I don’t ordinarily use this space to respond to someone else’s essay, but I am breaking that norm here. I am not linking to the essay in question, nor am I naming the writer—I don’t want anyone piling on this person. The thesis they present (from here on referred to simply as “the thesis”) demands a response and that’s all I want to try and do here. By “response,” please note that I do not mean “rebuttal.” My goal is not to refute so much as it is to redirect and enhance.

Here’s the thesis in question: SINNERS uses the language of Christianity to undermine Christianity’s truth. If I had to summarize my response in one sentence, I’d say the film uses the language of Christianity to undermine narratives that distort Christianity.

Spoilers follow.

To give the thesis credit, it assumes a firm commitment to Christian practice and language. It affirms the idea that sin separates us from God. In this context, it sees Preacher Boy Sammie’s father, a pastor, as a standard of religious authority. The pastor’s warnings against the evils of music frame the moral construct: faith in the walls of the church is good; the music, the blues, is evil.

Sammie, we learn, is a gifted musician, proficient with his guitar and in possession of a gorgeous voice. He helps twin brothers Smoke and Stack—having just returned to Louisiana after a stint working organized crime in Chicago—turn an old sawmill into a juke joint. Sammie’s musical power draws the attention of lurking vampires, however, and much violence ensues.

Having survived the night, Sammie returns to the church. His father implores him to put aside the music and return to faith. Sammie chooses the music. Under the framework of the thesis, Sammie’s rejection of the church and his embrace of the music is a rejection of repentance. This is a movie called SINNERS, after all, so what other conclusion could we draw?

That’s an admittedly thin summation—of both the film and the thesis’ attempt to analyze it. And, to be fair, I am probably not doing the thesis justice by reducing it to such a short abstract. In the interest of that fairness, however, the thesis’ refusal to dialog with other points of view weaken its posture.

Elsewhere, I have seen SINNERS contextualized in terms of colonialism, imperialism, and White Christian Nationalism, which is a fair reading. I am familiar enough with this approach, but to write about it with any integrity, I have to rely on the expertise of others. The best I can do when I respond to any film is “say what I saw,” and what I saw aligns with that approach.

Let me explain:

Some time ago, I attended a lecture on the history of hip hop. As presented, hip hop was an innovative spiritual expression of the Black community’s experience. According to the lecture, about 10% of what developed over the years fell into the profane stereotype white Christian evangelicals told their kids to avoid. In short, by the 1990s, record executives had taken that 10% and figured out how to market it to suburban white kids.

This should in no way be perceived as a complete understanding of hip hop’s origins. I am well aware I am leaving out important nuances and details that deserve ample attention. I only bring it up to say this about SINNERS: when the vampires attacked the juke joint, drawn by the power of Sammie’s music, that lecture shot to the front of my mind and stayed there until the credits rolled.

Limiting our appraisal of the film to a simple framework of sin and repentance, call and response, prevents us from contending with important and convicting truths SINNERS wants to examine. Sammie’s music originates from the Black experience in America. The film’s vampires, more than their lust for blood, feel the power of the music and want to take it for themselves.

Christian narratives justified generations of chattel slavery, gross oppression in the wake of emancipation, and the long arm of the Jim Crow south. If we begin, as the thesis asks us to, with the question of what this movie has to say about reality, this perspective must be taken into account as well. Ignoring it, as the thesis does, means failure to consider everything the film has to say. The title itself refuses to narrow its focus. SINNERS has as much to say about what it means to be sinned against as it does about disobeying God.

On that note, consider how the story handles the consequences of its survivors.

When we meet Sammie as an old man, and ageless Stack returns to visit him, the film lands on a perfect note of sorrow. After a long life living his dream, Sammie says his best day was still that day. He rejects Stack’s offer for immortality; says he’s seen enough of this world. He’s spent his life chasing that first high, only to reach the end knowing he’ll never feel that way again. The freedom he felt that day is elusive and fleeting and diminishing. Stack, we learn, feels much the same way.

OLD SAMMIE
You know something? Maybe once a week, I wake up paralyzed reliving that night. But before the sun went down, I think that was the best day of my life. Was it like that for you?

STACK
No doubt about it. Last time I seen my brother. Last time I seen the sun. And just for a few hours, we was free.

That’s tragic, not cathartic.

Have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness. The thesis would suppose the sentence ends there. The whole thing goes: Have nothing to do with the deeds of darkness, but rather expose them. On this front, SINNERS excels. That’s why this Christian enjoyed the film. It exposes the truth of the darkness—one day spent free means living so many others in the shadow of its light. It’s a lament, a cry for something better … a longing to see the sunrise again.

That’s my read, incomplete as it may be.

Like many, my first exposure to CHARIOTS OF FIRE came through its incredible score. I had of course seen the famous clip of the men running on the beach. I don’t think I ever saw an actual scene until I was in my twenties when my pastor used it as a sermon illustration.

Granted, my experience should in no way be taken as normative. I am sure many fellow xennials discovered CHARIOTS on HBO or through their parents. It’s beloved for good reason. I worry, though, that anyone who’s seen the film under the pretense of pedantic pastors may have missed some important points. I know I did.

You can probably recite the line by heart. “I believe that God made me for a purpose. For China. But He also made me fast. And when I run, I feel His pleasure.” Eric Liddell is a favorite pin-up for pastors and other Christian motivational speakers. To be fair, he has a truly astonishing story—one we might not know were it not for his running.

If all anyone remembers of this film is this line, then I would argue they’ve never really watched it. CHARIOTS OF FIRE is not (just) the Eric Liddell story. He’s a crucial piece of it, yes. But if we recall that opening scene on the beach, the camera introduces us to four 1924 Olympians: Liddell, Lord Andrew Lindsay, Aubrey Montague, and of course, Harold Abrahams. Their story is one of friendship, victory over racism and classism, and honoring God through the long daily grind of work that chases after perfection.

When we first meet Harold, his enormous sense of pride has eroded small portions of his shoulder. He meets any insult to his person or people with practiced resolve, an indefatigable will, and easily summoned cheer. He’s never lost a race, he says, and we get an early glimpse of his greatness when he conquers the famed Cambridge “college dash.” He’s the only person to accomplish such a feat in 700 years.

The film immediately transitions to Eric. For much of the runtime, we’re setup to believe his rivalry with Harold is headed for an epic showdown. Underneath that narrative drive are slow-boiling conflicts that elevate the larger themes. The first exists between Eric and his sister Jenny. Theirs is a missionary family, and they carry a legacy of evangelism. Jenny sees Eric’s running as a waste of time, a distraction from the real work of saving souls. Others around Eric, however, want him to run in the name of God, to use his gifts to make the world sit up and take notice.

Here, we get another oft-quoted moment that tends to find its way into well-meaning Sunday sermons: “You can praise the Lord by peeling a spud if you peel it to perfection.”

It’s the kind of sentiment that might read well on a bumper sticker. In context, it might be one of the most unkind things said to Eric. Any runner will tell you: perfection is never achieved. Every time you go to the line, even if you’re the best, you’re still racing against your last best time.

What Eric’s father calls perfection is really just hard work that suffers frequent mistakes. In an early race, he’s tangled up with another runner and tumbles off the track. Remarkably— miraculously—he gets up and surges ahead to win the sprint. That kind of speed is impossible without all the miles that came before.

Eric acknowledges as much in one of his early sermons:

I want you to do more than just watch a race. I want you to take part in it. I want to compare faith to running in a race. It’s hard. It requires concentration of will, energy of soul.

When the narrative returns to Harold and his upcoming meet with Liddell, he approaches the race with his signature seething pride. May the best man win, he offers, when Eric comes to shake his hand. Moments later, Harold comes in second. It’s a crushing blow, at first. “If I can’t win I won’t run!” After a firm but loving rebuke, he quickly rallies, engaging the services of a professional coach.1 He returns to training, running drills, beating his body into better shape so that he may beat Eric Liddell the next time they meet.

This is what it looks like to peel a spud.

I grew up in the Nazarene Church. Much of my early theological training was shaped by its doctrines and writings, which finds roots in the writings of John Wesley. His text, “A Plain Account of Christian Perfection,” was a favorite among students, particularly those who preferred to admonish the ones who lingered on the fringes of denominational norms.

The ideas of perfection that formed by youth tended to originate from inflated prooftext. Be perfect as I am perfect, my peers would say, ignoring the multitude of verses that lend important dimension to such a stubborn idea. It takes time and practice to peel a perfect spud. Puritan ideals tend to ignore the work, the repetition, the training it takes to reach that place. Even then, it will still fall short. Wesley himself, in some of his more understated passages, admits perfection sometimes appears quite ordinary.

Reducing CHARIOTS OF FIRE to bumper sticker theology betrays the richness of the film, which is itself a splinter of reflected light from the richness of Christ. Remembering the film for some well-written lines that look great on the inside of a greeting card neglects the depth the film wishes to convey.

Look once more at the remainder of Eric’s sermon cited above…

You experience elation when the winner breaks the tape—especially if you’ve got a bet on it. But how long does that last? You go home. Maybe your dinner’s burnt. Maybe you haven’t got a job. So who am I to say, “Believe, have faith,” in the face of life’s realities? I would like to give you something more permanent, but I can only point the way. I have no formula for winning the race. Everyone runs in her own way, or his own way. And where does the power come from, to see the race to its end? From within. Jesus said, “Behold, the Kingdom of God is within you. If with all your hearts, you truly seek me, you shall ever surely find me.” If you commit yourself to the love of Christ, then that is how you run a straight race.

Too many times, we focus on the finding and neglect the seeking. It’s the seeking—the practice, the repetition, the training—that leads to humility. By the end of the film, Harold Abrahams finds his humility. The man who confides in gentle Aubrey is far different from the headstrong boy anxious to defend his worth and place.

“When I run, I feel his pleasure.” In that pleasure, the work, and the pain that often comes with it, cultivates a sense of joy. Eric Liddell did not run with perfection. I mean, come on, look at the poor guy’s form. Look at the agony on his face upon winning that sprint after suffering a fall.

The cross—with all its thorns and agony—is not something Jesus endured so I would not have to. Perfection carries a cost.

Jeff Bridges eases a distraught Rosie Perez into the backseat of his Volvo. He buckles her in, then he hands her a toolbox. “This is your baby,” he says. “This is your chance to save him. The opening chords of U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name” rise above her anguished cries. Bridges slides behind the wheel, hits the gas. “Pray to God to give you the strength to save your baby!” He turns down an alley and floors the accelerator. He’s headed right for a concrete wall. The music pulses. He’s not slowing down. “Pray for us now and at the hour of our death!”

I stumbled on this scene when I was 14, too young to understand what was happening; old enough to sense I had just seen something profound. As Peter Weir’s follow up to DEAD POETS SOCIETY, FEARLESS came pre-loaded with a measure of audience goodwill, but fizzled in box office returns.1 Today, it’s unfamiliar to many, and it’s a masterpiece that deserves a larger audience.

Dig deep enough into my past internet writing and you’ll find this is the third time I’ve written about this film. It’s a tough one to classify—a disaster movie that defies its tropes, a psychological drama untethered to genre convention, a love story that refuses to play by the usual rules. Its ineffable quality makes it a challenge for lay critics and essayists like me. Too many subjects vie for attention. Its place in Peter Weir’s filmography, its examination of marriage and fidelity, its challenge to faith, even the differences between the film and the novel on which it’s based—they all covet attention.

For now, I want to focus on the film’s examination of theodicy—reconciling the goodness of God despite evil or tragedy.

Reducing FEARLESS to a single logline robs the story of its depth, but here goes: the arc of the plot follows the emotional journey of Max Klein (Bridges) after he survives a horrific plane crash, finding he is unafraid. To say more would spoil the film, so if you have not seen it and want to preserve the experience, this is your final warning.

The story swings wide of any preconceived expectation in its opening minutes. Max shuffles through a cornfield carrying an infant, guiding a small boy by the hand along with a battered group of other adults. It’s only after they emerge from the corn to meet the rescue workers on scene that we even know what happened. Max’s detached serenity is completely out of place and context. He denies even being a survivor and takes a cab to a hotel. It’s only later when the FBI tracks him down that we learn he has a wife and son, whom he never bothered to call to say he was still alive.

That’s because Max isn’t ready to believe is alive. Before he’s found, he takes a short roadtrip to see an old friend from college. Max makes it clear he’s not here to score a hookup. The focus is on the plate of strawberries he orders from a waitress who just happens to be named Faith. Max, we learn, is deathly allergic to strawberries—or at least he was. He takes one from the bowl, slowly letting it settle into his mouth before he chews, and he waits. His friend drones on about the her troubles—nothing so severe as a plane crash, but troubling enough. Max, meanwhile, eats the strawberry without incident. “Trust me,” he tells his friend, “your life is not a disaster.”

This cycle—confronting death, facing his fear, overcoming it—repeats at intervals throughout the narrative. One early episode finds Max walking across at least six lanes of L.A. traffic toward the strobing reflection of late morning sunlight (something we later learn precipitated the crash). He reaches the other side, unharmed and unflappable in the wake of squealing tires, blaring horns and screaming drivers. He simply smiles, lays down on the sidewalk, and cries to the heavens: “You want to kill me but you can’t!”

Contrast this to fellow crash survivor Carla Rodrigo (Perez2). She took the doomed flight with her two-year-old son, whom she lovingly called “Bubble,” and walked away without him. She can barely get out of bed. For weeks, she’s only left the house to go to church and light a candle for her son. When she returns to bed, she begs God to let her die.

In the effort to help her start the healing process, a grief counselor hired by the airline brings Max to see Carla. They meet each other on opposite ends of a shared spectrum. Carla is highly religions, yet devastated; Max says he doesn’t believe in God, and thinks the crash is the best thing that ever happened to him. He tells her about how he watched his father die of a heart attack—“like someone with a big hand reached down and squeezed the life out of him.” That was God, Carla says. “I don’t know why God killed him,” Max says “there was no reason to. So I decided, there was no God.”

