Publius' Forum

It seems that quite a a few Christian websites and commentators are getting their choir robes in a bundle over the forthcoming Tom Hanks movie, "The DaVinci Code", and the MSM are doing their best to spread the wild fire.

To sum up the film's plot for those of you still unaware, the movie purports to reveal a centuries old conspiracy discovered by the famous Italian artist and inventor, Leonardo DaVinci, fostered by the Catholic Church featuring Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene, Priests who kill those who find out, secret Catholic societies (like Opus Dei) hiding things from the public ... pretty much just a potboiler, conspiracy flick full of nonsense and absurd historical confabulation.

What the Christian community is protesting against is that the writer of the book upon which the movie is based, Dan Brown, presents the story-line as if he were describing real, uncovered history. Brown has even claimed variously in interviews that he is either writing a straight forward history based on real truth about the church, or he is using selective truths and adding to it to create his story. In true showman style, Brown acts as if what he is doing is revelatory, important stuff as opposed to just a story he made up.

This intentional misleading by the author is what Christians the world over are worried about. They are worried that too many in the public will get the wrong idea about the facts of Church history, or what is known and accepted about Jesus' life and these misconceptions will spell trouble for a misunderstood Church that is already best upon by enemies on all sides.

Now, I also hate these Hollywierd stories that are presented like history. It drives me nuts to watch most movies based on historical reality. But, I also know it is just a movie. We should also remember that both the MSM and Hollywood are ginning this up as high as they can, one to make Christians look foolish and the other to fuel ticket sales.

But, all I have to say is that I can count the number of movies that gets history right on one hand. Similarly, "The DaVinci Code" is CRAP. It is 90% fiction, just like every OTHER Hollywood movie that is based on historical reality.

Remember Mel Gibson's film, "The Patriot"? His character did NOT exist. The Church burned by English soldiers with colonists burning to death inside.... never happened.

The 2001 WWII submarine movie, "U571", where the Americans busted Hitler's Enigma code? Nope, it was the Brits.

How about Russell Crowe's award winning star vehicle, "A Beautiful Mind"? There's one that got some names and dates right, but not a whole lot else!

Back to Mel Gibson... His film "Braveheart" condensed about 200 or more years of English/Scottish history into only a few short years and had William Wallace doing things he never did.

The film, "American Outlaws", for instance, was supposed to be about the famous western outlaw, Jesse James. But, they had Jesse's entire 20 some year career all jammed into one year, 1866. They featured Jesse leading troops in the Civil War (he didn't really fight much in that war as he was too young), used the wrong guns, had the wrong clothing, the wrong hats, the wrong ... well, let's just say that the only thing they got right in that film was a few of the names! This one was a horrible piece of junk.

In fact, there are so few Westerns that get history right that if I were asked to give a dollar for every film that did so, I wouldn't be out much. I remember a movie called "The Santa Fe Trail" that was so bad that it presented every single famous Civil War general as having graduated from the same class in West Point even though those generals were decades apart in age and some of them never WENT to West Point in the FIRST place!

This is just a tiny, tiny slice of the movies with bad, bad history in them. There are so few films that get history right, it can't be a surprise that "The DaVinci Code" is full of crap, can it? I'd suggest that if someone is so stupid as to imagine that this movie is revealing true history, then alerting them to the truth won't do you much good anyway.

So, I think worried Christians should get over it.

-Warner Todd Huston