LBTM: That's our Buck!

Left Behind: The Movie has conveniently been divided into 11 parts for posting on YouTube. This neatly provides us with stopping points as well as the ability to watch together as we work our way through the movie.

We have some cause for optimism as we begin. Yes, there's the Kirk Cameron factor, but that might not be insurmountable. Lost Boys featured both Coreys, and who doesn't like Lost Boys? And as bad as the source material for this movie is, it's often the case that bad books make better movies.

Probably the biggest difficulty in the usual novel-to-movie transformation is that a novel is much, much longer than a movie. A novel like David Copperfield or Huckleberry Finn might work as a six-part miniseries, but not as a two-hour movie. Then there's the difficulty of translating prose to pictures, of trying somehow to preserve the narrative voice of the novel in a medium where that voice is no longer pre-eminent. (For a glorious illustration of and surrender to this problem, see Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.)

Neither of these is particularly troublesome when adapting a bad novel for the screen. Bad novels are filled with unnecessary and extraneous material a director will be eager to cut, so length isn't an issue. And bad novels usually have no distinct narrative voice -- at least not one worth worrying about preserving.

Left Behind thus seems eminently adaptable. The characters are paper thin and the novel's themes, to the extent it has any, are despicable, so I don't know why anyone might want to adapt it into a movie. But the task itself seems easy enough. And seeing even this same dismal material reworked by any hand other than those of LaHaye and Jenkins has to be some kind of improvement.

So like I said, I approach this film with a slight optimism. Let's dim the lights and start the projector.

We open with a voiceover narration, by Cameron -- two strikes right there. But this material isn't from the book, which is promising, and even though it's mostly just a vaguely foreboding series of non sequiturs --

How do you describe both a beginning and an end? We should have known better, but we didn't. What does it matter what we think we know? In the end, there's no denying the truth.

-- it's the general sort of thing one often hears at the beginning of passable post-apocalyptic horror/thriller B-movies. So one can still hope, at this point, that we might be in for a workmanlike retread of genre conventions. That would be a massive improvement on the book itself. The otherwise hackneyed sunrise-from-space visual accompanying this voiceover adds a touch of originality by seeming to suggest the earth rotating from north to south.

Fade in, we see the iconic view of Jerusalem -- looking down from the Mount of Olives east of the city, the morning sun glints off of the eastern face of the golden Dome of the Rock. The time and location appear in text in the lower corner of the screen, X-Files style (complete with the rat-a-tat dot-matrix printer sound effect). "Jerusalem 6:00 p.m.," it reads.

And now we know that we're watching a faithful adaptation of Left Behind. Less than two minutes in and the director has already lost track of whether it's night or day.

The soundtrack drones something vaguely Middle Eastern-sounding and we get the director's stock-footage slideshow of various Jerusalem landmarks at various times of day -- the Damascus Gate and Jaffa Gate near noon, the Western Wall in late afternoon -- over which the opening credits roll.

Kirk Cameron gets top billing, so now we know that director Vic "One Drop Can Kill You" Sarin isn't going to try to maintain Jenkins' pretense that Rayford Steele shares an equal place in the spotlight.

Steele is played by Brad Johnson. Not a household name, perhaps, but a competent working actor. He's the guy you want to get once you realize you couldn't get Tom Berenger.

Third billing goes to Chelsea Noble -- a.k.a. Mrs. Kirk Cameron -- who plays Hattie. (So now we get to picture Chelsea Handler as Meta-Hattie.) Clarence Gilyard Jr. will be playing the Rev. Bruce Barnes. You probably missed him as "Sundown" in Top Gun, but you may recognize him as Chuck Norris' sidekick from Walker, Texas Ranger. And my personal favorite in this film, Gordon Currie, who plays Nicolae Carpathia like he's auditioning for the role of Tim Curry.

Even though this credit sequence is one long establishing shot setting up Jerusalem as our location, we fade to black and fade back in somewhere else. And no, we never do return to Jerusalem. Jerusalem, it turns out, was just the setting for the credits.

Rat-a-tat, "Iraq 6:03 p.m." The time-stamp is believable this time because we see the sky filled with fighter planes heading west, into the setting sun. They spent some money on the CGI here -- those fighter planes appear more or less plausible.

And then suddenly, rat-a-tat, "Syrian-Israeli Border 6:03 p.m." Swarms of helicopters, tanks and fighter planes are heading east, their shadows stretching out before them as they race across the terrain.

The point here, I think, is supposed to be that the enemies of Israel are rushing to attack her without warning, so it's a bit unhelpful to be showing us tanks and fighter planes that appear to be heading from Israel and into Syria.

Rat-a-tat "Mediterranean Sea 6:04 p.m." -- the sky is filled with fighter planes flying low in formation. They're headed toward the top of the screen and the sun appears now to be directly overhead, but I think at this point we're going to have to agree to stop paying attention to things like direction and the position of the sun. Let's just agree that there are warplanes racing to attack Israel from the east and from the west, as well as tanks driving to attack Israel from the, um, west.

