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Like a lot of Catholics, I’m a big J. R. R. Tolkien fan. I first encountered The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings way back in middle school, and they instantly became some of my favorite novels of all time. Since those formative years, I’ve also read a few of Tolkien’s posthumously-published works, like The Silmarillion and Beren and Lúthien, and of course, I’ve seen all six of Peter Jackson’s Middle-earth movies. In fact, I think The Lord of the Rings is the greatest film trilogy ever made, so when I heard about the new animated movie The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, I couldn’t help but get excited. Sure, Jackson didn’t direct this film (although he is listed as an executive producer!), but I didn’t care. I’m always up for another journey to the magical world of Middle-earth, so I couldn’t wait to see what this new movie had in store.
The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim was directed by Kenji Kamiyama, and it stars Brian Cox, Gaia Wise, Luke Pasqualino, and Miranda Otto. The film takes place almost 200 years before the events of The Lord of the Rings, and it recounts a devastating war between Rohan and a neighboring people called the Dunlendings. It all starts when Helm, the king of Rohan, and Freca, the lord of the Dunlendings, get into a fistfight. At first, this brawl looks like it’s going to be a heavyweight battle for the ages, but it ends up being more one-sided than a Goldberg match from the old WCW days. Helm wins the fight with a single punch, but he doesn’t just knock Freca out. He accidentally kills the man, and Freca’s son, Wulf, is devastated. The poor guy can’t do anything about it just yet, but years later, he finally returns to take his revenge. He brings an army with him, and he’s intent on killing Helm and taking the throne for himself. Before we get into the real meat of this review, I have to let you know that The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is very much a stand-alone story, so if you’re not familiar with the world of Middle-earth, don’t fret. You won’t have any trouble following the narrative. Sure, we get a few hints here and there of what’s to come in The Lord of the Rings, and there’s some cool fan service at the end, but none of these moments are terribly important to the movie. They're just fun treats for longtime Tolkien fans, so you don't need to understand the references to enjoy the film. With that out of the way, let’s dive into The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, starting with the visuals. The land and the buildings are brought to life with remarkably realistic 3D animation, but the filmmakers employ a more traditional 2D style for the people and animals. That mismatch creates a jarring look that feels like bad CGI in a live-action movie, and at first, it really grated on me. I simply didn’t believe that these people were actually in this world, so I had a tough time buying into the story. But then something unexpected happened. As the film went on, I found myself so engrossed in the drama and the action that I stopped noticing the hybrid animation style. It’s almost like I was able to see past the medium and directly into the story itself, so it almost didn’t matter how the narrative was brought to life. Granted, I still noticed the odd visuals every now and again, and they still bothered me whenever I did, but thankfully, those moments soon became very few and far between. Moving on to the action, this is the one area where The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is just about perfect. When the movie picks up the pace, it’s absolutely riveting, and there are even a handful of times when it gets surprisingly brutal. For example, we see a couple of limbs get chopped off, and there’s a scene where an arrow gets shot through a guy’s neck. To be fair, these scenes aren’t particularly bloody (although they’re not entirely bloodless either!), so they’re nowhere near as savage as, say, Invincible or the new DC show Creature Commandos. But they add a realistically violent touch that I for one wasn’t expecting in a Lord of the Rings film. Last but not least, we have to talk about the story. As great as the action is, this is the real heart and soul of The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. At its core, this is a basic good vs. evil tale with (mostly) clearly drawn moral lines. On one side, Wulf and his crew are the villains, and they become more and more despicable as the war drags on. Wulf ends up being almost pure evil by the time the third act rolls around, so you can’t help but hate him with every fiber of your being. On the complete opposite end of the spectrum, Hammer and the Rohirrim are the good guys, and in typical Tolkienian fashion, they’re basically paragons of bravery and virtue. These people don’t back down when the evil invaders show up at their doorstep, and even when all hope seems lost, they still keep fighting for what’s right. In fact, the contrast between these two camps is so great that the characters on both sides end up being rather generic. There’s nothing interesting or charming about them beyond their moral standing, so unlike Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies, the whole thing ends up feeling a bit stiff. But despite that big flaw, I still found this almost archetypal battle incredibly inspiring. Wulf’s loathsome actions allowed me to see the ugliness of evil with a stark clarity you don’t always get in modern movies, and the heroes of Rohan made me wish I could fight the evils in our modern world with half their courage and conviction. That’s a great way to feel walking out of a movie, and if you ask me, I’d even say it’s the best compliment you could possibly give a film. Movies can affect us in a lot of ways, but the best thing they can do is inspire us to be better people. And The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim does exactly that. Sure, it’s not perfect, but it manages to overcome its weaknesses and deliver an amazing and moving experience. It’s what The Lord of the Rings should be, so at the end of the day, this movie gets a big thumbs up from me.
