Over the last few years, my brother and I have been brainstorming about how to make an epic movie (or series of movies) out of The Book of Mormon.
We didn't want something simple. We want something epic - a grand adventure for the ages, like we sometimes say the Book of Mormon itself is.
I've heard a lot of people love the idea, and I've heard a lot of concerns. I'd like to address some of the concerns and see if I can help. Perhaps you could help me address my major concern with making the Book of Mormon into a movie. If you have any more concerns, let me know. I'd love to discuss them.
Concern #1:
"It would be rated R."
This is the single most frequent concern I hear. I even heard this from someone who played in the Bible videos.
To be fair, it's a legitimate concern. There are plenty of lots of R-rated ancient war movies - from Gladiator (2000), to 300 (2006) to the extended edition of The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies (2014/2015).
The good news is: Not every ancient war movie needs to be rated R. The Lord of the Rings contains 3 of the most well-known ancient war movies ever, and none of them are rated R.
Besides, R-ratings have become harder and harder to get every year.
So how do you make a Book of Mormon movie appeal to the masses, but not be so violent that it's rated R?
It's the same way you have sexual material in a Bond film without making the film rated R: implication.
That implication can be pretty accurate to the book without being grotesque to the point of an R rating. And any filmmaker knows how to show a beheading (1 Nephi 4:18; Ether 15:30) or an arm-chopping (Alma 17:37) without being grotesque.
Implied violence is so common that there's a specific subgenre for movies that don't imply the most grotesque parts of the violence. That's a loose definition of the sickening genre of "torture porn". It's a horror subgenre, not an action subgenre. So action directors usually wouldn't make this action-adventure movie into a torture porn movie.
Besides, most directors would feel like gratuitous violence wouldn't fit with the tone and story of the film, and they might even cut down the war scenes to fit with the tone of the rest of the movies.
If you're still concerned about the film being rated R, let me know what your concern is. I'd love to discuss it more.
Concern #2:
"It would need to be more than 1 movie."
Fully agreed.
Don't worry. It's not about the page count. 531 pages isn't so long that it can't be turned into a good movie.
It's about the narrative.
Many of the characters in the Book of Mormon are only in one story: Enos, Jacob, King Bejamin, Abinadi, and so on...
Many (though not all) of those characters either need to be in their own movie, or they need to be cut out, because what's the point of having 40 minutes of material about Nephi, having one scene about Jacob, then moving on with no other reference to Jacob? It would feel like a meandering plot and a wasted scene. No, many characters need their own movie or they need to be cut.
More importantly, the main character and the tone shifts too often:
We start with an adventure story about Nephi
Then move to a lot of missionary stories about Alma the Younger and a side-story with Ammon as the main character
Then Alma the Younger becomes a Mentor character while Captain Moroni, Helaman, and Teancom become the main characters of a war story
Then we get a few random stories about intrigue, but there's no real main character
Then back to a war story about the destruction of the Nephite civilization
And that's not even including the Book of Ether.
This isn't one movie.
This is at least 3 movies, and I would prefer at least 5.
If you have concerns over any of this, or if you think the Book of Mormon could be one movie, let me know. I'd love to discuss it more with you and figure out the best way to present the most important book on earth to mainstream audiences.
Concern #3:
"It would be like Noah."
I heard this concern 4 times in one thread. Apparently Noah really bothered Christians - so much that they forgot about Hollywood's genuinely good Christian films.
No, I'm not talking about God's Not Dead. I'm talking about movies like The Passion of the Christ or The Nativity Story.
So how do you keep a Book of Mormon movie from becoming like Noah? It's actually pretty simple. Don't hire the guy who directed Noah.
Many Christians mainly complained that Noah didn't respect the source material. In the case of Noah, it included too many elements that were just... weird.
And that's what the director of Noah does. If you don't want weird surrealism, don't hire the guy who made Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream.
If you have more concerns over it being like Noah, I'd love to discuss them more with you. Just let me know.
So who do you hire? That leads us to the next concern:
Concern #4:
"What director respects the source material and respects the Spirit of the source material, and can still make it good?"
The first suggestion is usually Peter Jackson, because of his respect for the source material on The Lord of the Rings. But I think there's an important distinction to be made here:
I don't think Peter Jackson is good at respecting all source material. I think he simply respects the source material of The Lord of the Rings very well, because he's a huge fan of the books.
Similarly, J.J. Abrams is a huge fan of Star Wars, and Steven Moffat is a huge fan of classic Doctor Who, which led each to respect the spirit of the source material, even if they didn't make their works perfectly.
So perhaps you might need a fan of the Book of Mormon to make the movie. But you'd have to get Mormons to consistently make good movies so you can trust them to make the movie excellent. I wrote a bit about this in a blog post a little while ago: modernmarshill.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-to-make-good-mormon-movie.html
Maybe, just maybe, you could have someone who isn't a fan of the Book of Mormon still respect the tone and spirit of the book.
