So I am browsing through the new releases, and I see this film called Doubt with Philip Seamore Huffman on the cover in a priest garb. I don’t have to even read the film description. I know it is just another slap at the face of Christianity.

Sadly, I can’t recall one single movie by a major studio which portrayed Christianity in a positive light. Into the Wild offered some positive Christian elements, but hard to show that film at a church with the language and nudity. Totally unnecessary. If you can get past the foul language and violent scenes, Shaw shank Redemption and The Green Mile can be seen as Christian analogies. But a film that directly demonstrates Christianity in a positive light? Not a chance.

It is almost like the heads of studios have a deep rooted liberal atheist mindset, and they are determined to present their world views on film. Instead, their idea of morality is Seven Pounds. A guy who finds redemption in an offensive manner to Christianity morality..

Whenever we do see Christianity portrayed on film, it is almost always in the form of Catholicism. You have some corrupt priest doing bad things, or a priest losing their faith, or in the case of Sleepers, a priest who will lie for his friends. The fact that Hollywood represents a world where Catholicism is the only form of Christian faith is offensive enough. For the uneducated, many of the Catholic teachings and practices are not even found in the Bible.

They are completely clueless about a huge region in the United States known as the Bible Belt. Millions attend church every Sunday in a fashion that is almost never represented on film. The closest example I’ve seen is the church scenes done in Places of the Heart, and The Apostle which was financed outside Hollywood by Robert Duvall.

So why do we even need movies about Christianity? Because obviously, there is a high demand for it. Fireproof was a grass roots film made outside the Hollywood machinery. The film was a massive success, and even more so on dvd. The dvd remains on Amazon’s bestseller list. The film was also mocked and panned by Hollywood. If it is really that bad, why would people buy the dvd?

There is a huge market for positive Christian films, yet Hollywood’s hatred will not even let profit sway them.

Give me a break. Hollywood doesn't portray ANY religion in a positive light on a regular basis. There are countless movies with Islamic terrorists and one of the most successful films this decade was 1. Pro Christianity and 2. a slap in the face to Judisim and that was The Passion of the Christ.

I agree.

I hate how Christianity is always associated with Catholics. Yes, Doubt was about Catholic priest accused of molesting a boy. It was not a slap in the face to Christianity but a welcomed spotlight on corrupted Catholic priests.

This is gonna be interesting thats for sure....
You obviously havn't seen doubt. Its not really about Religion at all. More about how times change and the church struggling to decide on whether to change with the times or not.
I do hate Christianity myself though and love to see films like Religulous do well.
Also many people in Hollywood are pretty intelligent and are atheists and/or know that most of the time people dont wanna go watch some bullshit after-school special garbage like Fireproof or whatever.

There's a market for "positive" Christian films. But the market, Passion of the Christ aside, is not as big as you think it is. Look at, for example, Fireproof.

Did you see it in theaters? Because more people saw Nights in Rodanthe and Eagle Eye during its opening weekend. If you didn't see it opening weekend, you have only yourself to blame.

Simply put, you're in the minority. The studios listen to profits, and when they make movies for you, you don't go see them.

Chronicles of Naria? Lord of the Rings? Lots of Christian elements found in those franchises. And no offense, but I think if you'd at least read the synopsis, you'd realize Doubt is different from what you're portraying it to be.

Now Religulous, that's a different story. But that's just more Bill Maher being the cynical jackass that he is...

You lose all credibility and power to argue your point when you won't even read the description of a movie that you fear might be offensive to you. If you can't even read or watch something that challenges your beliefs then you are as weak as Hollywood says you are.

It isn't, actually. Stop being prejudiced and hateful.

Man up and stop acting like such a victim. You're the MAJORITY. Relish in it. And rest assured, with Fireproof's success there will be even more low-budget, craptacular Kirk Cameron movies to spooge over.

Some people have to find an environment where they can perceive themselves as an underdog just so they can whine about being a victim.

I have no problems watching films that challenge my beliefs. I even watched Religulous and thought it was funny at times. I found Borat hilarious even though he mocks a penacostal church service.

I just want to see more equality. How about a film that shows a priest holding onto his morals instead of being corrupt? There are many pastors out there who live clean Godly lives and only want to help people, but they are never in the movies. In There will Be Blood, Christianity is mocked again. The list is endless. People love feel good stories, ya know.

I wonder if it's just that studios don't think it would sell. It's kind of like how usually on the news, you don't really hear about much good stuff going on. It's always "OMGGGG!1!!11!! The crap is hitting the fan people!!!!!!!!1!!!" No news like bad news...

Perhaps you should rent some Kirk Cameron direct-to-rental dramas.

Because drama needs conflic, jeff. A priest holds onto his morals? That's... his job.

I think because a lot of moviegoers want something exciting/different to happen to characters in a film when they watch a movie.

Look at Doubt with three different "high concept" plots, as your example:

Man lives a godly life = boring
Man faces temptation = drama
Man accused of fucking a boy = dark drama

Movies are escapism. I don't want to watch a movie where the office drone goes to work, does his job, then goes home. Repeat 5 times until weekend.

If I wanted that, I'd just film my life.

Yes, there's room for movies about real people leading real lives, but typically something has to happen to make it compelling viewing for a couple of hours. Tell me an engaging story with engaging characters, and I'm there.

So you are just mad that there aren't more mainstream titles being made that uplift Christianity? The examples you give of movies that mock and degrade Christianity specifically are so few and far between, yet you are giving those titles so much power. The list is not endless, you are just so caught up in your own world that you only see what you want to see.

How many movies are made that uplift Islam or Judaism or Hinduism in mainstream Hollywood, but I don't see these people asking for equality.

