God is Dead

God's Not Dead is a 2014 christian themed drama film starring Kevin Sorbo and Shane Harper, directed by Harold Kronk. The film is about a philosophy student who is challenged to prove god's existence by his philosophy teacher, a committed atheist, this being a christian movie, the student of course wins and the teacher is forced to admit defeat.

The film is based upon an urban myth, the concept of the student who debates his teacher on the existence of god, and who wins, this is of course little more than a myth, as logically we know that such an occurrence is impossible, it is impossible to theologically or philosophically debate the existence of god, and one shouldn't try, doing to is merely setting oneself up for faliure, and being subjected to the 'you just have to have faith' argument.

The film was a surprising success, and despite my problems with the film from a thematic standpoint, the success of the film is great for no budget films, God's Not Dead was produced for 2 million dollars, and made over 50 million at the world box office. This is proof that films can succeed without huge marketing budgets or even huge releases, and perhaps the success of this film will encourage the producing of more niche films like this.

Despite it's low budget the film has relatively high production values, and looks reasonable, the film is reasonably well made, and the issues stem from the lack of sensible characterization. The characters in the film are not well rounded or even realistic. The film, like most religion is far too light and dark to be subtle, the teacher represents darkness and hatred (and atheism), and the student represents light and all that is good, this is problematic, and the teacher is openly characterized as a bad person because of his lack of religion.

The film itself is troublesome, and the characterization of the teacher as being a bad person is exactly the attitude that this film rallies against. The film feels angry and dark, and just as the teacher played by Sorbo is described as being angry, and hateful, which is the same attitude that this film has. God's not Dead is a highly problematic film, it is dark and angry, and is far from being enlightened or joyful. as religious films probably should be. The film demonizes atheism, and is highly charicatured in it's portrayal of it's characters. Rating: D-

Josh Wheaton: How can you hate someone who doesn't exist?