At Patheos: TFTM: This story can’t be part of this story

Fred Clark published a new post, TFTM: This story can’t be part of this story, at Patheos.com.

This week Fred writes about part 4 Left Behind II: Tribulation Force.

(Trigger Warning: Comments include discussions of suicide and suicidal ideation.)

Excerpt:

This is disappointing, a step backwards from the more capable and independent-minded Chloe we met in the first book and the first movie. The first Left Behind novel spent several chapters tracing Buck’s efforts to travel from Chicago to New York in the aftermath of the Event, yet Chloe managed to travel even further — from San Jose to Chicago — without any of the connections or financial resources Buck had at his disposal. She’s also the only person in that book with enough clarity and gumption to question Bruce’s pat, simplistic explanation of the calamity they’re all experiencing. But so far in this movie, she’s mostly been just a whiny brat.

And that seems deliberate. The earlier scene in the church-based emergency shelter seemed to have been included just to show us that Chloe is useless in a crisis. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but the filmmakers’ treatment of female characters may be even worse than the madonna-whore abominations of the books. For the first half of this movie, Chloe exists only to serve as a foil — a weak character used to make Rayford and Buck seem stronger.

[Fred Clark, TFTM: This story can’t be part of this story, January 23, 2012, posted at Patheos.com]


Commentators who would like to share their responses to the new post with all of Fred's fans (old and new) can cross-post to both boards.

 

Comments

[Firedrake]

There is no followup to an altar call. It's the climax, like the guy standing on the balcony holding up the Dark Lord's head, or the stroll into the sunset hand in hand; it's the payoff for all the tension-raising stuff that's happened earlier. What do you mean, life goes on?

All those passenger planes with underwing engines look the same to me, but the way the windows only start half-way back along its length is a bit weird. Half-cargo 737?

One could claim that everyone who read the Left Behind books was raptured (and is now in heaven going "har har sucker"). But even assuming that all the Atheist Catholic Pagan Unsaved are trying to forget about the things, there are still people like Bruce, who would certainly have been exposed to the books; and there are by now a lot of copies up for grabs...

[Mmy]

Is anyone else struck by how clearly comparing/contrasting the film/book versions of this story demonstrates the different basic underlying requirements of the two media.

To begin -- despite some of the nonsensical claims attendant with the "auteur" theory of cinema -- film is a fundamentally collaborative project.

Consider the number of people who can enhance/undermine the "vision" of the director and/or producer from the set designer, to the location scout, to the individual "named" actors, to the actors without lines, to the camera persons, to the editor........

[Ross]

@mmy: One thing I keep seeing is the thing I have mentioned before in reference to quite a lot of things:

Humans will occasionally act like humans, no matter how hard they try not to. It's a lot harder for actors in a movie to depict the casually callous utter empathetic bankrupcy which the books lionize in their heroes, just because the actor's guild is almost exclusively human in its membership.

Kirk Cameron just can't act as utterly reprehensible as the book version of Buck Williams, because he is (1) a human being and (2) Not a good enough actor to complete hide that fact.

It's *harder* for a movie to be inhuman in that way than a book -- heck, even in the books, Ellenjay can't quite manage to 100% suppress their humanity all the time. What chance did Cloud Ten have?

[russia tour]

I am totally delighted with strong your blog greatly that saved me! God bless you “That is the saving grace of humor. If you fail no one is laughing at you.” - A. Whitney Brown

[TRiG spamflagging]

Spam above.