So who ya gonna believe: Paramount or Director Darren Aronofsky? Either “Noah” is sure to be a hit with the 86 percent of religious people who are aware of the film (Paramount), or it’s the “least Biblical Biblical film ever made” (Aronofsky).
It's all a bit confusing right now for the film whose ending has been reshot and recut, gone one way and another, signalled a Hollywood re-embrace of the Biblical epic or Hollywood imposing its values on the Good Book. Try to make sense of this March 11 paragraph from Huffpo:
“Noah” director Darren Aronofsky and the movie’s distributor, Paramount Pictures, have run a fierce campaign trying to convince Christian audiences that their biblical epic isn't some sort of environmental crusade or diatribe against overpopulation. After months of contention, Aronofsky has given his bluntest statement on the Russell Crowe-fronted adaptation yet: “‘Noah’ is the least biblical biblical film ever made,” he told The New Yorker, via Digital Spy. “I don't give a fuck about the test scores [scores religious test audiences gave different cuts of the movie]. My films are outside the scores.”
The director and Paramount seemed to be working at crossed purposes. Paramount was combating a study from a religious group that shows 98 percent of religious people are dissatisfied with faith-based movies, including what they had heard of “Noah.” Paramount countered with its won numbers from Neilson and the Barna Group stating that 83 percent of “very religious” movie goers who were aware of “Noah” were interested in seeing it, and that 86 percent of Christian respondents would recommend it to their friends.
Aronofsky, who seems not to like anybody dumb enough to actually see his work, told the audience at “Noah’s” world premier in Mexico City this week, “It’s a very, very different movie. Anything you’re expecting, you’re fucking wrong.”
Not just wrong, but … Who knows, maybe that's how Christians in Hollywood like to be addressed?