Sarin is just trying to stay true to L&J's pliable sense of geography.

We fade back in to Kirk Cameron standing in a wheatfield, wrapping up what seems to be an on-location report for TV news. Making Buck Williams a TV reporter rather than a print journalist seems like a shrewd decision, as does opening with this scene -- the sneak attack on Israel miraculously swept away by divine intervention. In the book this scene is told early on, in flashback.

"And as the world faces the most serious food shortage in history," Cameron/Cameron says, "perhaps there is a ray of hope. I'm Buck Williams, and I'm standing in a wheat field in the middle of the Israeli desert."

See how that works? You make your protagonist a TV reporter and he can simply announce the setting -- no need for a rat-a-tat locator tag and no need for a set more elaborate than a bit of wheat, a random camel, and some Bedouins who seem to be making their camp in the middle of Rosenzweig's wheat field.

Buck turns to our favorite mad scientist, Dr. Rosenzweig (character actor Colin Fox, whom you'll recognize even if you can't quite say from where). "Dr. Rosenzweig," he says, "It looks like Iowa."

Wheat, corn, corn wheat. Close enough.

Cam-Cam says something about every nation wanting Rosey's secret formula due to "the recent crop failures," and the doctor says that it's not for sale. "All I want," he says, "is peace for Israel." And, of course, as we hear the words "peace for Israel" we also hear the engines of incoming fighter planes. This is an almost artful presentation of one of Left Behind's political themes: talk of peace leads to war.

They look up to see the CGI armada of warplanes and start to run for cover when several of the planes drop out of formation and begin dropping bombs on them. Because, you know, two guys and a cameraman in the middle of a wheat field in the middle of the desert present an irresistible strategic target. The explosions are pretty spiffy and it's very exciting watching Doc and CamCam and the camera guy and soundman dodging precision bombs as they dash toward an ancient-looking building where they hope to find cover.

That ancient building, it turns out, has a really big basement in which is hidden what seems to be the Israeli equivalent of NORAD. This thing is like the Tardis -- bigger on the inside than the outside. And no one there seems to have any qualms about Buck just wandering in to the apparent central command for the Israeli Air Force.

Buck and the Doc just mosey over to watch as the various Israeli generals race to scramble their defenses, standing around the inevitable Big Giant Map. We get some shouted dialogue -- in Hebrew with English subtitles -- before Rosenzweig explains the situation. He's a botanist, so he's completely at home in a military command center.

"A full-scale air attack," he says. "No warning." And no indication of who the invaders might be. "It could be anyone," he says. "No one has more enemies who want to see her destroyed than Israel."

That's an interesting bit of fudging there. In the book, the invading air forces were from Russia and Ethiopia because the authors insisted this was what the book of Ezekiel unambiguously prophesied. Ezekiel's meaning seems to have gotten a bit murkier between the time the book was written and when the film was produced. They do keep another bit from Ezekiel, though, the bit about Israel's enemies being so numerous as to blot out the sun. That language was clearly not intended to be figurative, so as Buck and Chaim are running toward the rickety wooden doors of the military command, we see the sky grow black and the sun disappear.

The enemy planes begin to explode at the Hand of God. Doc and Cam-Cam are watching the attack on giant radar screen/oscilloscope that shows lots of those little radar-screen dots indicating the incoming planes. When the planes start exploding, the radar screen shows little radar-screen explosions.

"Those planes are coming down but we haven't fired a shot. It's not possible," Rosenzweig says. "They're jamming our monitors. It's a cruel trick."

"Only one way to find out," Buck says. He grabs the camera and microphone from the floor, where they had been abandoned by his suddenly nowhere-to-be-seen crew and he runs outside. Slightly lower-budget explosions fill the sky (it looks a bit like a scene from the original Battlestar Galactica -- I'm not sure I didn't catch a glimpse of Dirk Benedict's old viper in there somewhere). In a Geraldo-esque move, Buck points the camera at himself, tilting it upwards to catch some of the sky behind his head, but keeping the journalistically essential image -- his face -- in the center of the screen. It's the Cam-Cam-cam!

We cut to what I guess is the control room of his TV network, which looks more like NASA's Mission Control in Houston, with dozens of people watching Buck's report on a bank of tiny screens. Some unidentified lady with ashes on her forehead leans forward and whispers, desperately, "Get out of there, Buck!" It's not clear if she's urging him to flee to safety, or if she means he should get his enormous head out of the shot so that the world can get a better look at the actual story.

Then Buck, who seems to be broadcasting live to the entire world, says, "I've been informed by top-ranking military officials that Israel has been unable to launch even a single plane in defense."

This is why NORAD doesn't let foreigners with satellite-broadcasting equipment just wander in to their central command. You shout something, some botanist translates it for them, and the next thing you know your military secrets are being broadcast to the entire world by some hack reporter who acts like you'd just sat down with him for an interview.

