After playing an unbelievably bad atheist philosophy professor in God’s Not Dead, Kevin Sorbo is going to stretch his range by playing an unbelievably bad atheist doctor of medicine in Let There Be Light. Watch the trailer and be in awe of Jerkules’ acting chops!
Can you spot the Christian tropes in the plot summary?
After suffering the traumatic loss of his youngest son to cancer, Dr. Sol Harkens (Kevin Sorbo) loses faith and heads down a path of darkness. Distancing himself from his ex-wife Katy (Sam Sorbo) and their two remaining sons, Sol turns to alcohol to numb his pain. Soon his bad habits catch up to him, and Sol is involved in a serious car accident that leaves him dead for four minutes before he is resuscitated. What Sol experiences during this time changes his outlook on life and brings him closer to his family and faith.
I see…
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Atheists are angry at the gods because of some trauma.
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Leaving the gods sends you down a path of darkness.
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You’ll lose all your friends and family if you don’t follow the gods.
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When you’re near death, boy will you regret not believing in the gods.
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Dreams and the confabulations of the unconscious mind are objective evidence of the existence of the gods.
Poor Kevin seems to be making a career of playing a caricature of an atheist, poorly, who then undergoes a miraculous conversion, unconvincingly. The most persuasive part of the trailer for me is when Sorbo accepts Christ into his life after suffering a traumatic brain injury, and as a reward, Satan (played by Sean Hannity) shows up to offer him a chance to appear on Fox News. Nope, I’m convinced. No way will I ever drink the Christian Kool-Aid.
Your listicle synopsis missed “leaving god then turn to alcohol”
Yeah, like atheism results in alcoholism. God is the drug, alcohol is a substitute. There may be a “correlation” (vaguely), but.…
Sorbo never made any good choices in career
Genre of Hercules only spinoff Xena which supplanted Herc. Then Andromeda was a pretty lame space opera of SyarFleet remnants.
Abandoned him due to Andromeda turning me off.
I think this film could, potentially, serve a really useful purpose! Say, for example, you accidentally swallow poison, and don’t have any emetic drugs in the house, just slide “Let there be light” into the ol’ DVD, and voila! instant vomiting…
Can’t wait for the moment where they explain that the kid’s horrific and painful death was actually a good thing planned by god a long time in advance.
Good news. The material for Good Awful Movies will never run dry.
The starting premise of Andromeda wasn’t bad. obviously the writers are to blame for the series turning out shitty, but I can’t help but blame Kevin Sorbet: his shitty acting was the visible face of the series’ overall shittiness.
But.. Dr. Sol Harkens? Really? Really?
Sure, DERP, I get it. Christians can’t make a movie without the ham-fisted 17th-Century allegorical names. And yeah, yeah, we knew the main character was going to have a Damascene conversion, just as we knew that Kevin Sorbo would cast himself as the lead. So naturally he’s named “Sol” because he’s like Saul on the road to Damascus, and “Harkens” because in the end he hearkens to the voice of the almighty. Still, damn…
All I can think of is the right reverend Dr. Billy Sol Hargus. That’s right, friends! I don’t care if it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus, ridin’ on the dashboard of my car!
“Can you spot the Christian tropes in the plot summary?
As far as I can see every single phrase is one.
So the movie is saying that those who appear on Faux News are ones who accepted a deal with Satan? Nice of the movie to tell its target audience to turn off at least one source of bile.
@quotetheunquote:
Emetics are rarely used for poisons anymore, because the poison tends to cause more damage coming back up again. I know it was a joke, but the knowledge could save someone’s vocal cords.
Now, if he killed his own son while drunk and then blamed the gods, you might have the beginning of a more entertaining story that could stand the test of time. There would of necessity still be a lot of manure to get through, of course.
Ahh, so I see he’s doing the über-Christian thing of refusing to be in any situation where he might be required to show on-screen intimacy to anybody who isn’t his actual wife. Kirk Cameron did the same thing, as I recall.
Xena was a spin-off of Hercules but eclipsed it in every way from popularity to how fondly it’s remembered. It helps that Lucy Lawless is still friggin’ awesome and is the opposite of Sorbo in every way.
A Masked Avenger @5:
Actually, the show’s downward slide (and the departure of most of the rest of the original cast) was a direct result of Sorbo getting increasing creative input as the series went on.
Turi1337 . Since these movies are so much alike, they didn’t need much material to begin with.
@12
and they became increasingly religious in tone and plot elements, I watched it for far to long expecting reason and truth to prevail but alas it was not to be
maybe I expect too much cause I expect reason and truth to prevail in real life too.
uncle frogy
When I was an atheist, I was only really angry at one God, namely: the God I was raised with. Even then I was less angry at the God itself than I was at all the garbage I’d been taught, though I did (and do) engage in the occasional bit of blasphemy against it to remind myself that I’m not bound to that thing anymore.
And contrary to the idea that ‘leaving God’ lead me down a path of darkness is the fact that I felt like a great weight had been lifted from my shoulders. I’m not going to hell! Yay! I can dance now (well, I can’t, but I could)!
I didn’t lose any friends or family for ‘leaving God,’ though admittedly I didn’t tell everybody. I almost lost a couple being an asshole for God, though.
