*** Offficial THE DA VINCI CODE Discussion Thread (1 Viewer)

[Nick_Scott]

I saw the movie. I'm a nutty fundementalist. I loved the movie.

I honestly did not find ANYTHING offensive in any way.

The 2 biggest controvercies that were talked about, were NOT in the movie:
Mary Magdalene was never proven to be his wife, or that the detective was a decendant. They only showed a group of devote pagans that believed it strongly.
The evil Opus Dei leader was actually not in Opus Dei. He was actually ANTI-catholic using pretending to be in Opus Dei, so he could manipulate them
Also.....
Tom Hanks character actually debunks all the Opun Dei myths himself in the movie. Then gives a speech at the end about faith

I thought it was a good thriller, with an interesting plot. Pacing, and acting was great. I liked the fast start. The twists were all pretty obvious though, and i didn't even read the book. They seemed kinda awkward, and gimmicky.

Nick

 

[Colin Jacobson]

Then you can claim "baggage" affects our take on EVERY movie we see, not just this one. I don't get your point. Of course our experiences influence us - why mention that here? It makes sense to claim that a devout Catholic might be turned off by the flick - or view it with a certain mindset - but your interpretation opens everyone up to "baggage".

Why is it so tough to accept that some folks just thought it was boring?

 

[Robert Crawford]

Obviously, you don't get what I'm saying, but I'll quit now so others can just discuss the film itself.




Crawdaddy

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

It's not surprising in this age of moral relativity that a strong opinion is regarded as hostility 99% of the time. Yes, everyone has a worldview that affects their perceptions of what goes on around them, unless they've been living in seclusion all their life. But criticizing a person's opinion based on their worldview and calling it 'baggage' automatically implies that it is weighing the person down, not allowing them to keep up with the rest of the "enlightened" world (usually those who hold with the criticizer's worldview). Additionally, I doubt most of those who are calling this film boring are doing so based on any presuppositions, but simply on how much they enjoyed watching it. However, I won't put myself in that category.

Personally, I found the book mildly entertaining if stilted, but the research and scholarship were at best laughable and and at worst disingenuous. Since Brown took "theories" that are themselves based on pure speculation ("wouldn't it be neat if...") and then twisted the fabricated theories to fit his plot, it was actually more enjoyable to research his inaccuracies than to read the book. He even got a lot of the location details wrong, making me doubt he ever visited places like Westminster Abbey.

The movie was pretty much just more of the same. I can't say I was horribly bored since I was trying to see how much of the novel Ron Howard kept, but I doubt I'll see it again. It would have been a lot more fun to have Jim Carrey as Robert Langdon, Martin Short doing his paranoid lawyer from SNL as Teabing, and Dennis Leary as a killer, albeit sardonic, albino priest ("Rome...we have a problem."). And Uwe Boll could have done just as much with the source material.

 

[John Garcia]

I don't get where you're going with this. Fact/research was done to lend some bit of credibility and realism to the story, but since it is entirely a work of fiction, he has evert liberty to bend them to his story as he sees fit. I can't, for the life of me, see why anyone would waste their time trying to disprove "fact" from a fictional story.

I read the book and saw the film. I was concerned by all the negative critic reviews, but I went to see it anyway and I felt it was well done. The others who were with me had not read the book and they all enjoyed it as well. It seems to me that some of the critics who complained about certain aspects clearly had not read the book beforehand, because the movie was extremely faithful to the book. I found it entertaining despite the fact that I had already read the book some time ago.

 

[PaulP]

Sorry but saying something like "I was bored out of my skull" is not a constructive criticism. You are free to have an opinion (isn't an opinion strong by default?), but you also should back your opinions up with something. You can't just state that the film was boring and leave. That's not constructive in a discussion.

And, of course, calls to ban the film are not hostile...

 

[Chris Atkins]

I've read the book but won't be seeing the film until next week.

But, John, I wanted to respond to this part of your post. Brown does go above and beyond what most fiction writers do by including a page at the beginning where he claims that all documents, art, societies, etc., in the book are accurate. This gives the book a non-fiction veniere which other works of fiction do not have. It also opens the storyline up to more criticism than a run-of-the-mill work of fiction, in my opinion.

 

[John Garcia]

I agree that, given the subject material, is a big point over which people have been agitated over. The material alone is an understandably a hotbed of contention. Various groups, places, and certain facts may be based in fact, however the story into which they were woven remains fiction and as far as I know, nowhere does Brown ever claim the story to be otherwise. I read somewhere that Brown's wife actually does all his research and fact checking.

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

The problem is that Brown has a foreword where he puts forth that the basic facts in the book are true and he has said in interviews that he personally believes what his "research" has uncovered. He makes it sound like only the plot is the part that is fictional. Indeed, he takes the idea that Jesus was married and that Mary was the true holy grail from a book called "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" that was debunked years ago. He says that the Priory of Sion really existed and was founded in 1099 AD, with Newton, Leonardo, and other luminaries as members, but the documents regarding the Priory of Sion were forged in the 1950's by a French scam artist trying to prove he was the descendant of royalty. He specifically claims that the architectural details and places are all correct, but he certainly mangles the description of Westminster Abbey according to the former Canon Theologian of Westminster Abbey, and I.M. Pei's pyramid does not have 666 windows. He has Teabing go off on long diatribes about the beginnings of Christianity that sound like scholarship but are nothing but pantheistic revisionist mumbo jumbo. He even claims that all the descriptions of documents are accurate, but he says that the Dead Sea Scrolls mention Jesus, when they do nothing of the kind. And on...and on...and on...and on...