Genre films rely heavily on opposing attraction. By this setup alone, the viewer expects Max and Carla to develop a flirtatious rapport that—

• escalates to sex

• disintegrates when his “fearless” manner oversteps to ignore her pain

• but later matures, probably after both their respective marriages end and they find themselves reunited in some saccharine coda right before the credits role.

FEARLESS patently refuses to follow such a tired trajectory.

Instead, Max and Carla end up crossing each other on the spectrum, challenging one another in bold yet divergent ways. Consider this exchange:

CARLA
(referring to Jesus, re: the loss of her son)
You know, he hurt me. He hurt me forever. But I still believe in him.

MAX
Well, people don’t so much believe in God as they choose not to believe in nothing. Life and death, they happen for no reason. We may think that people are born because their mothers wanted them a lot, or because God needed another home-run hitter for the Giants. We think that we die because we eat red meat or rob banks. That way, we even though we can never be good enough or careful enough to live forever, at least we can try. But if it makes no sense, if it … if life and death just happen, then there’s no reason to do anything.

CARLA
There’s no reason to love.

Her response should not be confused as acquiescence. It’s gentle rebuke. Carla, of course, loves her son, and always will. She refuses Max’s calm appraisal, even as she softens to his presence.

And his presence is a force. Since the crash, his perspective has shifted—he no longer feels that he walks the same plane of existence as everyone else. “You’re safe,” he assures Carla. “You’re safe because we died already.”

CARLA
I’m not dead.

MAX
No you’re not, that’s not what I meant.
(points to the crowds around them)
Look at them. They don’t know what it’s like to die in their heads. We do. We passed through death.

On this path, Max is determined to drink deep from the marrow of life (a strong echo of themes explored in DEAD POETS SOCIETY, but to greater degrees, and with a more skillful narrative touch), even if it hurts his son, and even if it drives away his wife. After falling out with his family at Thanksgiving, Max decides to take Carla Christmas shopping. “Let’s buy presents for the dead!” he exclaims.

At first repulsed by the idea, Carla soon catches his enthusiasm. It looks like she’s starting to heal, laughing again, rediscovering joy as Max purchases a set of tools for his father and she buys a toy for her son. In the safety of this joy and friendship, she summons her courage and makes her confession: at the moment of the crash, the moment when all life hung in the balance, she let go of her little son.

Her deep and penetrating regret, which she’s thus far managed to repress in front of Max, finally explodes. Max knows, as anyone would, there was nothing Carla could have done to save her child. Which leads Max to put her in the backseat of his Volvo, and hand her a toolbox.

First, to be clear, Max’s actions in the following scene are reckless, foolish, and not a form of treatment I or anyone with even half a moral compass would ever advise.3 That said, it works. When that toolbox flies through the windshield of Max’s Volvo, it delivers a fatal blow to Carla’s shame. There was nothing she could have done. It’s not her fault.

The subversive romantic tension between Max and Carla reaches its zenith when, after the incident in the car, Carla goes to visit Max’s wife, Laura. FEARLESS may not pass the Bechdel Test, but it pays careful attention to its women. Laura doesn’t fold, nor does she resort to cheap or catty insults. She defends her marriage with the patient strength of a lioness. Carla assures Laura there is no affair—there never was. What Max calls “overwhelming feelings of love” for her are not what they seem. Max is just a friend, she says, like an angel God sent to her.

But he’s not an angel, Laura tells her. He’s a man. And he can’t live up there where divinity lives. With this in mind, Carla delivers her final challenge to Max. She’s not a ghost anymore, she tells him. She’s back. It’s time for him to come back, too.

In what might be a narrative reflection of Max’s first-act cry to the heavens (“You want to kill me but you can’t!”) after walking through traffic, Laura later discovers a collection of paintings Max keeps in his office. Most of these he’s done himself, all depicting ethereal tunnels that either lead to darkness or light. He even has a copy of Hieronymous Bosch’s “The Ascent Into the Empyrean” where Laura finds the following caption:

“The soul comes to the end of its long journey and naked and alone draws near to the divine.”

FEARLESS carries this understated tension—humanity’s frailty, the nearness of death, the unseen touch of the divine, and the horror of the unexpected tangled up and tying it all together—through its entire runtime. Its closing scenes, which I cannot bring myself to spoil here, resist the urge to supply a unifying theory of everything to resolve this tension. The resolution achieves profound catharsis through the real paradox of passing through death in the stirring exultation of its final line:

“I’M ALIVE!”

It isn’t an answer to theodicy, but it does give us a bit of a clue.4

Of all the films to come out of the 1990s Disney Renaissance, BEAUTY AND THE BEAST stands apart, and stands tallest. Better writers have expounded on its genius and I won’t attempt to overshadow them here. Instead, I want to contrast a crucial sequence shared by both the 1991 animated feature and its 2017 live-action remake. The difference, as they say, makes all the difference.

It’s important to understand just how radical the 1991 film was in terms of its Disney lineage. Much of its timelessness emerges through its resistance to what were already tired tropes. Belle has no desire for a prince. She’s a nerd with the soul of an artist, well acquainted with hard work and hyperaware that something bigger orbits her little town. This is no puerile teenager with underdeveloped impulse control. Belle is a fully realized woman, young as she may be, fiercely independent and brimming with courage. It’s not that she doesn’t see the value in marriage—look at what she reads and how much she gushes over it. She chafes at the community’s reliance on marriage as mere utility.

The ultra-masculine Gaston gives this idea its legs. He’s the most attractive man in town and Belle is the most attractive woman—that’s all the sense it needs to make. He’s the embodiment of the provincial life Belle wishes to avoid. In Gaston’s house, she might as well mount herself over the fireplace for all the agency she’d have.

The Beast, likewise, sees beauty as something to use, something to adorn his castle rather than shape his soul. He is cursed because he basically is Gaston, albeit with a bigger bank account. When Belle offers to take her father’s place as prisoner for the crime of encroaching on his land, the Beast is surprised, but immediately retreats to his base impulses. Belle is a means to an end, nothing more. He is as uninterested in her as he is in learning from the books that fill his library.

Yes, the library. In a deleted scene, we learn the Beast has difficulty reading. Even without this knowledge, his emotional illiteracy is plainly apparent. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he throws a fit. Like Gaston, he is used to having others obey his whims. Neither can manipulate their way around Belle’s powerful sense of self. All the Beast can do is scream at her and send her away.

Up to this point in the story, the 2017 remake has followed the same beats while adding a few nice flourishes. Emma Watson’s Belle still visits the town library, which the remake sets inside a church. When the town folk make a mess of Belle’s inventiveness, the clergyman is the only person to help her clean up. Her father, played by Kevin Kline, is less the mad inventor and more a haunted widower.

The biggest shift occurs in the aftermath of Belle’s attempts to leave when she is attacked by a pack of ravenous wolves. While it’s a rousing rescue, the Beast’s motives remain suspect. He knows as well as the servants do that Belle is the best chance he has for breaking the curse. Even in his heroism, Belle is still an object of utility. When he sends the wolves yelping away and passes out from the effort, Belle resists the temptation to leave, and takes the injured Beast back to the castle. Here, the two narratives diverge.

The 1991 Library Sequence

Belle tends to the Beast’s wounds by the fire. The servants recoil. They know one of his legendary outbursts is imminent. He roars the moment Belle’s cloth touches his wounds. The servants flee, but Belle does not. That hurts! the Beast cries, ever the petulant child. Belle remains firm.

BELLE: “Well, if you would hold still it wouldn’t hurt as much!”

BEAST: “Well if you hadn’t run away, none of this would have happened!”

BELLE: “If you hadn’t frightened me, I wouldn’t have run away!”

BEAST: “Well you shouldn’t have been in the west wing.”

BELLE: “Well you should learn to control your temper!”

To which the Beast has no retort. Profoundly, the 1991 film makes no effort to explain away his immaturity. Maybe he had a controlling father. Maybe he had an emotionally abusive mother. Maybe he is just another in a long line of Disney’s royal orphans. Either way, he’s an entitled brat arguing with a commoner, and his sour persimmons are no match for Belle’s resolve. She has shown herself to be every ounce his equal. It was she who hoisted him onto the back of her horse to get him back to the castle. A frail waif she is not. And yet it is Belle who humbles herself, again, and thanks the Beast for saving her life. It’s a tentative reconciliation, and the Beast’s simple, “You’re welcome,” is fraught with promise.

“I’ve never felt this way about anyone,” he later confesses. Belle’s self-possession, her selflessness, has kindled a fire he only barely recognizes. She could have run and left him to die, yet she chose to help him. Now, he wants to do something for her in return … but what? What’s a bookish girl like that gonna want from him?

It’s the rakish Lumière who has the bright idea. He remembered the way she lit up when she first heard about the library. For all the treasure at his command, the Beast gives her the one place he has where her heart would have a real home.

The 2017 Library Sequence

The sequence begins by repeating the frustrated exchange between Belle and the Beast word for word with a crucial difference: Belle treats the Beast as he glowers in bed, pointedly facing away from her. Rather than drawing them together, this small change actually increases the emotional distance between them. The conflict turns passive and perfunctory.

Instead of reconciliation, the Beast turns away to sleep, giving the servants an opportunity to tell Belle about his dead mother and cruel father. They assume blame for failing to parent the Beast as a child, and they refuse to let Belle in on the curse’s conditions. While their choices allow Belle to maintain her agency, they have stripped the Beast of his opportunity to take responsibility for himself.

Instead, the Beast wakes sometime later to find Belle reciting Shakespeare. He finishes the verse for her—benefits of an expensive education, he says. Belle leaps at this hint of connection, tells the Beast that Romeo and Juliet is her favorite play. The Beast gags—so many better things to read, he says. Like what? asks Belle.

So he shows her the library. Like this, the response implies. Instead of a selfless act of love, the Beast introduces Belle to the library in an attempt to mansplain the merits of classical literature.

The 2017 remake attempts to deepen the fairy tale substance of its animated origin. Many of these additions—the clergyman, the servant’s relationships with each other—add to the telling rather than detract. Gaston’s similarities with the Beast receive careful attention. Even LeFou, a disposable sidekick in the original, gets an arc much more befitting of the story’s overall themes.

Even the addition of the Beast’s tragic backstory—while it arguably undermines the deeper truth that evil and selfishness are more innate than learned—gives the remake a chance to explore the entire cast’s transformation. The core of the story, however, rests in the change that occurs within the Beast.

Lead animator Glen Keane poignantly maintained the importance of showing the Beast’s return to human form occurs from the inside out. His physical change can only happen because of his inner change.

The remake doesn’t so much forget this as much as it neglects it. Why the Beast takes Belle to the library matters more than the act itself.

The hero wakes, his body covered in ash. Alone. Defeated. Then his voiceover intrudes, just in case we don’t get it. “Outcast. Betrayer. Alien.” This is Jake Sully, the hero of James Cameron’s AVATAR. He’s narrated most of the film up to this point, but the harrowing events of the previous hour have had me so wrapped up in their spell that I hardly noticed.

His voiceover continues. “I was in the place the eye does not see.” My inner critic presses in. A little cliched, but not bad. “I needed their help. And they needed mine.” Kinda spelled that out for us in the previous scene, but okay. “But to ever face them again, I was gonna have to take it to a whole new level.” And, bam—I’m kicked right out of the movie.

I cannot quit the AVATAR films. Believe me, I tried. I bought the Blu-ray in 2010 more out of pre-streaming era fan devotion. I watched it once, maybe twice more, and then it sat on the shelf for probably five years. Upon revisiting it, I thought surely its naked appropriation of so many other mythic elements, nearly all of which have found better use elsewhere, would bore me to tears.

Dammit if I didn’t enjoy the thing more than I did the first time I saw it. It brought back the feeling I had the first time I scanned Cameron’s 1995 scriptment years earlier. The feeling I wanted to feel in the theater the first time I saw it. At the time, I was so in awe of the 3-D experience—everything from the way Cameron frames that opening shot1 to the thundering banshee flights—the story and the performances were secondary.

With five years’ distance, everything reversed. The wonder of Cameron’s technological achievement receded, and Jake Sully emerged.

Jake takes the trip to Pandora for a fresh start. With the sudden death of his twin bother, he has the chance to assume his role in the Avatar Project. One life ends, another begins, so his voiceover says. Screenplays are often judged on the merits of their dialog alone. It’s an unjust rubric. AVATAR (and its sequels) receive fair criticism on this front, but writing is more than giving characters something to say.

Like when Jake first gets his avatar. I had learned before seeing the film that people bound to wheelchairs often dream of running. That’s exactly what Jake does the moment he regains the use of his legs—he runs. No parkour, no wild acrobatics, just a full sprint in a straight line. It’s beautiful. And there’s no voiceover to spoil the moment.

“I became a Marine for the hardship,” Jake tells us. “Told myself that I can pass any test a man can pass.” He begins the film attached to the machine—literally and figuratively. He cannot move without the assistance of his wheelchair. Even when he assumes control over his Na’vi body, he’s still tethered to the “company,” the RDA.

And the machine has been hard at work. Everyone’s a player, whether they like it or not. Even Grace Augustine (so much for subtext), for all her efforts, is just another useful cog. She’s helped build a school, brought English to the planet’s natives, and for what? The only reason she’s allowed to continue her work is the RDA’s hope of strip mining the planet for its wealth.

AVATAR took some undeserved heat for its use of the term “unobtainium,” which does have its roots in scientific study. Besides, it’s an apt enough name. The disruption of sin has always been the pursuit of God’s likeness without God—by knowledge, or power, or even unobtainium, alone. Most of Cameron’s films expose the folly of such dependence. Marvels produced by human hands might give us a glimpse of eternal wonder, but they could easily destroy us before we ever come close to crossing the barrier. Cameron’s film suppose they will, whether it’s Skynet sending a terminator back through time, or the sinking of the Titanic.

As a maguffin, unobtanium is just a shadow of the planet’s real treasure, which no one can really own: the chance for true rebirth.

