The Awesome God Project™®©

Recently, studio releases have focused on the spectacle.  Bigger budgets, bigger names, bigger guns, bigger explosions, bigger screens, and longer run times.  If the movie doesn’t clock in at 2 ½ hours, don’t bother making it.  The recently unveiled Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (with 100% more racism than previous Michael Bay films!) clocked in at 2 ½ hours.  Even the best studio summer movie, Star Trek, ran just over 2 hours (127 minutes) and Terminator Salvation clocked in 5 minutes short at 115.  Studios set up summer movies as an event – you anticipate it, you plan a social outing far in advance, buy tickets early, and arrive at least 30 minutes early if you want a seat.  These movies are supposed to change your life, and you better treat them as such.  The same goes for the Michael Mann movie starring Christian Bale and Johnny Depp, Public Enemies, clocks in at 2 ½ hours.  The based-on-a-true-story depression era gangster film subscribes to the event movie recipe, with a slight tweak of being aimed at adults rather then the coveted teenage demographic.  But, like most event movies, Public Enemies forgot something vital – a story.  You can only clock in at 2 ½ hours if you have a story that can carry you 2 ½ hours.  This concept is something we all learn when you take your first creative writing class, and reiterated in every other creative writing class afterwards, if you only have enough material for 7 pages, you’re only writing 7 pages.  If you stretch those 7 pages into 21 pages, prepare to meet the red pen.

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The word salvation is very charged—representing a concept that has been at the center of many church schisms, and I’m not just talking Martin Luther’s fit.  I’m talking about the hundred of small church schisms across the country.  My church has been through 3 or 4 schisms in its existence, and at some point the concept of salvation played a role in all of them.  Should we prepare our congregation for the ongoing and epic spiritual war?  If we don’t use it, do we lose it?  Or, is salvation a one-night stand that turns into an ongoing relationship?  Christians grapple with these questions daily—or whenever someone decides to throw a fit about it.  No matter what interpretation Christians pull out of the Bible, salvation is important.  Without salvation we have no way to Christ, which means no access to Heaven, and no wonderful chat with St. Peter when he’s checking the list at the Gate (“Do you guys have hockey?” “Yeah, and a pretty decent football team, but we need Joe Montana to die so we can get a decent QB.” “What about Jonny U?” “I never was a fan.”).  I tell you this, kind reader, not to teach you about Christianity or God, but because it has nothing to do with Terminator Salvation.  If you evoke salvation in your title, one expects that something happens to lead humanity to safety.  Humanity is saved.  We enter the Promised Land—a land free of killer robots, both terminators and cylons—and go on to build a better life.  If you promise salvation, you better deliver on it, and not leave us at the end trying to convolute a reason for the title.

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