Babylon Bee - Episode 11: Hollywood Hates Christians

Aug. 23, 2019 - Babylon Bee

01:20:37

Episode 11: Hollywood Hates Christians

Kyle and Ethan are joined by Brian Godawa for their first all-movie episode. They dig into the worldviews of various films and talk about how story is used to convey messages, sometimes more Christian than expected, and sometimes blatantly anti-Christian. Guest Brian Godawa is a screenwriter and novelist. He has spent a lot of time dissecting the worldviews and themes of film. For more Brian Godawa: Brian Godawa on Twitter Brian Godawa's website (where you can find everything) Brian Godawa's Blog "Thus Spake Godawa" Dive into Brian's novels: Chronicles of the Nephilim Chronicles of the Apocalypse Brian's book on worldviews in film Hollywood Worldviews Movies of the Week! (4:08) Science Fiction & AI Some of the movies/series discussed: Alita Battle Angel, Westworld, Better Than Us, Hunger Games (20:37) The Walking Dead & Zombie Films Some of the movies/series discussed: The Walking Dead, Shaun Of The Dead, 28 Days Later, 28 Weeks Later, The Exorcism Of Emily Rose (38:10) Discussion of Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (46:31) Topic of the Week: Anti-Christian/Anti-Conservative bias in Hollywood Some of the movies/series discussed: The Boyz, Unplanned, Gosnell, Bohemian Rhapsody, Valkerie, Walk The Line, Tolkien, To End All Wars, Captain Marvel, Hidden Figures, Finest Hours, Unbroken, Room, Black Panther, Hacksaw Ridge, God's Not Dead, Exodus, Noah, Paul, Madmen Brian's The Boys Amazon Series analysis (1:13:08) Hate Mail (1:20:51) Paid Subscriber-exclusive portion: Marvel Universe discussion Some of the movies/series discussed: Captain America, Captain Marvel, Avengers, End Game, Daredevil, Antman, Spiderman, Hulk, Dr. Strange Become a paid subscriber at https://babylonbee.com/plans
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Time	Text
	In a world where fake news rules over all, 1B arises.
	Wielding the stinger of satire.
	Driving it into the unsnopable heart of evil.
	While eating a Chick-fil-A sandwich.
	This summer, Satan is about to get owned.
	Big time.
	Starring Kurt Cameron as Joel Osteen.
	Living large, hanging out with the beautiful people, making lots of money.
	Kevin Sorbo as Bernie Sanders.
	They should pay their fair share of taxes.
	John MacArthur as himself.
	Wicked people.
	And Kyle Mann and Ethan Nicole.
	I'm Kyle Mann.
	I'm Ethan Nicole.
	With a special guest appearance by Brian Godawa.
	I'm Adeus.
	The Blockbuster event of the new millennium.
	The Babylon Bee movie podcast episode.
	Yeah, it's just a podcast episode about movies.
	Yes, this is Kyle Mann.
	This is Ethan Nicole.
	And this is such an exciting blockbuster episode of the Babylon Bee.
	Summer.
	Yeah, blockbuster episode.
	This is our movie episode.
	Once in a lifetime, there comes along a podcast episode that will change your life and change the way you see everything.
	And this is that episode.
	Especially movies.
	That's right.
	And you heard that third voice.
	Who is that?
	We have a special guest today, our movie guru, Brian Gadawa, the man who wrote the book that I always enjoyed reading called Hollywood World Views.
	He likes to dig into like, he's like a mind reader of Hollywood scripts.
	And you can like dig out.
	Anyway, Brian's here.
	He's a screenplay writer.
	He's like a theology nerd and he's also a novelist.
	And here he is sitting across from us.
	He's joined us in our new little office studio that we have going here.
	Thanks for having me, guys.
	And I have one request.
	You're talking a little slow.
	I listen to my podcasts at 1.5 speed.
	So would you mind talking a little faster?
	Sure.
	I appreciate it.
	You do a little bench barrel.
	Yeah.
	We're both way too laid back.
	And we like kind of stare at each other and kind of go, uh, between.
	Do you want to say something next?
	I don't know.
	Should I talk next?
	I need to look at our notes.
	Can everybody hold on a second?
	Yeah.
	It's a really good skill to have when you're running a podcast, a popular podcast, to not really know how to be able to talk and feel when to say silences up.
	I'll take this time now to promote my latest works.
	Yeah, Brian writes these epic novels.
	We'll get into that.
	He writes like Lord of the Rings with Noah.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	So we're going to talk movies.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	Like I said, Brian wrote a book called Hollywood World Views.
	He used to write this blog, which I think you still have a blog, but you used to write like every movie that came out.
	Yeah.
	Write these long, epic blog posts just digging into like what's the worldview of this movie?
	What's it saying?
	And I just found it fascinating.
	So I would love, when we started this podcast, I thought it'd be fun to do the occasional movie episode.
	Yeah.
	We just talk movies.
	I know a lot of you guys just get your news, your week's news from the Babylon Bee podcast, and you're going to be disappointed this week because we're not covering the news.
	We're going to cover three kind of general movies and genres.
	And then we're going to talk about a topic of the week, which is anti-Christian or anti-conservative bias in Hollywood and in films.
	And we're going to see, I mean, does it exist?
	Does it not exist?
	Is it a conspiracy theory or what?
	Are we being snowflakes?
	Yeah.
	Yeah, so we'll find out.
	And then we're going to get into some more specific movies and things in the subscriber portion.
	Excited about.
	Okay.
	So.
	You sound really excited about it.
	I'm very excited about it.
	Woohoo!
	Like if this was a Hollywood audition, I would hire you as excited guy number one.
	I can do excited.
	I just, we work in a place with other neighbor people.
	I don't want to scare people.
	Every week, there are movies.
	These are some of them.
	We are going to talk about AI and robots and sci-fi.
	So what are the big sci-fi movies right now?
	Because I don't watch them because I'm not a nerd.
	Gosh, I don't keep up either.
	I just saw Alita Battle Angel.
	This is a perfect topic to start with.
	All right.
	First of all, I got to say the hottest thing right now, in my opinion, it's going to be, is the new release on Netflix of a series, a Russian series actually called Better Than Us.
	And it is sort of a slightly in the near future, not super futuristic, but where robots have gotten to the point where AI is starting to be developed in them.
	And robots are used all throughout for servant-oriented things and stuff.
	But now there's this new special robot, which is a woman.
	And of course, she's sexy.
	We have to bleep that out.
	Yeah.
	I can't say sexy.
	Anyway, so it wrestles with the issues of AI, you know, which I think one of the most popular notions in movies and series, you know, I use that word movies, but the truth is, is the best stories nowadays are the streaming series.
	Which is really long movies.
	Yeah, exactly.
	But anyway, you know, it's a catch-all phrase.
	But so this, it's, it's, it's a story where a guy, you know, he's a, he's a doctor.
	He's struggling with his divorced marriage and he gets thrown in the midst of this thing and this robot imprints itself on his little daughter, who's just a cute, wonderful, cute little girl.
	And it's all about this issue of can robots actually become emotive, become more human-like?
	And it's not like you can't tell the difference.
	It's not like that at all.
	It's just, it's the next step of becoming more sensitive and being able to mimic.
	But the whole premise is, and this is the premise of all AI in modern sci-fi movies, whether it's Westworld, Ex Machina, Transcendence, even Alita Battle Angel to some degree, is the premise, it's this premise, the neuroscientific evolutionary premise that we, humanity, the identity of humanity is not transcendent.
	It's not, it's basically not in the image of God.
	It's not unique.
	We are simply more complex organisms.
	So therefore, the premise of the evolutionary science is, well, as an organism becomes more complex, it actually becomes more self-aware.
	So couldn't a robot with AI that is always learning and growing, therefore develop an identity or a consciousness or a soul or whatever you want to call it, right?
	So that, I think, is the major driver of all the AI stuff thing.
	You know, it's the premise of Westworld.
	It's a whole question of determinism, right?
	Exactly.
	And this is why for me, you know, personally, I don't, I don't believe in that.
	And so when I watch these movies and stuff where, you know, you've got people falling in love with a robot, I don't buy it and it's not very interesting to me because I don't believe that they're humans.
	And so the romance is not real and it's not satisfying, right?
	Can you watch a movie though where obviously it's built on a philosophy you disagree with?
	Yeah.
	And just kind of buy into their worldview for that couple hours and enjoy it and say, that is an interesting thought, but I disagree with it.
	Absolutely.
	In fact, that's what I'm doing with Better Than Us.
	It's a 16-part series.
	I'm almost done with it.
	It's a fantastic story.
	I highly recommend it.
	It's great because it wrestles with the issues.
	And even if I don't agree with it, that's okay.
	I mean, I enjoyed Alita Battle Angel.
	I enjoy Westworld to some degree, even though I fundamentally disagree with their whole premise.
	But what I'm speaking is more like emotionally and Just as a story, watching a story, if you don't believe the premise of this thing can be human, then you're not going to believe the romance story.
	It's like, yeah, sorry.
	So did you emotionally connect with short circuit?
	I saw that when I was a kid.
	So no.
	No.
	Didn't make an impression.
	I love it.
	I love that.
	Johnny watched it.
	But I don't remember it.
	Oh, man.
	Try to record it.
	Input.
	Need input, Stephanie.
	Do not disassemble.
	No, disassemble.
	So there's nothing like that in.