I'd recommend Kenneth Branagh after his work on Shakespeare and the first Thor movie. He seems like he understands the tone and purpose of movies similar to a Book of Mormon movie.
I might recommend Ridley Scott. We've seen from The Martian that he knows how to be faithful to source material, we've seen from Gladiator that he knows how to do an ancient war movie, and we've seen from Alien that he knows how to focus on the characters even in the midst of a standard genre movie, in ways that the books of 1 Nephi and Alma really need.
And as unorthodox as it may seem, I might recommend J.J. Abrams. Not because of his love of mystery boxes, but because of his ability to blend into genres like the ancient war movie the Book of Mormon would have to be. And because (from what I hear) he really likes making the fans happy.
If you have concerns over the director, let me know. I'd love to discuss it more with you and find a good solution with you.
Concern #5:
"Where are you going to find decent actors who respect the source material and the Spirit of the source material?"
If actors respect the source material, great. But what if we can't find actors who will respect the source material?
If actors don't respect the source material, here's what I expect:
I expect actors to read the source material.
I expect actors to find out why people like their character.
I expect actors to pretend to respect the source material.
In a word, I expect actors to act - to act like they respect the source material.
Yes, "heart speaks to heart", but the actors don't need to testify of the truth of the Book of Mormon. The actors need to contribute to the story, and the story needs to testify of the truth of the Book of Mormon.
As one example: I think Hugh Jackman would do justice to the role of Captain Moroni and try to stay true to the spirit of the source material.
I'd love to discuss this more if you have anything to say about actors who will respect the source material and the Spirit of the source material.
Concern 6:
"They already did it."
This is probably my favorite objection, because it's true.
They did already try to make a movie of the Book of Mormon that tried to appeal to the masses.
It didn't quite work.
I could discuss the reasons here, but I already discussed a lot of the basic reasons in this blog post (http://modernmarshill.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-to-make-good-mormon-movie.html), but to sum up: It was made by people who hadn't learned how to make a good movie yet with a budget that was about 2% what it should have been, and they might have been focusing so much on making the movie clean and inspirational that they forgot to make it good.
To compound the problem, they casted Kirby Heybourne as Sam, and casting Kirby Heybourne in a movie immediately marks it as a "Mormon" movie, and automatically makes non-Mormons not bother to see it.
Even more of a problem, they didn't have enough money to get it in theaters or to advertise it. So the movie enjoyed a very limited release to a few theaters in the "Book of Mormon belt". For its $1.5M budget, the movie made... $1.6M.
If they had made movie with the express intent of appealing to the masses, they would have increased their budget DRAMATICALLY, fixed some of the technical and directing problems that plagued the movie, and hired actors that non-Mormons consider "A-listers".
We didn't want something simple. We want something epic - a grand adventure for the ages, like we sometimes say the Book of Mormon itself is.
I've heard a lot of people love the idea, and I've heard a lot of concerns. I'd like to address some of the concerns and see if I can help. Perhaps you could help me address my major concern with making the Book of Mormon into a movie. If you have any more concerns, let me know. I'd love to discuss them.
Concern #1:
"It would be rated R."
This is the single most frequent concern I hear. I even heard this from someone who played in the Bible videos.
To be fair, it's a legitimate concern. There are plenty of lots of R-rated ancient war movies - from Gladiator (2000), to 300 (2006) to the extended edition of The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies (2014/2015).
The good news is: Not every ancient war movie needs to be rated R. The Lord of the Rings contains 3 of the most well-known ancient war movies ever, and none of them are rated R.
Besides, R-ratings have become harder and harder to get every year.
So how do you make a Book of Mormon movie appeal to the masses, but not be so violent that it's rated R?
It's the same way you have sexual material in a Bond film without making the film rated R: implication.
That implication can be pretty accurate to the book without being grotesque to the point of an R rating. And any filmmaker knows how to show a beheading (1 Nephi 4:18; Ether 15:30) or an arm-chopping (Alma 17:37) without being grotesque.
Implied violence is so common that there's a specific subgenre for movies that don't imply the most grotesque parts of the violence. That's a loose definition of the sickening genre of "torture porn". It's a horror subgenre, not an action subgenre. So action directors usually wouldn't make this action-adventure movie into a torture porn movie.
Besides, most directors would feel like gratuitous violence wouldn't fit with the tone and story of the film, and they might even cut down the war scenes to fit with the tone of the rest of the movies.
If you're still concerned about the film being rated R, let me know what your concern is. I'd love to discuss it more.
Concern #2:
"It would need to be more than 1 movie."
Fully agreed.
