Why do movies based on the Bible usually suck?

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I'm waiting for the Anime version.

Beyond the obvious non-existent sources, the clues have meaning. See if you can spot them. You've very close.

Clues about what? I didn't see your name in there.

GIGO

Monkeyshines; mere monkeyshines.

Text clues.

"A Verum Production". Verum is latin for truth.
"Warner Brothers". Witnesses refer to one another as brother and sister.
"Bryan Singer". Take out the "g" in "Singer" and you have "siner" (yes, I know "siner" is the incorrect spelling). We acknowledge we're imperfect in the eyes of God.



My name is in there if you view the larger size.

Warner Brothers Inc was founded by:
Harry (born Hirsz), Albert (born Aaron), Sam (born Szmul), and Jack (Itzhak or to some sources Jacob), whose Jewish parents had emigrated to North America. Not a single Witness in the family.

ruveyn

Probably just fellow Jehovah's Witnesses would have known what to look for and figured it out.

Jonah was also a Jew, so maybe the Warner Bros. being Jewish had something to do with something.

The History Channel is presenting The Bible.

http://www.history.com/shows/the-bible

I thought that it might be good, but was dissapointed with the first episode, which covered bits of Genesis. I turned it off when it got to Moses.

It is a low budget show, but low budget doesn't necessarily bad, if you have a decent script, acting and directing, which the show definitely lacks.

Practically nothing in the way of character development. It is intended to entertain the lowest common denominator--American Christians who are just too damned lazy to read the damned Bible for themselves. Gratuitous violence here and there. Angels are fighting Sodomites as if they were ninjas. No sex--and sex is REALLY important in Genesis. And, everyone is just so unconvincingly in awe of being a Biblical character. The actors' performances are utterly devoid of life.

Sometimes they are. For example The Ten Commandments was made by Cecil B. Demille a fairly well known producer.

The Burning Hell is one of the finest movies ever made.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hR8VkciG1jo[/youtube]

I've seen a few good movies based on the old testament, particularly the exodus.
However perhaps a problem is the work is based on fixed material so movies based on the new testament are a bit dull compared to the old testament.

The Bible wasn't written to be a "ripping good yarn" though. There is storytelling in it, but that's only a part of it, and not all of this storytelling was meant to "entertain". It is a mixture of law, an explanation of how things came to be (the world, the royal line, rival tribes), mythology (much of which was meant to affect people views of the world; "we should hate this tribe because x happened in the past", or "we should feel solidarity because Moses led all our ancestors out of Egypt"), moral lessons (whether you agree with them or not), hymns, etc. It (the Old Testament anyway) is basically the "book of the nation of Israel"; about its mythological history, its patron deity, its laws, its royal family, etc. A few sections arguably have some genuinely good storytelling in them, but to complain about it being "unreadable" because it is filled with too many details of who fathered whom, is interspersed with too many censuses and legal commentaries, or even that its stories are unengagingly told (think of the Bible as a "cliff notes" version of stories that were widely known and told orally, clipped back by dry scholarly types for the sake of being put in this "proto reference book"), is to miss the point of the text.

Does this make it problematic to adopt? Absolutely; it just wasn't conceived as a drama and the adaptations that have worked best have been liberal ones; adding, deleting, and changing things for the sake of a compelling human story. But inevitably, the fundies get angry, and that's a big part of your market right there. A lot of nonreligious people, or people of other faiths, will be turned off seeing it because of its content alone. And needless to say, fundies don't like their sacred scripture changed and tend to limit what can be portrayed on screen for moral and theological reasons, even if it would have been a good artistic choice.

what about the Life of Brian?

I'm waiting for Christopher Nolan to direct a movie about Jesus.