	I don't know if our audience is young or old, but they're going to know.
	We're going to get one email from someone who says, I love that movie.
	Yeah, that's going to be the only.
	So we got to talk about West World more and the new things.
	So basic idea is that the reason there's obsession with AI is that we like the idea, or there's a curiosity in our culture that wants to say that this could have all happened without God.
	And so a completely, like the way I like to see it is if you dump a pile of like material down a staircase and it can fall down that staircase for eternity, at some point it will become a, it'll become Beethoven.
	Yeah, yeah, exactly.
	That's the idea, right?
	Exactly.
	And my fundamental premise is that humanity is transcendent.
	And the transcendent is exactly what most movies and stories are about trying to grasp and trying to understand.
	Good ones.
	I mean, if you've got, you know, whatever, the crappy garbage where it's just exploiting, whether it's sex or violence or whatever, sure.
	But I'm saying, you know, most Hollywood mainstream movies, there's trying to find that transcendence because that's what I think as human beings satisfies us in stories.
	And that's why you've got the big themes, whether it's self-sacrifice.
	You know, a lot of movies have self-sacrifice or they have friendship and family.
	Family is probably the number one.
	If you want to make money in Hollywood, have it a movie and have your family a part of it.
	You know what I'm saying?
	But that's a good thing.
	I mean, I agree with that, right?
	Yeah.
	But those are all things that point towards transcendence.
	And I think that's what satisfies our souls or our spirits as humans who are watching stories.
	Can you real quick, because I know that when I listen to podcasts a lot and I was kind of new to story language and philosophy language, the term and the idea of transcendence, I had a tough time grasping what it meant.
	I get it better now, but I think.
	Good question.
	Yeah.
	So why don't you just unpack the meaning of that?
	So and this comes down to some assumptions as well as a Christian as I am.
	What?
	Oh, get out of here.
	We are canceled.
	You know, we do have a culture that's obviously very varied, but one of the strong elements is materialism.
	Materialism is the belief that everything is reducible to matter.
	So there is no such thing as consciousness or spirit or soul or anything like that.
	And of course, materialism does drive a lot of people's stories as well as science, et cetera, because they're trying to reduce that down.
	And the Christian belief is that while we are a material universe, we also have a transcendent or immaterial essence to reality.
	And that immaterial is where we talk about things like our spirit or a soul, or in particular, humanity being created in the image of God.
	And of course, nowadays with our evolutionary premise in most of society, whether it's materialism or not, there's the I'm losing my train of thought here.
	The evolution, oh, the transcendence.
	So there's the negation of God in there, but there's still the desire to find meaning and purpose.
	Now, this is my Christian worldview speaking.
	I readily acknowledge that.
	I'm saying you're not going to be a satisfied human being if you believe everything's reducible to matter and nothing, there is no ultimate truth and ultimate spiritual reality.
	If you live that way, you're going to be an ultimately an unsatisfying human being because we have the desire.
	We are created in the image of God, meaning God has made us in a way that we relate, we rule over nature, over the earth, and we're supposed to be God's representatives, being creative in what we do and love and give and all that kind of stuff, fight evil.
	Those are all expressions of the identity of God that we carry.
	And animals do not have that.
	Other things do not have that.
	And in that sense, we are transcendent.
	We are, you know, the apex of creation.
	And of course, in today's world, that is white supremacy or whatever you're, you know, it's human supremacy.
	You know, how dare you say that you are superior to animals and superior to everything else.
	That's why we're polluting the planet and killing everybody because we think we're superior and that causes evil, blah, blah, blah, blah.
	Which is its own form of superiority, right?
	Exactly.
	Yeah, exactly.
	So these are the worldviews that are in conflict.
	You know what I'm saying?
	And so that transcendence, I think, is the longing in all of our human hearts for meaning, purpose, something beyond what we just see and experience in this world.
	It's not enough.
	So would you say that our culture is transcendophobic?
	Wow.
	Although interestingly enough, I would say this, that this is why, you know, humanity is complex.
	And you can't reduce everything down to evolution or anything anyway.
	But I mean, no, not everybody does.
	But leftism actually is a religion.
	And in a sense, I would argue that the rise of socialism and leftism as an influential thought force in our society is evidence of the fact that when you kill gods, you know, Nietzschean-wise in society, you get rid of them.
	You don't get rid of that longing.
	And so you want to replace it.
	You have a God substitute.
	So this is why leftists, it is a religion.
	It's like you've got the holy sacrament.
	Scientists are the priests.
	And if you don't believe in global warming, then you are an evil sinner.
	It's the same language.
	It's the same scenario as any other religion.
	And my argument is that's because they know that even if they reject God and reject some higher meaning or purpose, they have to have some new created higher meaning or purpose.
	And that is still frowned in control of the world.
	Yeah, like no higher purpose or no meaning.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	Even though.
	Like, why?
	I mean, why?
	Why isn't it?
	I mean, if we are just evolved, you know, robots, meat robots, yeah, like, why does it matter?
	Yeah.
	What we do with our lives.
	And what basically happens is if you really live consistently with that, if society lives consistently that way, then ultimately you there's ultimately there will be a God and that God of the culture will become the state.
	So that's what leftism is.
	It's the replacement of a Judeo-Christian transcendent God who gives us commands that we should follow regardless with the state is God.
	And that's why they want to control it and use it to control everyone's lives.
	So they want to be the God themselves.
	And by the way, that's in a lot of movies.
	Yeah, let's go back to movies here.
	Yeah, there's sorry.
	Well, that's the philosophical thing.
	But that philosophy is embedded in a lot of movies.
	And I think there's a lot of good movies that will deal with things like this statism and show it for what it is.
	So a lot of times these AI things, these AI stories or sci-fi movies are often dystopian movies, right?
	Whether it's divergent or all these hunger games.
	All dystopias where the government is evil because it controls and suppresses the individual.
	That's a good thing in my mind.
	It amazes me when I, um, I mean, it shows that's a good thing that they show it as evil.
	I read, I read Hunger Games to my boys, and uh, and we watched the movies.
	Did you do all the voices?
	And I did all the voices.
	Yeah, I volunteered.
	You did do a lot of female voice.
	I volunteered as tribute.
	You know, yeah, they dressed up, you know, for the part and the whole deal.
	But you've done a little bit more like this.
	Thanks.
	It's great.
	But yeah, now I don't remember what I was going to say.
	No, the uh, but yeah, it amazed me that it was so anti-state, you know, and a lot of dystopian fiction is like that.
	But and then you'll get the left will often cite those, you know, like, oh, we're the we're the tributes fighting against the capital, and Trump is the, you know, and it's like, you know, you've missed the entire point.
	Like at the end of the, at the end of the last movie, spoiler alert, you know, she kills the incoming, the new president that's going to take over that was supposedly good because she says spoiler alert.
	Well, it wasn't a very good spoiler alert.
	We should put a little alert on you.
	Oh, if you're going to listen to this program, it just spoiler alerts because we got to talk about it.
	You've got to talk about these things to talk about.
	I don't even care about spoiler alerts.
	Well, but the whole thing is it's looking like it's going to be pro-state because they say, oh, this new state's coming in and these rulers are good.
	And then she kills the president who was going to take over.
	And she says, no, you know, I just want to go live my life.
	And this new government is the same as the old government.
	Right.
	And so it's this like anti-statist message at the end.
	Yeah.
	But you, but again, you see the left identifying with these characters in this, you know, the same thing with like Harry Potter, where the, the, you know, you've got the ministry that's all invaded and they're all they're all bad, you know, and they're fighting against it.
	But then the left, the resistance is always like, we're Harry Potter and Trump is a Voldemort.
	And yeah, yeah, I know it's interesting.
	How they see it, like the opposite of what it is.
	There was another example of another real recent movie where the, I can't remember what the name of the movie was.
	And the creator himself was saying that he saw Trump in it.
	And it was like, it was really more of a conservative movie and he didn't even realize it.
	He shouldn't have said that.
	That cultural appropriation, you know.
	And, you know, another good example of the dystopian stuff is Handmaid's Tale, right?
	So, you know, here's this, you know, dystopian future.
	And this is an element of what they tried to do: I think that we all, at least Americans, all have that desire for freedom.
	That's one of our highest values.
	So we, you know, so the suppression of the individual is a bad thing.
	That's, and that's good message, right?
	And so that's why you lend itself to statist tyranny oppresses the individual.
	But then what happens is they try to connect that statism with Christianity or with the view they hate.
	And thus you have Handmaid's Tale, where it's an absurdity of something that doesn't even remotely exist on any level or in any thought piece in any Christian world that you can imagine.
	And that is, Christians want to have a theocracy and take over the world and use women as their concubines and kill gays.
	And it's completely unlikely.
	No, but actually, that's it.
	Oh, you were saying that was bad.
	Isn't that Islam?
	I thought that was Islam.
	Oh, no, it's Christian.
	And that's the thing about it.
	It's so absurd that it's like, how could this be a popular show?
	Because it doesn't make sense on any level.
	It's a fantasy of what they think.
	Mike Pence is just cackling in the White House or whatever.
	Meanwhile, there's no Christian who even argues that on any level anywhere.
	Meanwhile, Muslims all over the world are actually killing gays, actually having theocracies.
	Not all Muslims, sir.
	Not all, but all over the world.
	And, you know, and it's like, so it actually is happening in Muslim cultures with Sharia law.
	Right.