The phrase “born again” has gotten so wrapped up in culture war nonsense that its intent and meaning is nearly always overlooked. It originates in the Gospel of John during Nicodemus’ clandestine visit with Jesus. Literally translated, it means “born from above,” which is itself an idiom. Brian Zahnd2 likens it to the phrase, “take it from the top.” To put it in context, Jesus is basically telling Nicodemus that he has to reconsider everything he thinks he knows.

Nicodemus was a member of the Sanhedrin, the highest religious authority. He doesn’t just know the machine, he is the machine. He helps perpetuate the process—study, prayer, fasting, feast and temple, and of course, strict adherence to the hundred some-odd rules instituted by Pharisaical law.

Western Christianity, in one of history’s frequent rhymes, has tried to reduce faith to formula and force doctrine inline with enlightenment thought. Read these chapters, say this prayer, and you will be saved. The RDA likewise believes only in what their technology and systematic dogma can produce. Parker Selfridge, the face of the company, cannot conceive the trees around him could ever carry memories. He and the RDA have lost the capacity for wonder, for curiosity, for mystery. Hometree stands between him and his treasure, it’s as simple as that. “They’re fly-bitten savages that live in a tree, all right? Look around. I don’t know about you, but I see a lot of trees. They can move.”

It’s no accident the first and final shots of the film close in on Jake’s eyes. He begins to change the moment his curiosity is engaged—when his torch goes out and he finds this new world hasn’t left him in darkness after all. Like Nicodemus, he sees the beauty his training had concealed, and curiosity carries him forward, deeper into new beauty, truth and love.

This is the story of Jake’s birth from above. That’s what keeps bringing me back.

For a long time—especially in my first years at college and probably more so in the 18 months after—I was zealous about apologetics. The atheist wants evidence, you say? Then they have not paid attention. It takes more faith for an atheist to believe there is no God than it does for a believer to know there is. I had a lock on all the cliches.

Two things shifted my thinking. They happened around the same time, and I have to share about them before diving into my third and final piece about MIDNIGHT MASS.

The first is a phone call. I was just weeks away from graduating with a BA in Theology and Ministry with a part-time job at the college library, and it was my turn to take a shift at the phones. The man who called had one question: is it all true? Yes, I said, with a confidence so smug he could probably smell it through the phone. He went on to tell me he didn’t believe it was. His wife had just left him, he said, for a pastor who used to be his friend.

I think we talked for about 20 minutes and I said everything wrong. This was not a man who needed convincing, he just wanted someone to listen. He needed to tell someone how betrayed he felt. He needed someone to agree with him that Evangelical Christianity was about power and influence and money. This was maybe 2004 or 2005, and I was still naive enough to pity those who believed that kind of nonsense. So I tried to reason with him. Come, the scripture says, and let us reason together. Isn’t that what I was trained to do?

Yes, and that was part of the problem. I had received a head full of knowledge and a piece of paper that said I knew what I was doing when the truth was I had no clue. I was 24 years old, and while I had tasted pain, I hadn’t yet felt it in the marrow of my bones. So, instead of being a friend to this hurting man, I decided to engage in a friendly debate. I wish I could ask that man’s forgiveness.

The second was something I read in a book. If it wasn’t when I was in college, it was very soon after. I wish I could cite it, but a quick look through Google provides many scenarios similar to what I’m about to relay, but not the one I remember.

I read about a professor who liked to ask the Christians and the atheists in his class to self-identify. Then, as an exercise, he’d put them into two like groups, and ask them to debate. The twist was each side had to argue the opposite point of view. What surprised this professor was that his Christian students often did a better job defending atheism than the actual atheists.

I’m not trying to make any kind of point in sharing that, except to say when I read it, I doubted I could defend atheism very well. And that bothered me. The idea had a ring of truth I knew I had not lived and did not own myself. Twenty years later, I think I understand. The Gospel of Christ, viewed from some angles, is deeply offensive to people. So many of those who claim to carry its torch—not just recently, but all throughout the last 2,000 years—have used it to curry power to help themselves and hurt the least of these. On purpose, and under the banner of Jesus. I used to read some of their books. Some of them, I used to call friend. I have learned that when a person feels that pain that goes on and on1 and someone tells them God has a purpose for the wound, it cuts deeper into flesh.

That is why, when Riley Flynn confronts Fr. Paul in MIDNIGHT MASS with such heated and accusatory rhetoric, I am not offended. I have felt Riley’s hurt.

If you’ve read this far, I’m assuming you’ve seen it, and I’m about to spoil significant parts of the story. Consider yourself warned.

About halfway through the miniseries, Riley and Erin Greene—a school teacher on the island and one-time love interest for Riley—talk about what they believe happens when we die. Erin has an answer, but it changes significantly by the end.

She’s returned to Crocket Island under a cloud of suspicion. She is pregnant, and she did not come back with a husband or even a lover. We only learn a little about what she experienced in the years she spent away from this insulated religious community, but whatever happened, she had depleted her supply of f***s to give. The only thing she cares about is moving on, and raising her little daughter once she’s born.

Then she loses the baby. The loss, however, comes from the effects of Fr. Paul’s deceit, which has yet to be fully revealed. Erin visits the doctor, and finds the baby that was in her belly is simply gone. More than that, there’s nothing to indicate she was ever pregnant.

There’s a grief that can’t be spoken. There’s a pain goes on and on.2

Up to now, she’s faithfully attended mass, a fixture in her church as much as the classroom she teaches at the small island school. She knows how people see her. A harlot. A whore. Yet she persists with quiet courage. When the thing Fr. Paul brought back with him is revealed, she is one of the few that can see it for what it is: a demon. A black creature filled with malice and bent on consumption.

Like most of those who stand with her in the story’s final act, she is killed by the creature, but not before she mortally wounds it. In the moments of her death, the story shifts perspective and takes us into her thoughts, back to the night she and Riley talked about what happens when we die.

I’m only posting a portion of her response, but you can find the whole thing here.

I’m returning. Just by remembering, I’m returning home. It’s like a drop of water falling back into the ocean, of which it’s always been a part. All things, a part, all of us a part, you, me, and my little girl, and my mother, and my father, everyone who’s ever been, every plant, every animal, every atom, every star, every galaxy, all of it. More galaxies in the universe than grains of sand on the beach, and that’s what we’re talking about when we say “God.” The one. The cosmos, and its infinite dreams. We are the cosmos dreaming of itself. It’s simply a dream that I think is my life, every time.

But I’ll forget this. I always do. I always forget my dreams. And now, in this split second, and the moment I remember, the instant I remember, I comprehend everything at once. There is no time. There is no death. Life is a dream. It’s a wish, made again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and again, and on into eternity. And I am all of it. I am everything. I am all. I am that I am.

Let’s call it out: that last line, if it isn’t outright blasphemy, comes very close. I grew up around reactionaries that would hear those words, turn the show off in disgust, and proclaim it a bastion of Hollywood’s bottomless cesspool. It would not matter how beautifully the show portrays real forgiveness, that show is an abomination—you may not think so, Travis, but God does. Read your Bible.

If you’re reading this, and you feel that way, I understand. And if you want to quit reading, I understand that, too.

If you’re still here, I think it’s important to unpack a couple things. First—and I hope by now my affection for Mike Flanagan and his writing is clear—Erin’s speech breaks the magic story spell for me every time I’ve watched the show. As a piece of written work, it contradicts and overruns and tries to squeeze the wine of truth from the thorn of an equally monstrous idea: none of this really matters.

If truly nothing matters, why bother telling me a story? I don’t mean that to sound contentious. If I allow myself to defend atheism, I see its inherent beauty—that in such a vast, unyielding, unsympathetic, cold and aimless emptiness, we exist.

Consider this passage from Carl Sagan about our fair planet’s place in the universe (which finds elegant placement in Flanagan’s THE LIFE OF CHUCK):

“The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.”3

The mere fact of our existence manifests a sense of hope—that life can even emerge let alone thrive on an insignificant speck so precisely perched in that sunbeam. I look at that, and yes, I see the hands of a creator. I won’t deny someone who doesn’t and still finds it beautiful. All of that to say, I do not agree with where Erin ends her journey in the story, but I understand how she gets there.

My two issues with it are this: it does not align with my experience, and it fails to align with the story’s own narrative. It deeply contradicts Erin’s own words from earlier in the story, especially in regard to her unborn daughter. MIDNIGHT MASS does not offer a satisfying alternative to the hope of resurrection. Death—that cosmic final solution—is no peaceful rest. I have not ever seen a person die in front of me, but I have spoken at length with those who have. It is not a gentle passing. And Erin’s speech—the idea of a wish; I always forget my dreams—it’s almost like she’s saying the universe is welcoming her home. Well done, good and faithful servant.

MIDNIGHT MASS is an exhilarating and profound work of storytelling. It actually pains me that Flanagan’s future projects are adaptations of someone else’s work, because the stories that play inside of his head belong on the shelf with other greats.

Part of that reason is the character of Leeza, about whom I wrote in part one. In the story’s final moments, her affliction returns, and she once again loses the ability to walk. Though tragic, her pain is the signal that balance has been restored and evil has been destroyed. That’s a powerful observation for those of us walking the tightrope between the now and not yet of Christ’s Kingdom. Death is our crucifixion moment—without it, we cannot experience resurrection and restoration.

An earlier version of this essay misrepresented a couple story points. Those have been corrected.

When James Cameron was 16 years old, he conceived of a deep sea odyssey based on the emerging science of liquid breathing systems. In that original tale, a group of explorers use the technology to explore an abyssal trench. One by one, they disappear into the depths, never to return, until the protagonist is forced to venture out alone to discover what lies below.

After the success of THE TERMINATOR and ALIENS, Cameron revisited the story just as his marriage was coming to an end. THE ABYSS became a tale of estranged lovers with the mysteries lurking in the deep serving as the catalyst to their reconciliation. Of the nine features Cameron has written and directed, it’s among the lowest box office earners, yet remains one of his richest stories.

The set up is simple: a nuclear submarine’s close encounter with an unidentified object speeding through the ocean results in a catastrophic collision. With a hurricane developing just over the horizon, the Navy mounts an immediate rescue with the assistance of a nearby underwater drilling rig.

Enter the crew of Deepcore, an experimental mobile deep sea oil drilling platform, led by Virgil “Bud” Brigman. For triple the usual dive pay, he and his crew are asked to welcome three Navy Seals led by Lieutenant Coffey to undertake the operation. Accompanying the seals is Lindsey—Brigman’s soon-to-be ex-wife (the divorce ain’t final) and designer of the rig.

Upon reaching the downed submarine, the creatures at the root of the film’s mystery reveal themselves. The sighting causes one lone crew member to panic and injure himself. Coffey believes it could be a Russian incursion. His CO even sends word of other enemy subs in the area. Meanwhile, news reports fed to the Deepcore crew from their topside support ship reveal tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet Union continue to escalate over what caused the sinking.

It’s important to note the story’s place in the latter half of the Cold War in 1989. What the Navy really wants is to secure the atomic warheads resting unprotected at the bottom of the ocean. The rescue is just cover. Coffey’s CO orders the seals to retrieve a warhead from the downed sub, arm it, and await further instructions.

When the hurricane arrives, Deepcore suffers near fatal damage. Cut off from topside, the survivors contend with increasing appearances from the aliens, and Coffey’s growing instability.

Part of the genius of THE ABYSS is how it resets the dynamic between a leading trio of characters. STAR TREK models the typical framing—Captain Kirk integrates the opposing wisdom of his closest companions; Dr. McCoy, the emotional hothead, and Spock the rational logician. The original STAR WARS does this to a degree with Han and Leia flanking Luke. Harry Potter even has Ron and Hermione.

Lindsey and Coffey enter the story in immediate conflict with Brigman, barking orders and asserting their own authority. Brigman’s role assumes a more priestly posture, especially in the final act of the story. If we think of the creatures who live in the deep as representative of the light, then Lindsey and Coffey represent the dark. For the first two acts, their arcs drive the story, and their responses to the light diverge almost immediately.

Lindsey describes her encounter with a near religious fervor. “I touched one of them. And it wasn’t some clunky steel can like we would build. It glided. It was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.” […] It was a machine, but it was alive—it was like a... like a dance of light.”

She is convinced they mean no harm, likely just as curious about these visitors above their heads as she is about them. Coffey, however, sees them as a threat, even after it’s clear these are not Russian spy submersibles. As his instability grows, his already limited sense of wonder completely diminishes. He only sees an enemy, and he is trained to destroy the enemy.

Coffey, using an ROV1 Lindsey hoped to use to get better video of the creatures, arms the recovered warhead to detonate in three hours, and sends it down to the take the creatures out.

The rest of act two unfolds with Cameron’s trademark suspense and white knuckle set pieces. Lindsey and Brigman are forced to neutralize Coffey in their attempt to stop him. this comes at the cost of severely damaging their submersible, leaving them minutes from drowning, and Brigman the only one with a dive helmet.

What follows is the film’s most harrowing sequence as Lindsey allows herself to drown so Brigman can tow her back to Deepcore to revive her. At the end of act two, with Lindsey having already given her life to save him, Brigman takes the lead of the final act. Using the new fluid breathing system the seals brought down with them, he descends into the deep alone to disarm the warhead. As was the case with dispatching Coffey, the act comes with a cost: Brigman doesn’t have enough oxygen to make it back to Deepcore.

He taps out one last message to the woman he still loves: Don’t cry baby. Knew this was one way ticket, but you know I had to come. Love you wife.

With that, the radio goes silent, and the crew of Deepcore mourns the loss of its leader.

By this point, the film has just one narrative thread left to tie. The story has already dealt with the numinous, sacrificial love, and the fallacies of fear. You can feel the narrative making the reach for transcendence. Depending on how and when you may have seen the film, opinions about whether it succeeds may vary.

One of the creatures arrives to take Brigman deeper into the trench to its home—a beautiful glowing disk flanked by towing battlements, an early glimpse at the resplendence on display in the later AVATAR films.

In the presence of these powerful others, Bud offers a weak hello before the wall of water behind him flickers to life like an undulating display monitor. The words he sent back to Deepcore are replayed back for him. Don’t cry baby. Knew this was one way ticket, but you know I had to come. Love you wife.

