Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Exodus: Is it going to be another "Noah?"

This is topic Exodus: Is it going to be another "Noah?" in forum Ground Level at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://ft-forum.com/ft/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=5;t=002859

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-09-2014, 09:08 PM:

I was just looking at some of the reviews from overseas showings of Exodus.....and it's not good. Many people praise the special effects and the use of 3-D, but beyond that, people are criticizing the acting, the writing, the directing, and the departure from Scripture.

Why is it, when Hollywood goes to make a movie based on the Bible, that they can't stick to the Bible? Don't they know that if they depart drastically from the Scriptures that their target audience will then hate the movie? This movie, for example, apparently shows God as a crotchety 10-year-old kid. I know it's not fashionable in Hollywood these days to believe in God (or even show any respect to those of us who do believe), but good grief. Why not at least SORT OF stick to the source material?

Just from watching the trailers, it's easy to tell that the writing sounds like "today," instead of thousands of years ago. The acting, especially from Christian Bale, seems wooden, the same way the acting was in "Noah."

Anyway...I'm still hoping to like this movie but I sure hope I don't feel like hiding from customers at the end of it, like I felt with "Noah."

Posted by Justin Hamaker (Member # 2165) on 12-09-2014, 09:51 PM:

I'm not a religious person, so I'll avoid any comment based on religion or the Bible. The point I'll make is that if they were just going to remake The Ten Commandments, what would be the point of making a new movie?

Posted by Joe Redifer (Member # 3) on 12-09-2014, 10:34 PM:

Most religious people haven't actually read the bible so I think the movie is safe.

Posted by Terry Lynn-Stevens (Member # 7349) on 12-09-2014, 11:36 PM:

quote: Mike Blakesley
Why is it, when Hollywood goes to make a movie based on the Bible, that they can't stick to the Bible?

Its gets people talking which is turn is probably good for business. I did not know what the story of Noah was and after I heard all the talk about what was legit and what was not, I then wanted to see the movie. After the movie, I drew my own conclusions and then did some research on what might be accurate and what was not. Overall Noah worked for me and I liked it. It made me aware of Noah even though it may not be accurate.

quote: Justin Hamaker
what would be the point of making a new movie?

Made for the new generation, especially the worldwide markets in Asia which are doing well. The audiences in these markets do not have the past memories/legacy of what has been done in North America.

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-10-2014, 12:00 AM:

If they'd stuck to the book when making The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah, that would have been interesting to say the least. It would have made for the first Biblical epic to get an R rating, probably!

Posted by Monte L Fullmer (Member # 2797) on 12-10-2014, 01:19 AM:

FOX had to fill in something a week before HOBBIT:BOTFA, and get this film pushed out the back door to oblivion.

Side note: Today, I received seven drives just of HOBBIT since I'm also doing the Marathon. HFR, ATMOS, 2 and 3D, et.al.

Posted by Marcel Birgelen (Member # 6801) on 12-10-2014, 01:52 AM:

Is there really no more original source material than the Bible out there? Also, if you're going to use some kind of religious text as source for your story, you should keep to the story already. You weren't going to convince anybody that's opposed to movies with a religious back-story anyway, so do you want to piss off the religious people that remain firmly in your target audience?

This might be the first Ridley Scott movie that triggers absolutely nothing in me. It's hard to believe this is the same guy that came up with both Alien and Blade Runner within three years. What happened to that guy?

quote: Justin Hamaker
I'm not a religious person, so I'll avoid any comment based on religion or the Bible. The point I'll make is that if they were just going to remake The Ten Commandments, what would be the point of making a new movie?

You can ask yourself the same thing about any of those recentish remakes. You'll be hard pressed to find a handful that turned out better than their original.

Posted by Matt Fields (Member # 3211) on 12-10-2014, 06:54 AM:

I agree Mike...this is Noah Part II for us small town folks. I think it will do worse than Noah for us.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 12-10-2014, 08:36 AM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
is that if they were just going to remake The Ten Commandments, what would be the point of making a new movie?

Hollywood has been remaking movies for as long as movies have existed. For example, The Maltese Falcon was remade three times in a 11 year period. The first was in 1931 with Ricardo Cortez and Bebe Daniels, then again in 1936 as Satan Meets A Lady with Warren Williams and Betty Davis, and they finally got it right in 1941 with Humphrey Bogart and Mary Astor. The 1941 version is almost a word for word remake of the original 1931 version, but the 1931 is dull as watching paint dry, and the 1941 version is a great fast moving film. The difference is acting and directing.

As for tampering with bible stories, personally that does not bother me if they keep to the spirit and meaning of the original and it is a good film. They did not in Noah, don't know about Exodus.

I also find it strange that they are releasing Exodus now. This is the story of Passover, which occurs in early April.

