Saturday, January 13, 2007

Gospel of John vs Passion of the Christ

In my opinion, Philip Saville's The Gospel of John is a much better film than Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. I checked out the IMDB ratings (Internet Movie Data Base), and The Gospel of John is rated higher than the The Passion of the Christ. Even though The Passion of the Christ grossed over $370,800,000 in the US and The Gospel of John grossed $4,068,087 (from figures I found on the Internet), the box office gross does not give us the full picture!

If you want to read some great reviews about The Gospel of John, go to Amazon.com and check it out for yourself! There are over 100 reviews of this film on their site. Some of the words used about this film in the reviews on Amazon.com are as follows:

OUTSTANDING, WONDERFUL, AWESOME, GREAT, EXCELLENT, TOUCHING, THE BEST, PHENOMENAL, HIGH-QUALITY PRODUCTION, TOP QUALITY - ACCURATE PORTRAYAL OF CHRIST, BEST MOVIE EVER MADE ABOUT JESUS!

The Gospel of John is in English, so there are no sub-titles to distract you. Also, the overall tone of this film is uplifting (even though Jesus was crucified at the end), whereas the Passion was very depressing from the very beginning. Also, The Gospel of John is rated PG-13, whereas The Passion of the Christ is rated R. Which film would you want your children to see?

Compare for yourself! Get the Gospel of John from your library, video store or Amazon.com. It's available on DVD (set of 2), and some libraries have the video set (three videos - two are the movie and the other one is the extra/behind the scenes).

Another Gospel of John Film? Why?

Marchiano Ministries is getting ready to produce a film about the Gospel of John. The title of their film is The Gospel According to John, word for word from the NIV version. They also have a blog on Blogger.com to keep everyone up-to-date about the production of this film. I am not sure why they feel the need to produce another film when we already have the wonderful Gospel of John film produced by Philip Saville and starring Henry Ian Cusick.

The Gospel of John film is now listed in Wikipedia.com (or.org), the free encyclopedia. You can find it by doing a search on the Wikipedia web site for "The Gospel of John (film)".

When Marchiano Ministries' film does come out, we can then compare the two films. If you want to visit their blog, go to http://makingthefilmthegospelaccordingtojohn.blogspot.com/ or their web site, http://www.gospelaccordingtojohn.com/.

Hopefully, people won't get confused and think it is the same film.

Here's a review of the Gospel of John film from Christianity Today:

http://www.christianitytoday.com/movies/reviews/gospelofjohn.html

Also, a review from Crosswalk.com:

http://www.crosswalk.com/fun/movies/1218491.html