	It is bizarre.
	And they, and yet they're not worried.
	The left is not worried about real evil.
	They're worried about their imagined evil that doesn't exist.
	It's crazy.
	It's crazy.
	Yeah, and I think you can see some of that on.
	I mean, we're going way off topic here, but uh, we're way off from sci-fi movies, but you can see that in Christianity too.
	I think there's a sure you get very religious sects or fundamental sects that sex sect that we're talking about sex and violence, Christian sex.
	There's lots of Christian sex.
	Their boogeyman has been whatever it is.
	I think that's common.
	You create a boogeyman.
	You look like a way bigger hero fighting your created boogeyman than a real one, right?
	Yeah.
	Because you have a better chance of every view.
	Every viewpoint on earth has their extreme cultic version.
	So absolutely.
	All right.
	Well, we want to do a whole sci-fi episode someday.
	That was a little dip of the toe into sci-fi.
	We want to talk about zombies next.
	You want to talk about the zombies?
	No.
	I love them.
	I am a little sick of them too, but I'm curious to see what Brian has to say about him.
	I love zombies.
	I used to hate zombie movies when I was a kid.
	Okay.
	Because they're scary and gross, gross, gruesome.
	And just like, who cares about just people eating people?
	It's so stupid.
	But I think in more recent years, zombies have become, you know, a very powerful, and they always have been.
	I just didn't recognize it as a young kid, but they are a very powerful social commentary.
	The zombies are Republicans.
	Yes, of course.
	They all have MAGA hats on.
	Yes, because they want to eat people.
	Very powerful.
	So, you know, I think one of the things that made it, one of the movies that made it really break through was the day one.
	12-day.
	2028.
	28 days later.
	Oh, come on.
	You're the movie guy, man.
	I've got bad memory now.
	Strike one.
	I have to have a list of notes even of movies to remember them.
	There was 28 days.
	28 days.
	28 weeks.
	28 weeks.
	28 months.
	Both of them were great.
	There were months too.
	I think there was a month, wasn't there?
	Oh, and then, of course, Walking Dead, right?
	28 years.
	I'm a big fan of Walking Dead, not anymore.
	I stopped after Negan was defeated.
	I never got to Negan even.
	Yeah.
	I stopped watching on the episode where he smashed the dude's face in with the bat.
	Oh, yeah.
	I was just, I was like, this is just depressing now.
	Well, here's, so here's the deal: horror, you know, and again, you know, we got a religious audience, I'm sure.
	So I'm sure all the movies I talked about so far are like really popular with the Christian.
	Yeah.
	I think all Christians watch Walking Dead just secretly.
	Yeah, yeah, yeah.
	And I do think, I do think that a lot of them have, a lot of them watch a lot of things that they would not admit to.
	Right.
	Game of Thrones.
	Oh.
	Okay.
	So anyway.
	Well, not anymore.
	We've disowned it after the finale.
	Yeah, that's true.
	I didn't see the last season.
	Yeah.
	So, but horror.
	So and horror is something that I've actually talked around the country on at churches and such because it's something that I actually really believe in.
	And the reason why I believe in it as a genre, even though a lot of Christians, and it's not for everyone, okay, but a lot of Christians have a problem with it, you know, because, oh, that's just what violence and exploiting fear and our God is not a God of fear and all this kind of stuff.
	And the truth is, what they don't realize is that, and I've written a chapter on this in my book, Hollywood Worldviews, that you can purchase on Amazon.com.
	But seriously, I've written a whole like article that's gone.
	You can probably find it free on the internet, actually, about sex and violence and horror movies in particular.
	Actually, an article on horror movies and why they are a powerful moral medium in today's postmodern society.
	When you have a society that rejects moral truth and is relativistic, what that means is, and of course rejects God, you have no foundation for morality.
	Oh, yes, there's a shallow surface sense of morality, but ultimately there's no foundation for morality.
	Therefore, as society becomes more consistent with that value, it's going to become less moral because it's going to start to realize, well, there is no morality.
	It's relative.
	So it's what I want it to be.
	And so horror movies, horror as a genre is great because it is a moral gut punch.
	When you watch a movie, yes, sometimes it screws him, et cetera.
	But you're watching this and it really clarifies the reality of evil.
	You're watching this movie.
	You're not saying, oh, one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter.
	You're watching it going, no, that guy is freaking evil and he deserves to die.
	It's an emotional, moral gut punch that affirms a moral value system in the world.
	It's also the medium where you can deal with religious values, Christian values, you know, like demonic possession movies like The Conjuring, right?
	Or The Exorcism of Emily Rose, and all those movies where you can deal with real demons and deal with Jesus Christ in a positive way that you can't in any other genre in Hollywood.
	So that's another that's true.
	It's interesting that in those kinds of movies like Emily Rose and such, it's like the Christian answer by a Christian.
	Written by a Christian, Scott Derrickson.
	Yeah, in those things, it's like the Christians are actually the good guys, and you kind of accept the Christian solution to the problem.
	I sometimes have a problem with those just because the solution is usually like a priest shows up and says something in Latin.
	And then it's like, okay, that's not really how spiritual warfare works.
	But if you look at it in terms of like symbolism, it's probably more.
	Or just having a positive picture of Christianity in movies.
	I mean, that's an amazing problem.
	The devil is real.
	And then the name and Jesus is a powerful thing.
	And, you know, in fact, the movie, the movie Devil by M. Night Shyamalan, which is a great movie.
	The elevator one.
	Yeah, the elevator one.
	And it's a small movie, but the principle is said in this woman's voice where she says, you know, I, you know, basically my grandma taught me that, you know, if there's a devil, then there has to be a God.
	And I mean, that's a real, because if you believe that there's a real, true, incarnate evil, you have to believe there has to be a good or there's no evil, right?
	Because evil is the absence of good.
	Yeah.
	So horror movies do that.
	Zombie movies in particular, the reason why I love them is in general, most of them, really from The Walking Dead, Zombiland, Shauna the Dead, which was hilarious, right?
	That changed the genre too.
	That helped bring more humor into horror movies in a positive way.
	And one of my personal favorites, Pride and Prejudice in Zombies.
	I love Jane Austen.
	I saw that.
	I saw it in the next video.
	I saw it.
	It is really good.
	It is.
	It is.
	I mean, obviously, what it is, you have to accept it.
	You got to accept it going in.
	Yeah.
	But so anyway, but what I want to get to is: so the zombies, what makes zombies great is you'll notice and notice, and this is true of a lot of some vampire movies too, like 30 Days of Night, which is one of my personal favorites, is that they wrestle with the issue of what makes us human, right?
	Because these are dead bodies who are animated and you can kill them and you know that you're justified in killing them.
	But why?
	They're not really human.
	Why?
	What is it that makes them different, et cetera?
	And that points towards the spirit in man, right?
	But also, you watch them like 28 days later, 28 weeks later is a great example.
	They often contrast, and Walking Dead is basically people who are selfish and seek to survive, protect themselves, and that end up hurting others or getting killed.
	But those who tend to sacrifice to rescue others are the good people, and those are the ones that promote life.
	And that's the theme in Walking Dead for the first five, six seasons.
	And that is basically what I argue is that's the Christian ethic of self-sacrifice versus the evolutionary ethic of self-survival.
	And so all zombie movies tend to pick that.
	And 28 Weeks Later is fantastic because that's the whole essence of the story: this father who literally protected himself and let his wife die, but it turns out she didn't, right?
	But that is on his soul and it destroys him because he tried to protect himself.
	And like I said, Walking Dead is the same sort of thing.
	The heroic people, the people that we cheer that are good people are the people who are sacrificing themselves or risking their lives to save others, not protecting yourself to save yourself.
	That's evolutionary ethic versus Christian ethic.
	That's what I argue in general, even if it doesn't promote Christianity, you know?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Because I always saw the zombie thing as like, I think people are very narcissistic and self-centered.
	And so they relate to the zombie genre because they feel that way out among other people.
	They feel like.
	Everyone else is kind of just this.
	Everyone's the same.
	Yeah.
	And I'm different.
	And they're all just kind of like idiots and I'm smart.
	And like, they just feel like it fits our very selfish view of ourselves and our lives.
	Yeah.
	I don't know.
	That's a very dark view of people.
	I think, I think, but this is good.
	I'm glad that you said that because it brings up a good point that, you know, none of this is absolute and there's good and bad things to each of these genres.
	And what you bring out, I would totally agree that, you know, too much of one thing can actually feed that negative side.
	And I think you make a very good point about that, that that zombie movies, particularly people who are obsessed with, you know, you see this kind of thing, you know, they just love all the zombie movies.
	And I've watched some that are just so bad that I turn them off.
	So when I talk about zombie movies, I'm thinking more of the mainstream stuff rather than the exploitation stuff.
	But nevertheless, yeah, it can appeal to that narcissism.
	And I think that that might be a good lead-in for us to talk about the next movie because that's, I think, one of the latest sort of big movies out is Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
	And it has, I think, my argument is going to be that it has a really interesting, strong good side to it and also a negative side to it.
	Interesting.
	If we can, I mean, forgive me.
	I'm like taking control of the Babylon B.
	This is my secret desire.
	I think people just like zombie movies because they get to see brains explode.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	But you know, you're operating on a whole other level.
	You're playing 4D chess here and me and Ethan are playing 2D Tiddlywings.
	Okay.
	So here, so, but here's the point about art slash storytelling slash movies, right?
