Coming Soon: DaVinci Riots

23 February, 2006. 476 words.

I’m stupefied by the irony and ignorance found in Barbara Nicolosi’s Da Vinci Code ‘Dialogue’? No Way! The thinking process that goes into concluding that the people who made The DaVinci Code “hate Jesus” and “wanted to bash Christians” is exactly the same thinking process that goes into concluding that a handful of Danish cartoonists insulted Islam and should literally be killed for blasphemy.

No. We don’t need to see this film. We all know what is in it. (Especially me, as I have read the screenplay.) It is a movie which begins from the point that Jesus was a fraud. He was not only not Divine, he was less than a man. And His Church is a sham association of meglomaniacal conspirators whose unifying principles are in the oppression of women.

Now I haven’t read the screenplay or seen the movie, but I did read the book, and that’s a pretty poor summary of the plot. In fact I would have to say it’s basically 100% wrong. Not that it matters. Ms. Nicolosi is obviously blinded by the very idea of questioning religious dogma, and would have no qualms about misleading people to discourage them from having a brain. (Hey, just like those megalomaniacal conspirators!)

The masses who will see this film … will go in to the theaters, eat handfuls of popcorn, and then come out marveling that millions of people for 2,000 years could have been so duped by a lie. … They won’t be coming to any Christian forum.

Ms. Nicolosi obviously has a very high opinion of her fellow humans.

I thought the book’s premise was imaginative and interesting (though I thought Dan Brown’s writing was completely juvenile). So did I immediately renounce all of Christianity after I read it? Um, no. Did I at any point forget that I was reading a work of fiction? Um, no. Did I think to myself sometimes, gee I wonder if that’s true? Sure. Did I do some research on my own to investigate the book’s claims? Absolutely. Did I ultimately learn a lot more about religion and Christianity because of it? You betcha. Because, unlike Ms. Nicolosi and her fellow movie-goers, I’m what you call a “rational human being.” And I don’t particularly like popcorn, either.

I’d like to see DVC for just two reasons: It’s directed by Ron Howard and stars Tom Hanks. That alone would be enough for me to watch a movie on any subject, because I cannot recall any recent movies by either of those two folks that totally stunk. They’ve got pretty good filmmaking resumes, so I know the movie will have good direction and good acting. (Something that was completely lacking from the book…) In other words, it will be entertaining. Ms. Nicolosi apparently fails to recognize that DVC is not supposed to be a freakin’ documentary.

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