This likely surprised anyone in 1989 who read Orson Scott Card’s novel based on the screenplay (written in tandem with production in close collaboration with Cameron) before seeing the film. The novel expands this scene significantly, challenging Bud with humanity’s penchant for destroying itself. The wall behind him erupts with news broadcasts detailing the escalating conflicts on the surface. They know war is imminent. When he asks them how they know humanity would really go so far as to destroy itself, they play him all the proof they need. We’ve been doing to each other since time began. The creatures want him know they have rendered judgement, and found humankind guilty. The sequence culminates in a series of massive tidal waves threatening the shorelines of every continent.

For the first time, the story shifts its focus from under the sea to focus on the people living above. They see the towering waves blotting out the sky. They make the dash for high ground, well aware all attempts are futile. The waves crest—the end is here.

And then, everything stops.

The waves linger over their intended victims like great arms ready to strike the fatal blow. For a moment that seems to last forever, humanity looks upon its judgement, and then watches the waves slowly—mercifully—recede. You could have done it, Bud says to the creatures. Why didn’t you?

Don’t cry baby. Knew this was one way ticket, but you know I had to come. Love you wife.

Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.

A series of events ahead of release led to the exclusion of the wave along with roughly 20 minutes of additional footage. Ordinarily, films that run longer than 150 minutes can stand to lose a few scenes. Cutting the wave, however, removed the film’s thematic core. As it was released in theaters, THE ABYSS is satisfying enough. Like all of Cameron’s films, it’s a love story, thrilling and well-told. The 1992 special edition, produced in the wake of Cameron’s success with TERMINATOR 2, restores 27 minutes. Those restored minutes elevate an already compelling story about reconciliation to something that tightly orbits Christology.

Here, the priest treats with the power beyond himself and defends humanity against their wrath. In laying down his life, humanity is saved.

The special edition begins with a quote from Frederich Nietzsche:

“….when you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.”

This comes from Beyond Good and Evil, in which Nietzsche attempts to refute the idea of a common morality for all. From what little I understand about Nietzsche and his writings, he was against ideas of divine transcendence. His conception of the “superman” instead transcended typical morals. If anything, THE ABYSS—at least in its full, uncut form—works against Nietzsche.

The religious implications were always at the front of Cameron’s mind in developing the story. “I like the idea that we are judged and found wanting by rational godlike aliens, but then saved by one good man. As a mob, we’re a lost cause. As individuals, there is hope.”2

The special edition, however, makes it clear humanity’s salvation is not just contingent on Brigman’s sacrifice. The beings who sent the wave have some more to say, and Brigman serves as their prophet. “They’ve left us alone,” he relays, “but it bothers them to see us hurting each other. Getting out of hand. They sent a message, hope you got it. They want us to grow up a bit, and put away childish things.”

The shorter theatrical cut, of course, omits all this, but retains the film’s final moments. The creatures make their ascent, allowing their temple to co-exist with us. The Nietzsche quote that opens the special edition manages to capture the film’s overall theme—“it got to the heart of what drew Cameron to this story the idea that his characters would go to the deepest, darkest part of the ocean to confront a monster, and find out the monster was them.”3

The greatest defeat is not death, but finding you have become the devil. THE ABYSS suggests that an encounter with the supernatural or divine leaves us in tension with both awe and fear, and that one leads to life while the other leads to a fate worse than death.

You’re likely familiar with the episode of The Big Bang Theory that supposedly eviscerates RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. If not, it goes like this: Amy Farrah Fowler, paramour to awkward genius and show co-lead Dr. Sheldon Cooper, views RAIDERS for the first time and promptly declares Indiana Jones inconsequential to his own story. If Indiana Jones had chosen to refuse the call to adventure, the Nazis still lose.

Sheldon is shocked, tries to argue, and Amy easily bats away every story point Sheldon proposes. One by one, this classic of adventure filmmaking that helped shape the childhoods of the show’s four lovable nerds falls to pieces in their minds like brittle clay. Amy is, of course, absolutely right. While humorous, and designed to expose an apparent flaw in the story, the episode never posits an alternative theory: what if Indy’s uselessness is the point of the story?

Take an easy stroll through internet traffic and you’ll find a few common assumptions about Indiana Jones. The third film—INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE—is a series favorite; TEMPLE OF DOOM is maligned but has a clear and devoted fan base; few like KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL; and a consensus has yet to form around DIAL OF DESTINY. RAIDERS gets attention for its erroneous rechristening as INDIANA JONES AND THE RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK to put it more inline franchise norms. RAIDERS, however, is not a normal Indiana Jones movie.

When George Lucas sold Steven Spielberg on Indiana Jones (originally “Indiana Smith”), Spielberg’s earliest conceptions placed the character parallel to James Bond. Had Harrison Ford’s portrayal not become so iconic, we could very well had seen 20 more Indiana Jones movies by now, along the way interpreted by three or four different actors. The first two sequels—TEMPLE and CRUSADE—even make a run at the James Bond archetype. They turn Indy into a rugged, more conquering hero with a Bond girl on one arm and a whip in the other.

RAIDERS was different. Indy is a reluctant hero. He goes on the adventure for nothing more than fortune and glory (a trait that carries through the first two sequels, yes, but with far less subtlety). The film’s love interest defies any Bond girl stereotypes. Marion Ravenwood is in every way Indy’s equal if not his better. And then there’s the most salient thing that sets RAIDERS apart from every subsequent sequel: in his first film adventure, Indiana Jones is an abject failure.

In RAIDERS, our adventuring hero spends the bulk of the film trying to make something happen, and loses every time, most often foiled by his nemesis, Belloq. Only at the end—tied to a post and set off to the side to observe—does Indy realize he has no choice but to surrender, and let someone else handle it all for him.

In every one of the sequels (with some deference to CRYSTAL and DIAL), Indiana is still largely the same person at the end of the film as he is in the beginning. In the brief, final moments of RAIDERS, we get a different Indy, one who realizes just how inconsequential he is. There are no smiling nods to the camera, no cheeky tip of the fedora. “They don’t know what they’ve got there,” is all he can say. This hero in the hat knows he’s a just a small man in a wide world after all, and like Bilbo Baggins, he may even say “thank goodness.”

I am not the first to point this out. Jeffrey Overstreet and Steven Greydanus have already covered this far better than I can hope to. It’s worth bringing back to the top of the feed every now and then, and I wanted to get it back out there. What Amy Farrah Fowler sees as a flaw, I see as the film’s crown. It’s why RAIDERS stands apart in my eyes, why the sequels will always be lesser films with a lesser hero.

Somewhere online, there’s a PDF transcript of the three-day story session between Spielberg, Lucas, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan that took place before Kasdan went to write the script. I have never read it, so I don’t know if Indy’s inconsequential role was intentional or just a happy accident. Indy is a man of action throughout. At no point does he give up until that last moment, when Belloq calls his bluff to blow up the ark. It’s gutsy to shift your protagonist to the back seat and let someone else drive, especially if that someone is the God of the universe. It’s a story choice the franchise has never dared repeat. In every subsequent film, Indy wins by sheer force of his guile and wits. RAIDERS is the only film that leaves Indy changed by the simple fact that he cannot win, no matter how hard he tries.

There’s something to winning by losing that strikes the chord of eucatastrophe—the “good disaster”—J.R.R. Tolkien identifies. Whether it’s Indy and the ark, Frodo at Mount Doom, or Luke Skywalker projecting his likeness, the hero falls, only to find he cannot pick himself up.

Sometimes, someone else must step in.

FIELD OF DREAMS occupies a funny place in film circles. While it is beloved by many, others regard the film with suspicion or even contempt. Its themes of nostalgia, paternal abandonment and reconciliation have been unpacked, repacked, and unpacked again.

No one ever watches it to think about the end of the world.

We know the story. Disillusioned by middle age and the memory of an unremarkable father, reluctant Iowa farmer Ray Kinsella hear’s a voice while walking through his cornfield. “If you build it, he will come.” The “it,” of course, is a baseball diamond, with the “he” being Shoeless Joe Jackson, the disgraced New York Yankee who allegedly threw the 1919 World Series along with seven other teammates. With the support of his wife, Ray endures the scorn of his neighbors and sets about building the field like a modern-day Noah.

Months pass and the field lies vacant, until one day, a lone ball player emerges from the corn. Shoeless Joe has returned to play baseball. Pretty soon, he brings his other seven disgraced teammates with him to visit Ray’s field.

At first, it’s a cheerful if somewhat pointless exhibition. There aren’t enough of these guys to have a real game, so all they can do is practice. Other than Ray and his wife and daughter, no one else can even see the players. To everyone on the outside, Ray looks like a lunatic, sacrificing his crop and squandering his savings to “build a useless ball field in the middle of rich farmland.”

The voice, however, returns to give Ray another mission: to hunt down a reclusive writer and activist named Terrence Mann (a loose stand-in for J.D. Salinger), and “ease his pain.” Soon, the mysterious voice enlists Ray and Mann to search out another old ball player named Moonlight Graham. When the unlikely trio at last return to Ray’s Iowa ball field, even more players have arrived, but he vultures are circling. Well-meaning family (who can only see an empty field) urge Ray to sell the farm to save his family from going homeless.

But the magic isn’t through with Ray yet. First Mann, then Ray’s daughter, are overcome with a vision: people will come. They’ll come to Iowa to recapture a piece of their lost innocence and the magic of forgotten heroes. People do come, but not before the magic makes one final flourish, giving Ray the chance to reconnect with the father he lost all those years ago. The camera pans away as Ray and his father have a game of catch while a long train of headlights finds its way to the field.

Phil Alden Robinson directed FIELD OF DREAMS from a screenplay he adapted from the original novella, Shoeless Joe, by W.P. Kinsella. In one of the blu-ray special features, Robinson admits to being someone who doesn’t necessarily believe in magic or the supernatural; that telling such a tall tale requires an artist who can keep his feet firmly on the ground. While he appears to (and in fact may) repudiate the idea of faith with this frame of mind, he makes an important point.

J.R.R. Tolkien takes great pains to explain how “sub-creative art” has to find its roots in reason and logic in his essay “On Fairy Stories.” “For creative fantasy,” he writes, “is founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact, but not slavery to it.”

Robinson imbues FIELD OF DREAMS with this same recognition, this same tension. Everyone in the film, whether they believe in the magic, whether they can even see the ball players, clearly see the world for what it is. Ray knows that broken dreams can crush a person’s soul—he saw it happen to his own father, and he’s terrified of suffering the same fate. Terrence, on the other hand, lived his dream—he published profound novels and fought in the battle for civil rights—until the forces of evil cut down Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Both men can hear creation groaning for the New Jerusalem.

In the world of the film, baseball represents this groaning in microcosm. As Terrence later says: “This field, this game, is a part of our past, Ray. It reminds us of all that once was good, and that could be again.” Even the story of Shoeless Joe, as told by Ray to his daughter, is a story of injustice and unfulfilled promise. When Joe arrives, he’s caught up in the timeless sensory trappings of his first love—the feel of the grass, the smell of a ball glove. In one of the more classic exchanges, he asks Ray: “Is this heaven?”

Later, Ray’s father tells us that heaven is a place where dreams come true. Cliched sentiment, to be sure, and if that were all the film had to say, FIELD OF DREAMS would never have ascended so high in the esteem of so many. The film itself gives us a picture of apocalypse not as catastrophe, but as “eucatastrophe.”1

Consider: as the film progresses, the veil separating death from life, even past and future, becomes thin and easy to puncture. We find one can step back and forth across these barriers with relative ease. At first, only a few receive the invitation, but soon, the whole world is invited to see and experience. Terrence is even given the opportunity to step through that veil and report back. “There is something out there, Ray, and if I have the courage to go through with this, what a story it’ll make.”

The film culminates not only with Ray’s reconciliation with his father, but with fallen creation’s reconciliation with eternity. The train of headlights that mark the film’s final shot remind us that with the coming of the New Jerusalem, the apparent disintegration of the world breaks down not to ruin, but to renewal.

What a story, indeed.

My essay on THE DAY AFTER ran over 1,400 words. Getting it under 1,500 meant losing some of what I had written about THREADS, the BBC’s 1984 film depicting nuclear conflict. It’s worth it, I think, to explore the where the two films diverge. While they cover the same broad topics, they take significantly different narrative and tonal approaches.

THREADS, released in 1984 and directed by Mick Jackson, plays more like a docudrama. Helpful chyrons spell out details while a passionless narrator adds to the horror. THE DAY AFTER focuses on the more immediate impact of nuclear war. In contrast, THREADS spans decades, glimpsing a chilling reality for the next two generations of survivors.

Centering its story in the city of Sheffield, THREADS begins by emphasizing workaday adults and the city civil servants tasked with keeping the lights on. Ruth Beckett and Jimmy Kemp are a young couple with a positive pregnancy test. The film follows them and their families as each reckon with promises and challenges ahead. The people of Sheffield are tuned-in and world-aware, but the coming apocalypse nonetheless takes many of them by surprise.

After the attack (a crushing and devastating sequence), typed chyrons provide a god-level view of the destruction, numbering the dead and reporting the horror. With the exception of Ruth, most the surviving characters serve as cyphers for the slow collapse of civilization. The city’s emergency planners conduct their affairs out of sheer will and fealty to their oaths. Ruth, meanwhile gives birth to her baby, a girl, and as the years pass, they try to survive their new decayed world.

While THE DAY AFTER retained some sense of human goodwill, THREADS completely strips away the presence of any god or good in the universe.1 The city planners are eventually found dead in their bunker. Oppressive forces marshal to sustain some sense of law and order. Years of scarcity and famine pass before Ruth finally passes away.

Her daughter, the child of a world where education and civility have blown away with the ash, can barely speak. A chance encounter with another young man leads to her own pregnancy. When it comes time to deliver, she can barely communicate her needs to a nurse in a dilapidated facility. The camera lingers on the stillborn child laid across her chest before mercifully cutting to black.

Somehow, THREADS’ indictment of humanity’s lesser angels cuts deeper as a whisper than THE DAY AFTER’s does with a shout.