	It's all, it's all a part of the same thing.
	The beauty and power of art, and I write about this in my books, The Imagination of God and God Against the Gods.
	But the power of storytelling and in Hollywood Worldviews, the power of art is precisely that.
	It combines both the entertaining aspect.
	Of course, people don't say, I don't think people want to go see zombie movies because I want to see the ethic of self-sacrifice versus, no, no, I agree.
	And there's something that's kind of cool about like, hey, you know, you can kill people and you're not guilty.
	But also just being chased.
	I love chase movies.
	I love movies where the good guy is being hunted by bad guys and he has to take them all down.
	So there is definitely on the surface, we are drawn to the entertaining elements of it.
	Absolutely.
	And that's a whole nother level.
	Well, I wasn't making a deep point there, but you brought it out.
	However, but me as the philosophical artist, I also believe that those things draw us.
	But then I think the things that make them powerful and meaningful and big hits, whether it's Shauna the Dead or Walking Dead, is that they're not just exploitation vehicles of gore and blood and violence.
	They are actually wrestling with meaningful human relationships.
	And what how, you know, the apocalypse, apocalyptic stories, their purpose is to say, for us to struggle or wrestle and figure out what makes civilization, right?
	What makes civilization?
	Because when it's lost, how you gain it back?
	And what do we end up in as tribal societies?
	Book of Eli is a fantastic example of that with Denzel Washington.
	And that movie is literally about what is the foundation of civilization because he's protecting the Bible and getting it to the coast so that they can keep books that have been lost that can rebuild civilization.
	That's literally what it's about.
	And that's what I argue most apocalyptic stories are about, even if people don't think of that consciously.
	Yeah, they're trying to figure out what was lost that went all wrong.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	And I'm big on you don't have to know this consciously for it to be effective.
	I speak as an artist.
	I know what we do.
	You guys are artists too.
	You know that we craft that stuff in there, whether or not they're going to be aware of it.
	We believe it affects them because the very nature of storytelling in movies and series is itself a means of persuading people in the way that we see the world.
	Yeah.
	And this is a very deep topic too, but I think that when you create a story, you know, we like to think as, especially if you're secular, think that you're just creating a thing out of thin air.
	But I think that we tend to believe that you're finding something, that you're finding a truth.
	And that's why you can try to write a story that doesn't ring true with your soul or with the human soul, and it won't really work.
	And so I think a lot of people that want to write a story that is disconnected from the idea that we are this that we're transcendent and that there's meaning doesn't ever work because to write a story, you're you're tapping into something deeper than just playing around with words on a keyboard.
	You know, it's not too off topic.
	It's not the same genre, but a good example of that in play is the, I'm on, I'm trying to get on Netflix, and there's a new, there's a new movie, Netflix Original, that is a love story, like a romance, a romantic comedy.
	Maybe I shouldn't be talking about this if I can't find it.
	Zombie love story.
	No, it's not.
	But it's, it's.
	Wasn't there one that came out like a zombie love story movie?
	Yeah.
	Oh, yeah, yeah.
	I just not see that.
	I already saw the one with the fish man, and I'm like, I don't want to see people forget what it was called.
	I have it.
	I have it on Blu-ray and I don't know what it's called.
	Oh, really?
	Yeah.
	Huh.
	My wife liked it.
	Oh, you liked it.
	My wife liked it a lot.
	I thought it was okay.
	Did they make out?
	Probably.
	I blew it.
	I brought up a topic that I can't find the example of a freaking movie that, but it was this idea, what you were saying about how if it doesn't ring true and if it doesn't connect with our humanity, you know.
	So a story, it's some love story, some Asian love story on Netflix.
	And it's basically a feminist parable, you know.
	And as I was watching, I enjoy feminist movies if they're well done.
	But so here's when you tell a story, the hero, the protagonist, this is part of storytelling.
	The protagonist is the one we cheer when we root for, right?
	But that protagonist has to have something wrong about the way they see the world.
	That's what's causing some of their problems, as well as the external villain, you know, that they have to battle.
	But as they fight the villain, they're losing and they fail because they don't realize there's something inside of them they have to change and become a better person.
	And when they do that, then they have the victory over themselves that they can then face the villain and win the villain.
	That's sort of the standard.
	Yeah.
	And that's in romantic comedies.
	That's in everything.
	And so I was watching this as I was trying to find this story.
	I can't remember what it's called.
	It's a real boring title, too.
	That's why it's very forgettable.
	But I remember it's watching it and thinking, and it's this feminist story.
	So it's the story of this woman and she wants to have everything and have love and be successful career.
	And it's making that argument that we can have everything, all that kind of stuff.
	But it's so interesting is that by the end of the story, the man that she was in love with, he's the one who has to change and learn something's wrong with him so that he can fit into her life better and she can move on.
	And what's so hilarious about that is not because it should be the other way around because she's a woman.
	No.
	Whoever your hero is, is the one who has to learn.
	So if the hero was a man, I would say he has to learn something's wrong with him.
	So he's made worthy of the woman.
	But in this case, because it's feminism as the ideology, they have to stick to that.
	It's got to be the man who changes.
	And my point was, I'm watching the story.
	It's like completely unsatisfying because I'm supposed to be rooting for this woman, but she's not the one who has to change.
	And it was very, very unsatisfying as a story.
	And so that's why I'm saying, like, whatever you're going to tell you, the story itself actually, it actually embodies the persuasion in a way, right?
	Because you're rooting for the hero.
	And whatever flaw the hero has is what we also learn about ourselves.
	So when the hero learns by the end of the story what they have to better in themselves, you know, Luke must realize that he is the savior, the one, the chosen one, whatever.
	But, you know, by the end of the story, as the hero learns and then overcomes his ultimate problem, then we too will be with him in that journey.
	Does that make sense?
	Yeah, yeah.
	Are we getting, are we, am I staying too philosophical?
	Let's talk more about movies.
	No, I mean, we're getting philosophical about movies.
	That's the foundation.
	That's the whole idea, right?
	Yeah.
	They're all flawed.
	We just want our homeschool audience to know that Luke is not a reference to the book in the Bible.
	It's a character in a franchise called Star Wars.
	Yeah.
	Okay.
	We actually got an angry hate male when we kept doing that homeschool reference.
	Oh, yeah.
	So I was like, please stop doing the homeschool call-out.
	It's hilarious.
	We love you homeschoolers.
	We love you, homeschoolers.
	All right.
	Yeah.
	Let's, yeah, that's the thing.
	This is our first episode of talking movies, and there's so much you could talk about.
	Am I getting too serious for the Babylonians?
	No, throw a joke in a random canner.
	Usually Kyle is able to use pretty good throwing jokes in, but you talk really fast.
	And Kyle always waits for three seconds of silence before he tells a joke.
	So that's a problem.
	I'm knock knock.
	No, she.
	Okay, so anyway, I don't know what I'm saying.
	All right.
	Sorry, I'm just, you know, like I said, I listened to podcasts at 1.5, so I think I've started talking that way.
	It's fun.
	We'll try the next one.
	We'll see how it goes.
	All right.
	We figured that it'd be good to talk about one new movie that's actually in theaters right now.
	And so we're going to do one that Kyle hadn't seen.
	So Kyle's going to be even quieter in this portion, probably.
	I'll go ahead and give him my review right now.
	Too much blood.
	Yeah.
	Isn't there blood?
	We're talking about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, but yes, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.
	And so spoiler.
	We've already made a spoiler.
	Major spoiler.
	I'm going to explain the essence of it.
	So too bad.
	But listen, you don't want to go see it anyway.
	Probably.
	Too much blood.
	Yeah, when I saw it, I was like, I don't really know why I saw that.
	Because I heard everybody said it was so good.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Now, I do, here's what I'm going to argue: I actually think I have a love-hate relationship with Tarantino.
	A lot of his movies I just think are just garbage and stupid.
	I think pulp fiction was a masterpiece.
	Okay.
	So I admit that.
	But then a lot of them in between, terrible.
	Anyway, I watched Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which the premise is that Leonardo DiCaprio plays in, I think it's like, yeah, in the 60s, around the time of the Manson murder.
	Yeah, it's like around late 60s.
	59 or no, 69, probably.
	Yeah, okay.
	Late 60s, yep.
	So, and he's an aging star or whatever.
	You know, he's failing and he's, so he's struggling with his whole identity.
	Meanwhile, Brad Pitt plays the stunt man, his stunt double, who is just a cool guy, man.
	And he just, he's not burdened by all that garbage.
	And he's actually a good guy, and he just, he's helping Leonardo to find his way a little bit in life.
	So that's kind of the premise of it.
	Well, they happen to live next door to Sharon Tate and Roma Palancy.
	And Cecilo Lane, where the murders happen.
	So, you know, he's a fictional character.
	Or Cecilo Drone.
	DiCaprio is a fictional character.
	So that's a fictional story, you know.
	And so the thing is, is this.
	Tarantino has done this for a couple of movies now.
	He did this in the Glorious Bastards too.
	It's the genre that is called alternative history.
	In other words, if things happen differently, here's what it might have been.
	Now, that's an interesting genre.
	It's worthy of creativity, etc.
	So what he does is he says, you know, he says, well, how might the Manson murders have occurred or not occurred if these kind of characters had interacted in that scenario, you know?