No one at the TV network seems to respond to the substance of the story Buck is standing in front of. Nor do they seem compelled to respond -- they're not rushing around the way you'd think maybe a TV newsroom might if they'd just learned World War III was starting. Instead, they stare rapturously at their star reporter and gush his praises, their voices choked with emotion:

"Buck would've filmed Hiroshima from ground zero if he'd been there."

"Yeah, that's our Buck."

Here, as in the novel, we learn that our heroes are totally awesome by the subtle device of constantly having other characters say that our heroes are totally awesome. Here, as in the novel, this doesn't work.

I can't help but see a parallel here between the kind of journalism we're seeing Buck practice here and the kind of evangelism that we see practiced by Cameron, LaHaye and Jenkins in real life. Buck seems to think that he's the story here. "I'm Buck Williams and I'm standing ..." He's got a camera, but instead of using it to show the explicit miracle occurring behind him, he uses it to show himself earnestly telling us about that miracle. I'd like to see the miracle, but Buck is standing in the way. Get out of there, Buck!

Anyway, Cam-Cam makes one final, inept attempt at some kind of "This is London" sign-off when he's interrupted by the arrival of the Mysterious Man in the Prophet Costume. The MMPC recites a snippet from the book of Daniel in a flat monotone -- as though he's afraid any inflection in his voice might cause his fake beard to fall off -- and then, just as mysteriously, he hobbles away.

The verdict so far: Incoherent, careless and dull, but still better than the book.

Next week: Meet the Steeles.

Comments

[Lee Ratner]

Ya, more LB Fridays. Also, first post. I win.

[lucidity]

Only once in a lifetime is there as perfect a pun as the Cam-Cam-cam. Savor it, Fred.

[Boze]

The Tristram Shandy movie is brilliant! There's an enormous artificial womb.

[McJulie]

Did the random prophet guy remind anyone else of The Great Prophet Zarquon wandering out as the universe ends in the BBC Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?

[SchrodingersDuck]

How do you describe both a beginning and an end? We should have known better, but we didn't. What does it matter what we think we know? In the end, there's no denying the truth.

Crisswell Cameron Predicts!

We are all interested in the future, for that is where you and I are going to spend the rest of our lives. And remember my friend, future events such as these will affect you in the future!

[Joshua]

Alas! If only there had been a second camera (perhaps on a grassy knoll in Iowisreal?) filming Buck filming himself, we could have had the Cam-Cam-cam-cam. But then that level of detachment might make us realise what a completely ridiculous person our supposed hero is.

[Caravelle]

Great beginning Fred !

I find it weird how Buck says "As the world faces blah blah hope. I'm Buck Williams, and I'm standing in a wheat field blah blah interview blah"

Up until "I'm Buck Williams" it looks as though he's wrapping up a segment, but then it turns out he's just beginning. Don't they usually introduce themselves at the end ? I guess he could do it at the beginning, although that's what the anchor is for, but doing it in the middle like that is distracting and weird. And prompts the response "what do we care who you are, tell us about the wheat field !".

The rest of the infodump interview wasn't badly done though.

[SchrodingersDuck]

Oh, FYI, YouTube has a much quality version of Left Behind (as in higher quality video - sadly, it's still a bad, bad film). It seems to have been cut in pretty much the same place, which is helpful. You can actually see the hordes of crappy CGI Ethopian nuclear fighters in full definition and everything!

[Rosemary Molloy]

I know people who will believe this is true!

[Karen]

On my computer, Buck's mouth movements were out of sync with the sound, giving the thing a Japanese monster movie effect. It was a considerable improvement.

Earlier in the week we had a long discussion of the merits or lack thereof of Thomas Kinkaide, including pointing out that the shadows in his paintings often don't work with the light sources, which seems to follow here. Is there something in RTC culture that explains this complete lack of representation? I thought RTC disliked abstract art? Why do they make so much of it?

[Fraser]

Has anyone ever seen the Dairiburger blog? Snarky reviews of Sweet Valley High by a recovering fan, very funny--but her constant comments on how Liz and Jessica are invariably the Most Awesome, Most Amazing Girls Who Ever Walked The Earth reminds me a lot of Buck and Rayford.

[Judith]

""Those planes are coming down but we haven't fired a shot. It's not possible," Rosenzweig says. "They're jamming our monitors. It's a cruel trick.""

.....'Cause, ya know, waking up one morning and suddenly deciding that instead of ending world hunger, they are going to destroy you're entire nation wasn't AT ALL cruel, was it, Rosenzweig?

On a non-movie note, can anyone here who has read the prequels remind me of exactly how this was Nicky’s fault? I clearly remember that it was, but I can’t recall how a member of the lower house of the Romanian government convinced three other nations that The Death Of Israel > Solving World Hunger…. Do they even explain it in the book? I just remember the Leon Angst that it resulted in. UnFortunately The Rapture is one of many books in the LB series that I do not own, so I can’t look it up.

-Happy Sigh- I am so glad to see LB Fridays return. (I know they offically returned last week, but this is the first real post.) I still squee whenever I see I new post. (Though that might not mean very much, since I’m still incredibly new to this blog compared to some other members.)