It’s disingenuous to make the two films face off on some kind of scorecard. Look hard enough on YouTube and you will find those who try. The only one of these I ever bothered to watch (and never finished) paid particular attention to the character of Mrs. Dahlberg in THE DAY AFTER.

The Dahlberg family, if you recall, are finalizing plans for their oldest daughter’s wedding. Throughout THE DAY AFTER’s opening act, Mrs. Dahlberg is determined to see the wedding through. The world can just go to pieces without her, thank you very much. She has more pressing things to do. The food is ready, the pies are baked, the clothes are set, but the beds still have to be made. Once the missiles are out of the tubes, Mr. Dahlberg urgently tries to get his family into the basement where he’s rigged a makeshift bomb shelter. He finds his wife making the bed with the precision of a five-star hotel maid. She even slaps his hand away when he asks her to stop, forcing him to carry her out off the room.

Mrs. Dahlberg finally breaks. She can no longer keep the terror out. And the sound of her mournful howl as her husband carries her to the bunker could curdle a person’s blood.

The yahoos online point to this scene as a sign of THE DAY AFTER’s weakness and the superiority of THREADS. Why does she keep making the bed? Doesn’t she know the missiles are coming? What a stupid American.

What a stupid idea to pit these films against each other in some kind of grudge match. The bed-making scene cuts the heart as much as THREADS’ final frame. But the metaphor it implies warrants a quick nod. When facing our comeuppance, it’s common to say we’ve made our bed and now we have to lie in it.

Where THREADS’ final moments crystalize its impeachment of human hubris, THE DAY AFTER’s provides a broken olive branch. Dr. Oakes returns home to find it buried in rubble, occupied now by strangers. After feebly telling them to leave, one of the strangers, an old man like him, offers him a scrap of food. We’re left with two men holding each other, sheltering each other from the dead wind.

Nuclear horror is a human problem. The ability to draw such god-like power from the atom can help humanity just as much as it can hurt. It’s the bent toward undervaluing others that makes it easier to destroy with fire rather than use it to keep others warm. Both these films understand the fundamental truth that binds any community. The real nightmare isn’t burning alive, it’s dying alone.

Depending on who you read, a showing of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT (1930) during his first trip to the United States supposedly tipped Dietrich Bonhoeffer over to pacifism. THE DAY AFTER, released in 1983, may have had a similar effect on President Reagan’s posture toward Russia as he transitioned into his second term.1

It took another 17 years for THE DAY AFTER to find me, however. When it did, I was not ready for it.

I grew up in the waning years of the Cold War at the tail end of the Satanic Panic. I never had to wrestle with the fear of annihilation. My parents had duck and cover and the Cuban Missile Crisis. I had stranger danger and something called “The Rapture.” This was the 1980s and early 90s—before Left Behind and well after The Late Great Planet Earth. On occasion, some nightly news segment or some element of conversation prompted my grandparents or my mom to relay various episodes from the Book of Revelation. The end of the world was not a common topic in our house, but when it did come up, the Rapture always received a nod.

If you’re not familiar, it goes something like this:

At some unforeseen moment, Christ returns to take his true followers away, vanishing them in a blink. Over the next seven years, tribulation ensues across the globe. Persecution and oppression; famine and pestilence; the moon turns blood red and the sun turns black as sack cloth. Those left behind can choose to repent and follow Jesus or submit to his arch nemesis, the Antichrist. At the end of seven years, Jesus gloriously returns to invite his new persecuted followers into paradise and damn the rest to hell.

Some may quibble with the details, but that’s the gist. Various other elements—a one-world government, boiling seas, global war or decimation by fire—come and go depending on the telling.

The Rapture may be unserious theology,2 but it made for harrowing stories growing up. I remember the first time I saw a red moon, long before I knew how common they were. Despite that first jerk of terror, I could not look away. That feeling, that needling dread in the pit of my stomach, felt … good.

My concept of the end of the world has always been alive with a sense of wonder and discovery. Something about the apocalypse asks me to look closer. Like any good xennial, the movies had a hand in this, too.

By 1991, I had learned about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but those were just words on a page. I saw TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY that summer, and the reality of nuclear holocaust burned into my retinas. You know the scene. After leaving the theater, I asked my parents if something like the nightmarish vision of an incinerated Los Angeles could really happen.

Yes, they said. And that’s when they told me about THE DAY AFTER.

Produced by ABC television, it was one of two made-for-TV films produced at the height of the Reagan/Gorbachev phase of the Cold War (the other, THREADS, was released by the BBC in 1984). THE DAY AFTER had an almost mythic appraisal. The rare times it came up in conversation, people discussed it in whispers (probably not, but that’s how my young brain recorded it). I bookmarked the film in my head, determined to see it somehow.

Disaster movies became my kryptonite when I was a teenager. I could watch Irwin Allen or Roland Emmerich on repeat. Teenage boys tend to have a bizarre interest in things that blow up. For most, it’s just a phase. None of us turned into firebugs. For me, though, nuclear power became a blood red moon hovering over the city. By the time I reached college, I knew more than most people about nuclear weapons—how they worked, the way they exploded the air, the differences in their destructive yield. So when I finally saw THE DAY AFTER in a TV listing on the Sci-Fi Channel (before it was rebranded as Syfy), I made sure to watch it.

Apocalyptic tales usually break down into two groups: those lined with hope (or at least an unbreakable good will), and those “stripped of the presence of God.”3 THE DAY AFTER falls into this latter category.

The first hour introduces us to an ensemble cast in and around the city of Lawrence, Kansas. Dr. Russell Oakes (Jason Robards) cares for his patients at the hospital but worries about his daughter’s future. Farmer Jim Dahlberg (Jim Cullum) is about to marry off his little girl and she’s growing up too fast for him. Airman Billy McCoy (William Allen Young) is eager to go on leave, but he heard something about an alert, so he’s stuck on base.

Radio and TV news broadcasts unfold an escalating narrative of intercontinental political tension, first in the background, then louder and louder. Then the missiles are launched. Some actually watch in mesmerized horror as the smoke trails reach for the sky. Prof. Joe Huxley (John Lithgow) tells us it only takes 30 minutes for the missiles to reach their targets. We never learn who fired first. It doesn’t matter. The war is already over, as Airman McCoy later says.

The attack sequence—pieced together by a combination of optical effects, bomb test footage, and practical pyrotechnics—may not have aged well, but it is still a hot knife in the face. Whole towns vanish in a blinding flash. Thousands, along with the few of the main cast, are consumed by the nuclear fire. The survivors are forced to crawl through the smoldering aftermath. That’s when the film twists that knot of dread into something much more disquieting.

Over the following weeks, Dr. Oakes loses his hair along with his ability to care for the ever growing number of patients. The bodies overwhelm the city morgue. The university gymnasium becomes a triage ward. Airman McCoy befriends a half-crazed survivor only to end his part in the tale in a mass grave alongside Farmer Dahlberg’s daughter.

Few films have ever given me nightmares. THE DAY AFTER was the second. The afternoon I watched it, something fundamental shifted inside me. It turned conceptual thought into something much more real—something white hot and choked with ash. I understood much more clearly the grief many Japanese and Japanese-Americans feel about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. My world felt much less enchanted. I was forced to confront our collective human fragility—we really can, as Sarah Connor says, “fly apart like leaves.”

We come of age with a combination of stories, those handed down to us and those that unfold in front of us. The movies give us an easy shorthand for parsing these narratives, and help us understand the otherwise unimaginable. THE DAY AFTER didn’t show the destruction of the entire world. It didn’t have to. It was enough to simply wrest away the enchantment of that blue Kansas sky and replace it with endless nuclear winter.

That word—enchantment—governs much of the way people of faith engage the world. By stripping away that enchantment, apocalyptic stories can reveal truths we normally have difficulty confronting. In these stories, characters have to rely on each other to face the chilling destiny of a world without grace. In that way, the stories awaken the need to give love as much as we need to receive it. It allows us to become the grace.

Rapture theology, insofar as it attempts to counter the narratives of graceless humanity, fails. By imagining a world in which the faithful escape the brutality of judgement or tyranny, it makes it easier to leave “the least of these” behind. THE DAY AFTER may be stripped of the presence of God, but it maintains a good will that, while cracked, doesn’t break. The Rapture strips away the presence of God, handing the Earth over to Satan, and snatching away those who would manifest good will. Put another way, it’s just another graceless period at the end of another miserable sentence.

Never underestimate the power of a better story.

Several years ago, I had the misfortune of visiting a church the morning they fired their youth pastor. The shamed minister and his wife stood before the congregation—at least 200 people—and confessed he was addicted to pornography. He apologized, he begged the congregation’s forgiveness, and then he and his wife left the sanctuary, marching up the center aisle and out the door in brutal, unnerving quiet.

Ever since, I have thought going to a church has got to be a strange experience for an outsider. Not because a leader was held to account—leaders should be—but because of what happened next.

Another church leader took the stage, a big stick in his hands. He pontificated about the church’s vulnerability to spiritual attack, particularly among men. Then he called the men in the room to purity and integrity, to faithfulness to their wives and to resistance against the schemes of the devil. He held that stick high and invited any man who wanted to come claim it and declare that same commitment.

One man came up and said a few words. Then another. And another. Until one of them had the bright idea of inviting every man in the congregation up on stage to proudly declare they would not be a slave to sin—that they would hold each other accountable and stand together in holy brotherhood.

Every man in the room took the stage. Every man, that is, except me. I was furious.

First, depending on the research you believe, somewhere between 30 to 50 percent of Christian men have viewed pornography on purpose within the previous month.1 I had absolutely no intention of joining an empty show of solidarity with a group of people who just publicly shamed and exiled the one person who was caught.

Second, this wasn’t a gesture of repentance or humility. No one who went up on that stage confessed to anything. It was pride and hypocrisy dressed in the robes holiness. That is not the example Jesus left us.

Enemies Without and Within

When a story like MIDNIGHT MASS comes along, a story that explicitly calls out the evils lurking within the walls of the church, I think of that morning. I see a character like Riley Flynn who’s walked away from the faith and I can’t blame him. When he grew up in a place led by a feckless Monsignor like Pruitt/Hill and a fanatic lay leader like Bev Keane, the Jesus he’s seen is nothing more than a shroud.

Peter Kreeft likes to say that the devil baits the hook of evil with the worm of truth.2 As a condition of his parole, Riley is required to attend Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. At first, he takes long boat ride to the mainland. Upon meeting the newly arrived Father Paul Hill, he convinces Riley to have his AA meetings with him.

Riley, remember, went to prison for killing a teenage girl in a drunken car accident. In their first meeting, Riley confronts Fr. Hill with the problem of evil, and the typical response that suffering can be a gift from God. “What a monstrous idea,” he says. Fr. Hill’s response—as thoughtful and scriptural as any well meaning pastor could hope—is really just bait.

“There’s nothing in the scripture, or in the world for that matter, that suggests God negates personal accountability … I believe God can take our work, even our awful works, and turn them into something else. I know he can find the good in them, find the love in them, whether we see it or not.”

Nothing Fr. Hill says here would fail a short-answer Sunday School test. It aligns with scriptural, theological, and philosophical responses to the problem of evil. If anything, it stops short. Christ suffered, and not just on the cross. Sometime before he climbed the hill at Golgotha, Jesus visited the tomb of, according to some scholars, his best friend. At Lazarus’ tomb, the shortest verse in recorded scripture illuminates God’s response to suffering. Jesus weeps. If you believe, as Christians do, that Jesus is God incarnate, then tears are not foreign, nor are they shameful, embarrassing, or a sign of weakness. Young men (and women), however, are often encouraged by stern parents and leaders not to cry. Hold back the tears. Chin up. Be brave, now. Christ is on his throne, they will say—look to him and remember the coming resurrection.

At times, this sentiment is, indeed, monstrous. When God showed us his face (Jesus), he showed us his tears.3 Tears in response to an awful thing. It shows us not all tears are an evil.

Run the tale forward a bit, and we see that Jesus does turn that awful thing to good. Lazarus returns to life and leaves the tomb. This, however, is not the state our world finds itself in most of the time. If we take John 11:1-44 as a micro-story of the cosmos (no, it’s not a perfect comparison, but bear with me), then we spend most of the time cycling through verses 32-37. We’ve heard the truth—I am the resurrection and the life—but Lazarus is still dead, and we’re left wondering why God didn’t do anything about it.

For now, we’re left with Fr. Hill’s sense of hope: resurrection—turning the bad thing good—is coming. I don’t doubt any man on the stage of that church I visited all those years ago believed any different. Belief can only carry a person so far. What lives in their heart matters, and some of those men, I can say with some degree of confidence, were likely vampires.

Not real vampires, of course. You don’t need to find a demon lurking in a cave to become someone like Bev Keane. Before we learn the awful truth of Fr. Hill and the creature he brought back with him, we learn plenty about Bev. Anyone who’s spent more than half an hour in a church knows someone like her—not a “well-intentioned dragon,” but a devil in church clothes. She knows the words, the scripture, the rites and the liturgy, but she cannot bear that God loves a sinner as much as he loves her. The wine at St. Patricks was corrupted long before Fr. Hill’s creature exchanged it for its blood. It already runs through Hill’s veins, even as he tries to speak encouragement to Riley—the worm of truth on the hook of his evil.

The Worm of Myth

Peter Kreeft also says that, if the devil baits the hook of evil with the worm of truth, then God baits the hook of truth with the worm of myth.4 Here, writer Mike Flanagan cannot help but crash into the Gospel.

Each night before he sleeps, Riley sees a vision of the girl he killed. She appears to him broken, her skin cracked like porcelain. Between the fractures flash the red and blue police lights that filled that awful night, the night Riley prayed for God to save her life, and watched her die anyway.

This vision persists even as Riley learns who Fr. Paul really is. In startling horror, the creature Hill has brought back with him attacks Riley, not to kill him, but to corrupt him, just as it previously corrupted Hill. To make Riley in its unholy image—a vampire, pulsing with murderous desire, unable to suffer sunlight.