	And, you know, like I said, and Glorious Bastards was, you know, you got to see Hitler actually get killed by guys, you know, and whatever, was he flamed or whatever, shot up, shot, you know.
	And so here, so here's the thing.
	That's what I'm saying.
	Classic movie.
	Yeah.
	I've never seen it.
	I have no idea.
	So first of all, I have to say, number one, is that it is long and a little boring, quite boring at times.
	Way too many shots of close-ups of people's feet walking.
	I don't know why.
	A lot of shots of people's feet walking.
	And secondly, he does a major, makes a major mistake of first-year filmmakers make, and I did it in my first film, is he has long, uninteresting driving sequences so that he can play his favorite music over the soundtrack, right?
	He does this, and it's just like.
	I don't see anything wrong with that.
	I do that in my real life.
	Like I'll drive around the block a couple of times.
	I know, I know.
	So my favorite DC talk track can finish.
	But in the end, but in movies, three or four times is pretty boring.
	I like the cool movie trick where you hear the music and then they turn off the car and the music turns off and you go, oh, they were listening to it.
	Yeah.
	See, he tiddlywinks over here.
	Or when they just play, he has the headlines on and you just hear it in the little slightly background, but then it becomes the soundtrack.
	Yeah, when you become him.
	Yeah.
	Anyway, so he's good on that.
	Yeah.
	I'm just going to shout the names of movies out to sound like I know what I'm talking about.
	Okay, so here's the premise.
	It's like, okay, so you've got this, these, you know, these two characters who interact and basically they end up stopping the Manson murders because the first people that they go to kill, Tex Watson and his couple of girls, ends up being Brad Pitt and DiCaprio, right?
	And, you know, so so they, so it, it doesn't end up occurring.
	And what the value of this is, the good side is it's catharsis.
	In other words, you're watching this movie, and if you know anything about the, just the horrible brutality of the Manson murders and what depths of evil people can go, that's the whole point of that, right?
	But he shows them not being killed and the good guys just completely maul and destroy them.
	But it's self-defense.
	Is there blood?
	There is some blood.
	It is a total blood.
	But not as much as most Tarantino movies.
	It's as if Brad Pitt's character knows what she would have done.
	Like the way that he kills that girl.
	Yeah.
	He's basically just smashing her face into everything in the house.
	It almost becomes cartoonish.
	Yeah, it is.
	It is cartoony.
	It gets very silly because everything just keeps changing shots, bashing her here, bashing her.
	So the catharsis is as a viewer, you're like, you have this sense of justice.
	Yeah, they really got their just desserts, you know, because we know those are evil people who did really great evil.
	And we get to see what didn't get to happen, which is they get their just desserts.
	That's called catharsis, right?
	And there's a certain value to that I don't deny.
	And also, I think it's ultimately a conservative value because you've got these guys who stand up, use guns, fight back.
	And this is very much a thing in society that I think is ultimately conservative value is to defend yourself and to the death, right?
	So that's the good side.
	And I have conservative friends who said, you know, Ann and Phelm from the Ann and Film podcast, they argued that it was very conservative.
	And I'm like, okay, I can see that.
	But here's the downside, in my opinion.
	And it's the downside that fits into today's narrative.
	And that is.
	I think when it comes to, look, whenever you're telling a movie, you're fictionalizing, even if you're telling this true story.
	No problem with that.
	I get that.
	You fictionalized him.
	But with the most important things of history, like these people were really brutally murdered, what happened.
	If you make that the opposite, what you're doing is you're feeding into this leftist narrative of facts don't matter.
	What matters is our feelings.
	And this is why they don't even.
	You need to say that really fast, like Ben Shapiro does.
	Facts don't care about your feelings.
	There you go.
	And so you see what I'm saying?
	It's like, they don't care what really happens because what's satisfying to me is to see the Manson murderers get their due.
	But you see, the danger of that is this is what's happening all over now.
	The Russian hoax has been proven as a hoax, but the media and the leftists still go with the narrative because the narrative feels better.
	It just feels better to go with it, right?
	Yeah.
	And that's happening on every, the Brett Kavanaugh, complete fraud against him, complete fraud, you know, libel slander, been proven to be false, but they're still sticking to the narrative.
	They're still saying Ferguson, you know, it's like the narrative is that, you know, a cop killed an unarmed man.
	No, actually, it was justifiable homicide of the guy who was trying to kill him.
	And it's like, but they don't care because they stick with, see what I'm saying so?
	Yeah.
	I think that's destroying our culture from the inside out because of the denial of the most important facts.
	And that's the danger I see in the movie.
	Does that make sense?
	No, that is one of the most crazy things about some of these stories.
	Like getting into the facts makes you seem like, are you being a bigot?
	Because you're getting into the facts?
	Yeah.
	It's weird.
	Yeah, it's really weird.
	Like we can't just talk about the actual facts of what happened.
	Like if you take the stance that maybe the narrative isn't true, immediately you're, yeah.
	Yeah.
	If we really wanted it to be a conservative movie, we could build a wall around Manson.
	Here you go.
	He's just bumping into and Jizzy keeps, yeah, like a 10-foot by 10-foot area.
	Just write and piggy everywhere.
	Yeah.
	Well, actually, actually, they lived in a pretty rich area.
	They already had fences.
	They literally did in the movie.
	They had fences.
	Oh, yeah, they're on Spawn Ranch, right?
	Because, of course, all Hollywood hypocrites are like that.
	They're against the wall, but they have walls around their mansions.
	You have walls and fences everywhere, yeah.
	Yeah.
	With a moat.
	The hypocrisy is on that.
	Sharks.
	Laser eyes.
	All right.
	So for our main topic, we're going to get into Christian, anti-Christian bias in Hollywood.
	So hold your horses.
	And now, the Babylon Bees topic of the week.
	Well, there's kind of this narrative among Christians and conservatives that Hollywood is very anti-them and that Hollywood is in this liberal bubble.
	And, you know, I don't know, that all the narratives of Hollywood films are designed to kind of oppress conservatives.
	And I think it comes off a little annoying at times, right?
	Like, you know, conservatives, oh, this movie's, you know, this movie hates snowflakey.
	Conservative snowflakes.
	And so I was just kind of wondering, you know, you're someone who's there.
	We're very close, but I think we live just outside the bubble, right?
	I've been in the belly a little bit.
	You've been there.
	Oh, yeah, more than I have.
	Yeah.
	There's a literal bubble.
	I think it's a big plastic glass, plexiglass dome.
	I think most people that work in Hollywood feel like they're outside of it because it's such an in thing.
	It's just like, it's just like it's a good way to put it.
	It's like when you're in junior high and there's the kids who are the in-crowd, and there's only a few that really are in.
	And you wonder, they're always the ones into being train wrecks later in life.
	Yeah, because they hit their peak when they're 12 or 13.
	Yeah, you know, so uh, because you all you're always breaking in, even if you've just had a movie, yeah, you're you're trying to break in with the next movie because you never know.
	Like, you've written a movie, like I remember when I first met you, like, yeah, you've written a movie with Kiefer Sutherland starring in it, To End All Wars, which is available on Amazon, and it is a great movie, it's great one of the classics of for that Christians love, yeah, it's a great Christian movie for sure.
	Um, but yeah, so it's funny, just that whole idea.
	You had that happen, and you still feel like you're breaking in.
	In fact, within the year, I was still felt literally, I just had that first movie made, and I was under this illusion that, like, now I've broken in, and now I'm going to get all this work.
	And I literally had to go back to pounding on doors, you know, and it was just very disheartening.
	That was a moment, that was a part of time in my life where I did deal with depression because it was just such a shock to the system, yeah, until I just accepted it.
	No, that's how it is.
	And I heard other more famous people, more successful people than me saying the same thing after every movie.
	I'm not sure I'm even going to make another movie.
	Yeah, so I just accepted it and moved on anyway.
	Who cares?
	Who cares about that?
	I don't know what you guys are talking about.
	Who cares about that?
	You can go.
	Just the idea that, yeah, that Hollywood feels like an in-crowd.
	Oh, yeah, yeah, the in-crowd thing.
	Almost everybody feels like an outsider, probably.
	So, my question is: Is this real?
	And how bad is it?
	What's the problem?
	And should Christians be worried about it?
	And how do we, I mean, if there's Christian artists and filmmakers in Hollywood, how do you know?
	Well, there are, look, I mean, we know there's one.
	Yeah, but are there look at it as war, like I should boycott this movie?
	Yeah, Christian or that kind of stuff.
	Yeah, it's a topic.
	Do you subvert the system and inject your values into secular films?
	Do you make Christian films?
	Do you, I mean, what's you know?
	Well, look, I've written a lot on my blog post at gadawa.com.
	Available on Amazon.
	Yes, but no, seriously, I'm kind of proud of my movie posts because I do go into in-depth in the movies and stuff.
	And not as much as I used to, but there are some recent ones on there.
	We'll talk about the boys, number one.
	But first of all, try to tell people Hollywood is not monolithic.
	It's not all one thing.
	And there are a lot of when I first came out here 25 years ago or something, there was like one or two Christian ministries that actually reached out to content creators like writers, directors, producers, and even actors.
	And, you know, I knew of about, oh, there must have been several hundred Christians in the industry working to try to just, you know, to be an influence into whatever, tell our stories, right?
	Nothing subversive.
	It's just we love movies and we want to tell stories.
	Now, 25 years later, there's thousands of Christians that I've seen and I've known and dozens of Christian ministries reaching content creators, et cetera, et cetera.