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Have you seen the recent A24 horror movie Heretic? It’s about a pair of Mormon missionaries, Sister Paxton and Sister Barnes, who enter the home of a charming older man named Mr. Reed. They think the guy wants to talk to them about their beliefs, but they soon learn that he has something much more sinister in mind.
It’s a really interesting idea for a horror film, but it might leave you with a few questions. Mr. Reed poses some thought-provoking arguments against Christianity, and while Heretic never presents these arguments as definitive, the movie doesn’t definitively refute them either. We just get a few hints of what the Christian response might be, so it’s up to us, the viewers, to flesh these ideas out a bit more. You might even have to do a bit of research to figure out what’s wrong with Mr. Reed’s case against the faith, and I’d like to help you out a bit. Unfortunately, we can’t go through Heretic with a fine-toothed comb in a single article, but let’s take a look at the man's main arguments against Christianity and see just where they go wrong. Plagiarizing the Faith When Heretic moves from Mr. Reed’s living room to his study, the guy uses board games and pop music to argue that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all just different versions of the same basic idea. He compares them to Monopoly–which was plagiarized from an earlier game called The Landlord’s Game–and various pop musicians who’ve been sued for ripping off other people’s songs. Then, in a seemingly irrefutable coup de grâce, the man explains that the story of Jesus is also just another iteration of a story that was around long before the rise of Christianity. History, he says, knows numerous other gods and saviors who allegedly rose from the dead, were born on December 25, or had twelve followers, so the Gospels are essentially just a hodgepodge of these earlier mythologies. Like I said, this argument can be challenging, but if you do a bit of digging, you’ll find that it’s nowhere near as airtight as Mr. Reed makes it out to be. For example, the idea that Christianity is just one of three major iterations of the same basic monotheistic belief isn’t really an argument at all. At best, it’s an irrelevant observation, and at worst, it's just an unproven assertion. Of course Christianity shares similarities with Judaism! The whole point of our faith is that it’s the fulfillment of God’s promises to his people in the Old Testament. See, the Old Testament is essentially a story waiting to be resolved. It tells us that God created a good world, that humanity messed it up, and that God was going to use the people of Israel to fix it. But a problem arose. The Israelites proved to be just as sinful as the rest of humanity, so God found himself in a pickle: he had to restore his wayward people before he could use them to repair our broken world. That’s where the Old Testament ends, and unsurprisingly, it's also where Jesus comes into the picture. He came to restore Israel (that’s why, as he says in Matthew 15:24, he was sent “only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel”) and gather a faithful remnant of Israelites, and after he rose from the dead and ascended into heaven, that remnant was finally able to fulfill its vocation and bring his salvation to the rest of the world. So yes, Christianity shares several similarities with Judaism, but those parallels don’t prove anything. The religion of ancient Israel was supposed to give way to something different (even if nobody expected it to be quite this different), so our faith isn’t just a ripoff of Judaism. It’s the long-awaited fulfillment of Judaism. Dying and Rising Gods But what about the second part of Mr. Reed’s argument? When he says the story of Jesus was plagiarized from various pagan mythologies, that’s not just an assertion. It’s an actual argument, and it’s not unique to him. A lot of real-world atheists use it too, so I’m sure some of you have even heard it before. Now, on the surface, this argument seems rock-solid, but like I said before, if you do a bit of digging, you’ll find that it’s little more than smoke and mirrors. As Sister Barnes explains in Heretic, Mr. Reed ignores the numerous differences between Jesus and these other saviors, and she even points one out. She says that one of these figures has, as she so elegantly puts it, “a freaking bird head,” whereas Jesus almost certainly had a normal human head. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. When you research this argument, you’ll find something shocking: almost all of the evidence for these parallels to the Gospels comes from after the rise of Christianity. So if anything, the line of influence was the other way around. As far as we can tell, it looks like the devotees of these gods borrowed elements of Jesus’ story and incorporated them into their own beliefs. On top of that, if we look closely at the alleged similarities, we’ll see that they’re often not nearly as impressive as they’re made out to be. To take just one example, the Egyptian god Osiris is supposed to have died and risen again just like Jesus, but that’s not actually the case. Yes, he dies in his story, but he doesn’t return to anything resembling a real human life. Rather, he ends up “living” and reigning in the underworld, and if you ask me, that’s not a real resurrection. That’s just a different way of being dead. I could go through a whole host of other supposed parallels that end up being similarly shallow, but you get the point. The evidence doesn’t support Mr. Reed’s theory in Heretic, so once again, his plagiarism argument shows itself to be a theological house of cards. If you just blow on it a tiny bit, the whole thing comes tumbling down. Controlling the Masses Mr. Reed’s last major argument against Christianity is that all religions are simply about control, not truth, and in my opinion, this might be the least persuasive argument of all. Much like the guy’s first main point, this one is also just an unproven assertion, but it’s worse than that. It’s demonstrably false, and the narrative of Heretic bears that out. Mr. Reed tells Sister Paxton that Mormonism dictates every choice she makes, so he always knew exactly what she was going to do. But then something unexpected happens. As the man is making his grand speech, the young missionary stabs him in the neck, proving him wrong. He didn’t see that coming, so it looks like religion isn’t quite as controlling as he thinks it is. And anybody who’s even remotely religious will see a similar dynamic in their own life as well. I’ll use myself as an example. Yes, I’m Catholic, and yes, I believe everything the Church teaches, but the Church doesn’t control me. I’ve freely chosen to believe, and if (hypothetically speaking) I ever choose to leave the faith, I’m free to do that too. Nobody is putting a gun to my head and forcing me to stay Catholic. What’s more, apart from my religious convictions, the Church doesn’t have much of a say in my day-to-day life. Nobody tells me what clothes to wear, what music to listen to, or what movies to watch, so to say that my religion controls me is pretty laughable. The Power of Prayer Last but not least, we have to talk about an argument that comes from a surprising source. At the end of Heretic, as Sister Paxton and Mr. Reed lie nearly dying on the basement floor, Sister Paxton reveals that she doesn’t actually believe in the power of prayer. She says the issue was once the subject of a scientific study, but the researchers found that prayer has no effect on people’s recovery from illness. However, despite her unbelief, the woman prays anyway, and surprisingly, her prayer is answered. Sister Barnes, who we previously thought was dead, rises up and saves her friend from Mr. Reed’s last-ditch effort to kill her, and then she slumps to the floor and finally dies. It’s a bittersweet end to this harrowing adventure, and it provides a thrilling narrative response to Sister Paxton’s unexpected skepticism. But Heretic is just a movie, not real life, so how can Catholics respond to her argument against the effectiveness of prayer? The easy answer is to point to prayers we’ve seen God answer, but I don’t think that’s enough. Unless we’ve been given genuine miracles, skeptics can always say that our prayers had nothing to do with it, so we need to deal with the argument more directly. And to do that, we have to understand something about prayer. God is a person, not a vending machine, so prayer isn’t a mechanical process that can be studied scientifically. God doesn’t answer us simply because we say the right words or perform the right ritual, and he’s definitely not a lab rat that performs on command. He only gives us what we want when he knows it’ll lead us closer to him, so prayer doesn’t really lend itself to this kind of scientific inquiry. Grappling Tools If you’ve seen Heretic, you know I’ve only scratched the surface in this article. Like many great films, this one raises more questions than anybody can answer in a single sitting, so it would take an entire book (at least!) to thoroughly examine the fascinating debate between Mr. Reed and his Mormon guests. I simply hope I’ve given you the tools you need to begin grappling with these weighty questions yourself, and if I’ve done that, I’ll count this as a success. We Catholics have a bit of a love-hate relationship with modern movies. We enjoy a good film just like anyone else, and many of us want to see all the big blockbusters our friends rant and rave about. But when we sit down to watch a Hollywood movie, we often deem some of the content objectionable or even offensive. Mainstream cinema is full of sex, violence, and themes that run contrary to our faith, so we find ourselves in a bit of a pickle: should we watch all of these films anyway, or should we turn our backs on this seemingly godless industry?