Don't worry. It's not about the page count. 531 pages isn't so long that it can't be turned into a good movie.
It's about the narrative.
Many of the characters in the Book of Mormon are only in one story: Enos, Jacob, King Bejamin, Abinadi, and so on...
Many (though not all) of those characters either need to be in their own movie, or they need to be cut out, because what's the point of having 40 minutes of material about Nephi, having one scene about Jacob, then moving on with no other reference to Jacob? It would feel like a meandering plot and a wasted scene. No, many characters need their own movie or they need to be cut.
More importantly, the main character and the tone shifts too often:
We start with an adventure story about Nephi
Then move to a lot of missionary stories about Alma the Younger and a side-story with Ammon as the main character
Then Alma the Younger becomes a Mentor character while Captain Moroni, Helaman, and Teancom become the main characters of a war story
Then we get a few random stories about intrigue, but there's no real main character
Then back to a war story about the destruction of the Nephite civilization
And that's not even including the Book of Ether.
This isn't one movie.
This is at least 3 movies, and I would prefer at least 5.
If you have concerns over any of this, or if you think the Book of Mormon could be one movie, let me know. I'd love to discuss it more with you and figure out the best way to present the most important book on earth to mainstream audiences.
Concern #3:
"It would be like Noah."
I heard this concern 4 times in one thread. Apparently Noah really bothered Christians - so much that they forgot about Hollywood's genuinely good Christian films.
No, I'm not talking about God's Not Dead. I'm talking about movies like The Passion of the Christ or The Nativity Story.
So how do you keep a Book of Mormon movie from becoming like Noah? It's actually pretty simple. Don't hire the guy who directed Noah.
Many Christians mainly complained that Noah didn't respect the source material. In the case of Noah, it included too many elements that were just... weird.
And that's what the director of Noah does. If you don't want weird surrealism, don't hire the guy who made Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream.
If you have more concerns over it being like Noah, I'd love to discuss them more with you. Just let me know.
So who do you hire? That leads us to the next concern:
Concern #4:
"What director respects the source material and respects the Spirit of the source material, and can still make it good?"
The first suggestion is usually Peter Jackson, because of his respect for the source material on The Lord of the Rings. But I think there's an important distinction to be made here:
I don't think Peter Jackson is good at respecting all source material. I think he simply respects the source material of The Lord of the Rings very well, because he's a huge fan of the books.
Similarly, J.J. Abrams is a huge fan of Star Wars, and Steven Moffat is a huge fan of classic Doctor Who, which led each to respect the spirit of the source material, even if they didn't make their works perfectly.
So perhaps you might need a fan of the Book of Mormon to make the movie. But you'd have to get Mormons to consistently make good movies so you can trust them to make the movie excellent. I wrote a bit about this in a blog post a little while ago: modernmarshill.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-to-make-good-mormon-movie.html
Maybe, just maybe, you could have someone who isn't a fan of the Book of Mormon still respect the tone and spirit of the book.
I'd recommend Kenneth Branagh after his work on Shakespeare and the first Thor movie. He seems like he understands the tone and purpose of movies similar to a Book of Mormon movie.
I might recommend Ridley Scott. We've seen from The Martian that he knows how to be faithful to source material, we've seen from Gladiator that he knows how to do an ancient war movie, and we've seen from Alien that he knows how to focus on the characters even in the midst of a standard genre movie, in ways that the books of 1 Nephi and Alma really need.
And as unorthodox as it may seem, I might recommend J.J. Abrams. Not because of his love of mystery boxes, but because of his ability to blend into genres like the ancient war movie the Book of Mormon would have to be. And because (from what I hear) he really likes making the fans happy.
If you have concerns over the director, let me know. I'd love to discuss it more with you and find a good solution with you.
Concern #5:
"Where are you going to find decent actors who respect the source material and the Spirit of the source material?"
If actors respect the source material, great. But what if we can't find actors who will respect the source material?
If actors don't respect the source material, here's what I expect:
I expect actors to read the source material.
I expect actors to find out why people like their character.
I expect actors to pretend to respect the source material.
In a word, I expect actors to act - to act like they respect the source material.
Yes, "heart speaks to heart", but the actors don't need to testify of the truth of the Book of Mormon. The actors need to contribute to the story, and the story needs to testify of the truth of the Book of Mormon.
As one example: I think Hugh Jackman would do justice to the role of Captain Moroni and try to stay true to the spirit of the source material.
I'd love to discuss this more if you have anything to say about actors who will respect the source material and the Spirit of the source material.
Concern 6:
"They already did it."
This is probably my favorite objection, because it's true.
They did already try to make a movie of the Book of Mormon that tried to appeal to the masses.
It didn't quite work.
