Culture Corner: Top 10 Reasons to Hope

It’s a Wonderful Life, 12 Angry Men, The Green Mile, Gattaca. These are a few of the movies on my Top Ten list. Bring together a compelling story, redemption, fine acting and a smart script, and I’m hooked. What we watch says a lot about what matters to us. Show me your Top Ten, and I bet I can make a few accurate assumptions about what you value and what tugs your heart. One of my draws, for example, is characters who win by endlessly doing the right thing. God calls me to do the right thing, but I need occasional reminders that it’s worth the effort. A movie like It’s a Wonderful Life provides that reminder. So I have a list, and you probably have a list. But what about the world’s list? Let’s look at the highest grossing worldwide box office movies for the past ten years and see if we can tell what matters to the human race...

Worldwide Box Office from 1999-2008 1999: Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace 2000: Mission: Impossible II 2001: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone 2002: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers 2003: Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Second highest of all time at $1,129,219,252) 2004: Shrek 2 2005: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire 2006: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest 2007: Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End 2008: The Dark Knight

When I found these on The Internet Movie Database, the list struck me in several ways.

First, none of them exists in our normal world. In fact, every one here falls into the category of fantasy, except perhaps The Dark Knight which is more science fiction, and Mission: Impossible II, which – though it contains neither magic to call it fantasy, nor an alternate reality to call it science fiction – is so humanly impossible that we may as well call it fantasy. Regardless, they’re other-worldly. Siths, ogres, wizards and ghosts live in the paranormal. (I guess we could say that M:I 2’s Tom Cruise lives in the supranormal.)

Second, the main character does what normal humans cannot. Harry Potter looks like a normal kid raised by a grossly average, dysfunctional family, but Harry is no muggle. He defeats evil (almost) single-handedly. Frodo Baggins appears to be the smallest and most unlikely success-story of them all, but he (almost) alone binds the darkness. Captain Jack Sparrow presents himself as barely one step removed from the drunkards and ne’er-do-wells in his troupe, but he (almost alone) faces Hell itself and emerges victoriously. Each character is an unlikely hero who succeeds at the unlikely.

Third, the setting contains enough familiar reality to engage our imagination. Characters face problems, fall in love, wrestle with personal demons, and fight for good. So do we. It doesn’t matter that on screen we watch a herd of elephant-like Imperial AT-AT Walkers firing laser cannons at Luke Skywalker in a snow field on a distant planet. A scene like this works because we know how it feels to be under fire in one way or another, to want to win, to fear, to work with companions and accomplish a task, and to face threats in order to protect the good we value. Popular movies are popular, in part, because they tap into the human experience.

Fourth, and finally, the main character fights against the darkness. You might protest on how much or how seriously they fight against said darkness, but, generally speaking, they do, and that’s what makes us like them. What struck me most about this list is the observation that the world – at least the global community of movie-goers – puts its money in stories about underdogs who face tremendous odds to defeat evil (evil effectively personified through fantastically frightening creatures) in order that goodness and light can prevail. Fellow Christians often harp on how the world is going to pot and how this generation is more prone to evil than the previous one, but I disagree. We don’t value evil. We want to be rescued. We want to know that darkness will not win. Now, if we can only convince viewers that the hope of redemption is found in Jesus Christ and not in Tom Cruise.

1. What’s on your Top Ten list and what do your favorites say about you? 2. How does this worldwide list affect what you think about the human race? And does it influence your approach to sharing the Good News?

Post written by Sam Van Eman. Photo by Elizabeth O. Weller. Used with permission.