‘Left Behind’ Remake: The Teaser Trailer
Nicolas Cage stars in the first teaser for the end-times film.
E. Stephen Burnett on May 30, 2014 · 5 comments
Watch the above trailer, then repeat this profound reaction with me: Okay. Well. Huh.
Can’t tell if new Cageface or previous Cageface.
I must say a little more:
- It’s still a better “Left Behind” marketing effort than for the first attempt, Left Behind: The Movie. Do you remember when Cloud Ten Pictures put the whole thing on VHS in October 1999 and still expected you to go see the film in theaters in February 2000(?!).
- Stunts. ‘Splosions. And Nicolas Cage with a personality (of Nicolas Cage).
- They had better show actual video footage, as the book “showed,” of people getting snatched out of their own clothes and toupees and artificial kneecaps.1 The 1999 direct-to-video film utterly failed in this regard. You didn’t even see a reenacted fulfillment of the now-famous bumper sticker — only the results.
- I actually read about this teaser on Aint It Cool. They’re covering it because of the director, “the mighty Vic Armstrong,” which has major geek cred.
- I got the idea from the trailer that prayer and going to church are good things.
- No disrespect for Kirk Cameron who famously starred as journalist2 Cameron “Buck” Williams in Left Behind ’99, but Buck 2.0 looks more like a journalist.
- Where is Nicolae “Hot Blond International Man of Mystery” Carpathia? The “single personal Satanic Antichrist” concept has even more non-copyrighted cultural name recognition than The Rapture.
- Cage is no Marlboro Man (literally, Marlboro Man actor Brad Johnson played a traditionally masculine Rayford Steele in the first film). Otherwise the cast of this film does remind me a little more of the book.
- Please don’t say, “Haw, haw, all the Christians vanish and this is supposed to be an acocalyptic tragedy?” It’s been said.
- Please also don’t say, “The fact that so many people hate and mock Christians like this surely means The End is Near.” Or maybe that’s just what I would have said when I was 15 and obsessed with the Left Behind book series.
- Which I have come to believe isn extremely perplexing way to view Christ’s second coming, albeit a backward attempt to follow Scripture’s emphasis on the goodness of the human body. ↩
- The film foresaw the dying newsmagazine industry and changed him to a network news reporter; now here in The Future, even network news is dying. ↩
The funny thing is, Nick Cage is actually quite close to my mental image of Rayford from reading the books. Yeah. Seeing Cage cast as him, I started laughing, as I realized that I actually would have chosen him for the role.
But then, the two people I’d always cared about were Buck and Chloe. While Rayford was always a bit Nick Cage-ish in my mind. 😀
Nicholas Cage has some serious acting chops. Nicholas Cage also chooses really bad movies. I never liked the Left Behind series, the theology was so transparent and so “this one way and no other is how things are going to roll out” that it made some things laughable. It also was technically, in my opinion, poorly written. There were cringe-worthy lines, scenes, and just moments where I was not able to believe anyone would react the way the characters were.
It is a pre-tribulation, mostly literal interpretation of the events of Revelation. They did make the giant grasshopper/bugs into helicopters, everyone apparently does that.
And that’s okay. I have nothing against those that hold that viewpoint as people; I have a grievance against them that they tend to ram that idea as the only one that exists into popular culture. There are four different views of the end times, and this is merely one of them. I also don’t like the “scare people into heaven” kinda underlying argument that comes with some of this theology.
Now, which Nick Cage movie will this be? One that is amazing, or one that is a flop? I don’t know. I do find it interesting that HE is interested in it.
I wonder how they convinced theaters to run the movie at all. They probably had to rent out the theaters or something. Or maybe things were different back then, and theaters didn’t worry about direct-to-VHS the same way that they worry about streaming now.
Hey now. I finally watched the trailer, and ya know what?
It actually looks pretty non-pathetic.
This is actually comparatively high praise from the man.