I just finished watching The Book of Eli. I enjoyed it. I have made no secret that I’m an atheist, but I liked the religious angle of this movie. It made no excuses that it was Christian and even gave some hints of divine inspiration. But because it was upfront about it, I found it better. If it had tried to be broad and appeal to all religions, it wouldn’t have felt sincere. The Christian mythology made it feel complete.
I feel the same way about the show Supernatural. I’m in the fourth season and there is a war going on between angels and demons, heaven versus hell. But it is also following Christian mythology there. It makes it feel realer that they are going with this scenario and not going to pretend to take other religions into account.
I suppose it is because they have picked one religion, it has a theme that you can relate to. You know some of the rules. If it had tried to go too far into political correctness, it would have had to invent its own mythology from scratch. And then you wouldn’t know the rules.
And then when the rules are broken, it becomes more effective. In the show, the angels are not that caring. Defeat hell is the first concern. If wiping out a town of innocent humans would help, then let’s do it.
I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer suffered from this a bit. They never explicitly backed any religion. So the big bad was always something of their own creation. It loses some of the impact if you have to be told something is evil and nasty, than just being told it’s Lucifer.
Nazi’s make the best villains.