the movies

Originally uploaded by gwbrark.

I've just returned from seeing the movie Kingdom of Heaven. It's silly, but there are lots of fun and impressive battle sequences, a la Braveheart, the Lord of the Rings, Troy, etc. etc. etc. I'm very impressed with what they can do with all that digital technology nowadays.

The things that annoyed me about the movie have to do with the pop theology. Orlando Bloom became the champion of some kind of weird gnostic Jerusalem that he called (I believe) a "kingdom of conscience." Salahadin was portrayed as a kind of sword-weilding Martin Luther King on horseback, who only started fighting to establish a land of tolerance and ethnic harmony.

In the end, the message of the movie is this: "The proposition 'nothing is worth fighting for,' is worth fighting for... to the death." I didn't go see it for a message, but I wonder how many people will take its message without a grain of salt?