As the story unfolds, however, a person’s inner character determines much about how the he or she responds to the corruption. Riley, cursed with horrifying hunger and told to seek another to consume, approaches a trusted friend. Instead of consuming Erin Greene—someone he’s known since they were kids; someone who should have been a much more meaningful part of his life—Riley tells her the truth. He bares his corrupted soul to her, and she watches him perish in fire under the rising sun.

Just before be dies, though, Riley sees the vision of the girl he struck one last time. Only this time, he doesn’t see her dead and shattered. This time, she is whole, alive, eye shining and smiling. Before he dies, she takes his hand, and welcomes him to death in peace—and, maybe, absolution.

I cannot in good faith comment on writer/director Mike Flanagan’s spiritual condition. He has said in interviews he is an atheist—which, in the minds of some evangelicals or Catholics—makes him an enemy. My theory is there’s enough eternity written on every heart that an artist simply has no choice but to reflect it some of the time. MIDNIGHT MASS tells a story where most of the non-Christian characters reflect that eternity better than the Christians.

Maybe the stones are already crying out. Maybe we should listen.

It’s a New Year. You want to write a book. If you’re the kind of person who likes resolutions, and you don’t want to burn out by mid-February, there’s something you need to hear: Writing is exercise.

Let me explain.

Before my sciatica got really bad, I was a runner. I didn’t start running until I was in my 30s. I weighed 225 pounds and needed to build endurance so I could keep up with my toddlers. One mile became two, and by the time I could run three, I wanted more. By age 36, I was 180 pounds and I could run nine miles no problem.

If you’re a new writer, you likely know countless similar stories about some of your favorite authors. You know how many rejections they received before they got their first yes, and the story of that first yes keeps your fires lit. Stories about the work it took get there earn less attention.

It took me a year to drop the first 40 pounds, and another two years to work up to nine-miles. In between there were many three- and four-mile runs that felt miserable. There were shin splints and falls, ice packs and bandages. Getting to nine miles took work—work I had to learn to love.

Love takes effort. It doesn’t always feel good. But love is what gets a person up at four o’clock every morning to write 200 words of shitty prose. If you want to write a book, it starts with a mile. Write something short, and finish it. Even if it’s terrible. Writing a novel takes discipline as much as it takes creativity. The act of sitting down, putting in enough words, bit by bit, every day, gets tedious if you haven’t built the muscle.

Do the math. A decent mid-range novel is anywhere from 75,000 to 100,000 words. Just starting at the low-end, putting 1,000 words down every day will take you just over two months at least, four at most. That doesn’t sound too bad, but look at this way. Two months is a kid’s summer vacation. How many times are you gonna want to go out and swim instead of staying inside and doing something that feels like homework? Because trust me, it’ll start to feel like homework around day 19, if not sooner.

Easy First Steps

Write a little every day. Do what Ira Glass says and give yourself a goal of finishing one short project a week. Get enough weeks in and pretty soon, 75 or 100 days of writing isn’t going to feel so rough. Give yourself a character, a situation that screws up her world, and let her fight her way out. Do it in one or two thousand words, then move on to another one. Work your way up to longer stuff.

Put down your phone and acquire what is becoming the lost ability of reading deeply and well. Read widely. Read classics. Challenge yourself. Buy actual books so you can write notes in the margins and underline passages. Art is tactile, and learning it cannot take place only through a screen. You owe it to your own cognitive development.

Try writing longhand. I read an article once that explained typing is a predominantly left-brained activity while writing by hand is more right-brained. Creativity lives in the right hemisphere. Writing by hand, the article said, fully engages our creative centers. I write full-time for a non-profit, and every time I have to produce original content, the first draft is longhand. I wrote the entire first draft of a novel longhand. Yes, it’s anachronistic, but it works for me.

Recommended Reading

There’s doing, and there’s teaching, and there are those who can do both. Learn from them. Three of the best books I can recommend are:

• The Story Grid, by Shawn Coyne. Coyne is a master editor. He’s nurtured the work of Harlen Coben, Steven Pressfield, and many many others. It’s a big book. Read it cover to cover. He gives you a functioning definition for how to know if your story “works,” and what it takes to make it work.

• How to Write Science Fiction & Fantasy, by Orson Scott Card. Read this even if you don’t write science fiction or fantasy. What Card has to say here about the importance of world-building and how to do it well translates to every genre. This book also introduced me to the work of Octavia Butler—worth the read for that alone.

• Quitter, by Jon Acuff. Few people turn into full-time writers overnight. Most of the writers on Substack don’t make enough to pay the bills on paywalled posts alone. I read somewhere (it may have even been this book) that if you look at any shelf in Barnes & Noble, most of the writers represented there probably have a day job. This is the sticky reality for aspiring writers. Quitter taught me a lesson I should have been smart enough to learn earlier: you need to learn to like your day job. You don’t need to love it. But if you want to write well and get paid to do it, you need to make sure you can pay your bills first. Learn how to be responsible, take orders, and do the menial tasks. Again, you’re building important muscle, not the least of which will be your humility.

One Last Thing

Stay away from artificial intelligence, at least when it comes to developing your story or your prose. Research, sure—it’s hard to do any research online without some form of A.I. giving you a lift. Don’t ever use it to brainstorm or cure your writer’s block. What most new writers call writer’s block is ordinary frustration, something every writer learns to overcome. Writer’s write. If you hit a “block,” start with who, what, when, where, why, and how, and just get something down. Yes, it’ll read like shit, but everybody’s first draft reads like shit.

This is by no means an all-encompassing guide to getting started. I’m only writing from my admittedly limited experience. In the future, I hope I can share some advice on how to land an agent or what it’s like to work with an editor to see a novel through publication. For now, this is about sharing what I know works. Your mileage my vary. Figure out what works for you. Then, do the work.

A recent rewatch of Mike Flanagan’s 2021 Netflix miniseries MIDNIGHT MASS kindled an excess of thoughts. I’ve written more than 3,500 words trying to pin down a coherent thesis around them. My essays tend to run between 800 and 1,200 words, so I will have to spread everything out across two or three. While I was putting this together, it occurred to me nearly every paragraph I had written turned litigious at some point. Maybe the line between dialog and argument is thin to the point of being porous. That said, I have tried in this draft to lean more toward dialog. Arguing with the work just cheapens my appreciation of it, and Flanagan’s story is a masterpiece. I may not agree with all its conclusions, but I can certainly feel every ounce of pain and mistrust it wants to communicate. It is so much more than a story of lost or deconstructed faith. It is the story of faith in distress that clearly exposes the deeds of darkness, especially among those who call themselves faithful.

MIDNIGHT MASS opens on a chrome ichthus—the fish-shaped decal that represents Christianity—bathed in the pulsing red and blue of police lights. A young woman has died, killed by a drunk driver named Riley Flynn. He can’t even remember the accident. When the reality of what he’s done finally pierces the alcoholic fog, he desperately prays the Lord’s Prayer. The police officer tending to his wounds interrupts. “While you’re at it, ask him why he always takes the kids, while the drunk f***s walk away with scratches.”

The problem of evil is the greatest thorn in Christianity’s side. It is, I believe, a necessary tension. Good does not require evil, but evil cannot exist without it. MIDNIGHT MASS holds this tension in several of its characters. Here, I want to highlight two: Leeza Scarborough, and Sheriff Hassan.

Teenage Leeza has been bound to a wheelchair since the town drunk accidentally shot her while he was out hunting. She was born and raised on Crockett Island, a (fictional) tight knit and largely Catholic community somewhere off the coast of New England. Leeza joyfully attends every mass with her parents. At the end of episode two, the charismatic Father Paul—the island’s new itinerant priest—beckons her to leave her wheelchair to accept communion. Miracle of miracles, she rises and walks.

While the faithful see a sign, Sheriff Hassan—the island’s lone lawman—is the first to really cross examine the event through the lens of faith. Hassan is Muslim, widowed after his wife died of cancer years earlier. He raises his son alone as he tries to keep the peace and navigate town prejudices. His son Ali, a friend of Leeza’s, is understandably curious about this church where miracles happen. Hassan contrasts his wife’s suffering with Leeza’s sudden healing this way:

“If God really worked that way, if he decided that he was gonna heal some people and not others, if he chose to spare some and not others, if he handed Leeza Scarborough a miracle but let a child die of a brain tumor across the way on the mainland … no, that’s not how it works, Ali. It’s not. That’s not how God works. No matter how exciting the stories are at Saint Patrick’s—or the Buddhists, or Scientologists—it’s not magic. It’s not.”

It’s easy to imagine the trite rebuttals evangelical culture would mount in response. Hassan is a Muslim, one might say, he cannot claim to know the ways of Christ.

Or, maybe: Hassan’s argument makes faith and miracles out to be a zero sum game, and the Bible makes it clear that’s not the case.

Or, more cynically: It’s obvious this show was written by an atheist.

Consider everything Hassan says here (and consider also that Mike Flanagan is a careful writer). Nothing he says here is untrue. To reduce miracles to some kind merit achievement cheapens the Gospel as much as it cheapens Hassan’s Muslim faith. Like it or not, Hassan’s faith makes him a child of Abraham just as much as Leeza.

Some, especially Leeza’s parents, see her healing as a sign of divine agency. Others, like church administrator Bev Keane, see it as an opportunity to secure the church’s power. Leeza, however, is no mere Sunday morning pew warrior. Her faith is alive and robust, and the same Mike Flanagan who gives Hassan his rough-hewn wisdom gives Leeza one of the most moving pictures of forgiveness ever captured by drama.

Leeza takes her new legs and walks to the home of Joe Collie, the man who shot her. Joe’s reaction to her sudden visit is almost fearful, like he expects the same power that healed Leeza to smite him. What’s more, Joe knows he deserves it. He is under no illusions—he knows he is a prisoner of the bottle, and every ounce of hate weighed against him cannot tip the scales of his consequence.

As she begins, Leeza does not mince words. “I hate you, Joe Collie,” she says. “I want you to hurt. I want you to suffer. I want you to make the noises my dad made when he put his hands over the bullet hole in my spine. I want you to beg for my forgiveness so that I can tell you no.”

It is hard not to hear echoes of Job’s reproofs to God. “When I hoped for good, evil came; when I looked for light, then came darkness. The churning inside me never stops; days of suffering confront me. I go about blackened, but not by the sun; I stand up in the assembly and cry for help. I have become a brother of jackals, a companion of owls. My skin grows black and peels; my body burns with fever. My lyre is tuned to mourning, and my pipe to the sound of wailing.” (Job 30:26-31, NIV)

“You stole from me,” Leeza continues. “Not just who I was, but who I could have been […] you reached through time, Joe Collie—you reached through time and you stole!”

And then the scene takes a remarkable turn:

“I came here today … I forgive you. I forgive you, Joe Collie. I forgive you, and I see you now. I see you, and I am still angry with you, but it’s different. Even now, just saying it, it’s different. Do you want to know why it’s different? Because the only thing standing between you and a better life is you. The only thing standing in my way was hate; the only thing standing in your way is you. […] So if God can forgive you, and he says he can—all over the place, he says it—then I can forgive you. And if I can forgive you, Joe Collie, then anyone can.”

Job spends the bulk of his narrative with his hand on the doorknob of blasphemy. Three of his friends try speaking orthodoxy over him, but Job isn’t having it. He calls God unjust; says he cannot trust Him; accuses God of forsaking him. Yet when God finally breaks his silence, he refers to Job as “His servant,” and directs his anger at Job’s three friends. Why? Because they only spoke about God, and Job spoke to Him.1

Leeza exemplifies the believer who speaks to God. And, so does Hassan. Other’s can wrestle with the theological underpinnings of that, but the overall story presents an important revelation: when the truth of the miracles at work at St. Patrick’s is finally revealed, Hassan’s admonitions of “that’s not how God works” are proven true. Leeza, likewise, is one of the few who sees through the deceptions that later stain the church halls in blood. Their pain gave them eyes to see.

Stories often do not provide answers, but they do lend meaning. They can remind us that our pain may have a part to play in the unfolding drama of the universe in ways we cannot possibly discern. MIDNIGHT MASS doesn’t answer the problem of evil, but it does, I think, offer some important clues to its resolution.

Riley Flynn’s character arch offers us another. Each night, he goes to sleep with visions of the young girl he killed. The resolution of those visions, and the questions Riley brings to God, I’ll try and tackle next time.

On a clear and cheerful day, our plucky ensemble cast discovers an intercontinental ballistic missile of unknown origin is headed for the United States. Responses are considered, options are weighed, solutions deployed. Tensions escalate with precision and craft, the vices tightening until the millisecond before impact—

And then the whole thing backs up and we see it all again from someone else’s perspective.

It’s a tried and true device. Used well, each iteration provides a new layer of meaning and places the whole event in a greater context. Couched in a 115 minute disaster movie, there’s only enough room to revisit the scenario three times, and A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE only has enough to say to fill two of them. By our third time around, moralizing fills the space new revelations would ordinarily occupy.

The story is at once an indictment and an olive branch. It exposes institutional holes and suggests (hopes?) some of our better angels might fill them. The mounting disquiet it manages to conjure reaches crescendo when those who know about the sudden inevitable doom are surrounded by crowds of busy extras fully engaged in their routines, and there’s nothing anyone can do. There’s no opportunity to warn people. No one’s coming to the rescue. The people who know something can do nothing but work the problem and try to find the best bad option.

That’s part of the appeal of a disaster movie—the invitation to consider a frightful puzzle as characters make their choices and grapple with the consequences. Here, A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE stops short. The narrative ends on a crushing note of unresolved hopelessness, a question lingering over the rolling credits: we’re screwed unless we do something, folks, so what are we gonna do?

I think it was Joss Whedon who said television is great for asking questions, but movies are for providing answers.1 If this film were the pilot for a post-apocalyptic serial, I’d have season tickets. As a singular episode, it begins with a fresh perspective, and ends on sour notes we’ve heard many times before.

On the performance front, everyone delivers. Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Idris Elba, they all bring everything we’ve come to expect. It’s delightful to see Moses Ingram, and I wish the film had spent more time with her. The pacing, the writing, the design—every element does its job remarkably well. Sarah Welch-Larson is right, though, when she says the film’s structure is its greatest strength and its greatest flaw.2 By not giving us a resolution, by repeating the same beats without new layers to explore, we’re denied an actual story.