[Jim]

To call that voice-over pseudo-philosophical bullshit is to give it undeserved praise. It's like a junior-high student trying to write the intro to a Terminator fan movie. (Not even sure if these exist, come to think of it, and don't really care.)

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The establishing shots of Jerusalem seem reasonably competent at establishing a sense of place (if you ignore the time issue and that the movie never returns there). I like one of my favorite popcorn movies, Day of the Jackal, because it does this for Paris. I'm not familiar with Jerusalem, though. Anybody know if the opening gives you a good feel for the city?

------

Since Buck is doing what seems like it would be a much sought-after exclusive interview, I'm guessing he's not a GIRAT, but a little closer to Barbara Walters. "If you were a prophecy, what sort of prophecy would you be?" "I'd be an oak tree, Kirk."

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At least in the movie, it is established why agriculture would be a source of wealth for Israel. There's a food shortage and crop failures. No fair delving too deeply into this, I think.

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If you're going to launch a nuclear attack, why do you send in planes to attack random targets on the ground first? (Although, I suppose that the movie version hasn't established that the attack on Israel is nuclear, so this criticism could be unfounded.)

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The Israeli equivalent of NORAD has no security perimeter. Apparently if you just hide it in what appears to be a goatherder's home, nobody will ever find it. They don't have seem to have any problem with camera crews filming just outside either.

-------

The attack could be coming from anyone? Because Israel doesn't monitor potential enemies or its borders or anything. I'm sure the helicopters, planes and tanks are unmarked and just appeared out of nowhere. Given the involvement of the UN later in the story, maybe they're black helicopters.

------

The "biggest surprise attack since Pearl Harbor" and "all-out unprecedented attempt to destroy Israel" show that the producers are going to be faithful to LH&J's unfamiliarity with !America. They wouldn't think to compare the surprise attack to the Yom Kippur war, just one of several "all-out attempts to destroy Israel." Honestly, you're making a movie set partially in Israel and you can't be arsed to read the Wikipedia article about it?

[Monkay]

Did the random prophet guy remind anyone else of The Great Prophet Zarquon
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."

[Geds]

You can actually see the hordes of crappy CGI Ethopian nuclear fighters in full definition and everything!

Wherein they appear to be nothing so much as MiG-29s, which are exactly the type of aircraft one most certainly does not want to send on long-range bombing missions, what with their designed role as fairly short-ranged air superiority fighters, at which they are quite good.

I can't help but see a parallel here between the kind of journalism we're seeing Buck practice here and the kind of evangelism that we see practiced by Cameron, LaHaye and Jenkins in real life. Buck seems to think that he's the story here. "I'm Buck Williams and I'm standing ..."

Good point. I rarely went to an evangelism seminar/training session/waste of time that I couldn't get out of for whatever reason that wasn't focused almost entirely on making sure that the evangelizer could coherently present a "personal testimony." I always thought that was pretty stupid.

[Just Me]

The attack on Israel was Nicky's fault, because he wanted the formula, but Rosenzweig wouldn't give it to him. So Nicky and Stonagal told Russia, Libya, and Ethiopia about the formula, and promised them that once they took over Israel, they'd have unlimited use of it in their own countries, and Nicky would sell it to the rest of the world, and give them a 7% licensing fee.

[Judith]

Thank you. That was much less painful than looking it up would have been, too.

[Judith]

But wouldn't an attack like this/that destroy Israel, and thus the formula, several times over?

...Lol. This is what I get for only skimming it in search of quotes that I can turn into slash. (It was over the summer, alright? I had nothing else to do.)

[Ben H]

I have to say I am surprised at how horrible the acting is. I wasn't expecting anything above basic TV movie-of-the-week level stuff, but this is far far below. This is strictly amateur hour, which is weird because Kirk Cameron is a professional actor and if he's not a good one he isn't usually this bad.

The production values are a weird combination of passable (CGI, sets) and absolutely dreadful (The director of photography should not be allowed near a camera again.)

I guess this is an example of that peculiar evangelical concept that the quality of 'art' is irrelevant, only the intent matters. Bad acting and bad camerawork are fine as long as the message is pure. Because it isn't hard to find people who can act decently or point a camera well for relatively little money, but I guess it's hard to find someone who can do those things and is a devout Real True Christian (TM)

[SchrodingersDuck]

Dr. Rosenzweig (character actor Colin Fox, whom you'll recognize even if you can't quite say from where)

Particularly once they're inside the base, I could have sworn he was Doc Brown from the Back to the Future films - he has some very similar mannerisms, such as when he swings round and leans against the desk in sudden thought, and particularly because at about 7:30 I'm positive he yells "No! Marty!". Seriously. I've watched that bit about a dozen times, and I can't figure what he's saying if not "No! Marty!" or perhaps "No! Martin!".

So Nicky and Stonagal told Russia, Libya, and Ethiopia about the formula, and promised them that once they took over Israel, they'd have unlimited use of it in their own countries, and Nicky would sell it to the rest of the world, and give them a 7% licensing fee.