I haven’t (consciously) been near death since becoming an atheist, but I must say that my previous faith did fuck-all for me when I in my times of need. I prayed and prayed, but God must have been screening his calls because no one ever picked up.
I wouldn’t call dreams objective evidence, but there are an important part of my current faith. My old God couldn’t even be bothered to visit me in my dreams. Though I did dream about Godzilla once.
Somehow I don’t think I’m a part of this film’s target audience. It doesn’t even sound like it would be enjoyable in a bad movie kind of way. I don’t have much tolerance for preachy Christian drivel.
@ A Masked Avenger, #5
I had much the same thought, though I read it as a terrible pun: ‘He harkens to the sun(son).’
See how that fails to work?
If you didn’t believe in gods (atheist), being angry at one is nonsensical.
What amazes me is how this is all delivered with such a straight face. How can it not make its producers’ toes curl up in embarrassment? Does the director of this garbage really want to be remembered for such a painful pile of trash?
What a thing to tell the grandkids: “Hey, kids, I made one of the dumbest movies ever to be produced!” “Great stuff, Gramps, you’re a genuine 100%, five star, high concentrate, live-wire cretin!”
What a legacy, eh?
@ Usernames! 🦑, #16
Apologies, that wasn’t as clear as I’d intended:
I was angry about the shit I’d been taught, which I had believed. I often expressed this anger as though I was “angry at God,” when in fact I was angry at the Lutheran Church Missouri Synod, the “Left Behind” inspired soteriology, and conservative Christianity in general. I wasn’t actually angry at God. I didn’t believe in God.
Is that better?
Nonsensical as it may be, people can have contradicting feelings any time. I am an atheist angry at a God. If they were real, I would join Satan.
A couple of thoughts:
1) The gods answer all prayers; most of the time the answer is No.
2) I want to see a mash up of this thing and “Flatliners.”
These sorts of movies only ever work in the USA and maybe countries with a similar demographic make-up. Not just because there are a ton of Evangelicals there to buy tickets, but also because this constant shtick of “former Christian gets mad at god for some trauma and becomes an atheist or rather a guy who still believes in god but hates him now” simply wouldn’t work in a country where atheism is far more wide-spread and people are extremely commonly born to the irreligious and simply never become religious in the first place themselves, either. This lie that atheism is based on hatred of god would not even work on their target audience, since even those extremist Christians couldn’t deny that being angry at god doesn’t have anything to do with it. Which means that they’ll have to change their formula in the USA, too, eventually, as the nones are increasing in number.
@Saganite:
I think you underestimate the ability of said extremist Christians to create their own echo chambers and spend their entire lives without venturing outside. They already have their own bookstores, their own music, their own TV channels…
I’m sure a lot of them consider the statistics about ‘nones increasing in number’ to be yet more liberal propaganda to try to convince them to give up.
My takeaway from this is that drunk driving is good, since it leads to reunions with deceased loved ones.
Did I get the message right?
Follow the money!!!
I’m sure these movies cost next to nothing to make.
And have a built in audience of xians who like to hate atheists.
I just looked it up on Google.
The last Sorbo fiasco was wildly profitable, net of $60 million.
@johnlee
#17
How can it not make its producers’ toes curl up in embarrassment? Does the director of this garbage really want to be remembered for such a painful pile of trash?
Perhaps they lack the Babinski response?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plantar_reflex
So in that case, do people become Catholics because Zeus lightning bolted their dads? Do people become protestants because the Pope murdered their parents? Or do they become Batman??
Back when I was in elementary school, a boy in my class tried to convince me that gods exist by asking what I would scream as I fell off of a cliff. I actually had the chance to test his ‘proof’ as well as the Christian trope/tripe that:
I had, back in early June, a near-death experience (I went swimming without a parachute). Seriously — if I had rotated just a little more, my head would have hit the rock that broke my back and my ribs and and I would have rolled into the three-feet-deep river unconscious. Oddly, I did not regret my atheism. I did regret my choice to (as it turned out) almost get killed trying to retrieve a $50 net (and there was another one in the wagon!). And as I went from ‘ouch, that hurt,’ to ‘Oggie, my boy, you done fucked up big time,” I did not ask gods for anything. I thanked the company that made my cheap flip-phone for making it robust enough to survive a thorough dunking in a river while still having the juice for me to spend 10 minutes on the phone with 911 trying to tell them where I was, not gods. I worried about my wife, not whether I had jumped through all the hoops required by the genocidal sky-daddy. I cried out in pain, but did not cry out any god’s name. So I can honestly say that this Christian bullshit regarding turning to gods when death may be imminent is not always reality. I did not scream ‘Oh, gods!’ I did not scream. Until the pain really hit as I was being dragged out of the river.
Sorry for the TMI. Still working some shit out.
Sorry for your experience, Ogvorbis.
(speaking as a longtime lurker)
Haven’t had a true “near death” experience, but have undergone three major (orthopedic) surgeries… and each time I told my wife I loved her and thanked the medical professional I last saw before they put me under. The last time (and I do hope it was a ‘last time’) I did think ahead and was ready with a question for the resident who was with me when I came back up in recovery: “Is it too late to change my mind?”
mountainbob #29
“Is it too late to change my mind?”
That is hilarious.
What was the reaction?
re: the trailer
at about 38-40 seconds
“pays the bills”
yup