Dumper
I figured Jumper was going to be a crappy movie, I just didn't know how crappy. What do you do with a book that has a Muslim terrorists as a bad buy? John C. Wright who liked the book, but hated the movie writes:
AH! But these illuminati are the Magisterium! They are the Opus Dei! You heard me. The Christians are the bad guys. Their motive for killing teleporters is that "Old God should Have the Power to Be in All Places At Once". Boy, that is so stupid it makes my head ache. Teleporters go from place to place, they are not in all places at once, and God does not teleport.
These guys are not Jews or even Evil Buddhists. They are called Paladins— yes, you heard me. The band of knights in service to Charlemagne who saved Europe from the Muslim hordes of Spain and North Africa are just the people the film makers thought it would be creepy to name their bad guys after. They are the same people (according to one character in the film) who were responsible for the Inquisition.
Whatever, film maker dude. Good thing you did not have the Muslim terrorist in the book as the villain, or that might have offended someone.
So with films like the Da Vinci Code, Golden Compass, and now Jumper it looks like Catholics are now the villains of choice and for Hollywood the Chosen people. It reminds me of the great line in Fiddler on the Roof "We are Your chosen people. But, once in a while, can't You choose someone else?"
John C. Wright has a thorough review of just how bad this movie is on multiple levels.
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Ok, no seriously, I don't get it. Why IS the Catholic Church the bad guy these days? Is it because we're shiny? Or *gasp* maybe we really do wanna murder Jesus' descendents and we're secretly a pgan empire!
No seriously, I really don't understand why.
The answer is simple. Catholics don't issue Fatwa's asking for the death of anybody who offends the Church. The Catholic League is about as tough as we get.
I'm Irish, Cardinal Sean Brady and a handful of traditionalists is about as tough as we get. Nevermind a few redemporists here and there.
Good Lord, do we need another apparition to get the world to take us seriously?
The Catholic League is about as tough as we get.
Catholic blogs are full of posts tearing Bill Donohue apart, from the comfort of their computer chairs, for being one of the few Catholics to stand up for Catholicism. If more Catholics refused vocally and with their money to let their religion be trashed maybe we wouldn't be portrayed as the bad guys so often.
I think people see the Church as a mystery.
2000 years old, around 1,000,000,000 members, crosses (no pun intended) international lines, a hierarchy that is well defined, rituals, groups of men and women living lives in secret (cloistered), the list goes on.
Throw in some of the wrongs members have actually done coupled with the flat out lies and distortions told by some of our protestant brothers and sisters; Maria Monk, Galileo and the Spanish Inquisition.
Top it off with a message the world needs to hear and doesn't seem to want and we're all running around with targets on our backs.
No seriously, I really don't understand why.
Because anti-Catholic/anti-Christian persons have been trying for nearly 2,000 years to kill Christianity. It hasn't succeeded (which is why athesits are *still* rehashing the same arguments the Romans used) and won't succeed now.
But they figure more people are likely to believe a craptacular Hollywood film than to pick up a book, go to the local parish, or actually *talk* to a Catholic.
Catholics are targeted because Catholics provide the most prominent voices against hedonism and the Hollywood "lifestyle". Also we don't fight back.
I suggest reading Chapter 6 of Newman's (really long book-length) Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. It's a very entertaining look at how the world of antiquity and the world of Victorian England regarded the Church in largely the same way. :)
Personally, I was vastly entertained to find out that the Church was in fact legally defined in the Roman Empire as an "enemy of mankind", a religion of witches and fortunetellers ("malefici" and "mathematici"), a superstition, etc.
We have to be the bad guys, because otherwise, the world would have to admit we're God's Church.
Elizabeth: The Golden Age is similarly anti-Catholic. We're portrayed as incompetent sorcerers. I'd disagree with that assessment vigorously, only I just knocked over one of my incense burner and set fire to the forest of crucifixes in my office...
Oh and a big "Amen!" to Memphis Aggie.
I saw this with my boyfriend, and it is - indeed - a terrible movie. But there was one very hilarious part! The main-character teams up with another jumper who said, passionately, that the Paladins had been around for centuries: "You know - the Spanish Inquisition!? Burning Witches!? That was US!"
Just the fact that Hayden Christensen is in the movie is enough for me to tell that it will be absolutely craptacular. Nevermind the anti-Catholic stuff... Christensen could ruin even the best scripted, more utterly Catholic of movies all by himself!