director Kevin Smith: "The original inspiration for the story was a question I had about my beliefs, and I couldn't figure it out. It's funny on its own. Obviously, I've been making relationship films, and this one is no exception, it's about a relationship with God, it's a fantasy farce." And because it's based on questioning belief, so , you can imagine how the film challenges the orthodox religious concept. Of course, this also brought some troubles for the film's public release, but this did not seem to affect its good box office.
The Wrath of Heaven is a collection of many image categories in the Bible: God, prophets, disciples, angels, devils, fallen angels, and even muses. However, they all exist in unusual forms. God is a woman, black (it would be more accurate to say she's a mixed race based on her skin color alone), loves pinball, hangs out on earth a lot, can't talk to anyone other than Metataron because of her "lion" "Roaring Gong" will kill people. Before God discovered his lion's roaring power, five Adams were killed. Moreover, God had no power to fight back when he was beaten in the world. Prophet Silencer Bob, barely speaking, stays with Prophet Joe. And Joe, who is no longer talking all the time, every word will contain dirty words; he is the person who masturbates the most in the world, when he is masturbating, he still thinks of men; he always wants to have sex with the heroine, when the world is about to be destroyed by fallen angels At that time, the prophet actually used the last time to make love to the heroine. The two characters are actually carried over from the director's other two films, with the addition of sainthood. Disciple, here comes the thirteenth disciple, and neither the Bible nor the church mentions him because he was a black disciple. He's a living dead now, he doesn't seem to have any quirks, he's fallen from the sky, naked; while sleeping on the train, he will take off his dirty shoes in a daze, and use babysitting Treat this shoe with the same attitude. The six-winged angel, Mettalon, is the throat of God, because the voice of God's roar cannot be tolerated by others. Moreover, angels are born without sexual organs. Satan seems to be more normal than these people, or people who are not human or gods, and he still thinks of revenge. And the other devils, there are three kids who hit people with hockey, and a dunghill similar to Ultraman's rival, which was defeated by Bob the Silent with deodorant. Fallen angels are two normal people who just want to go home. Muse is not a woman. She is of the same gender as Mettalon, but she is a hot female figure, and she is also a stripper. Whoever gives more money will go to her. When she is dancing, she wants to use it to strip. Dance to prove he's not gay Joe. The goddess in charge of art also encountered a bottleneck in creation. The heroine of the story, the woman who saves the world created by God, the descendant of Jesus, is a person who doubts the existence of God.
These images are all offering a kind of doubt about faith, which is also the theme of the film: the crisis of faith of contemporary people. And this image seems to convey to us the denial of belief, but in fact, this not only does not deny belief, but rather reduces complexity and optimizes this belief. It overturns the religious image that the church has always advocated, and it is absolutely impossible for a new religious image to be established from this film. Then, the director's creative intention is highlighted: from the subversion of the previous religious image. , to establish a belief outside the image, that is, a belief that has nothing to do with the image of God, and directly believes in the idea conveyed by God. This is similar to the Buddhist saying that "there is no Buddha outside the heart, that is, the heart is the Buddha".
This deconstruction of belief also exists in the plot of the film.
First of all, I have to say that, as a Hollywood movie, the traces of its pipeline production are very serious, which few American movies can get rid of. Its plot can be summed up in one sentence: the story of an ordinary American who inadvertently gets involved in a major event that ultimately saves the world. This sentence can also be used for almost all American movies, just add or remove some qualified words when applying it.
The uniqueness of Kevin Smith is that he weakens the focus on the hero in this narrative mode, he pays attention to all the characters in the play, and all the characters in the play are given a lot of pen and ink by the director, so each character experience can be told as a single story. Among them, the heroine can be the incarnation of the director in the play. When the heroine believes in God again, that is when the director discovers the God in his heart.
Since the experiences of the main characters have already been explained when introducing the characters, they will not be repeated here.
In the past, there are two ways of spreading religions: coercion and inducement. It’s just that a big religion has different expressions about the region and heaven. Different Taoisms exploit people's fear of death and longing for longevity. The director didn't pay much attention to the aspect of inducement, but in fact he was a religious propagator who inherited this tradition, and let God satisfy the heroine's wish to become a mother. The film takes a negative approach to traditional intimidation. In the structure of traditional religious images, the director dispels all intimidating dogmas in religion. As long as the laughing "Jesus guy" who wants to replace Jesus on the cross in the play appears, this kind of dissolution has already been performed very well. Comedy is the best tool to dissolve idols. However, what the bishop said when he released this piece of Jesus to the public was the main point, although it sounded equally joyful in the film: "Jesus Christ did not come to this world to intimidate us!" A new faith that cannot Then build on the foundation of intimidation. People and beliefs should be equal, even, what people believe in is the beauty of people themselves, what people believe in is people themselves, and people and beliefs are one.
Before faith is doubted, the object of faith is also man himself. However, in such a society, the rational side of people is suitable for the rule and development of the social form. In contemporary times, this society emphasizes the freedom of people themselves, so the objects of belief also have the characteristics of people in the world, such as humor, sex, swearing and so on.
A film may not have a big impact on the beliefs of mankind as a whole. What he provides is a reflection on beliefs and the reconstruction of beliefs, building a modern belief based on tradition in the structure of traditional beliefs. .
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