Nicolas Cage has an interesting sideline in bad movie remakes, such as Wicker Man, which has been included on many Worst Horror Remakes Ever lists (lots of competition there); then there was Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans, which, while not exactly a “bad” reimagining of Abel Ferrara’s pulpy cop drama, was certainly three-sheets-to-the-wind crazy.
Cage now takes on a project based on a popular Christian book series, Left Behind, which originally starred Kirk Cameron in a low-budget imagining of what would happen if “The Rapture” really did take place.
You know: that’s when God decides to suddenly upload a bunch of “saved” people to heaven, while leaving a bunch of “left behinds” standing around on Earth, trying to figure out where they went wrong. According to the Left Behind series (and the Bible, apparently), those who don’t make the cut have a limited amount of time (seven years) to make their lives “right” with God… or else be swept down into eternal damnation. There are no third options.
The Rapture has been pretty big in popular culture lately, what with a novel and TV show called The Leftovers, and Seth Rogen comedies like This Is The End. While Rogen’s film played the event for laughs, it had an underlying moral pulse to it that made you think he and co-writer Jay Baruchel had been reading the Bible a lot between bong hits. With decidedly confused results.
Left Behind, the remake, isn’t intentionally a comedy, though it does have its share of comic moments. With Cage along for the ride, it’s reasonable to expect a few full-blown cuckoo moments, but he actually plays it pretty straight: he’s a commercial pilot who’s straying from his wife (planning a tryst with one of the flight attendants) because his wife (Lea Thompson, remember her?) has become a solemn Born Again Christian, and his daughter Chloe is a dyed-in-the-wool religious skeptic. (She insists on calling her mother’s beliefs “nutty” and “wacko,” which you can tell is going to work against her come Rapture time.)
The most striking moment comes 30 minutes into the movie when, all of a sudden, a white flash appears and, next thing you know, people are standing next to empty piles of clothing. (No blue funnels of light like in This Is The End.) The Rapture hits while Cage is mid-flight, and finds his co-pilot’s seat suddenly unoccupied. Chloe, that hardcore skeptic, finds herself holding on to the empty clothes and baseball cap of her younger brother in a mall. All over town, cars are smashing through mall windows and small planes are crashing into parking lots, because those behind the controls were suddenly called away on more urgent business — namely, being saved. (You sort of imagine God being asked about this: “But… who’s gonna fly the plane with the pilot gone? What about all the passengers?” God shrugs: “Eh, don’t worry. They’ll figure it out.” Mysterious ways, indeed.)
Chloe discovers her mother has taken the Heavenly Express Elevator as well, and tries to piece it all together. A local pastor explains to her about the Bible and the Rapture, but she slips into angry skeptic mode again: “Why should I believe you? You didn’t even believe enough yourself!” she says, noting that he’s still there, un-Raptured. Ouch.
Meanwhile, Cage is having his epiphany moment, as passengers start freaking out over their missing seatmates, and his plane is running low on fuel: “Either I’m going crazy, or the entire world is insane.” A little of both, Nic. A little of both.
Cage is the first to figure out the Rapture angle, but instead of convincing the blonde bimbo flight attendant he’s been planning to bang, she just gets all upset at his sudden religious conversion. “Where is all this God stuff coming from?” the bimbo says. Apparently, Born Again Christians think their religious message automatically repels non-believers like garlic does vampires: the infidels immediately cringe and get all cranky about being judged.
The movie then turns into one of those mid-air disaster movies — slightly less funny than Airplane!, but still worthy of a few chuckles, not least of all because the passengers are a kind of United Colors of Benetton of dysfunctional types: there’s a Muslim who looks terroristy but isn’t; an unpleasant dwarf (really) who keeps mouthing off to everybody around him; an elderly woman who is confused and scared through most of the flight; a British blonde woman with a junk habit; an African-American mother with a daughter who disappears mid-flight; an annoying white businessman who makes cell phone calls while the plane is taking off; and of course a geeky Asian who posits all kinds of sci-fi theories, such as “What if we passed through a wormhole?” or “We have to consider the possibility that this was an alien abduction.”
And that’s just in Business Class.
Chloe has one of those soul-searching montages, standing on top of a suspension bridge and gazing out as a song called What It Looks Like in Heaven plays in the background. She uses the moment to apologize to her mom for being all judgy, before contemplating a death leap into the harbor. Just then, her cell phone rings: It’s her dad. From up in the plane. He needs to make an emergency landing. Now!
That this becomes Left Behind’s major plot thread speaks of a certain non-commitment to the book’s solemn and dead-serious message. Surely, making a safe landing is the least of worries for all those left behinders. They’re still going to Hell!
This shift to action movie mode may be because this is only supposed to be the first in a series of Left Behind movies, but really, they kind of drop the ball on the Christian message. Even a movie like 1991’s The Rapture with Mimi Rogers and David Duchovney paid more respect to the alarming prospect of people vanishing into thin air, and the moral questions this raises.
But anyway, Chloe (miraculously) climbs down off the suspension bridge and hops in a stolen jeep to find the nearest stretch of land where Daddy can make a safe landing. She does so by exploding a fuel dump that’s bright enough for her dad to see and navigate by, suddenly turning the movie into a Bruce Willis Die Hard entry.
When they do make their (miraculous) landing — the nose of the jet just inches away from a fuel tanker — Dad and Chloe stare out at the remains of their world, post-Rapture: the city in flames around them, and a bunch of people who somehow couldn’t swing a First Class ticket to paradise. “It looks like the end of the world,” one of the passengers says, surveying all the destruction. “No,” Chloe exclaims. “I think it’s only the beginning.”
Nice try, Chloe. With lame end-of-the-world entries like this, no one’s going to come back for seconds.