Posted by Harold Hallikainen (Member # 5405) on 12-10-2014, 08:58 AM:

quote: Justin Hamaker
The point I'll make is that if they were just going to remake The Ten Commandments, what would be the point of making a new movie?

Speaking of... I saw the original 10 Commandments (1923) recently at a film festival showing in Guadalupe CA, where it was filmed. The story of the brothers was actually interesting. The black and white images were very good quality. I also always thought that silent films used a pretty low frame rate (18, I think), but the motion in this was very smooth. It's also interesting that DeMille remade the film in 1956 using Vista Vision. I always thought Vista Vision was a very elegant solution to the problem of how to increase the aspect ratio of 35mm film (run it sideways!).

Harold

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-10-2014, 10:24 AM:

I haven't seen the original Ten Commandments but would like to, not least because it was of the first world premieres to take place at the theater where I work.

Silent movies have to be treated the same way, essentially, as widescreen epics and other event films: the presentation is utterly crucial. Silent drama features acquired a horrible reputation, I think, because for about 30 years from the '70s to the early '00s the only way they could be seen was either on duped-to-death and grainy 16mm prints in universities and film societies, or on occasional late-night TV broadcasts, always at 24fps (25 in Europe), very rarely with tints/tones/Handscheigl/other authentic color, and usually with cheesy recorded music cut and pasted onto the audio track with little or no attempt made to match it to action. So silent movies looked primitive, and were exclusively associated with comedy if you weren't a film history geek.

This started to change in the '90s with Carl Davis and the Thames Silents series and eventually the DVD, and there is now an avalanche of decent restorations of teens and 20s features coming through. I don't think The Artist could ever have been made if that hadn't happened. Intolerance, Wings, The Crowd, etc., are all now available in something that looks and sounds much closer to what teens and '20s audiences would have experienced, and for that reason I think the broader public are starting to wake up to the fact that silent cinema doesn't have to be primitive - it just works in a slightly different way.

As for frame rates, there was no global standard before sound. They gradually increased from the late teens onwards, mainly because big picture palaces with longer throws to bigger screens were opening. That called for more light on the screen, which caused a move from three-blade to two-blade shutters in projectors, which need a higher frame rate to appear flicker-free to the viewer. As a general rule, European studios stuck with lower frame rates for longer: 17-21 was typical for German, French and British studios throughout the 1920s, whereas Hollywood was more or less standardized on 24 by the early 1920s. This was essentially why it became the standard sound speed. The early RCA Photophone tests were done at 22, by they had to go with 24 in the end because everyone else did.

Posted by Mike Spaeth (Member # 524) on 12-10-2014, 02:40 PM:

Having seen both films, and being from the religious community, here is my opinion:

There are definitely some creative liberties taken with the story. Not as many as "Noah". I actually enjoyed both. The liberties taken were not such that the community as a whole will reject / campaign against the film, but they will not necessarily embrace the film like "Passion Of The Christ". It'll be somewhere in the middle.

Posted by Jim Cassedy (Member # 4115) on 12-10-2014, 04:54 PM:

>Exodus: Is it going to be another "Noah?"<
Only if it rains.

quote: Harold Hallikainen
I saw the original 10 Commandments

Last time I watched "The 10 Commandments" on TV, there were only eight.
I think they took two out to make room for commercials.

And while we're on the topic of religious films, someone recently asked me
if I had seen "Passion Of The Christ".

And I said "Nawwwww. . . . I know how it ends. . . " [Roll Eyes]

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-10-2014, 05:29 PM:

quote:
It would have made for the first Biblical epic to get an R rating, probably!

Depends if you count the The Passion of the Christ, or the Last Temptation of Christ.

I just want to hear Christian Bale say "I'm Noah" in his Batman voice;>

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-10-2014, 06:21 PM:

Hollywood has rarely made a film that was accurate whether it concerned The Bible,Westerns,or anything else for that matter. They convienently change Facts to make the Film more interesting in their Minds. In the case of the movie "TOMBSTONE" which was supposed to be as accurate as possible concerning the Earps and Clantons(Gunfight at the OK Coral) Documented Old west history shows Doc Holiday already in a Sanitarium in Colorado dying from TB at the same time he supposedly killed Johnny Ringo.

The Movie "Houdini"(1953) ventures so far from the Truth it's laughable. Houdini's Mother could not stand her son's wife Bess;yet in the film they are good friends. Houdini did not die on the stage after being taken out of the Water Torture in the Movie.He died several days later(Halloween)from paratanitis from a ruptured Appendix...

Anytime you start believing anything Hollywood Makes and tells you it's an accurate representation; you know their full of BS most of the time....

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-10-2014, 06:41 PM:

As I keep telling my audiences "Based on a true story" means fiction.