If you ask me, the answer lies somewhere between those two extremes. We shouldn’t leave our faith at the door when we enter a movie theater, but we also don’t need to be cinematic Pharisees. Instead, when we watch a film, we should follow St. Paul’s advice and “test everything; hold fast what is good, [and] abstain from every form of evil” (1 Thessalonians 5:21-22). To be fair, that’s easier said than done (but then again, what isn’t?), so let’s talk about some concrete ways we can put these wise words into practice in our moviegoing lives. 1) Truth, Goodness, and Beauty As you might be able to guess, the starting point of a Catholic approach to any art form, cinematic or not, isn’t our own personal preference or the fads and trends that dominate pop culture. Instead, the foundation of our moviegoing philosophy comes straight out of Sacred Scripture: “Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” - Philippians 4:8 St. Paul says a lot in that one verse, but the Catholic tradition often condenses his words down to three main ideas: we should occupy ourselves with truth, goodness, and beauty. These are the things that feed our souls and lift us up to God, so they’re the primary attributes we should look for in the movies we watch. But what do they look like in cinematic form? It’s easy enough to point out instances of truth, beauty, and goodness in the real world, but what does it mean to see them in a movie? Let me give you a few clear examples of what I’m talking about. To begin, truth generally takes the form of a deep insight into the human condition or the world around us. For instance, the wrestling drama The Iron Claw is a heart-rending exploration of the inescapable reality of death, and the tragically underseen sci-fi flick The Creator uses its AI storyline to craft a moving allegory about the universality of human dignity. In contrast, beauty often resides in the more technical aspects of a film, like its cinematography and set design, so this tends to be the most explicitly artistic of the three. Last but not least, we have goodness. As I’m sure you can guess, this usually refers to depictions of heroic virtue, like in The Lord of the Rings and Cabrini, so if a movie inspires you to be a better person, it almost certainly scores high on this count. 2) Good Is Good Enough Unfortunately though, a lot of modern movies are somewhat of a mixed bag. Many films today display falsehood, ugliness, and evil alongside their good qualities, so it can be tough to find a movie that knocks it out of the park on every level. You may have to endure a few things you’d rather not see to get to the good stuff, and that can give rise to a frustrating dilemma: should you watch these films anyway, or should you limit your viewing to movies that don’t have any objectionable content whatsoever? Generally speaking, I’d say the first option is the way to go. Sure, some movies just aren’t worth watching (for instance, if the entire message is contrary to our faith), but as the old saying goes, don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. In other words, a film doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth your time. To take an easy example, a number of years ago, I wrote an article giving a Catholic interpretation of Guillermo del Toro’s movie Pan’s Labyrinth, and in that article, I noted that the film’s moral compass is a bit skewed. On the whole, it has a number of great messages that fit perfectly with our Catholic faith, but it mixes those important truths with a big error. There’s a scene that presents euthanasia as a good thing, but as Catholics, we know this practice is contrary to human dignity. Nevertheless, we shouldn’t get too hung up on that one flaw. As I said, if you take a step back and look at the bigger picture, you’ll see that the majority of the movie’s message is spot-on. In fact, it’s surprisingly Catholic, so like a lot of other modern films, Pan’s Labyrinth is definitely worth a watch despite its imperfections. 