Instead, it plays much like a film based on a prior true story in which the ending was already well known and documented. There was a 1990 made-for-TV movie about the Challenger disaster that documented the lives of the astronauts and ended with the shuttle’s lift-off. A more recent example would be Paul Greengrass’ UNITED 93, which ends in the split second before the plan crashes. In both examples, the resolution is implied—the deep impression of the actual event leaves artifacts any future audience can uncover. Were A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE a true story from the past (and thank God for now it’s locked away in the vaults of fiction), at least some of the characters would be real people the audience might know about going into the story. I could easily learn more about them with a quick trip to the library or to Wikipedia. Constructing a work of fiction in this way, however artfully, leaves too much untold.

Not every story is required to answer every question, of course. Plenty of films ask questions without presenting all the answers, but even they allow for some sense of resolution. That’s why I can revisit 2001, or NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN, and feel full. I would have loved five more minutes of A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE. Director Kathryn Bigelow built an excellent story. I just wished she hadn’t asked me to leave it so soon.

Despite attempts to turn him into one, the Batman makes a poor Christ figure.1 If there is a biblical parallel, he’s closer to a Judge.

The book of Judges unfolds in cycles—the people sin, fall into oppression, then cry out to God who appoints a judge to save them and lead them for a while. Likewise, whenever his story finds its way to film, the Batman appears at the height of Gotham City’s corruption.

Batman/Bruce Wayne roots his call to action in the murder of his mother and father. Of the nine films in which the he receives top billing, five derive much of their narrative heft from his parents’ legacy. His father, Thomas Wayne, assumes more prominence beginning with Christopher Nolan’s 2005 BATMAN BEGINS. Seventeen years, four films (or five?2), and another reboot later, writer/director Matt Reeves took the opportunity to explore the Wayne family legacy again in 2022’s THE BATMAN.

When we first meet Bruce Wayne (Robert Pattinson), he’s two years into his stint as the Dark Knight. Like every other iteration before him, the loss of his parents drives Bruce to seek out and destroy the criminal element. Reeves’ film colors Bruce’s sense of calling with a slight variation on the hero’s typical introduction. The first time a scoundrel dares ask, “Who are you?” Bruce beats the poor guy to a pulp and answers: “I am vengeance.”

In a lesser film, this would just be a clever sidestep of the expected cliche (“I’m Batman”). Matt Reeves is a consummate storyteller, and he has more on his mind than simple catchphrases. This Bruce blames his parents’ murder on more than the killer himself—he blames the rotting city that festered and fed the conditions that permitted his creation. Even as he defends it, he questions whether Gotham is worth saving. He has no interest in using his fortune or family name to make a positive difference. Vengeance is his calling as well as his mask, worn to cover his grief for the father this city took from him.

As the narrative progresses, however, we learn corruption may have tainted the untouchable Thomas Wayne, and may even have led to his untimely death. At the very least, he made some questionable choices. Others have further corrupted the legacy he left behind—namely, the Gotham Renewal Project, a charitable endowment set up during Thomas’ ill-fated run for mayor. In the years since the Waynes’ murder, the fund has never fulfilled its goal to elevate the least of these. Instead, it allowed bad people to keep doing bad things at the expense of the people it was meant to serve.

Here, then, enters the Riddler. Like the Zodiac Killer, he taunts the authorities with his puzzles as he brings down the hammer of justice on the corrupt. He knows Renewal is just a money pot for bad guys. This Riddler—a stark and brilliant contrast to any of the character’s prior incarnations—sees the Batman as a partner, perhaps a friend. “We did this together,” he says when the two finally meet.

Unlike Bruce, someone born into power and privilege and the safety net of generational wealth, the Riddler and those like him grew up isolated and under-resourced. Sin, however, touches everyone, just as the rain falls on the righteous and unrighteous alike. After unmasking one of the Riddler’s copycat agents, the Batman asks: who are you?

The copycat’s response brings the story’s theme full circle: “I am vengeance.”

His calling card, the anchor of his justice, comes screaming back at him as a searing indictment. The Batman and the Riddler are more alike than unalike. His vengeance makes him no better than the very people he has sworn to defeat. He ends the film committed to finding a better road—one that honors the best of his father, and (it is assumed) takes responsibility for the worst.

One of Superman’s primary canon events of course centers on his parents.2 Examining how the films use this event to interrogate his heroism helps deconstruct problematic Christ metaphors and reconstruct a better idea of Superman’s calling.

MAN OF STEEL (2013)

Let’s start with Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL, probably the most challenging piece of this conversation. Understanding the film’s central ideas depends on how we interpret a single word spoken by Jonathan “Pa” Kent (Kevin Costner). Early in the story, Pa Kent admonishes young Clark for saving a bus full of his schoolmates after it plunges into a river. The Kents have done their best to keep Clark’s abilities a secret, afraid some authority will come and take him away. “We talked about this,” Pa tells him, “right? You have to keep this side of yourself a secret.”

“What was I supposed to do?” Clark asks. “Just let them die?”

Pa’s response here is crucial. When this moment was first edited for the film’s trailer, he see him grimace and answer simply: “Maybe.”

Play the scene in full, however, and there’s more. “Maybe … there’s more at stake here than just our lives, Clark, or the lives of those around us.”

It’s a troubling moment. IMDB prints the line as: “Maybe; but there’s more at stake …,” which is a clear misreading. Jonathan says the line without the conjunction. The subtitles on the Blu-ray, however, place a period after “Maybe.” So, is Jonathan saying there may be times Clark should let people die? Or is he calling out the moral complexities of Superman’s abilities?

If we follow the first reading (Maybe you should sometimes let things unfold without your help), then Superman’s recklessness throughout the film takes on new meaning. The logs he plunges through a bullying trucker’s rig smacks of petulance. When he emerges from the water after rescuing an oil rig crew from a flaming catastrophe and swipes a set of clothes, it’s a fair exchange. The destruction of Metropolis in the film’s climax is more than mere spectacle, it’s the work of a careless god.

If we take Jonathan’s “maybe” the other way (Maybe this is more complex…), he’s trying to make sense of the profound challenge morality poses to nihilism. In this reading, Clark’s act of vengeance against the bullying trucker is a searching attempt to answer the same question: is there a moral order to the universe, and what part do I play in it? Finding (and refining) his calling comes with its share of trial and error.

I tend to lean toward this reading. It better places his earthly father in dialog with his, for lack of a better term, “heavenly” father, Jor-El (Russell Crowe). Jor-El is a man of high moral character who becomes a heroic martyr without any real fault or blemish. He represents the best of Krypton, and he wants his son to share that legacy. “You will give the people of Earth an ideal to strive towards,” he tells his son. “They will race behind you, they will stumble, they will fall. But in time, they will join you in the sun, Kal. In time, you will help them accomplish wonders.”

The Christ metaphors almost write themselves, malformed as they may be. This Superman is meant to be the best of us, but he’s got a ways yet to go.

SUPERMAN (1978)

Richard Donner’s 1978 SUPERMAN plays the same thematic chords. In this film, Jor-El (here played by Marlon Brando) says the quiet part out loud: “They can be a great people, Kal-El, they wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way. For this reason, above all, their capacity for good, I have sent them you: my only son.”

Donner’s Jor-El contrasts with Snyder’s, however, in one crucial directive: he forbids his son to interfere in human affairs. This command comes after Superman has already lost this universe’s version of Pa Kent (Glenn Ford) to a sudden heart attack. Ford’s Jonathan Kent shares some similarity with Costner’s. Both fear someone might learn about Clark’s powers and take him away. Where Costner’s Jonathan believes the world will fear Clark’s powers, Ford’s leans into a sense of destiny: “One thing I do know, son, and that is you are here for a reason. I don’t know whose reason, or whatever the reason is ... but I do know one thing: it’s not to score touchdowns.”

The film’s ensuing heroics loosely bring the ideals of his two fathers into conflict, culminating in the death of Lois Lane late in the film. The regret Superman earlier expresses upon Jonathan’s death is echoed here: “All those things I can do. All those powers. And I couldn’t even save him.” Even after saving so many lives, he finds himself back where he started: facing a loss he cannot overcome. It is here the Christ metaphor achieves any semblance of clarity: Superman literally moves the earth to restore creation and save the object of his affection.

After such an audacious apex, subsequent “Donnerverse” films can only fall short. Director Bryan Singer’s SUPERMAN RETURNS (2006)—a reboot/sequel to 1980’s SUPERMAN II— revisits conversations of fatherhood and calling by giving the man of steel a son. The attempt ultimately fails, however, arguably turning Superman into an absent father.

As a mythic character, Superman makes some sense as a Christ figure. He comes from the heavens, the only son of a righteous being, sent to earth to represent the best of humanity. For all his power, however, he’s still a man, vulnerable to more than just kryptonite. He is subject to the same temptations, the same foibles and insecurities, and the same abuses of power. He lends hope through his ability to overcome these temptations. As a Christ figure, Superman can only fly so high. He’s still very human, and that might be his greatest strength.

Which brings me to—

SUPERMAN (2025)

The newest SUPERMAN twists the father/son canon event away from errant Jesus jukes to place the focus squarely on how it shapes calling. In James Gunn’s 2025 retelling, Superman again receives his sense of purpose from his Kryptonian parents—“We have searched the universe for a home where you can do the most good, and live out Krypton’s truth. That place is Earth.”

It’s just the first half of the message, but it’s enough for Superman to carry the fires of good to light the world. Later, when the second half of the message is revealed, his father’s directive takes a sinister turn. “The people there are simple and profoundly confused. Weak of mind and spirit and body. Lord over the planet as the last son of Krypton … Do us proud, our beloved son. Rule without mercy.”

At once, the world hates and fears him. Before, children would run to him. Now, their parents hide them away. The story arc brings Superman back to his Kansas home where this universe’s Pa Kent (Pruitt Taylor Vince) spells out the first half of the theme—it’s your choices that make you who you are. And bingo, Superman overcomes one father’s sinister imperatives and embraces his adoptive father’s grace.

It’s kindergarten watercolors, sure, but it only works because it’s a bookend to Pa’s more winsome conclusion: “Parents aren’t for tellin’ their children who they’re supposed to be. We are here to give y’all tools to help you make fools of yourselves all on your own.” This Superman has spent the movie trying to make good choices, and sometimes, yeah, he screws up. But he’s not struggling with inner demons. The very notion of ruling over humanity repulses him. Pa Kent’s soft reproof isn’t a redirect, it’s a reminder.

Where previous Superman films have focused on his power, Gunn elevates Superman’s humanity. Some of the film’s more standout lines have been over-memed to the point of exhaustion, but its most beautiful moment is probably its most underplayed.

Angry and defeated, the villainous Lex Luthor again spits his preferred epithet for Superman, calling him an alien. To which Superman responds: “That is where you’ve always been wrong about me, Lex. I am as human as anyone. I love, I get scared. I wake up every morning, and despite not knowing what to do, I put one foot in front of the other, and I try to make the best choices that I can. I screw up all the time, but that’s being human, and that’s my greatest strength.”

That’s where the overplayed clips tend to cut the scene. But there’s more.

“And someday,” Superman tells Lex, “I hope, for the sake of the world, you understand that it’s yours too.”

Our default perception of humanity is its corruption. When we fail, what’s our response? “I’m only human.” We have limitations. We stumble and fall. And we forget that humanity, if we embrace the narrative of Christ, was not corrupt in the beginning.

That’s the heart of this Superman’s calling. He may be the orphan of tyrants, but he can hear the call of his created intent. He recognizes its melody because Ma and Pa Kent have been singing it to him his whole life. If there’s anything that Superman does to reflect Christ—whether it’s this film or the myth at large—it’s this. Defeating the villain isn’t enough.

This Superman would rather see Lex Luthor restored.

While the Superman mythos draws easy comparisons to Christ, they fall apart under scrutiny. It was never the character’s intent (as outlined here). Shoehorned Christology is lesser Christology. Gunn’s film has received fair criticism for its jokey tone and its sinister Jor-El. By shedding the divine parallels, though, I think Gunn’s vision gives us a more beatific vision—a glimpse of humanity as it was meant to be.

In an opening scene of Greta Gerwig’s LITTLE WOMEN, the March family walks through the Christmas snow to take their holiday breakfast feast to a poor family living nearby. To the casual eye, it’s a common tracking shot—the family headed right to left in the foreground while other families make their way across the background in the opposite direction. Our eyes track the with the family, but Gerwig frames the shot with intention. Look closer at those other families in the background and you will find them walking into a church. It is Christmas, after all. Polite society expects believers to celebrate in kind. Without saying a word, though, Gerwig has made a profound statement:

While the faithful in Concord, Mass. head into church, the March girls head outside to be the church.

First Steps into the Louise May Alcott Universe

I have been enchanted by Louisa May Alcott’s story since I was very young without ever having read the actual book (something I intend to rectify in 2026). Back in 1988, HBO broadcast an English-dubbed Japanese anime adaptation called TALES OF LITTLE WOMEN. It takes some liberties—relocating the March family to the fictional town of “Newcord” where an early Civil War battle decimates their house, forcing them to live with the cantankerous Aunt March. Other usual story beats appear, like Beth’s illness and the loss of Jo’s hair. But other moments invented for this version hit just as powerfully. Like when the family returns to their ruined home, and Beth finds all her cherished dolls burned to cinders, she finds one that survived, protected, it seems, by some of the others. That doll is with her when she later passes.

I was only eight when I first saw this series. Most of my memories of the show are fragmented and unclear. The moments that moved me the most centered on the characters of Beth and Jo. While I am only familiar with adaptations of Alcott’s book, Beth and Jo anchor every telling I’ve seen. The way the family rallies when Beth falls ill; how Jo sacrifices her hair to pay for Marmie’s train ticket rather than beg the mercies of Aunt March. Goodness—a life laid down to save another—never ceases to move me. When I fail to find it in a story, I have a hard time sticking with it.