Of course, as far as the Gunfight at OK Corral, Earp was pitching his version of the story to Hollywood in the 1920's. If you read his approved biography by Stuart Lake, the book is almost complete fiction. Taking liberties was never just for Hollywood story tellers.

Posted by Mike Blakesley (Member # 26) on 12-10-2014, 06:49 PM:

I guess I don't mind them bending the source material a bit to make for a better story. After all, alot of Bible stories are really very short in the Bible, or they leave out a lot of details, so it's necessary to flesh things out a bit. But it still seems so stupid to do things that are GUARANTEED to make the audience hate the movie. Like those "rock monsters" in Noah.

There's also nothing wrong with making a movie fun to look at. Special effects and biblical sources aside, the 1956 "Ten Commandments" probably owed at least half of its ticket sales to people oohing and aahing over the stars. (Who could ever get tired of looking at Anne Baxter as Nefretiri?)

Getting people to talk about the movie is fine. But doing things just to antagonize them is something else.

Hollywood had a great chance to rein in a gigantic crop of new moviegoers this year with all the biblical movies that were released. Unfortunately they have mostly blown it so far; none of the movies were very good. Exodus will either put the nail in the coffin, or repair the damage a little bit. I'm hoping it's the latter.

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-10-2014, 11:06 PM:

I remember seeing "The Ten Commandments" back in 1956.Of course the Special Effects for the day were pretty spectacular on the Big Screen.When Moses Parts the Red Sea, that was awesome for a little kid to see and years later when I found out it was Done on Paramount's Back Lot along with Optical work;That was hard to believe. I think the Catch Tanks they used back then are still on their Lot.

When you watched a DeMille Film back in the day,you knew it was going to be spectacular in one way or another. This would be a Good Vintage Film to be redone in 3D... [beer]

The illusion of the Red Sea parting was achieved by large "dump tanks" that were flooded, then the film was shown in reverse. The two frothing walls of water were created by water dumped constantly into "catch basin areas" then the foaming, churning water was visually manipulated and used sideways for the walls of water. A gelatin substance was added to the water in the tanks to give it more of a sea water consistency. Although the dump tanks have long since been removed, the catch basin section of this tank still exists today on the Paramount lot, directly in front of the exterior sky backdrop, in the central portion of the studio. It can still be flooded for water scenes, but when not being used in a production, it is an extension of a parking lot.

btw: I got to meet Frasier Heston at an NRA Function where he accepted a Lifetime Achievement Award on behalf of his Dad,who was too Ill to attend(advanced stages of Alzheimers) I asked him if he remembered being put in a Basket and floated down the NILE. He laughed; he was only 3 months old at the time !

Posted by Leo Enticknap (Member # 534) on 12-11-2014, 11:39 AM:

quote: Martin McCaffrey
Earp was pitching his version of the story to Hollywood in the 1920's. If you read his approved biography by Stuart Lake, the book is almost complete fiction. Taking liberties was never just for Hollywood story tellers.

I've just finished reading this unapproved biography, the author of which spends most of the introduction explaining how difficult it was to unpick facts from printed legends, the origin of most of the legends being Lake's book. Ironically, unpicking the legends reveals Earp to be a far more interesting and multi-dimensional character than the one portrayed in Gunfight, My Darling Clementine, etc.

Posted by Martin McCaffery (Member # 37) on 12-11-2014, 12:21 PM:

Oh, he's definitely interesting. Especially when juxtaposed against not only his legend and myths, but especially the whole Wild West myth.

John Ford nailed it at the end of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

Posted by Steve Matz (Member # 1890) on 12-11-2014, 09:12 PM:

I'm very skeptical of Old West History and so called Facts. I don't believe all these Super Gunfighters like Hickcock,Holiday,Ringo,etc. were the lightning Fast Icons that Books and Movies have portrayed them forever.

Just the fact that John(Doc)Holiday(he was a Dentist) had TB;was a Chronic Drunk; makes me question how he would be this Elite Gunfighter when half the time he was Coughing his Lungs out from Tuberculosis and Drunk most of the Time.

It reminds me of when I was in School; we had what was supposedly the Toughest Guy in your School. Never saw him Fight but you believed all the Stories because he was Muscular and looked Tough. Then one day after School he gets in a Fight with a Guy you would have Thought couldn't punch his way out of a paper bag and proceeds to beat the Shit out of Mr Tough Guy.

Then the Following Day; The Whimp Guy that beat the Toughest guy in School has become someone that was everything from a Blackbelt Karate Expert to a Golden Gloves Champ, etc. all of which was untrue but made for a Good Build up. I believe most of these Old West Tales have been so embellished through the Decades from when they were first told; These Guys should be Supermen Today... [Roll Eyes]