in prison, Sampson realizes his mistakes and rises up one last time.
There is a lot more action opportunities here than in David and Goliath.
And many of the Biblical epics of the 60s-70s did a lot of them including 5 Versions of Samson and Delilah, Esther and the King, The Greatest Story Ever Told, Adam and Eve, Noah’s Ark, Sodom and Gomorrah, TV’s TNT Bible Series, Prince of Egypt, The Ten Commandments.
And that’s just Old Testament. Last Temptation of Christ, Passion of the Christ, Jesus Christ Superstar, Gospel of John, Nativity Story, Jesus of Nazereth, King of Kings.
Then there are hordes of Fictional offshoots that are biblical in nature such as Ben Hur, The Left Behind Series, and many others.
David and Goliath is one of the few that hasn’t been done to death – as long as we don’t count Veggie Tales.
I hardly think this is a bad thing, nor is it diluting/discrediting your faith to the point of myth to see a theatrical adaptation of one of the many Biblical adventures worthy of an adventure.
Even if they add a bunch of stuff to the original material, which they probably will for the sake of movie storytelling, i don’t think it’ll be bad press for God. As long as they don’t bastardize the story and have David cursing God and saying God isn’t real…
Then i don’t see this as a negative movie. If the movie sucks, all people will say, is that this is a sucky movie, not… God sucks, because this movie sucks. And if this movie does well, then people mnight be turned on to read the actual story from the bible.
I do agree though, the David vs. Goliath story, although epic in nature, was extremely brief. There’s so much more to David’s story than that tiny part.
David vs. Goliath was kind of dope… But if they wanted to make a epic 300 style movie from a character in the bible, Joshua actually led the Israelites into the promise land, and waged war with all the clans in that land, killing thousands in battles, even giants. It was all out mayhem. It was an all or nothing war.
David, slings a rock at a giants head and knocks him down and then the movie ends? Are they going to show the rest of his life where drama gets wicked crazy? Because if they just show up until he kills Goliath, i guess that could be interesting, but they’d have to write up a bunch of epic bs to fill up this 2 hours before the showdown. Because there’s almost nothing written about David before the showdown with Goliath other than he was the youngest or something of brothers, God chose him to be King and he herded sheep.