When the first God’s Not Dead took the faith-based film world by storm in 2014, it’s fair to say it was like the Donald Trump of American Evangelical Christian movies. Where others had been restrained and careful to be as inoffensive and universal as possible, Pure Flix went straight for right-wing talking points in its tale of evil academia out to persecute all Christians, even to the point of having the atheist villain get run over by a car and a shrill liberal character get cancer. It worked, to the tune of $60 million, in part because faith-based audiences are starved for new twists, having seen umpteen Jesus biopics, Revelation/rapture thrillers, and the ubiquitous “flawed successful person messes up, experiences tragedy, then finds religion again” narrative. Christian courtroom dramas aren’t as common, and throwing in the actual fear many conservative Christians have of a leftist agenda in education, complete with broadly hissable villains, turned out to be a winning combination. That earworm of a theme song didn’t hurt, either.
Lightning didn’t strike twice, though. God’s Not Dead 2, featuring reasonably big-name actress Melissa Joan Hart in the lead, Ray Wise as the demonic ACLU bad guy, and cameos from Christian celebrities like Lee Strobel and Pat Boone, only made $20 million. While it similarly stacked the political deck, the sequel was a little less take-no prisoners in that it did walk back the cancer plot from part one, with the stricken character converting and miraculously healing thereafter.
Director Harold Cronk and writers Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman are no longer aboard for part three, A Light in Darkness, which is written and directed by newcomer Michael Mason. This may account for the drastic tonal shift: from its opening and closing remarks about a spark that can start a great fire, to its theme that church is contained within people and not old buildings, and its outright rejection of the persecution frame, it arguably burns the franchise’s past down in the same way The Last Jedi did to Star Wars. It’s not clear who this is for: the movie wants to reach out to liberals, up to and including having the hero of the first film, Shane Harper’s Josh Wheaton, proclaim unironically and affirmatively that “Jesus was the ultimate social justice warrior!” But liberals aren’t going to pay to see this movie, except some who’ll go to laugh at the anticipated hokey sincerity; and the red-meat Evangelicals who made the first installment a success may not be too happy when this film points the finger at them for being too judgy.
Pure Flix founding partner David A.R. White, whose Reverend Dave character has been a supporting spiritual center in the series so far, moves front and center to the lead role this time; when we catch up to him, he’s in prison for refusing to show printed copies of his sermons to the government. (The way A Light in Darkness takes up this plot thread, teased at the end of the credits for God’s Not Dead 2 as the next big threat, only to discard it almost immediately, is the God’s Not Dead equivalent of killing Supreme Leader Snoke without providing his backstory.) Dave gets out just in time to be party to the sudden, violent, and awkward death of one of the good Christian returning characters in the series, and then the movie goes back in time to establish that Reverend Dave’s church is on University property, and the college wants it demolished. Rather than hire a transparent villain to make this case, however, the board of directors forces Dave’s pal Thomas (Ted McGinley) to become the reluctant opponent of the Reverend’s efforts to keep his religious institution on public property. Dave, in turn, seeks the help of his estranged atheist brother Pearce (John Corbett), an attorney we’ve conveniently never heard from before in this cinematic saga, to represent his case under the logic of eminent domain overreach.
Always an affable presence in these films in small doses, White is weaker as a lead, unable to go as dark as the script sometimes calls for, and certainly not up for seriously pulling off a silent jogging-and-crying scene that seems like a ham-handed Rocky throwback. It’s logical, storywise, that if this is intended to conclude a trilogy, Dave would be the final character to be tested, but since these movies haven’t always (or ever) taken the logical choice, Corbett as lead would have been better. As is, he steals the show as a spiritually conflicted but responsible brother; like its predecessors, this movie still assumes most atheists are just deeply hurt man-babies on the inside, but Pearce is neither demonized nor given an easy, obvious redemption. Like in real life, spirituality is depicted as an ongoing struggle.
And that, paradoxically, may be what hurts the movie the most at the box office. “Ongoing internal struggle” isn’t as inherently cinematic as “good Christians triumph over powerful atheists.” For a film series as fundamentally conservative as God’s Not Dead, part three’s “both-sides-ism” is a veritable olive branch, but it’s also the equivalent of going to a pro-wrestling match only to watch the two opponents apologize to each other and refuse to fight.
If the folks on the angrier side of the church aisle are encouraged to be nicer and more loving by viewing this film, it could potentially be a force for good. But as a story unfolding on the big screen, it’s tough to recommend for entertainment value either ironically or wholeheartedly. In case you do attend, however, be advised that there is indeed a post-credits scene, but it isn’t one that teases any kind of sequel.
