Jamila Young – Arts & Entertainment Editor
If you’ve seen or heard of the History Channel miniseries called ‘The Bible,’ the creators of that series, Roma Downey and her husband Mark Burnett (who produces the NBC show ‘The Voice’) have made a movie from it. It features the same actors from ‘The Bible,’ but with some missing. In the show, Satan was shown tempting Jesus, but in the movie the character of Satan was not shown.
However, there were things added into the movie that weren’t in the show. At the start of the movie, the Bible chapter of Genesis was narrated and Adam and Eve were shown, and they were never mentioned in the miniseries. After that backstory came the birth of Jesus, and then the events that lead up to his crucifixion. He went around the town of Galilee and preached to the town people while his 12 disciples and followers that believed in him went with him.
I liked how they were able to get so many people to play town people, because since there were so many, it made it more realistic, and the clothes added to that as well. They also did a good job showing the crucifixion. I cringed when they showed Jesus’ hands being nailed into the cross, although it wasn’t as in-depth as when it was shown in ‘Passion of the Christ.’ It was sad to see his mother Mary crying while having to watch her son get beaten by the Romans, and then when Jesus had to carry the cross up to the mountain by himself after being beaten, he kept falling because he was so weak, and Mary stepped in and helped raise the cross up after Jesus fell to the ground with it.
The movie showed some specific events that happened in the actual bible, as well as in the History Channel miniseries, like how Jesus multiplied the fish and bread so that everyone in town was able to eat, the Last Supper, the resurrection of Lazarus, and more.
I come from a religious family, and I knew what was happening in the movie from watching ‘The Bible,’ as well as being raised in church, but there were some things in the movie that were shown that I didn’t know happened. For instance, when Jesus and his disciples were at the Last Supper, Jesus had a vision that Judas would betray him. Now I knew that happened, but later in the movie it showed Judas hanging himself from a tree and killing himself; I didn’t know that that happened.
The movie also left me with some questions. Joseph was only showed when Jesus was born, so I was wondering where he went. Also, there was a scene towards the end of the movie where Jesus returns after dying on the cross, and he had holes in the palms of his hands where he was nailed to the cross. I wanted to know why God didn’t fix his hands since he didn’t still have blood on his body from being beaten, and he didn’t have any bruising from the crown of thorns that were on his head. I decided to ask my mom why that was, and she said maybe they left his hands like that so that he could prove that it really was him. I guess that makes sense, but I feel like people would’ve known it was him by just seeing him, or maybe not.
I thought the movie was really good as a whole, but it did show some of the same things that were in the ‘The Bible,’ which makes me think that the producers should’ve made a decision: either make the movie or make the miniseries. After seeing the movie, I don’t think there was a need for both.
4 out of 5 owls