I was still in college when my wife introduced me to Gillian Armstrong’s LITTLE WOMEN (1994) one Christmas. Having fond memories of the animated version, I was eager to see it. Which surprised my new bride, because not many of my gentleman peers dared to watch something so feminine. (It’s a sad commentary that goodness and friendship should be reduced to gendered pejorative.)

I was surprised to learn at the time that the Civil War battle that burns down the March family home never occurs in Alcott’s novel. Armstrongs’s version still hits all the major story beats—Beth’s illness and eventual demise, Jo’s journey from misfit to author/school teacher (including her relationship with Bhaer), Meg’s relationship with John Brook, and, of course, the Laurie of it all. It’s a fine, if somewhat romantic telling. That’s no problem for me. But a part of me always chafes at the sequence where Jo finally writes her book. Movies like to make writing look glamorous when the truth looks much more like Dustin Hoffman in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN, notes scratched on any available scrap of paper, receipts or napkins, used or otherwise. Until Greta Gerwig came along.

Gerwig casts her version with a troupe just as stellar as Armstrong’s. Her adaptation brings a sense of visual and narrative genius to the story, re-stacking scenes to accentuate their parallels and elevate their meaning. And, Gerwig understands what it’s like to be a writer. Many writers begin with a sense of ambition that far exceeds good sense or experience. Sometimes, we’re just not ready to write that particular epic blasting away in our brains. Jo undergoes the same journey, and when she finally sits down to write it all out, Gerwig invites us into the slog, the monotony, and the hand cramps. When Jo sees her finished book at the end, by god, she has earned it.

Gerwig also handles Beth’s meekness and surrender with charm and care. I do not mean meekness as some milquetoast introverted stereotype. Beth is a powerful force, even if she is the shy one. She was the best of us, Jo later exclaims. Saoirse Ronan’s Jo, meanwhile, is a kinetic delight—headstrong, reckless and determined, yes, but also warm and wisened by the journey’s end.

What Makes a Good Christmas Movie…

For the last several years, my wife and I have made it a habit to watch both films—Armstrong’s and Gerwig’s—every Christmas season. They join a modest list that includes more obvious classics like A CHRISTMAS STORY, HOME ALONE, and IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, as well as less common titles like THE LORD OF THE RINGS and DIE HARD.

Bear with me here, because I know I just raised a point of ridiculous contention.

Someone on Substack recently asked why DIE HARD would be a Christmas movie while its sequel, which also takes place on Christmas Eve, is not. Easy. The season of advent invites anticipation and waiting, reflection and lament. It looks forward to transformation. Christmas is about renewal and redemption at the end of a long struggle. DIE HARD may draw us in with gunfire and explosions, but it’s John McClane’s friendship with Sergeant Powell and Argyle the limo driver and his reconciliation with his wife that make the gunfire and explosions matter. DIE HARD 2, on the other hand, is not a Christmas movie simply because nothing is redeemed or reconciled—it’s a blatant retread of its predecessor’s tropes with none of the heart.

Christmas stories, to me, should find at least some of their setting on or around December 25, sure, but they must also strike the chords of sustained friendship and goodness over struggle. It’s why something like DIE HARD makes the list, and something like THE SANTA CLAUSE—with its a**hole protagonist and a dead Santa nobody grieves—most certainly does not.

To dislodge my tongue from my cheek, let me return again to Alcott’s story. LITTLE WOMEN gives us a picture of domestic struggle that highlights service over ambition, and fruit that emerges from labor and love. Work is hard, and it can blacken our fingers, but there is joy in the struggle if we have the courage to look, and listen, and learn. Remember, God invited shepherds to witness the birth of Christ, not kings. Like the best stories, LITTLE WOMEN invites its audience into a fictional world to equip them to with a greater sense of purpose upon their return to the real world .

Would that we could all meet the world outside—or just this advent season—with the courage of Jo and the conviction of Beth.

I like to believe that, if I ever saw someone under assault, I would run to help. The truth—and this is hard to admit—is I know I could hesitate. I say “could” because I have brushed up against this kind of scenario a couple times before. I have leapt into immediate action, but I am not consistent. I have hesitated, to my shame. If the gut-wrenching videos that sometimes circulate online are anything to go by, I am not alone in this affliction.

To their lasting credit, horror stories do not assume the best about people. They lean into moral complexities in ways other genres avoid. A film like Zach Cregger’s WEAPONS (2025) is quick to reveal the wobbly morals of its main players, but it quietly highlights a deeper menace at work. I won’t attempt to examine the meaning of its more striking and surreal visuals (for that, Jeff Rauseo has a good write-up). Instead, I want to look at the effect the forces of evil have on the world the film builds. Like Andy Muschetti’s IT, released in 2017, some of its most unsettling moments involve those who witness evil, and yet do nothing.

WEAPONS begins with an eerie premise: early one morning, at 2:17 AM, all the children of Justine Gandy’s first grade class run away from their homes, arms splayed like flightless birds, to disappear into the dark. Only one child returns to school the next day. At first, the community appears to rally. Flowers and signs and cards are placed outside the school, which stays closed while police conduct their investigation. Police question the student, search his home, find nothing. One month later, school reopens, the children are still missing, and suspicion surrounds the hapless teacher.

That’s all in the first five minutes. As the story unfolds from there, it’s hard not to notice what’s missing. No more late night vigils. No more search parties. Wisely, the film doesn’t call attention to it. Not directly. This strange listless condition just seems to settle over the world. When an affected parent, Archer, visits another afflicted home, the parents he meets cannot seem to muster the barest level of concern for their lost child. It’s as though they remember having a child, but no longer remember why they should care.

The first time (one of many) Justine is assailed by someone in the film, a stranger steps in to help her. This first assault is a consequence of her own poor choices. The next time, however, the assailant is possessed by the dark forces at hand. When she is attacked at the gas station, Archer is with her, and he is the only one who helps. Even the attendant angrily tells her to get out of his store. “F**king help me!” Justine screams at him.

Later, this blindness even seems to affect Archer. As he and Justine search a house for the missing kids, both have to fight off other possessed attackers. After dispatching his, Archer resumes the search while Justine fends off hers in the very next room. He is both deaf and blind here. Even the sound design mutes the noise of Justine’s fight whenever the perspective shifts back to Archer.

Again, the film never pauses to acknowledge it. This is not the sign of a careless filmmaker. Cregger does this on purpose, I think. Otherwise he would never have let Justine admonish the gas station attendant. What I think Cregger might be getting at, intentionally or not, is something Malcolm Gladwell likes to paraphrase from Jesuit priest James F. Keenan S.J.:

“Sin is the failure to bother to care.”

Andy Muschetti deploys this same tack in IT, albeit with less subtlety (but, really, IT doesn’t rely on much subtlety). The best example occurs early in the story when new kid Ben Hanscom is cornered on a bridge by the town bullies. One of them draws a knife, then he draws blood. At the perfect moment, a car drives by—a beacon of rescue. The adults inside look directly at the situation, recognizable to anyone with half a conscience as a kid in deep trouble. And they drive right on by, a little red balloon hovering in the car’s back window.

By this time in the film, we’ve learned the red balloon is a sign of “It’s” presence. While the malevolence living in Derry, Maine, often takes the form of Pennywise the clown, it’s no mere monster-of-the-week. “It” warps the town and its people, particularly adults in positions of authority. Those charged to protect, nurture, and defend the least of these have helped create an environment where children disappear at a rate six times the national average. Whether it’s a parent’s overprotectiveness, or their incestuous desire, or their violent sense of authority, their “care” has become corrupted.

WEAPONS and IT take different paths to victory. In one, evil is undermined by its own machinations; in the other, the bonds of friendship drive away evil’s power. Both, however, depend on someone placing another person’s welfare above their own.

The actual quote from James F. Keenan S.J. goes like this: “Sin is simply the failure to bother to love.” (emphasis mine)

Keenan calls attention to love’s function as a verb. Love acts. Love fights. Love inactive betrays its name. Call it corruption, call it sin, call it human nature, horror stories call attention to the crack drawn through every human heart. And some of these stories, if we look closely, reflect a splinter of the light that fills the gap—that helps the blind to see.

When Nintendo and Illumination premiered THE SUPER MARIO BROS. MOVIE in 2023, speculation about when and how THE LEGEND OF ZELDA would make it to the screen began almost immediately. Sure enough, director Wes Ball is expected to bring a live-action adaptation of the story to screens sometime in 2027. The first production photos landed online last week.

Not to take anything away from the filmmakers, I always thought ZELDA would work better as an animated feature, or even a series. Given the breadth of its lore, a single film would have a hard time capturing the scope and grandeur the games suggest.

In my head, I see something that plays with convention. I’d hold back from fully introducing Link and tell smaller stories first—about people he crosses paths with or stops to help on his journey, keeping him in the background while giving the audience a chance to fall in love with what he’s fighting for. Tell stories that could fill in the narrative gaps video games can get away with. Do something that, like the games, charts a new course while honoring what came before …

****

FADE IN:

We open on a quiet village, worn down by time and war. Beneath the shabby guard towers where old men keep watch, life goes on.

A young boy—let’s call him Cale—fights with a bully at the schoolhouse. His grandfather breaks it up, makes him apologize. Cale resists. The bully started it. Grandfather insists, and the boys shake hands. Schoolyard rules. They’ll probably fight again next week.

On the way home, grandfather encourages him to try and make peace. This is a small community; our closest neighbors are too far away. The only people we can depend on are each other.

A guard raises a cry from the watchtower before they reach home. A raiding party of Bokoblins. Villains on horseback. Clubs and swords and flaming arrows. Cale sees the bully fighting off a pair of monsters and runs to help. The bully’s mother is killed; his father tells him to run. Cale and the grandfather manage to hurry him away to shelter.

Night falls. The streets outside have quieted, silence broken only by the snorts of meandering monsters. Our trio wait for the Bokoblins to finish collecting their spoils. The boys whisper questions. What if they find us? What if they never leave? The grandfather tries to soothe them with a story. Something his father told him about when he was a boy. About the lost princess, Zelda, and the champions who died defending her.

Great machines guarded the country of Hyrule then. When the Calamity appeared, he turned the machines against their masters. The king was killed in the first wave. The champions of Hyrule—heroes of the country’s four lands—rallied their peoples behind great mechanized beasts built to resist the Calamity’s foretold return.

A fifth champion guarded the princess. His name was Link. As he hurried the princess to the temple of the guard to activate the Triforce—the three-fold source of Hyrule’s knowledge and strength: courage, wisdom, and power—Link and Zelda watched in horror as the champions’s beasts turned against them, destroying their homelands.

The only choice was to dismantle the Triforce. Link was killed defending the princess as she reached the castle. Shortly after Zelda entered the stronghold, the mechanized terrors suddenly stopped their assault. They have lain dormant now for more than a hundred years. The Triforce of Power still glows in the castle’s deepest keeps, but the remaining pieces—the Triforces of Courage and Wisdom—remain to be found.

And what of Princess Zelda? She remains trapped at the castle, a prisoner outside of time, locked in stalemate with the Calamity. Who is he, you ask? Some think he was a man, once. A warrior from the Gerudo tribe named Ganon. He is bent on finding the remaining pieces of the Triforce so he can break Zelda’s hold, and apply his final solution.

The grandfather pauses his tale. Outside, the shrieks of the bokoblins rip the quiet. Swords clash. The monsters scream in agony. Stillness returns. Hope alights on the faces of the grandfather and the two boys for the first time.

Their door creeps open. Against the moonlight stands the ragged form of a Hyrule elf-man—a warrior. The grandfather stands. It can’t be.

The young warrior enters, approaches the grandfather. Is your name Beedle? he asks the grandfather.

That was my father’s name, he says.

The warrior removes a map from his satchel. The grandfather recoils at the sight of black blood. The warrior smiles—It’s not mine, he says, brandishing the map. I need your help.

The grandfather looks at him. He reaches out and grabs the man by his right wrist, turning over his palm.

He sees the symbol of the Triforce.

... Link?

END OF EPISODE ONE.

As the first season unfolds, episodes would explore similar stories about the various peoples of Hyrule, and how Link recovers his memory by acting as an itinerant knight on a larger mission. The map leads him to the Master Sword, but he can’t get to that till he finds the Triforce of Courage. The final episodes would bring Link to the front of the narrative as we learn of the love he and Zelda had begun to feel for each other before they were separated, and reveal the full scope of the sacrifice Zelda made for her people.

I’d go for three seasons. The over-arching narrative would involve assembling the completed Triforce to defeat Calamity Ganon. Along the way, we’d learn that Ganon and the Calamity are two separate beings, and that the Calamity is the ultimate evil. I would want to develop Ganon—a lost hero of Gerudo corrupted by the Calamity that Link and Zelda are ultimately able to restore.

I’d lean into the idea that, since the Triforce represents three powers united, it takes three heroes to wield it. Link would represent courage, but I’d love to play with expectations for wisdom and power. The assumption would be Zelda represents wisdom while Ganon represents power. A big surprise could be that Ganon really represents wisdom, and Zelda, power. Her sacrifice would reflect the harrowing of Hell—taking Ganon’s place as the Calamity’s prisoner. Link would ultimately rescue them both, and all three would wield the power of the Triforce to expel the Calamity forever.

Broken out over three 10-episode seasons, similar to AVATAR: THE LAST AIRBENDER

• Season 1: Link recovers his memory as he hunts for the Triforce of Courage

• Season 2: The hunt for the Master Sword; the pasts of Ganon and the Calamity explored

• Season 3: The assault on Hyrule Castle, the redemption of Ganon, the defeat of the Calamity

Obviously I’m borrowing elements from different games and re-compositing it all. This is really just an exercise in what-ifs. If ever given the opportunity, this is what I would pitch.

Maybe I’ll make this a semi-regular thing—pitch an adaptation of another IP for fun. A “spec pitch” for lack of a better term. I don’t know. I don’t want to spend too much time playing in someone else’s sandbox. I only spent four days developing this idea. Any longer and I’m taking time away from developing my own work.

Now … onto the next story.