Who needs industrial industrial espionage when you can just go in there and blow stuff up?

[CarlosMcRey]

But why did Nicky want the formula? Was he hoping to take over the UN through increased crop yields? The big question that both this and the book generate for me is, why bother attacking? Mossad may be tough, but I don't doubt that sending the KGB to kidnap some Israeli scientists would be much less risky than a direct military confrontation. (And judging by the security around their central command, you could probably pay some college kids to steal the formula from Rosenzweig's office.)

I know, it's a minor point in a book (and movie) filled with much bigger idiocies.

Incidentally, for me the weird juxtaposition and the way nobody bats an eye when Rosie the Gardener walks into central command sort of suggest that the miracle-grow formula is actually under the military's control, which is sort of interesting since it brings up the question of why they might be running the show.

[David]

Yeah, I also noticed the "biggest surprise attack since Pearl Harbor" -- beh?! Because nuking an entire nation off the map is the same as attacking... a harbor?

Also, I at least think the people fawning over Buck is, so far, more plausible than in the book since despite his overwhelming narcissism, he did at least do something that appears, to one who hasn't read the book jacket^W^W movie synopsis, to put him in danger in pursuit of a story. That's not something he was real big on in the book. That is to say, in addition to people saying he's amazing, we have at least one concrete action that is only partially inconsistent with it. That's progress.

[Geds]

Particularly once they're inside the base, I could have sworn he was Doc Brown from the Back to the Future films

That's Christopher Lloyd. I kept thinking Colin Fox was the recurring monk guy from Babylon 5, but was apparently wrong.

[SchrodingersDuck]

The MMPC recites a snippet from the book of Daniel in a flat monotone -- as though he's afraid any inflection in his voice might cause his fake beard to fall off -- and then, just as mysteriously, he hobbles away.

The end of the world is going on around him. Planes are exploding in the sky, nuclear missiles are falling harmlessly to the ground, tanks are collapsing in the streets. The sun has actually disappeared from the sky. What does Buck film on this momentous occasion. Some guy, probably drunk, wearing tatty robes and a badly cut beard, rambling on about some arcane, probably alcohol induced, prophesy. That's going to be what everyone's talking about at their watercoolers tomorrow:

Person 1: Say did you see that news report about the Russia, Ethopia and Libya launching all out war against Israel yet losing their entire armies without firing a shot?
Person 2: And what about the crazy drunk guy who was rambling about nothing in particular?
Person 1: I know, right!? How strange was that!?
Person 2: Man... that crazy drunk guy rambling about nothing in particular might be the event of the century!
Person 1: You should see some of the YouTube remixes of the crazy drunk guy rambling about nothing in particular - they're hilarious!

And another thing: why would would a Jewish prophet, in Israel, quoting a Hebrew text, be speaking English? Nevermind...

[Joshua]

Just to be a pedantic jerk, Geds, I'm going to point out that there do exist ground attack-capable variants of the MiG-29, though nothing remotely close to, say, the F-15E. (They didn't have much need, as the Su-27 does the multi-role thing much better, and I do get the impression that the Soviets were much more into dedicated ground-attack craft like the Su-25 than the US is.)

But, yeah, it's dumb. They really should be using the aforementioned Su-25 or at least the -27, but then this isn't that kind of movie. (Meaning the kind of movie that gets basic logic correct.)

For that matter, the planes are making their attack runs from ridiculously low altitudes, and their bombs, none of which could possibly have less than 250lb charges (and most likely would be 500lb or more), explode more like hand grenades. I might be willing to grant them rockets producing explosions of that size, but I didn't see any such thing being fired.

ALSO from the "no, seriously, I'm pretty sure Israel would have a better handle on this" file, the claim that they couldn't launch any of their own aircraft is completely ridiculous. In such an emergency, they could just scramble without needing ATC radar. It'd be a mess, but better than being totally defenceless. For that matter, they'd already have multiple CAPs airborne. Even nations that aren't being threatened with extermination on a regular basis take that basic precaution. And, from a filmic point of view, that would provide an extra moment of drama as the Israeli NORAD guys announce, "They've shot down our CAP!" Or even a scene where the unidentified MiG-29s shoot down the Israeli planes just before the big ground attack sequence. Or, to drive home the miraculous nature of events, some scenes where the attackers launch missiles at the Israeli CAP that go wide and explode harmlessly or something.

A final thought: There don't seem to be any nuclear weapons involved here. I find this fascinating, actually. It's a telling bit of Adaptation Decay, as you can almost imagine the scriptwriter meeting where they agree to cut it out. "Nukes? Really? And nobody gets hurt?" "Well, yeah, it's a miracle..." "Sure, sure. But I just don't know how we're going to sell that on screen. Better take it out." It's like they realised for a brief moment what has been already commented on in Fred's article in the equivalent scene of the books: there's just no possible way to read such an event as anything other than divine intervention, so what person in their right mind would be so asinine as to maintain the charade of living in the obliviously secular world that L&J require as a backdrop for their Rapture story.