	And so in one sense, there's a lot more Christians, and we are infiltrating it to some degree.
	But there's also a large degree in which we have been compromised and become a lot of them have become like Hollywood leftists.
	And so their faith has been nullified in some ways.
	And there is a lot of, there are a lot of people.
	I have, you know, I can tell you, I know people and myself, I've lost work because they found out I was a Christian.
	It has nothing to do with who I am or anything.
	It's just finding out as a Christian or finding out you're a conservative.
	And when I first came there, my impression was it was worse to be a Republican than a Christian.
	They still hated both, but it seemed to, and that was like even 15 years ago.
	Well, because people can identify as like liberal Christians or leftist Christians.
	And that probably gets some of the Christians to stink off you.
	Yeah, exactly.
	You know, so how do you know that you lost work because you're a Christian?
	Did they say, oh, you're a Christian?
	This is in a time when they had said it.
	They just told us.
	Really?
	It's like, really?
	I mean, but we aren't the kind of people also who necessarily go around suing people, right?
	So, and this is some years back.
	So, I'm more in the independent side of Hollywood.
	It's not like I'm in with big studios and stuff like that.
	So, and partly, you know, because I work with people who have the same vision and stuff, right?
	So, but nevertheless, yeah.
	So, I like to tell people there is definitely anti-Christian, anti-Christian bias in a lot of movies.
	And I write about them on my blog.
	But I also write that there's a lot of positive, I have to admit, I'm surprised sometimes, honestly, at how conservative some movies can be.
	Like the Marvel universe is actually quite conservative until near the end now.
	Obviously, they're turning woke, but there's a lot of it lost me when Captain Marvel cut her hair into the she cut her hair into kind of like the feminist.
	It's kind of a Donald Trump style haircut.
	The Donald Trump hairdo is good on feminism.
	Yeah.
	So I'm surprised.
	And I like to, I actually like to try to point out whenever I see a movie that comes out that actually has some surprisingly conservative values in it that comes out of Hollywood.
	And I admit, yeah, hey, I'm even saying I'm surprised.
	I'm trying to see if I can find some examples of that.
	Or even very pro-Christianity.
	You know, I have lists that I keep where I show how, like, let me give you an example, where true stories wherein the Christianity of the characters is crucial to their story slash lives.
	It's not just, you know, oh, they believe in something.
	So, you know, we all realize that you can't say everything in the story.
	You need to focus, but we're all about identity, right?
	Well, if a gay person's identity is their sexuality is everything they are, well, then so it is for a Christian as well.
	But they cut it out and they make them into secular stories where they completely, you know, and that is like the worst insult of all.
	Tolkien was the latest one.
	Oh, yeah, the honor biography.
	They cut out the Catholicism.
	No, sure.
	They might have one moment where they see him praying or something like that.
	But I mean, they don't show how important it is to the story as well.
	That's even integral to his works.
	Yes, exactly.
	Exactly.
	Wrinkle in Time took out the Christian, made it into New Age.
	Hidden figures.
	Yeah, but you know, they added Oprah.
	That's true.
	So they added a new God.
	That makes up for God, right?
	Hidden figures.
	Remember the one about the black women during the space program, which was a fantastic movie.
	Nothing about their faith.
	They were all staunch, strong Christian women.
	That was part of their story, right?
	The finest hours, the one about the sea rescue with Chris Pine.
	It's a great movie, by the way.
	Finest Hours.
	The Vow.
	Unbroken.
	Unbroken, yeah.
	No, the one about the guy.
	Oh my gosh, the very essence of what makes it a great story was his forgiveness.
	Yeah.
	Walk the line, Johnny Cash, right?
	They all, maybe they'll choose a part of their life when faith wasn't there.
	So it's, so they're being, quote, authentic.
	But in truth, is it.
	They should do a movie about Jesus where they cut out his Jewish faith and make him less religious.
	Maybe they have already.
	I'm trying to think.
	Yeah, I wouldn't be.
	But you see, my point is that I trumpet that stuff all the time.
	But then also there are times where, oh, pro-life movies, you know, and I'm not going to do the independent ones like Room, which was the one that made Brian Larson famous.
	It's like fan.
	Amazing.
	And that's a movie that is dealing with the one argument that pro-abortion, pro-death people really, you know, it's like, well, what if she was raped and the child was not, was the product of rape?
	And this one shows that no, even those children are worthy of living.
	And that's a Hollywood movie.
	I'm like, wow, that's amazing, you know?
	So that kind of stuff happens.
	And I try to, I try to make it my purpose to point those out because I do want to promote the good.
	Another good example is the, well, Bohemian Rhapsody.
	Okay.
	I never saw that.
	What?
	Yeah, what?
	Wait, what?
	Freddy Mercury?
	Yeah.
	Actually, I would say that that's an example of a movie where it unwittingly shows that here was a man who was unfaithful to a woman that he loved.
	And that is the source of all of his misery and unhappiness.
	And there was a sense in which it unwittingly showed the value of monogamy and heterosexual monogamy as well, right?
	Oh, Captain Panther.
	That was a classic thing where it's like, Captain Panther.
	Can I say Captain Panther?
	You did say Captain Panther.
	You know, I was looking at Captain America Civil War.
	And I was like, I was physically ill.
	I was starting to get physically ill from Captain Panther.
	So Black Panther, right?
	So here you have like Black Panther himself is like Donald Trump, man.
	I mean, he's like, he's like, we're going to keep the wall around our city.
	That was pretty incredible.
	You know, we're keeping him out.
	I'm like, oh my gosh, that's like, and he's the hero, and that's freaking dumb.
	Well, and then, you know, people were actually mad about it because halfway through the movie, they posed that question, like, should we, should we send arms and funds to revolutionary groups like communists, like antiphot type groups around the world to help black people rise up and fight against the governments?
	And the answer in the end of the movie is no.
	We're going to share knowledge.
	You know, that's kind of how they solve the problem, which is interesting.
	So, yeah, so and I try to point those out because I really can't.
	See, when you start talking about a Marvel movie, then I can jump in and I can jump in.
	Then I have to step back a little bit.
	I'm going to be talking less than because I can't keep up with that as much.
	I enjoy some of the Marvel, but I can talk you under the rug about Daredevil, though.
	And then, of course, you've got Hacksar Ridge, which is Mel Gibson.
	Of course, any Mel Gibson movie is going to be awesome and with great values and conservative values in personal life, maybe.
	That's the kind of stuff that interests me is when it's, I mean, I would call that a Christian movie.
	Yeah.
	But it's not, it's not, it's not what we think of as a Christian movie, like God's Not Dead or something.
	You know, everybody's a 2D, you know, caricature of atheists and Christians and stuff.
	Exactly.
	And by the way, I'm proud to say that my movie, Turner Wars, I think is in that category with Hacksar Ridge because it's definitely not a Christian movie, but it's a movie that has Christianity in it because it was part of the story, right?
	Yeah.
	And that's very integral to it.
	And that was my goal to do that.
	But Hackstar Ridge was fantastic because here you've got this true story, World War II, this kid who is a Seventh-day Adventist and a pacifist, and he ends up going into war and he goes and he ends up saving an unbelievable amount of guys on the field and he won't carry a gun, right?
	But what's so ironic is at the same time, it also shows that his pacifism really is contradictory, unlivable, because he's being protected by guys with guns, right?
	But I think Gibson meant to make that point, you know, meant to show that.
	Yet there's a beautiful balance of it.
	They can work together, you know?
	But he does it in the name of Christ.
	But then the other guys make good points that make him question his own values as well to realize that, no, if we don't stand up and fight evil, evil will vanquish us, you know, that kind of thing.
	Things like that.
	Yeah.
	So those are good.
	So those are some examples to at least set the page.
	Right.
	Okay.
	So not to say that like Hollywood doesn't see a Christian character in their script and go, get rid of him.
	It depends.
	Probably depends on the director and everything.
	Yeah, there is.
	Once again, it's so complicated.
	Yes, there is a concerted effort.
	There is a significant amount of them who do.
	I've heard cases and inside stories where that's actually happens.
	In fact, Doug Tenapel, our friend, you know, he sells his creature tech, you know, it's all about like creation, science, creation, scientists, or whatever versus evolution and stuff.
	And one of the first things they say is, you know, like, well, can we cut out the religion stuff?
	Know it's and sometimes it's because they just hate Christianity.
	Sometimes it's because they literally are so in a bubble that they think, well, if we have that, that will be offensive to people and we won't make money.
	They literally think it will be, whereas it's the exact opposite.
	More people will see it because there are more people who are positive towards that than are not, right?
	Yeah.
	So it's their own ignorance that causes them to make those choices.
	But sometimes it's a very deliberate hate campaign, such as the boys.
	Okay.
	Is that good?
	Was that good?
	That was a transition.
	Yeah.
	Boom, boom.
	Sorry if I'm taking control.
	I don't mean to be.
	I'm just.
	You got a lot in your mind.
	We're here to bounce off.
	So is this, you said, me again?
	I've only watched the first episode.
	So you were canceled.
	So here's the thing.
	I do enjoy superheroes.
	That's a whole nother topic of philosophical discussion.
	You know, I think that superheroes, I'm not intrinsically against them, but I do think they're very dangerous because they become God substitutes as well.
	And it's very obvious that they're like the Greek gods and stuff.