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When the first God’s Not Dead took the faith-based film world by storm in 2014, it’s fair to say it was like the Donald Trump of American Evangelical Christian movies. Where others had been restrained and careful to be as inoffensive and universal as possible, Pure Flix went straight for right-wing talking points in its tale of evil academia out to persecute all Christians, even to the point of having the atheist villain get run over by a car and a shrill liberal character get cancer. It worked, to the tune of $60 million, in part because faith-based audiences are starved for new twists, having seen umpteen Jesus biopics, Revelation/rapture thrillers, and the ubiquitous “flawed successful person messes up, experiences tragedy, then finds religion again” narrative. Christian courtroom dramas aren’t as common, and throwing in the actual fear many conservative Christians have of a leftist agenda in education, complete with broadly hissable villains, turned out to be a winning combination. That earworm of a theme song didn’t hurt, either.
Lightning didn’t strike twice, though. God’s Not Dead 2, featuring reasonably big-name actress Melissa Joan Hart in the lead, Ray Wise as the demonic ACLU bad guy, and cameos from Christian celebrities like Lee Strobel and Pat Boone, only made $20 million. While it similarly stacked the political deck, the sequel was a little less take-no prisoners in that it did walk back the cancer plot from part one, with the stricken character converting and miraculously healing thereafter.
Director Harold Cronk and writers Cary Solomon and Chuck Konzelman are no longer aboard for part three, A Light in Darkness, which is written and directed by newcomer Michael Mason. This may account for the drastic tonal shift: from its opening and closing remarks about a spark that can start a great fire, to its theme that church is contained within people and not old buildings, and its outright rejection of the persecution frame, it arguably burns the franchise’s past down in the same way The Last Jedi did to Star Wars. It’s not clear who this is for: the movie wants to reach out to liberals, up to and including having the hero of the first film, Shane Harper’s Josh Wheaton, proclaim unironically and affirmatively that “Jesus was the ultimate social justice warrior!” But liberals aren’t going to pay to see this movie, except some who’ll go to laugh at the anticipated hokey sincerity; and the red-meat Evangelicals who made the first installment a success may not be too happy when this film points the finger at them for being too judgy.
Pure Flix founding partner David A.R. White, whose Reverend Dave character has been a supporting spiritual center in the series so far, moves front and center to the lead role this time; when we catch up to him, he’s in prison for refusing to show printed copies of his sermons to the government. (The way A Light in Darkness takes up this plot thread, teased at the end of the credits for God’s Not Dead 2 as the next big threat, only to discard it almost immediately, is the God’s Not Dead equivalent of killing Supreme Leader Snoke without providing his backstory.) Dave gets out just in time to be party to the sudden, violent, and awkward death of one of the good Christian returning characters in the series, and then the movie goes back in time to establish that Reverend Dave’s church is on University property, and the college wants it demolished. Rather than hire a transparent villain to make this case, however, the board of directors forces Dave’s pal Thomas (Ted McGinley) to become the reluctant opponent of the Reverend’s efforts to keep his religious institution on public property. Dave, in turn, seeks the help of his estranged atheist brother Pearce (John Corbett), an attorney we’ve conveniently never heard from before in this cinematic saga, to represent his case under the logic of eminent domain overreach.
Always an affable presence in these films in small doses, White is weaker as a lead, unable to go as dark as the script sometimes calls for, and certainly not up for seriously pulling off a silent jogging-and-crying scene that seems like a ham-handed Rocky throwback. It’s logical, storywise, that if this is intended to conclude a trilogy, Dave would be the final character to be tested, but since these movies haven’t always (or ever) taken the logical choice, Corbett as lead would have been better. As is, he steals the show as a spiritually conflicted but responsible brother; like its predecessors, this movie still assumes most atheists are just deeply hurt man-babies on the inside, but Pearce is neither demonized nor given an easy, obvious redemption. Like in real life, spirituality is depicted as an ongoing struggle.
And that, paradoxically, may be what hurts the movie the most at the box office. “Ongoing internal struggle” isn’t as inherently cinematic as “good Christians triumph over powerful atheists.” For a film series as fundamentally conservative as God’s Not Dead, part three’s “both-sides-ism” is a veritable olive branch, but it’s also the equivalent of going to a pro-wrestling match only to watch the two opponents apologize to each other and refuse to fight.
If the folks on the angrier side of the church aisle are encouraged to be nicer and more loving by viewing this film, it could potentially be a force for good. But as a story unfolding on the big screen, it’s tough to recommend for entertainment value either ironically or wholeheartedly. In case you do attend, however, be advised that there is indeed a post-credits scene, but it isn’t one that teases any kind of sequel.
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