[Moderately Unbalanced Squid]

If only there had been a second camera (perhaps on a grassy knoll in Iowisreal?) filming Buck filming himself, we could have had the Cam-Cam-cam-cam.

But then we'd need a camera to document that there were four cameras there. It could be called the Cam-Cam-cam-cam-cam.

This could go on all night!

[CarlosMcRey]

BTW: Nothing says lame-ass wannabe world overlord like (non-ironically) offering allies a 7% licensing fee.

Besides, don't Libya and Ethiopia know that Nicky would just rip them off by maintaining exclusive rights to the Super-Plant-Gro-Man cartoon character and all subsidiary merchandising? Once the world market for wheat has been saturated the formula's not really going to be worth much. But the right to sell schwag at 300% mark up is where the real money's going to be.

[Fraser]

As someone pointed out, how could this be a sneak attack? The days when a Japanese fleet just had to observe radio silence are long gone—wherever these planes took off from, someone was watching unless they used a stargate, a cloaking device or the Dark Side ("These aren't the planes on your radar. Do not ping when they appear.").

I haven't watched the video yet, but this synopsis makes it sound like Israel is completely defenseless and unable to fight back. That makes no sense either.

[madjoey]

MMPC sounds about two shades off a very credible Elmer Fudd.

[Mau de Katt]

Incidentally, for me the weird juxtaposition and the way nobody bats an eye when Rosie the Gardener walks into central command sort of suggest that the miracle-grow formula is actually under the military's control, which is sort of interesting since it brings up the question of why they might be running the show.

That's how I always interpreted it, too... when I bothered to think about the situation at all, that is. I figured that the reason the Hidden Base was in the middle of Chaim's Miraculous Wheat Field was that it was a military test field... because of the World-Reaching Significance of The Miracle Formula! *bling* and all, so the military had to protect it and be in charge of its testing and such. Didn't make much sense, but then nothing else in this series does, either. *shrug*

And another thing: why would would a Jewish prophet, in Israel, quoting a Hebrew text, be speaking English? Nevermind...

That is actually explained later on in the movie. It's another one of those Miraculous Events [tm], so it's not as clueless as it first appears.

[Cactus Wren]

And then as Mysterious Man in Prophet Costume turns away, Cam-Cam -- keeping the Cam-Cam-cam on him at all times -- displays his finely honed journalistic instincts with a series of incisive questions: "Wait, just what did that mean? Who are you? What are you doing here? Why are you dressed like an extra from The Ten Commandments?"

Oh, wait. Right.

As Mysterious Man in Prophet Costume turns away, Cam-Cam -- keeping the Cam-Cam-cam on him at all times -- displays his finely honed journalistic instincts as established by LaHaye and Jenkins, by standing in numb silence and watching him walk off.

Yup, that's our Buck. Greatest Investigative Reporter of All Time.

(BTW, if anybody wants a copy for your home viewing pleasure, it's available at Amazon. And, because none of us want to put more money into Ellanjay's pockets, used DVDs start at a buck and a quarter, used VHS tapes at a cent. Plus postage, of course.)

[madjoey]

lucidity: Only once in a lifetime is there as perfect a pun as the Cam-Cam-cam. Savor it, Fred.

Moxy Fruvous did a pretty good job with Chile/chilly/chili on The Kids' Song. Seems like that's a band that would have broad appeal to the erudite members of this list.

[Judith]

"And another thing: why would would a Jewish prophet, in Israel, quoting a Hebrew text, be speaking English? Nevermind..." ~SchrodingersDuck

In the Left Behind series, everyone speaks English all the time everywhere with virtually no exceptions. Ever. This is actually one of the more forgivable scenes, because at least our prophet was speaking to and American/native English speaker. It's far more annoying when a room full of non-native English speakers start discussing Nicky's evil plans in one of the most-commonly spoken languages on the planet (even when there is another language that they all know) while knowing very well that the room in which they are speaking is probably bugged.

But I suppose that after bugging all of New Babylon in about two paragraphs and all but giving up on sleeping, it would just be too much to ask of our poor David to run around with a Romanian to Hebrew dictionary. Thus everyone in the world conveniently speaks the language that our heroes conveniently speak.

But we probably shouldn’t be too picky about this. There are a few scenes in the prequels where they actually try to have their characters speak Romanian (not by actually writing in Romanian, of course, but by telling us that they are speaking in Romanian) and these scenes are a train wreck (because they spontaneously switch gears and actually start writing the dialogue in Romanian, which I find confusing as Hell. (If the entire conversation was actually in Romanian but was written in English, then when the authors start writing in Romanian, does that mean that the characters are actually speaking English? And why do they all act like it's some miracle that Nicky has a basic understanding of his own native language at six years old?)).

[Morninglight]

I swear, I'm going to write a 'Left Behind'-esque novel where God and the Trib Force are bad guys.

[Geds]

They didn't have much need, as the Su-27 does the multi-role thing much better, and I do get the impression that the Soviets were much more into dedicated ground-attack craft like the Su-25 than the US is.