I have no problem with fiction, in fact, I'm a fiction junkie. But when you start claiming that your research is valid (even if only for some parts of the novel), and then you describe the contents of real documents (Dead Sea Scrolls, Nag Hammadi, gnostic gospels, etc.) in any manner you choose, after stating your descriptions are accurate, you are being disingenuous. Either his research was slipshod, or he just chose to make up what the documents say and/or mean, regardless of the truth. Just because you are a novelist doesn't mean you don't do complete research or intentionally mis-state facts to make your plot more thrilling.

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

Well I'm sorry too, but I don't remember writing anything about constructive criticism. Personally, I think saying that it was boring is a perfectly fine opinion to state. If you want to know why they thought it was boring, ask them. THAT is a discussion.

No, opinions are not necessarily strong by default. I have an opinion that I don't care much for peas. I have an opinion that I like watches with hands more than digital watches. I eat peas when my wife fixes them, and I'm wearing a digital watch right now because it was cheap and has an alarm.

It's also not constructive to a discussion to make it sound like someone is saying something they did not. I said nothing about banning the movie. I believe I even said I saw it...

 

[Brent Bridgeman]

But John, the question then is, how do you separate the story from the facts? It becomes impossible to tell what he claims is fact, especially since he is absolutely wrong on many points that he DOES say are factual (Priory of Sion, Dead Sea Scrolls, etc.). This causes a great many people to just assume that EVERYTHING must be true since they don't have the time, resources, or desire to research it themselves. Look at the movie JFK. Many people believed the story as Stone told it, without realizing that he pulled all these conspiracy theories together into a mismash of fact and fanciful fiction. (But a really entertaining mismash it was...and a great resource for playing "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon"!)

 

[PaulP]

Brent, I wasn't implying yourself when I was talking about banning. But I've read and seen on TV people championing for the film's ban, and that's what I meant.

And I didn't equate an opinion to a criticism. I just think that plainly stating in a discussion thread about a film that said film was boring is rather pointless - thus not constructive to a discussion thread.

I'm actually ambivalent about it. Like I said before, I didn't read the book but found the film enjoayble on pretty much the same level as I found National Treasure to be enjoyable. I do think it's a better film than most make it sound; it surely isn't shit like Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector or Scary Movie 4.

 

[PaulP]

As far as the whole fiction/non-fiction thing, if people read this as it should be read - a novel - then they shouldn't have notions that it's a factual book. If they somehow read the novel as a non-fiction piece... well then that's their problem. Also, I don't see the big deal with using real people, places and things in fictional ways or settings. Writers have done it lots of times in the past; Brown's not the first.

 

[Holadem]

*sigh*

Who are those many people? Have you actually encountered anyone in your life, or even online that believes the stuff in the Da Vinci Code?

I will tell you one thing, 99% of the noise I hear about this movie/book is the sound of people who insist on telling everyone else that the stuff is fiction. They are basically wrapped up in this "controversy" of little substance which keeps feeding upon itself.

The rest of us, frankly, are tired of it.

It's fiction. And Dan Brown dramatically streched his facts to fit his fiction.

WE GET IT.

--
H

 

[Ruz-El]

I caught this this weekend. I had reservations about going, as I avoided the book as I didn;t like how people were taking it as fact, while the Autor basically sat around collecting money with no attempt (as far as I've seen) to set the record straight on where he got the information. The only reason I went was I told my dad (who liked the book) I would go with him.

I like the movie. I thought it was a decent thriller, and considering that it was basically just dispensing information for 2.5 hours, I thought it was well paced. I only had one problem with it: Tom Hanks.

Tom was weak in this film. He had a the precence of a wet rag, which isn't a good thing if the audience is supposed to learn and share experiance with his character. His physical appearance was also oddly off putting, in that his head seemed bloated and pasty. I'm not being mean. I like Hanks, and like most of his movies, but in this case, he was just really off the mark.

I like many don't really see what all the fuss is about. It's a decent thriller, nothing more, nothing less.

 

[John Garcia]

LOL, I knew already when they announced that Tom was going to be Langdon that I wasn't going to be happy with that, and seeing the movie validated that. He was the wrong person for that role, or maybe it was just his appearance, as you mentioned, that I didn't find to be fitting of the character. I don't know who I would have selected for the role, but not him.

IMO, the movie, just like the book, did their job - entertain. Brown basically doesn't need to come out and say it is fiction because that is a given already. If he believes it is plausible, fine; but he is not claiming it to be a factual account of historical facts.

To be honest, the controversy just adds to the curiousity of the masses...

 

[Ruz-El]

I would of picked someone like Ed Norton or Lieve Schriber. 30ish actors who can play academic types. I also think, and I'm going to get killed for this, that David Schwimmer would of been good.

 

[John Garcia]

Ed Norton - I think that would work for me. I thought all of the other main characters were pretty well cast.

 

[Chris Atkins]

Not sure I agree with this, John. Ultimately, most art has a message. DVC certainly does. Even if the story is fiction, the characters in DVC have definite points of view that are shared by many in our society. Some of the passages in the book take the form of outright lectures about religion, society, etc. I certainly didn't come away from DVC thinking that Dan Brown's ONLY intent was to entertain. He had a message that he told in the context of a fairly entertaining thriller. And if we are going to communicate as a people, we have to respond to the messages we receive in the art we consume. IMHO, of course.

 

[Carlo_M]

Michael Crichton sometimes goes so fas as to include bibliographies and footnotes in his fiction books. To me that's way more "I'm based on real evidence" than Brown's first page disclaimer.

But no one takes Crichton to task for his fictional license, at least nowhere near the level to which they're subjecting Brown. Of course, Crichton also has never written about religion.