	But that doesn't make it intrinsically wrong because they can, Superman was originally a myth that pointed towards a Christ figure.
	That's a Superman, the original Superman was a classic Christ story.
	So I have, I love that and I think that's good.
	There's a lot of grand sacrifice in a lot of these stories.
	Self-sacrifice is a dominant ethic in hero stories.
	So that's that's good.
	The danger is that when you have a godless society, they become the gods that just replace the replace that in people's lives.
	But I still enjoy them.
	And so The Boys come on Amazon.
	And I'm interested in this because I also think the premise of the boys is: what if the world of we have superheroes in the world, but they were really, you know, a lot of times they're a little bit too not goody two-shoes, but you know, like impossibly good people, too altruistic.
	They're not real human beings who have selfish.
	Well, what if normal people had these powers?
	And there's various versions of selfish addicts or, you know, whatever.
	They're like huge celebrities and they'd be limited up.
	Exactly.
	And corporate.
	In truth.
	And so in other words, it's these superheroes who become celebrities, but they're narcissists, they're selfish, and they start to exploit it and they hurt people.
	It's actually an interesting premise.
	I love the premise.
	Isn't that the premise of a lot of superhero things, though?
	But throughout the character arc, they actually overcome that impulse.
	Yeah, sure.
	Did you see Shazam?
	Yeah.
	Remember in Shazam, he wants to go make money off his power and he's just very selfish.
	And part of the story arc is, you know, but this, the boys, though, is to the extreme.
	And like, you know, the superheroes.
	Are they learning a lesson?
	I mean, that's what I'm saying.
	Is there a well, you're, you're the premise is that they ultimately will.
	You think they're going.
	Superheroes are kind of, I only saw the first episode.
	It seems like they're kind of almost the villains.
	Essentially, that's as you're watching it.
	That's what you kind of get the impression is it's like, let's make the superheroes, they're still heroes in society, but let's as it make them emotionally villains.
	Yeah.
	So it's kind of an it's irony, you know.
	And again, I have no con, I have no problem with that because what you end up seeing is, you know, you got superheroes who are worried about their Twitter accounts and their social media value and stuff.
	And basically what it is, is it's a metaphor for Hollywood celebrities.
	Because now the difference is Hollywood celebrities only think they're saving the world.
	But nevertheless, no, I'm telling you, you watch this and you're like going, this is Harvey Weinstein's Hollywood because, for example, one of the first things that happens, so it focuses on one of the protagonists is a female called Starlight.
	She has a starlight power.
	Anyway, she gets inducted into the inner circle of these big guys, right?
	And one of the first, the very first thing she meets one of this, the fish guys or whatever.
	And the very first thing he does is he makes her engage in sexual acts with him, or he's going to not let, he's going to tell them that she's not worthy to be on the team, that kind of a thing, right?
	Yeah.
	And it's just like, oh my gosh, that's like, that's a perfect metaphor for celebrity culture in general.
	And she becomes disillusioned because she thought it was all about this glory of being heroes and saving the world and stuff.
	And she realizes this.
	I think that's great.
	It's all good.
	It's all, it's, it's cynical a bit, but it's, and it also shows like, well, what if superheroes are so vainglorious that they become irresponsible and sloppy and hurt people?
	And you know, like, yeah, think about it.
	We see these movies where the cities are destroyed by the good guys.
	But what about all those people being killed because this is all, yeah, this is all good in and of itself.
	But then by the fifth episode, there's these hints.
	You're getting these hints.
	Like one of the superheroes in the background is being interviewed and he says, well, yes, everyone should be able to have guns.
	Everyone should be able to have guns so they can protect themselves and stuff.
	You know, basically making a conservative argument, which my first reaction is like, that doesn't fit this paradigm because these are superheroes who are saying, let us take care of it.
	Let us save you.
	It would be more consistent if they were for gun control.
	So I started, okay, so this is going to be the anti-conservative bias.
	It's leaking in, but it's not that bad.
	It's tolerable.
	Like the tick.
	Tick is the same thing.
	It's funny, but it's got this little anti-conservative jabs occasionally.
	But then by the fifth episode, all of a sudden you find out one of them is an evangelical Christian who's preaching at this Christian conference called the Believe Expo.
	And the Starlight girl, she has a Christian past.
	She goes there and it's literally like a Christian conference where they're singing the Christian contemporary music.
	And it's, you know, it's all the typical clichés and stereotypes of Christians.
	But in particular, they want to bring out that it's homophobic and it mocks virginity, right?
	And it's all about this girl and it's also fraudulent.
	And the guy who's the like televangelist.
	The televangelist preacher who's a stretch guy.
	He's actually a closet homosexual who's preaching against homosexuality because he's really the it's all the cliches that you're saying.
	It's just gay, man.
	It's like grab bag.
	I like how that's always the insult.
	Like, yeah, you're really just secret homosexual.
	You're gay.
	It's like, isn't that an insult?
	Yeah, let's let's tell a story where it's like, all these anti-Christians are actually secular atheists are actually secret Christians.
	You know what I mean?
	Do the opposite, right?
	Okay, so, and again, to me, what struck me was not that they're attacking Christians, you know, because of course, the whole thing, and it just, it, it just completely attacks Christianity and it's all a caricature.
	We would agree that those, what was going on there was wrong, right?
	But that this is to them, this is what Christianity is.
	But my point is, is that how can you possibly link Christianity because it's all about worshiping these people as conservative heroes?
	I think, oh, yeah, yeah, the preacher, superhero guy's on stage and says something.
	He literally uses Bush's words at 9-11.
	We were attacked.
	So we must attack the foreign nations who are our enemies or something like that.
	But I found out it was literally a quote from Bush.
	So this is the kind of subtle.
	Yeah, that's real fun.
	Real good movie making right there.
	Very artistic.
	But my point was, not that they attack Christians because they do that all the time.
	It was that it had, it's literally, it's like saying Harvey Weinstein's world is because of Christianity.
	You know, it's like these Christians are the ones that caused the Harvey Weinstein world.
	And I'm like, really?
	Yes.
	This is what you have to do to make yourself feel better.
	It's so absurd.
	So are we being snowflakes for being offended?
	No, I'm not being outraged.
	I'm just laughing.
	This is absurd.
	It's Babylon B material.
	Is the offense more, okay, they're attacking us.
	I don't like that.
	Or is it bogus?
	It's an unfair attack and it feels shoehorned in there just because.
	Yeah.
	My argument is that it's thematically inconsistent with the rest of the.
	Yeah.
	Like, yeah, I'm not, I'm not about being outraged.
	To me, it is more the absurdity of the connection.
	It's like, okay, go ahead and attack Christians because you do that or have a caricature of Christianity.
	Fine.
	But to say that it is the thing, link it to the Hollywood celebrity culture is completely absurd.
	And all that says to me is that's bad storytelling.
	I mean, that's the point where I'm going, like, this is so unsatisfying.
	Even if I wasn't a Christian, I would go, this is absurd and has no connection at all.
	Oh, they're clearly ideologues who are just full of hatred trying to promote their hatred.
	Yeah, it's like it's like when I watch a Christian movie and they make a caricature of an atheist and I go, yes.
	And I god's not dead.
	And I'm like, you know, I'm just cringing.
	I'm like, this is unfair to atheist.
	I'm not an atheist, but I'm offended by it because it's, I totally agree.
	In fact, I make the argument in my blog post several times where it's like, okay, now we need to have another category of bad atheist movie.
	I'll accept the bad Christian movie and I hate them too.
	But what about bad atheist movies which are preachy and show all the Christians as bad and atheists are good?
	And you know, you got that in the movie, the Exodus movie, the Noah movie, right?
	You know, it's like, okay, now let's have bad atheist movies because they're doing just as bad.
	You see Paul with the alien?
	Oh, kind of floating of the raiders.
	So terrible.
	I did, yeah.
	That was a bad atheist movie.
	Yeah, exactly.
	I feel you almost you almost expect them to have an altar call at the end where they invite you to come up and accept Richard Dawkins or give up your faith.
	Yeah.
	Come up and give up your faith.
	Yeah.
	Yeah.
	So in these cases, I'm more like, come on, your ideology is just making bad stories and absurd.
	This isn't satisfying, you know?
	In fact, give me a really good, subtle.
	I've often made the arguments like, I actually appreciate watching movies that I don't agree with that make good points.
	And, you know, like feminism is a classic example.
	I mean, some of my, you know, some, some of the more interesting movies are actually feminist movies, you know?
	Like Mean Girls.
	Yeah, yeah, mean girls.
	Or we talked about Mad.
	Did we talk about Mad Racks?
	No, we didn't, did we?
	Mad Max.
	Mad Max.
	Oh, that's the next episode.
	Mad Max.
	Mad Max.
	Did you say Mad Racks?
	Mad Max.
	That's a different feminist movie.
	Mad Men.
	Mad Men, the series.
	Did you guys ever see that?
	Yeah.
	Classic.
	I loved it.
	But I admit that it's like, okay, yeah, these are some of the stereotypes of the 50s, but they're partly true.
	And I won't deny that.
	But I also love that world.
	It was fascinating.
	When it's done in an interesting way that doesn't feel that on the nose.
	I think I respect the argument more.
	Exactly.
	That's all I'm saying.
	And I'm willing to love those and enjoy those much more so.
	Yeah, I thought just on the topic of the bias against Christian bias in Hollywood, I was always interested in there.