I was going to bring that up, but decided not to. I was a little too confused with the fact that if I were setting up the shot I'd have Israel saturated with bombs dropped from high level by Tu-95s and/or high speed runs by Tu-22s and Tu-160s, especially since all of those aircraft are capable of carrying, y'know, nukes.

But then I remembered that I actually know something about long-range strategic bombing.

[Nicole J. LeBoeuf-Little]

Instead, they stare rapturously at their star reporter and gush his praises, their voices choked with emotion:
"Buck would've filmed Hiroshima from ground zero if he'd been there."
"Yeah, that's our Buck."
Here, as in the novel, we learn that our heroes are totally awesome by the subtle device of constantly having other characters say that our heroes are totally awesome.

Compare and Contrast: Cam-Cam's heroics with those of Edison Carter, reporter extraordinaire from Max Headroom. Everyone thinks he's the bomb, too, but their thoughts tend to be borne out by entire episodes devoted to Carter actually being the damn bomb.

This random moment brought to you by the Great TiVo In The Sky, which has reunited me with one of my favorite childhood TV phenomena! Yayyyyy!

(BTW - Bugmaster, thank you ever so much for the recommendation of Haibane Reinmei - John and I have been watching it and loving it to death. It doesn't quite reach the quality of Lain: Serial Experiments, but is somewhere up there--in my opinion--between Voices of a Distant Star and Last Exile. It's very beautiful and tender and sweet and we've watched 4 eps of it so far. We were not oblivious to the boy who wants to be a carpenter when he grows up, by the by.)

[practicallyevil]

They look up to see the CGI armada of warplanes and start to run for cover when several of the planes drop out of formation and begin dropping bombs on them. Because, you know, two guys and a cameraman in the middle of a wheat field in the middle of the desert present an irresistible strategic target.

Perhaps they were incendiary, or defoliant bombs and meant to wipe out Israel's (now) key industry of agriculture by destroying the wheat field? Or maybe they were bunker busters and meant to hit the secret Israeli NORAD base located beneath the wheat field.

With regards to the planes being able to sneak up on Israeli airspace, if Rosenzweig believes there enemy is capable of jamming their RADAR to make it look like the planes are crashing, then they can probably jam the RADAR in the far more practical sense of not having them appear on the screen at all. I don't know why they appeared on screen after the first bombs were dropped, maybe they couldn't jam the short range radar?

Although this movie is extremely cheesy it hasn't dipped below "SciFi Channel Original" movie quality yet, but it is hovering just above the line.

[Mau de Katt]

"And another thing: why would would a Jewish prophet, in Israel, quoting a Hebrew text, be speaking English? Nevermind..." ~SchrodingersDuck

In the Left Behind series, everyone speaks English all the time everywhere with virtually no exceptions. Ever. This is actually one of the more forgivable scenes, because at least our prophet was speaking to and American/native English speaker.

Later on in the movie, when Cam Cam is reviewing his Cam Cam cam footage with his producer or editor or whomever, the footage reveals that the MMPC actually was speaking in Hebrew (or something that sounded like Hebrew). Cam Cam is all puzzled because hey, he heard the MMPC speak English! So, it's supposed to be one of those Day Of Pentecost miracle-thingies, that anyone present heard MMPC speaking in his or her own native language. Except the only person there to hear him was Our Intrepid Reporter, who just stands there dumbstruck by the Awesomeness Of It All.

And, the Miracle doesn't seem to be miraculous enough to translate to news footage, so all it does is show Cam Cam that it was, in fact a Jen-Yoo-WINE Miraculous Event!*bling*. (See, Cam Cam, it IS All About You!)

[Chris]

Kudos on noticing the varying sun angles, I certainly didn't. Although the way the lighting goes within seconds from daylight to Hollywood Night (i.e. bluish, but still nearly as much light as daytime) is kind of hard to miss. In real life, even if there were enough planes to blot out the sun as seen from one place, that's only because *you're in their shadow*.

Do all agricultural researchers have secret underground bunkers with military command centers in them, or just the really *successful* agricultural researchers?

We are not told what year this is, but apparently the attackers can stage through Iraq with no interference either from the occupation forces, or from the actual Iraqi government, if any. IMDB states the movie was released in 2000, so not expecting the occupation is reasonable (unless your script is based on infallible prophecies or something); but wasn't there significant U.S. military presence "monitoring" the Hussein regime basically continuously since the end of Gulf War I? Why didn't they intervene or at least tip off the Israelis?

Unlike one of our audience members who posted above, nobody in Israeli Air Defense can identify the attacking planes by their silhouettes, their radar returns, any radio traffic between them, or any combination of these sources of information. Isn't this, in real life, a fairly well established field in which you'd expect to see some identifications made pretty much immediately by a reasonably with-it military? (Which the real Israeli military *definitely* is.) The attackers could be under orders to maintain radio silence, I guess, but you'd kind of expect the first dozen unexplained detonations of their planes to convince them to reconsider that policy.

