Ben-Hur, for what it is, is a movie that will always hold a special place in my heart. Yes, some elements of the film have not exactly aged well. Yes, The Ten Commandments was a slightly better film, and even that has been surpassed by The Prince of Egypt in most people's memories. Yes, Charlton Heston spent the last portion being the patron saint of gun nuts while the rest of the cast faded into obscurity.
But Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (that was the title of the original Lew Wallace novel, so shut up) has two things going for it that makes it a classic. For one, the classic chariot race is the best Hollywood action scene of all time, and simply will never be topped in terms of pure emotional gravitas. And secondly and more importantly, it manages the seemingly impossible task of having two distinct yet distant narratives that connect in the end, something you don't usually see outside of TV. Because once you look back at it, the Ben-Hur storyline and the Christ narrative are generally distant, save for a few key scenes. But it is those key scenes that end up making all the difference.
Of course, Hollywood just couldn't leave a good enough thing alone. Which brings us to the... remake that just got released this past weekend. It was... something that happened... for a reason that God only knows. It bombed at the box office, and deservedly so. Though perhaps the telling thing about the whole enterprise was the type of people who thoroughly praise it to high heaven (no pun intended). Glenn Beck called the whole thing "This is the movie we hoped Noah would be, which was an abomination." Another conservative website called it "a watchable, entertaining film", even as numerous others found it difficult to sit through the $100 million mess. In some ways, it is a similar critical dynamic for numerous faith-based films, where Christian conservative critics are praising it as amazing while everyone else is praising it as garbage.
Ok, ok, getting back on topic: More than anything else, this has a lot of similarities with the recent Fantastic Four movie that bombed last year, especially when it comes to reboots. The first similarity, of course, is that it is a reboot of an old successful property* where Toby Kebbel plays a villain who acts Adam Levine channeling the spirit of Cobra Commander. It had theoretically great talent who were either lost or utterly incompatible with their roles. It strains to be reserved and intelligent yet entertaining, but instead ends up turning into a boring melodrama punctuated with bits of empty spectacle that has way too much bad CGI. And in the end, the moral is only accomplished with the Hollywood kind of obnoxious speechifying. Did I forget to mention that there is a sequel hook?
Ultimately, the comparison works out this way: the 1959 film is one of all-time greatest epics, and still is an absolute joy to watch. The new film is a historical faith-based film with the budget of a Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps that's what the faith-based crowd wants, a rehashing of the old for a way to affirm confirm what they believe in their prejudices. As another website noted, "he good news is that the movie's ending sets viewers up for a possible sequel, where Judah and his family and friends go to Rome and meet with Christ's disciples, as they do in the original novel." For the rest of us, let's hope it doesn't happen.
*The original novel was one of the best-selling books in the United States, up until Gone With The Wind was published.