I could discuss the reasons here, but I already discussed a lot of the basic reasons in this blog post (http://modernmarshill.blogspot.com/2018/02/how-to-make-good-mormon-movie.html), but to sum up: It was made by people who hadn't learned how to make a good movie yet with a budget that was about 2% what it should have been, and they might have been focusing so much on making the movie clean and inspirational that they forgot to make it good.
To compound the problem, they casted Kirby Heybourne as Sam, and casting Kirby Heybourne in a movie immediately marks it as a "Mormon" movie, and automatically makes non-Mormons not bother to see it.
Even more of a problem, they didn't have enough money to get it in theaters or to advertise it. So the movie enjoyed a very limited release to a few theaters in the "Book of Mormon belt". For its $1.5M budget, the movie made... $1.6M.
If they had made movie with the express intent of appealing to the masses, they would have increased their budget DRAMATICALLY, fixed some of the technical and directing problems that plagued the movie, and hired actors that non-Mormons consider "A-listers".
OK, those are all the concerns I usually hear about a Book of Mormon movie. Now I'd like to bring up my own concern about a Book of Mormon movie, because maybe you'll have some ideas on this.
The Book of Mormon is not supposed to be a good story.
As it is, it isn't a good story.
The characters are all caricatures. Characters are either presented as nothing but good or as nothing but bad until they convert and become nothing but good.
The narrative is extremely disjointed. You could put the stories of Nephi in practically any order, or take out almost any story in 1 Nephi (except that Nephi has to get the plates) and the plot would make just as much sense. On top of that, many stories (Jacob and Sherem, Enos, Helaman 5) are pretty irrelevant to the story and feature main characters who are only shown in that story once.
And the plot doesn't really make any sense. The plot is essentially about the Nephites trying to win a war against the Lamanites. This plot has a sad ending that doesn't feel particularly deserved. The main characters go from having successfully ended the war (4 Nephi) to slaughtering each other in the bloodiest, most sickening battle in movie history about 5 minutes of screentime. And it doesn't have the classical tragedy structure that Little Shop of Horrors, The Social Network, and Shakespeare's tragedies used that makes the audience feel like the sad ending is deserved. There's a bit of a sub-plot about trying to preserve the history of the people, but that's not really explored at all, and there's another sub-plot about the Nephites trying to convert Lamanites, but there isn't much of a structure or an arc to that plot.
Now, Raymond G. Frensham wrote that a "law" of screenwriting is that "a good book makes a bad movie; a bad book makes a good movie" (Teach Yourself: Screenwriting). So perhaps people would find a way to make an excellent movie out of a book that isn't a good story right now, like they did with The Polar Express and the first Night at the Museum movie.
But Mormons are the most dedicated fan base in the world. And they would be either heartbroken or enraged to see a movie that changes a single moment of their favorite book in the world, a book that changed their lives. Jacob's Allegory of the Olive Tree practically has to be cut out of the movie, because it's almost completely irrelevant to the plot no matter how well you depict it visually. And King Benjamin's sermon practically has to be truncated down to about 5 lines and seeing the reactions of the congregation because those are the only parts that actually have to do with the plot and because no matter how good the speech is, audiences just don't want to watch 4 chapters of monologue. That completely defeats the purpose of cinema as a visual medium. But cutting down or cutting out either of those sermons take out important spiritual principles people have loved and learned from all their lives. Either Mormons would be storming out of the theater or non-Mormons would be sleeping through the sermon and feel it is quite literally a preachy scene.
But it's not supposed to be a good story anyway. It's supposed to be a volume of scripture.
Nephi states pretty clearly that his purpose isn't to entertain; it's to convert. And those are almost his exact words. His exact words are: "...the fulness of mine intent is that I may persuade men to come unto the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and be saved.
"Wherefore, the things which are pleasing unto the world I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and unto those who are not of the world" (1 Nephi 6:4-5).
"Wherefore, the things which are pleasing unto the world I do not write, but the things which are pleasing unto God and unto those who are not of the world" (1 Nephi 6:4-5).
Moroni states that his purpose in writing the Book of Mormon is "to show unto the remnant of the house of Israel what great things the Lord hath done for their fathers; and that they may know the covenants of the Lord, that they are not cast off forever—And also to the convincing of the Jew and Gentile that Jesus is the Christ, the Eternal God, manifesting himself unto all nations" (Title Page) and writes that his purpose in abridging the plates of Ether was "that evil may be done away, and that the time may come that Satan may have no power upon the hearts of the children of men, but that they may be persuaded to do good continually, that they may come unto the fountain of all righteousness and be saved" (Ether 8:26).
I know that the Book of Mormon is a true volume of holy scripture. And I would love a movie to come out that would invite people to read the original book by being appealing to non-Mormons as a big-budget epic.
If you like the idea of making a Book of Mormon movie, I'd love some ideas of how to make it genuinely good on a level of plot.
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