	And I don't know if this is true anymore, but I remember hearing that, you know, the GPG and PG-13 movies make the most money by far.
	But I remember seeing a graph or something that showed that R-rated movies were like, they made way more of them or something like that.
	It was a period of time.
	Oh, right.
	Just the idea that despite the loss of money, there was a, and I don't know if that's still true or not, because movies have changed to where like PG-13, like almost everything wedges itself, even it is PG-13.
	So I think it has, I mean, anything about that?
	It is PG-13?
	Yeah.
	No, it's not.
	I swear.
	I swear it's part one.
	I believe.
	Let's see.
	I dispute this.
	Fact check.
	Huh.
	Is it PG-13?
	Someone look it up on Snowflake.
	Wondering if, does that have something to do with?
	Uh, it kind of showed a bias that they don't care, they don't care about making money even well, no only that, there's an ideolog um ideological, a desire to put trashier stuff or to go for the violent and the shocking stuff, even though they would make more money if they made nothing but family films.
	Yeah yeah, and you know what I think it is honestly.
	Uh, it's not.
	It's not the executives, the executives a lot of times they are more money driven they really are but it's.
	It's the content creators, it's the writers.
	Those are the people that like, well yeah, you know, they're not satisfied with that stuff.
	They want to push the envelope, they want to change society and they realize you've got to do it subtly and you've got to do it step by step.
	Yeah and, and i'm i'm confident that writers and directors, they are deliberately pushing the envelope because they don't agree with the typical family values or whatever, and they want kids to be able to watch more.
	I mean, how else can you have a society that is now like talking about and allowing, like child drag queens, like how is that allowed?
	But yet it's accepted?
	You know, I mean, obviously it's debated.
	But my point is is that would never have been debated years ago because it's obviously evil and child, it's child abuse and pederasty.
	But now it's like no no, actually these children may feel like it's their identity.
	It's like wow, they've.
	They've come a long way.
	So yeah um yeah, when you set something up as your guiding principle, like identity politics yeah, then it just opens a gate to, oh, i'm wrong.
	Except I told you that it was pg13.
	Well, you know one.
	There was a horror movie that came out that was pg13.
	Yeah, I know what you're saying.
	I, there's a lot more pg13 movies coming out.
	I'm excited it.
	Part two comes out in like two weeks.
	Yeah, I love that movie.
	That first movie was great.
	Yeah, best Stephen King adaptation yeah, it was pretty good.
	Well, maybe the shiny good argument.
	Yeah yeah, I don't know all right well, we should wrap this up.
	This has been a beefy episode with lots of thoughts and uh, let's move on to hate mail.
	Let's move on to hate mail.
	I would miss Adam Ford.
	I miss Adam Ford too.
	We all miss Adam, For Well, he's rolling in his grave right now, rolling in his grave future he's not dead, all right.
	So we got some hate mail this week.
	This is from someone who was mad at us during the Kavanaugh hearings and this is a classic.
	We're going back to the Classic, we're going to the Classic Archives and the weird thing is they're mad that we're making fun of Kavanaugh.
	But I don't know that we did much.
	I'm telling you what we we might have done.
	We might have done one or two that pushed back at Kavanaugh a little bit.
	Just, you know, made some lighthearted fun of him.
	Yeah, I can't remember, but I don't know.
	But maybe they just took it the wrong way.
	Anyway, this is what they say.
	It's very likely the Babylon Be Dude.
	Seriously, i'm like this one dude.
	Or is he saying it just says the Babylon b dude, no comma.
	Baby dude, the Babylon b dude seriously, i'm all for jokes and make fun of everyone, even racist jokes, all right, but this is open-minded.
	He likes racist jokes, but this is insensitive and immature.
	So much so that I want to speak to your pastor, young man.
	This man's reputation is being questioned, his family is being attacked, his caricature, assassinated by a very serious allegation of rape, all of which is falsified by the left, because they are sick, demented with demons.
	And here you are in the midst of his trial, being a Royal feminine hygiene product.
	That's what it really says.
	You are absolutely disgusting.
	Repent, can we get a Dave?
	We need a.
	We need a Dave.
	We need a Dave on this one.
	That's a pretty good Dave.
	What does it remind you of?
	Um, it is very uh, it's like a.
	It's like a preacher during the great awakening.
	Yeah, it's like.
	You are absolutely disgusting.
	God holds you over the pit of hell as a spider and he loathes you.
	All right, we'll try it.
	I'll try to get Dave to do a take on this one.
	The Babylon Bee Dude, seriously, I'm all for jokes and make fun of everyone, even racist jokes.
	But this is insensitive and immature.
	So much so that I want to speak to your pastor.
	This man's reputation is being questioned.
	His family is being attacked.
	His character assassinated by a very serious allegation, all of which is falsified by the left because they are sick dementing with demons.
	And here you are in the midst of his trial, being a royal feminine hygiene product.
	You are absolutely disgusted.
	But he's not going to be able to improve on my...
	Yeah, that was pretty good.
	You just want to do it?
	Repent.
	That's pretty good.
	Yeah.
	Yeah, I don't know if there's anything to say to it except for that.
	That's great.
	You guys should write us more hate mail like that.
	You know, we're good podcast hosts because we always say, well, I don't know what else to say about it.
	There's nothing to say about that.
	Listen, I got to tell you guys, man, I'm a Calvinist, but I love your Calvinist jabs.
	Good.
	So that's, it's so good-spirited.
	I'm telling you, really.
	And plus, you do.
	Where's your beard?
	You do make some occasional Armenian jabs, don't you?
	Absolutely.
	Yeah.
	We do the Calvinist thing and the Armenian thing.
	I think if you can make fun of it, but make it seem lighthearted.
	Yeah.
	You can take some of the anger out of the debate.
	Exactly.
	In other words, your humor is really good natured.
	It doesn't have that anger in it that other people have.
	Well, we try.
	We talk about that a lot in our book, which you can get on Amazon.
	Do we?
	I don't know.
	He was pitching his book.
	Yeah, he's really good at that.
	So I wanted to pitch my book.
	All right.
	Now, also, Brian, we actually do want to give you the opportunity to.
	Yeah, people are interested in you.
	They want you.
	I want to hear more of this guy going off on movies.
	Everything's at gadawa.com, G-O-D-A-W-A.com.
	Everything I have.
	And it's an interesting website.
	It's not a lot of free stuff, a lot of cool stuff.
	So it's not just boring.
	But the heart of it is that if you're interested in sort of like being able to learn how to watch movies more intelligently like this, my classic book, Hollywood Worldviews, is it's on all my books are in audio, Kindle, and paperback.
	Everything's at Amazon.
	You can go there.
	And also my latest novel series, which is Chronicles of the Apocalypse.
	And I write basically Chronicles of the Nephilim, Chronicles of the Apocalypse, and Chronicles of the Watchers.
	I retell Bible stories through the paradigm of the divine counsel.
	So I show the spiritual warfare.
	I show watchers, Nuffelim giants, and sort of the bizarre stuff that Christians are afraid to deal with that are in the Bible.
	I retell those stories and I, you know, I try to stay true to the spirit of the Bible.
	So I do that because I have a high regard for the Bible.
	But there's a lot of imagination in there and a lot of like spiritual warfare stuff.
	So it sounds like Frank Parettius.
	Yeah, it is, but it's a different level.
	It's a different.
	It's not like there's demons behind every tree.
	It's really more at the high levels of watchers.
	There's a spiritual war in heaven.
	What does that mean?
	That kind of thing.
	But yeah.
	Yeah, I know in Pareti, it's like they would stub their toe.
	Yeah.
	The character would stub their toe and then it would switch over.
	Actually, it was a demon.
	Yeah, yeah.
	Yeah, I couldn't do that.
	I just couldn't do that.
	I was curious because you have, I mean, I don't know how many of those books you've written.
	I've written these crazy.
	Yeah.
	I'm impressed.
	So, if somebody wants to start, what's the best first book in that whole series of Christian, whatever we call it, fantasy?
	Yeah, really, Christian fantasy or biblical fantasy.
	That's scary.
	Biblical fiction.
	Actually, I am the biggest bestseller on biblical fiction on Amazon.
	All my books dominate the top 10 and top 20, but you want to start with Noah Pevo.
	Isn't that Bible fiction?
	Yeah, that's where the atheist tips his fedora.
	Oh, yes.
	See, gotcha.
	Got him, Coach.
	Gotcha.
	But Noah Primeval, that's the first one.
	It literally starts with Noah's story and then everything goes from there.
	Sweet.
	All right.
	Well, we are going to dive in for our subscriber portion.
	We're going to get into the Marvel universe.
	So anybody wants to stick around for that?
	There's a door right here with a coin slot on it.
	You got to start throwing your change in there.
	And then you can come in with the cool people.
	There's a bunch of nice velvet sofas.
	That door with the coin slot in it is located at babylonbee.com/slash plans.
	Yes, yes, it is.
	So if you subscribe, you get access to the full podcast.
	And, you know, whether or not you do, we love having you.
	Yeah, thanks for watching.
	And hit us a review on iTunes or something.
	Yeah.
	We love you.
	Till next time.
	Tip your deacons.
	Yes.
	And tip your rosters.
	Goodbye.
	Kyle and Ethan would like to thank Seth Dylan for paying the bills, Adam Ford for creating their job, the other writers for tirelessly pitching headlines, the subscribers, and you, the listener.

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