Sorry, this movie sucks

Brilliant and touching

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

The acting in this movie is really good.

The film starts with some narration by John, whose gospel introduces the concept of the "logos" or "The Word" and equates this Greek theological idea to Jesus . It places Jesus with God the father from the beginning of time.It jumps to a quick Matthew version of his birth and then to collecting apostles, making his first miracle being a human fish finder. Yes the Lord God creator and all being of time, space and dimension must stick his face into the water to locate fish. My LOL moment.The movie introduces historical background, but does so briefly. The famous Sermon on the Mount, what I consider to be the inspirational center piece of Christianity is not used, save for The Lord's Prayer. Even "Life of Brian" did that aspect better..."Blessed are the cheese makers..."The film nicely modernizes the King James version, even with the actors having varying accents. The film attempts to follow the story through the Gospel of John, which may be why they cut the sermon on the mount, but then they added other aspects that were not in John, but Matthew.The production makes Jesus look like a cult leader with a rock star following. The last hour which concentrates on the Passion of Christ, I couldn't help but compare it mentally to the far superior Mel Gibson production. Indeed, in many ways this film isn't any better than some low budget church productions.I liked the idea of opening with John. If they had made this film based strictly on the Gospel of John, they could of had a first. The story assumes we know the characters and never builds or develops them. The plot has wholes in it, like what was Pontius Pilate supposed to do with his wife's dream she considered a warning? Say, "Okay Jesus off you go then." Wouldn't that screw up everyone's salvation?On the plus side Jesus Christ handled hecklers better than Chris Christie, but then, who doesn't? The film takes some dramatic liberties utilizing long "William Shatner like" pauses before Jesus says a line we know is coming. The scene of Judas "returning" the 30 pieces of silver, was nothing like what I imagined, my bad I guess.I really loved the rock star Jesus for the first 30-45 minutes of the film. But the second half felt like they changed Jesus and not for the better.

First, this series sucked, because it wasn't even accurately portrayed as if they were in Africa, because that's the truth to the bible and biblical fact. Second, the show only showed all the main people in the bible to be white, and then once again referring to the bible coming from Africa, obviously people weren't that light skin. The worst thing about this series was they don't show the true "Jesus". I also, think that the way the stories were put together in this series was really crappy. I hope I never see this show again! Quite honestly this show does not show a man of burnished bronze skin and probably never will. They never showed the man with the hair of lamb's wool! I will also be honest this show might have made me not be a man of Christianity I will tell you that much.

Lovers of Jesus, don't get upset. I don't like this movie. Why? Because I love Jesus! Just because you slap "Jesus" on the title doesn't make it perfect. The problems:We are given a mish mash jumble cluster of Bible sequence that seems like it went through a wood chipper. Most of the movie I was thinking "...wait a minute, that happened before/after/never" What audience is supposed to enjoy a jacked up sequence? People with limited knowledge will get wrong information and added confusion. Vets of the Bible will spend the whole time fact checking and finding out that the movie is WRONG.Near the beginning one of the disciples asks Jesus, "what are we going to do?" to which Jesus says, "Change the world!" Besides the fact that this exchange never happened in the Bible, Jesus came to SAVE the world. It wasn't a political movement, social movement, or self-help class. Jesus came, lived a perfect/sinless life so he could die in our place of punishment to cover our sins with His blood. Simple.The stoning scene was especially troubling to me. A group of leaders are gathered around the prostitute and want to execute her. They see this as a chance to test Jesus. Jesus gives the classic teaching "He who is without sin cast the first stone" to which we see all the stones drop from the crowd. The problem is they show Jesus like the rest of the crowd dropping His stone, implying that Jesus is guilty of sin. Either this is a terrible filming choice communicating the wrong message, OR an actual belief of the new age Downey... Jesus is blameless and without sin. This sinless life is critical to proving Jesus was God and also qualified Him to be the atonement for sin. Non biblical issue: SLOW MOTION ABUSE!!! Producers meeting: Guy 1 = Hmm, what is the best way to communicate that this moment is powerful/important... Guy 2 = I KNOW! Let's slow motion it. Guy 1 = I don't know, there are at least eleven important scenes. Guy 2 = Slow motion them all, it'll be great!!!

I enjoyed this film. I thought they did a professional well-made production. I never understand people giving low ratings like 1-4 because it takes a tremendous amount of skill and energy to even make a film that looks decent, good acting, etc. That any filmmaker who gets a film out into theaters even though you may think is bad, should get at least a 5. Although I was disappointed that Jesus didn't look more Jewish, he was good-looking and the typical look that photos of Jesus we all grew up with. So I think that was fine. The actor who played Jesus did a great job in believability as to being Jesus.I don't believe Jesus cried or screamed in pain because he knew he was spirit and not this body. He was also a Gnostic and believed this world was not the real world, and the real world was Heaven where we are right now, but can't see because we think we are these bodies. Therefore, he would not have felt the pain. If he can walk on water, make food materialize because of his knowing this truth, then no, he wouldn't be screaming pain. But that is what we all expect because we are not thinking as spirit. I'm glad they mentioned that there. That we must be reborn as spirit. Meaning, we are spirit and we need to live life as that. When we look out into the world and realize we are all that One Son of God, we will see God's kingdom. Jesus was the first of us who woke up and saw this. He's like an older brother. We are all his children and so he is not the only son of God. We all are. But, we are just One Son, thinking we are all these separate bodies. We are not. So this version is old school, and incorrect. So other than a few old school story of Jesus, it was still a very well done film. I congratulate the filmmakers for sharing their time and money to create this film. It's always nice to have a reminder of how we need to be toward each other even if the version isn't the truth.