Apparently it doesn't occur to any of the attackers to break off the attack, either, which is actually worse than the book; with missiles this is no more than you'd expect, but with manned vehicles surely there's a limit to how many of their comrades they can watch mysteriously blowing up and still remain dedicated to their mission.

The Israeli computers display their on-screen warning information in English, for the benefit of the audience. Of course, given how much military hardware Israel gets from the U.S., this might actually be realistic, but somehow I doubt if the producers thought it through that far.

Buck claims to have been informed "by top-ranking military officials", when the only person he's spoken to is Rosenzweig. I suppose if Rosenzweig was moonlighting as the head of the Israeli air force, it would certainly explain the positioning of his research project right outside their command bunker (and maybe even why he and his foreign friend were allowed in with no security checks), but it does seem an odd juxtaposition of career paths. Alternatively, the GIRAT is just lying to make his source seem more credible, because "I've just been informed by an agricultural researcher that Israel has been unable to launch even a single plane" sounds much less impressive.

"Buck would have filmed Hiroshima from ground zero if he'd been there!" -- which apparently would have been a service to the field of journalism, all things considered.

[CarlosMcRey]

We open with a voiceover narration, by Cameron -- two strikes right there.

They would have really benefited from hiring a good voice actor there. It's an apocalypse movie; a little gravitas is in order. When Cameron says, "How do you describe both a beginning and an end?" it doesn't sound cryptic or ominous, it just sounds like Mike Seaver having problems with his term paper.

[Jim]

@Fraser--The sneak attack is at least plausible (as one was accomplished in the 70s, at least), it's the not knowing who is attacking even while they're attacking that I'm having a problem with.

[CarlosMcRey]

I do have to admit that there has been a merciful lack of Great Wall analogies so far.

[JC]

Maybe the prophet guy was a shot down pilot who was incoherent with shock. Okay, it is a pretty far fetched theory, but if a botanist can just wander into an Israeli command center, surely the Ethiopians can employ Ben Gunn as a mercenary.

[Judith]

"Later on in the movie, when Cam Cam is reviewing his Cam Cam cam footage with his producer or editor or whomever, the footage reveals that the MMPC actually was speaking in Hebrew (or something that sounded like Hebrew). Cam Cam is all puzzled because hey, he heard the MMPC speak English! So, it's supposed to be one of those Day Of Pentecost miracle-thingies, that anyone present heard MMPC speaking in his or her own native language. Except the only person there to hear him was Our Intrepid Reporter, who just stands there dumbstruck by the Awesomeness Of It All." ~Mau de Katt

Ah. Well then, the movie is forgiven, but I still hold that the book failed on this level.

"And, the Miracle doesn't seem to be miraculous enough to translate to news footage, so all it does is show Cam Cam that it was, in fact a Jen-Yoo-WINE Miraculous Event!*bling*. (See, Cam Cam, it IS All About You!)" ~Mau de Katt

So God = Dracula? I thought that even Nicky could do some stuff over the camera. I don't remember any on-camera mind-zaps, but he could at least force most of the people who saw him to be madly in love with him for no obvious reason. And why, of all the people in the world who could have used a little something to renew their belief in the supernatural, would God reach out to the man who is already busy watching him destroy an entire army? It's almost like God performing a series of miracles for Moses while he was crossing the parted Red Sea.

I don't suppose the GIRAT gets into any trouble for taking a break from all of that boring WWIII stuff and watching some drunk guy ramble on in a language that apparently none of them can understand...?

I should just go watch the entire movie. It's officially at the bottom of my (very very LONG) list of things to do this weekend.

[slythwolf]

Schrodinger's Duck, the speaking English part will be explained later as Buck having been magically able to understand this dude even though he's totally speaking another language, which the camera records as such so everybody thinks Buck is nuts.

[Jessica]

"And no one there seems to have any qualms about Buck just wandering in to the apparent central command for the Israeli Air Force."

This made me LOL.
Awesome! And hoo-ray for LB Friday.

[yagowe]

Although this movie is extremely cheesy it hasn't dipped below "SciFi Channel Original" movie quality yet, but it is hovering just above the line.

It's going to have to get quite a bit worse yet to land in "Attack of the Gryphon" territory.

[Gabriel]

Woot! More Left Behind!

While I was watching this movie, I was thinking two things.

#1 = Space Mutiny was more entertaining, and had higher production values.

#2 = This could actually be a cool set up for a retro-mecha-anime. The part where they run from the wheat field straight into the command center seems like something ripped directly from an episode of Tranzor Z, Battle of the Planets, or Star Blazers. The old man is exactly the kind of plot device some animes use (most recently I've seen something similar used in Raxhephon). The difference is the atmosphere to make those elements work just isn't there. In fact, I think even the infamous dub of Clash of the Bionoids has better acting than this.

[Geds]

It's going to have to get quite a bit worse yet to land in "Attack of the Gryphon" territory.

What about Raptor Island?

[Dahne]

Anybody else expecting Rambling Old Guy's line to be, "War. War never changes"?