why did they remake left behind (2014) with nicolas cage?
katy perry goes to space, michael b jordan sees double, and the rapture.
Hey everyone,
Welcome to the second edition of VideoTape Magazine, a weekly newsletter we think you will enjoy if you have 10,000 spoons but all you need is a knife. If this is being forwarded to you, subscribe here.
In today’s newsletter, Katy Perry goes to space, Michael B Jordan sees double, and the children’s book series about the bloody end of the world.
The Headlines:
Hollywood Is Cranking Out Original Movies. Audiences Aren’t Showing Up.
Hang on, everyone is always telling me they want more original films. Hit a theater near you asap or unless you want everything to become a Fast and Furious sequel.
Fyre Fest 2 Postponed Indefinitely
Noooo!
Me whenever a new season of Hacks comes out
The Referral:
Ryan Coogler, director of Black Panther and Creed, is back with Sinners, his biggest swing yet. Sinners is a cool movie that is almost impossible to talk about without spoiling. Suffice it to say, Coogler crafts rich themes into a deliciously fun genre film. And an excellent double Michael B Jordan performance!
And now, a little something for you about the children’s book and movie series, Left Behind...
A
think-piece™
“Wait, is that the movie with Nicolas Cage?” a friend asked me after I mentioned the Left Behind series offhand. I was excited to share that there isn’t just a Cage money-grab flick (Cage was firmly in his “bid on dinosaur bones era”), but a whole universe of horror apocalypse books and films by co-authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. The first book, Left Behind: A Novel of the Earth’s Last Days released in 1995. The last book, the sixteenth in the series, came out in 2007. Before the Cage film, there was a trilogy of low-budget Kirk Cameron films designed for Evangelical audiences. Jerry Falwell once said about the series, "In terms of its impact on Christianity, it's probably greater than that of any other book in modern times, outside the Bible."
Left Behind (2014) is a movie with a zero percent on Rotten Tomatoes, a feat so rare that it has its own Wikipedia page. It was nominated for three Razzies but managed to spawn a spinoff film for the youth as well as a Kevin Sorbo-led sequel.
If you didn’t know any of this, don’t feel bad! You probably just didn’t grow up Evangelical in the late 90s and early ‘00s. To recap, the apocalypse comes after all existing Christians are “raptured” (disappear into heaven). This natural disaster wreaks havoc and sets in motion a gruesome end times featuring an evil dictator, plagues of locusts, nuclear war, and so much more! The books had titles like, Assassins: Assignment: Jerusalem, Target: Antichrist and Desecration: Antichrist Takes the Throne. You might think of the Left Behind books as comparable to something like The Da Vinci Code. The books were hugely popular (over 65 million copies!) and spread through church bookstores faster than The Purpose Driven Life.
The difference between Left Behind and Da Vinci Code is that the Left Behind books are real. At least, according to co-author Tim LaHaye, who promoted his books by claiming that they would one day really come to pass. LaHaye, the brains behind the operation, was a real character. He sued the production company behind the Kirk Cameron films because he didn’t like the movies. He famously called the Pope the “archpriest of Satan” and he firmly believed in the Illuminati. He came up with the idea for Left Behind as a way to spread his Dispensensationalist ideas and make a lot of money. Perhaps most implausibly, LaHaye and Jenkins turned their apocalyptic literature into a series of 40 children’s books. Left Behind: The Kids had the exact same plot as the adult series, but with teenage protagonists in place of the adults. Lazy writing, but who am I to judge? If it were up to me, this whole newsletter would be links to movie trailers and DIY recipes for Chick Fil A sauce.
Growing up in the Evangelical world in the late ‘90s and early ‘00s, there were certain immutable rules. Harry Potter books were bonfire fodder, but reading Lord of the Rings was encouraged. R-rated movies were a no-go, but Mel Gibson’s Passion of the Christ was a sacred text. Girls weren’t supposed to date in high school, but often ended up married to the youth group leader when they turned 18. I’m not trying to eviscerate anyone here. There was awesome stuff too. Summer camps. Friendships. Switchfoot.
Should young children be reading apocalypse-porn that they’re being told will happen imminently? I’m not sure. I could go either way on that one. Tim LaHaye said in 2011 that Obama’s policies were pushing the world into the Apocalypse. He’s far from the first person to jump the gun on an end of the world prediction, but there’s almost no question that he has profited the most from the fear he helped stoke. I remember growing up in the church and feeling the dread when I woke up to an empty house. If my mom’s sweater was left on a chair, even scarier (because that’s how the rapture works). I remember people in the church predicting different global figures, celebrities, and politicians as the antichrist - even George W. Bush got a few shoutouts, of all people!
Sadly, Tim LaHaye has passed away and I cannot ask him any of my questions. His co-writer, Jerry B. Jenkins, is still a prolific author, book coach, and father of The Chosen creator Dallas Jenkins. I noticed that Jerry often responds to questions on Goodreads, including one fan who keeps asking if he can write Left Behind fanfiction. So, I asked him on Goodreads if he thought the themes in Left Behind: the Kids were too mature for children. He hasn’t responded yet, but he said to another questioner, “The series continues to sell between ten and fifteen thousand units per month, coming up on 29 years since the first title was released. That tells me it remains relevant to this day. More importantly, I still hear from readers who say they're lives were changed from reading it.”
Ultimately, maybe my question is this: why make a series of 40 books that seem designed to terrify young children into thinking the world is ending? I don’t know if I’ll ever have the answer to that, but I will let you know if Jenkins responds to my Goodreads question. In the meantime, I take great comfort in the fact that his Intellectual Property allowed the creation of Left Behind (2014) starring Nicolas Cage.