Have you all managed to let your eyes take in the trailer for Darren Aronofsky’s new film Noah? It certainly is a dazzling piece of work and like it’ll be can’t miss filmmaking when it arrives in theaters. By the end of the trailer though, my thoughts were less on the film but more on how it would be received and the nature of adaptations. Take a gander at the trailer and see my reasoning.
Watching the trailer for Noah I found myself slighty perplexed at what I was witnessing. It’s been a while since I’ve opened my Bible, but Noah as I remembered it didn’t feel as epic as it does in the trailer. Sure there was the mention of how the world was going to shit and everyone was going to die, but it resonanted with me as a story of one man’s battle with a test in his life. Even when all around him haven’t been supportive or downright against him, Noah stuck with the plan and was rewarded in the end. Now I realize this is just a trailer, but given the reports that have mentioned that the film isn’t going over well with Christian test audiences, it got me thinking about the nature of adaptations specifically Biblical ones.
Any time you adapt material, you should be able to have free reign to create what you need for the medium. However, I am having a difficult time wrangling my thoughts around how one shoudl adapt a Biblical epic. I, myself, am not as protective of the Word as others, but it seems that when you have a book this famous and well known that there isn’t really a margin for error or vast changes. And I don’t just mean from a creative standpoint. The business aspect of this is incredibly hard to ignore. Yes, we want our directors to feel free to do whatever they need to get the job done, but this film also needs to do well at the box office, and pissing off Christians by changing the story might not help. At the same time, creators have to have the freedom with which to play. See the conundrum?
In the end, I don’t really have the answer as to what should happen with Biblical adaptations but it should be a fascinating conversation as there are more in the pipeline. What do you all think?