Sam Strange Remembers: NOAH
No one wants to make movies about God, which seems weird because he's God. If I understand things correctly, people tend to be pretty fond of Him. Turning the guy into a cinematic badass should be a no-brainer. I mean, I read his book, and some of that stuff is pretty crazy. Maybe when people have to actually look at it, the whole thing gets harder to kill people over.
In any case, I decided to go all out on religious badassery with Noah, and I think the results offer Christian people something to really enjoy without feeling like absolute nerds. Getting into this world requires a little setup, so here it goes:
Once upon a time there were only two people: Adam and Eve. They had two babies: Cane and Able. Cain killed Able and ran off. So Adam and Eve had another kid named Seth. They had a bunch more kids but they all died of various ailments characteristic of an age with no doctors, books, or bandaids.
Since Cane killed his brother, God deemed him evil. This means that his very footsteps blackened the Earth and destroyed all beauty. Seth on the other hand promoted growth and good things. But he was also a real stoic hardass without humor, so while he was obviously the better man, no one liked him and he had a hard time procreating. Cane, meanwhile, fucked absolutely everything and partied his ass off.
This went on for ten generations. And it was before Obamacare, so a lifetime could last as long as a million years. By the time Noah gets born, there are only a handful of Seth people, and over ten billion Cane-folk. The world is a desolate wasteland and everyone is starving to death.
We meet Noah as he and his two boys scrape dry algae off rocks for dinner, so it's safe to assume that their life is pretty awful. One of the boys picks a flower, and Noah gets pissed because he's really against hurting the Earth in any way, shape, or form. This is why they can only live in the shittiest areas. Noah refuses to walk anywhere where he might accidentally step on some grass. He also finds puns distasteful and makes a big deal about how he doesn't own a television.
One night, Noah has a dream where everyone on Earth dies in a massive flood. This tells him that everyone on Earth is about to die in a massive flood. He figures it's because God made a huge mistake with all those Cane-folk and now wants to have a do-over. Noah briefly wonders why God doesn't just wait for everyone to starve to death, but he knows not to question such an infallible deity, even when this upcoming flood is basically an admittance of that deity's failure. In the end, Noah figures even the best authors should be allowed a second draft and lets it go at that.
But Noah doesn't know if God sent him the message because he's supposed to do something about it or just to rub it in. So he goes to visit his grandfather, a rascally wizard who dwells in a cave. Noah's grandfather has no ideas but gives Noah a bunch of drugs, hoping that a hallucination, while not necessarily the word of God he's looking for, will at least give him some direction and get him out of his goddamn cave.
And it works! Noah decides that he's supposed to build a huge boat and fill it with the world's innocent animals. Up in Heaven, God decides that's actually not a horrible idea and takes credit for it by making Noah's task slightly less impossible. He does this in several ways. For instance, Noah's grandfather gives him a pebble of petrified old man poop as kind of a sick joke. God turns that into a miracle seed that sprouts a massive forest. He also sends Noah a bunch of rock giants to do all the heavy lifting, cutting, and nailing. They also urinate tar, which is helpful. And instead of having Noah track down and capture millions of animals, God has them all march right up to the boat while it's still being constructed. He also sends Noah's especially frail and tiny wife some high-carb food, but she abstains for reasons God does not understand.
This does not occur in a vacuum. While Noah watches his rock slaves labor, the world's starving Cane-folk begin to understand how fucked they are, and they pause their blood orgies long enough to parley with Noah. They find him very unlikable and can't believe God wants to spare this guy. So they start building weapons for their big assault on the boat.
Years pass. The rock guys are pretty close to finishing the boat. Meanwhile, the Cane-folk have a good stockpile of weapons. On the eve of the big climax, Noah gets sidetracked by a lot of family stuff. See, all the animals come in pairs so they can have sex and make more animals. Noah has a wife. His oldest son has a wife too, but she can't have babies. Rather than view this as the miracle it is, everyone's bummed out. Meanwhile, Noah's second child has no lady prospects, so he goes among the Cane-folk to find one. Noah has a third child, Rickon, but he's into fucking animals so no worries there.
None of this plays out well. Kid #2 finds a lady, but Noah doesn't let her on the boat, which sows deep seeds of animosity. Noah's grandfather, in a last ditch effort to mess with Noah before the flood, uses his superpowers to make Kid #1's wife both highly fertile and super horny. Since Noah thinks all humans are supposed to die after the flood, including his family, he makes it known that he will murder their baby if it's a girl. Noah's wife carefully weighs living the rest of her life with this asshole against one last night on Earth with people who aren't totally lame buzzkills.
The Cane-folk launch a huge attack on the boat, but they are repelled by stone slaves. And when the stone slaves die, they are repelled by God himself. Noah stabs a couple people, but he could have just hung out inside. It's not like God would let anyone unworthy board. Except the direct descendant from Cane who sneaks by unnoticed.
So now the boat is afloat but everyone inside hates each other. Kid #2 wants to kill Noah for letting his girlfriend die. Kid #1 is getting ready to kill Noah, and Noah is getting ready to kill Kid #1's kid. Noah's wife decided to stay on the boat and regrets it with each passing animal fart. Meanwhile, the main Cane guy is eating all the super cool animals, erasing them from our existence one by one. First he chomps down on a unicorn. Then a bigfoot. Then a dingo that shits dollar bills.
Finally, everyone on Earth is dead and the boat rests on solid land. Everything hits the fan at once. Kid #1's wife gives birth to twin girls. While Noah marches to kill them, Kid #2 and the Cane guy spring a trap to murder Noah. But Noah's pretty badass. He fights the Cane guy hard enough that Kid #2 changes his mind and stabs the guy in the armpit. Noah attempts to murder the twin girls but in the last moment chickens out, which means all this death and labor was for nothing. God shakes his head and gives up altogether. The twins grow up and give birth to the awful world we live in today. Fucking Noah, man.
(three stars)