3) Depiction vs. Endorsement If you’ve ever studied the Bible, you might be familiar with this next point. Scripture contains numerous accounts of heinous sins, even some committed by the heroes of salvation history, but that doesn’t mean the Bible is endorsing these acts. To take just one example, when we read that David committed adultery with Bathsheba and then arranged for the woman’s husband to be killed in battle, it’s not holding his behavior up as an example for us to follow. It’s simply describing his sins, and when we watch movies, we have to make that same distinction. Take The Exorcist, for instance. There’s a scene where the possessed girl does something shockingly sacreligious with a crucifix, but the film isn’t endorsing this profanity. It’s just showing us how evil the demon inside her truly is, so even though this moment may be off-putting to some viewers, it’s not promoting sin. And that’s a key distinction because a lot of movies, especially in the horror genre, get criticized for promoting or glorifying evil when they’re actually doing the exact opposite. Granted, there are films that genuinely merit this criticism, and they’re generally not worth your time. But there are also plenty of movies that merely depict evil without endorsing it, and for Catholic viewers, there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, accurately portraying evil is an important function of art. As Pope St. John Paul II said in his 1999 Letter to Artists, “Even when they explore the darkest depths of the soul or the most unsettling aspects of evil, artists give voice in a way to the universal desire for redemption.” (Letter to Artists, 10). 4) A Sad Ending And the pope’s words don’t just apply to evil in the middle of a film. They also apply to evil at the very end, so we don’t have to reject a movie simply because it has a downer ending. Sure, seeing good triumph over evil is incredibly uplifting, and it dovetails very nicely with our belief that Jesus will ultimately conquer sin and death when he comes again. But not every story has to end on a happy note. Take Avengers: Infinity War, for example. In that film, the villain prevails against the combined might of (almost) every single hero in the Marvel universe, and that heartbreaking finale perfectly embodies John Paul II’s advice to artists. It highlights the hard truth that evil won’t suffer its ultimate defeat until Jesus’ second coming, so in the meantime, there are no guarantees. As long as we live in a fallen world, there will be times when the bad guys come out on top and get away scot-free, so God is the only one who can fully set things right. Along similar lines, movies with sad endings can also function as cautionary tales, and this is a tradition that stretches at least as far back as Jesus himself. His parable of the rich fool ends with the titular character being told by God that he’s going to die, but we don’t criticize the story for its dour finale. No, we recognize that it’s a cautionary tale against trusting in riches, and many great films take that exact same approach. Consider the 2018 sci-fi thriller Upgrade. I don’t want to spoil the film if you haven’t seen it, but suffice it to say that this story doesn’t exactly end on a good note. It’s a cautionary tale about the potential dangers of technology, especially artificial intelligence, and the sad finale hammers that point home with an emotional gut punch that’s impossible to ignore. It’s a great message we’d all do well to heed, so we shouldn’t write the film (and others like it) off simply because it doesn’t leave us feeling warm and fuzzy inside. 5) What Not to Watch Last but not least, I want to say a few words about movies we shouldn’t watch. Even though we don’t have to reject Hollywood in its entirety, there are some films Catholics should definitely steer clear of. Most obviously, unless you’re a movie critic, it’s generally a good idea to avoid overtly anti-Catholic films or films that strongly promote ideas and practices that are contrary to our faith. In the same vein, if a movie is going to lead you into sin, don’t watch it. Period. That being said, it’s often tough to know where to draw the line. Since movies don’t have to be perfect to be worth our time, at what point does the bad in a film begin to outweigh the good? When does a movie stop being merely imperfect and become legitimately evil? Unfortunately, there’s no one-size-fits-all answer to those questions, so each one of us has to grapple with this problem and come to the best conclusions we can. I can’t make those decisions for you, but I can give you one piece of advice: don’t ever feel like you have to watch something. If you’re not comfortable seeing a movie, it’s always okay to give it a pass. And if you’re really struggling, there’s nothing wrong with putting a film off until you can learn more about it or get some advice from someone you trust. Your relationship with God should always be your top priority, and if you ever think a movie might compromise that relationship, don’t hesitate to give it the boot. |
Jp Nunezis a longtime film buff and theology nerd with master's degrees in theology and philosophy from Franciscan University of Steubenville. His favorite movie genres are horror, superheroes, and giant monsters. ArchivesCategories |
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