I suppose we all knew that this one was coming. After all, a site about technology and geek culture, reviewing speculative fictions films every week, it is only a matter of time before the biggest speculative Christian film of all time was reviewed here. If you aren’t familiar with Left Behind, it was a series of books that sold very well in both secular and Christian markets. It seemed only justified to turn it into a movie, but only the first two books were made into a film, and then they made one called Left Behind: World at War. Considering that the third book in the series did not have that title, I can only guess that they took a few creative liberties to make a movie trilogy.

The Left Behind movies were an attempt by Christians to spread the gospel through movies. This has been attempted before with not much results. The Reverend Billy Graham produced several films in the seventies and eighties. It was something that Mel Gibson was more effective at with 2004’s The Passion of the Christ, and he had a pure grassroots campaign. As sad as it is to think of what happened to Mel, it is even more sad to see what happened with the Left Behind series.

Most Christians who have read the series of books got addicted to them, but many thought the book series declined as the series went on. It is difficult to tell when it “jumped the shark”, and I would have to read them all to find out. I never did get around to reading them, but my wife devoured these books.

Since the Left Behind books were so successful, it seems only right to adapt them to the screen. After all, Hollywood loves to make disaster films like 1998’s Michael Bay Armageddon, and isn’t it about time someone made a real film about the end of the world as told by the Bible, one where the end of the world is not preventable?

Left Behind begins right away with The Rapture. This is a concept that I don’t really agree with, as it deals with God calling all the chosen ones home before the planet Earth lays waste to itself. I don’t really want to get into why I don’t support this, but let’s just say that there is enough verses supporting God’s people suffering during the last days as there is being “raptured away”.

Most of the Left Behind movie deals with a world that has discovered that all the Christians of the world have been subsequently deleted. In the movie, the children of the world were also eliminated. I don’t believe all the world’s kids were raptured in the original book series, otherwise there would not be the spin-off book series known as Left Behind: The Kids. If all the kids of the world did disappear, I believe it would cause a greater sense of panic than what is shown in this film. I guess no one who worked on the Left Behind film read P.D. James book The Children of Men.

It is apparent that the filmmakers did read the Stephen King novella The Langoliers, as the scene where people begin to disappear on an airplane is incredibly similar. The rest of the film looks a lot like one of those Christian films that I called The Revelation-exploitation films. There was an attempt in 1972 called A Thief in the Night that essentially attempted the same thing as Left Behind: to reach a secular world with horror movie scenarios. Was this an attempt to frighten people into believing in the gospel? If so, it sucks on principle alone, and the films of this era are better served as fodder for Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Yes, Left Behind is B-rated at best, which is a real shame as it was backed by a lot of Christian groups. There was so much merchandising around it that you could not visit a Christian bookstore without seeing it in your face. I have already talked about the spinoff series for younger readers, and there was an album, a graphic novel series, maybe even toys. I don’t really remember.

I know that I usually like to talk more about the plot and story of the movie on these reviews, but I would rather do that some other time. If I ever get around to doing that, it will be in a video format similar to the Nostalgia Critic. I need to learn more about video formatting before that happens.

As it were, I bring this movie up because I have learned some disturbing news: They are remaking Left Behind! This demonstrates something that I have talked about before, that some franchises should just be…Left Behind.

When tried to find out more about the Left Behind remake, what I discovered on imdb.com seemed like a joke. I saw that the one-and-only Nicolas Cage was going to be in it. What. The. Heck. The man who played the psychotic Castor Troy in Face/Off is playing Rayford Steele, a character from the Left Behind series. Please don’t get me wrong, as I love Nicolas Cage. Seriously, no one has that repressed insanity that he conveys in almost every role he plays, and maybe I just want to see him be pushed over the edge with the Rapture.

So, are Christians trying to get the gospel on film using Nicolas Cage? Stranger things happened with Mel Gibson about ten years ago. I honestly think this will not work, because if it does, is Nicolas Cage going to do twelve films for all twelve books? Sadly, I am shaking my head, just thinking: “not this again”.