The Exorcist. Same could be said for quite a few horror movies where righteous men have to stand up to a physical expression of supernatural evil.

Off the top of my head, Signs and Lars & the Real Girl also both presented Christians in a positive light.

Hollywood sees dollar signs and are trying to go after a piece of the Christian belief $$. Fox now has a label (FoxFaith) which caters to people who like religion in their movies. For the rest of us, well it's still pretty unavoidable, I see far more movies with Christian beliefs in a positive light (Signs and Knowing come to mind) than I do in a negative (and when it's negative, it's usually just an evil priest, since Hollywood is too afraid to offend the masses).

In general, there are very few "studio system" movies that don't involve things blowing up or sex comedies, but last I checked not many were anti-Christian. They generally don't blow money on anything having to do with religion, period. Seven Pounds offended you? Okay fine, it didn't go out of its way to do so and is a borderline invalid point. Also There Will Be Blood and Doubt are hardly standard studio movies, they're the kind of movies that producers have to shop around and plead for funding from studios to move forward. (And it thankfully goes through, TWBB was fantastic, still haven't seen Doubt.)

That said, major studios tend to avoid the topic all together. General moviegoers don't like being preached to nor enjoy having beliefs pushed upon them. If you don't want to see a movie that may offend your religion, avoid anything that has seemingly "dark" content and you'll be fine (Seven Pounds ads, for instance, originally made it sound like it was either a) it was going to turn out how it did or b) he was going to blow something up.) There are plenty of other movies out there with happy go lucky characters living good clean lives. They're generally by Disney, rated G or PG and do gangbusters at the Box Office.

Jeff, do you ever watch old Hollywood movies? There are tons that deal with men and women of faith and the struggles they have in a difficult world. And they do so without proselytizing. Here's a few:

THE SONG OF BERNADETTE (1943)
THE KEYS OF THE KINGDOM (1944)
GOING MY WAY (1944) - 10 Oscar nominations/won seven of them, including Best Picture and Best Actor (Bing Crosby)
THE BELLS OF ST. MARY'S (1945)
THE MIRACLE OF OUR LADY OF FATIMA (1952)

Those are all explicitly about the Catholic faith, but there are plenty of others that deal with similar issues, but not necessarily Catholic. THE RAZOR'S EDGE (1946) is a good one. I'D CLIMB THE HIGHEST MOUNTAIN (1951), about a Methodist minister newly assigned to a church in rural Georgia in 1910, is a good one also.

I'm having trouble thinking of more recent ones, not because they don't exist but because they didn't have the impact of the 1940s films cited above.

One of the most interesting old Hollywood films about a man of faith torn between his past and the new path he's on is a western called HELLFIRE (1949), about a gunslinger-turned-preacher who has to contend with a host of baddies as he attempts to fulfill a dying preacher's wish to build a church.

How many movies openly mock Islam or Budda? WOuld you ever see Borat urinating on a Holy Islamic temple? Show an Islamic Holy Man being corrupt? Not in a million years yet it is quite ok to degrade Christianity in movies.
Even in Religulous, Maher spends most of his time hating on Christians.

And can you think of any film that even portrays mainstream Christianity, not Catholicism? Heck, even in Xmen 2, the spiritual mutant is, you guess it, a Catholic. So is Daredevil lol

I like this...

No real dog in this fight but The Passion of the Christ was financed outside of the major studios, so not really a "Hollywood" production, much to their regret.
Though in fairness I am not sure Christianity was the only factor in passing on the film, Latin and Aramaic, and its R rating most likely had some effect on the decisions.

Because Buddha and Islam aren't nearly as popular in the US. Plus when other countries make fun of Islam, it ends up really, really bad thanks to extremists. And last I checked, there were plenty of movies based on Islam that cast it in a horrible, horrible light. I'm sure if the Christian community started rioting everytime somebody made a funny about Jesus, there would be less of it, but then there would be more movies about Christians beating up cartoonists.

Buddhism is made fun of regularly, in terms of Buddha's fatness, Monks (and monks in general, but Anger Management comes to mind), and reincarnation jokes. But considering it is less a religion and more a philosophy it's a little harder to mock. No religion is generally pointed out as a "hey lets offend them!" in the movies, except for maybe the Jews in a self-deprecating way (Thanks Woody!).

From the sounds of it, this is more focused around priests looking bad. You're right about the Catholic church being the primary church in movies, and considering how often they're in the news the movies are keeping closer to reality than anything - it's a conflict of interest that makes for movie drama. That said, there is no hate of Christianity involved with it, it's a dislike of corruption within the system.

As a warning, be careful if you look up Christian movies on imdb, for some reason Oz (the TV series) is listed as one. ...

Real drama would be found in a religious person having faith, losing it or doubting it because of terrible things that happen to them or their loved ones, and then regaining it. This is a universal theme and it's so common to be almost banal, whether or not Christian faith is the focus.

If 'Hollywood' really hated Christianity there wouldn't be so many TV shows with religious and quasi-religious themes dominating them. Shows like Saving Grace or Joan of Arcadia deal/dealt with matters of faith quite explicitly. Six Feet Under featured a family who were regular churchgoers and whose explicitly Christian faith help sustain them through tragedy. While not explicitly Christian by any stretch of the imagination, nearly every episode of both Buffy and Angel dealt with themes of sin, redemption, good/evil, and the responsibility of one's own deeds. The West Wing's President Bartlett was a devout Catholic whose religious devotion was a major, positive theme throughout the series. When the show portrayed the intolerance of some people of faith it was careful to show the love and forgiveness of other Christians. I could probably think of other examples but I don't watch a lot of TV.