Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Rapture-Palooza (2013)


The date was December 31, 1995. As the year was about to close, Tyndale House Publishers released a new book from the minds of Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins. Left Behind: A Novel of Earth’s Last Days showed a fictionalized account of what happened the day of The Rapture and what happened in the two weeks following it. By 2007, fifteen more books would be published in the series, with the story continuing both before and after the events of the first.

The date was October 31, 2000. Cloud Ten Pictures released a film adaptation of Left Behind to the world, starring Kirk Cameron. It was the second religious film that Kirk Cameron was in, but the first to leave a lasting impact on people. It left such a lasting impact that two sequels were released. Left Behind II: Tribulation Force came out in 2002, while Left Behind: World At War came out in 2005. Every one of the movies dealt with the aftermath of The Rapture.

The date was October 3, 2014. A remake of Left Behind was released into theaters. Tim LaHaye hadn’t liked the previous adaptations of his work. They weren’t the spectacle he thought they deserved to be, instead feeling like direct-to-video flicks. After a lengthy battle, he was granted the right to remake the story. Cloud Ten Pictures was on board again, renamed Stoney Lake Entertainment, as the Nicolas Cage vehicle was given to the people. It didn’t leave nearly the same impression as the Kirk Cameron movies did. Instead, it became a mostly forgotten footnote in movie history garnering the illustrious 0% on Rotten Tomatoes.


I bring all this up because of that final date. October 3, 2014. It was right at the end of a surge in movies and television about The Rapture. Yeah, that’s right. The Rapture was getting a lot of screentime. There were two mainstream comedies in 2013 about The Rapture, as well as the first two movies in a Pure Flix franchise. There was a television show that began in 2014 that followed the aftermath of a Rapture-like occurrence. There was another sequel to the Pure Flix franchise in 2014, as well as the Left Behind remake. That’s a lot of Rapture fiction for two years. I want to quickly touch upon each of them.

Let’s begin with the Pure Flix franchise, since I’ve covered another big Pure Flix franchise, God’s Not Dead, previously. David A.R. White has produced a lot of movies and shows through Pure Flix, many of which he starred in. I’ve gone into all four God’s Not Dead movies at different times, as well as Brother White. One franchise I haven’t checked in on, yet, is Revelation Road. Where God’s Not Dead was the “we’re being attacked” movie and Brother White was the inclusivity flick that could have been handled a little better, Revelation Road was the apocalypse action franchise.

I’ve only seen he trailers for each of the three Revelation Road movies, but those trailers clearly made the movies look like a faith-based Mad Max. The first two movies pit David A.R. White’s character up against a biker gang in the aftermath of what seemed like The Rapture. His family may or may not have gone up to Heaven. I don’t know. The trailer for the third movie made it seem like he never got back to them, at least, and was roaming the post-apocalypse in an Interceptor-like car. Eventually, I’ll check the movies out. They’re on my radar. I like David A.R. White performances, even if I’m not a fan of faith-based movies for the most part.


Also in 2013 was a double dose of Rapture comedies. The first, and more famous, of the two was This is the End. It brought together a bunch of comedy movie hard-hitters, guys who were friends at the time, and had them goofing off during the immediate aftermath of The Rapture. Seth Rogen, Jay Baruchel, James Franco, Jonah Hill, Craig Robinson, and Danny McBride were at James Franco’s house while the outside world turned into Hell on Earth. It was the movie with all the cameos and the comedic actors everyone loved. Though, it has James Franco and he’s a little too problematic for some people to watch anymore.

This is the End was the more apocalyptic of the two Rapture comedies in 2013. It was survival horror as the six friends and/or acquaintances (nobody liked Danny McBride) tried to stay alive in the worst possible environment. The landscape beyond the confines of the house was inhospitable. At least, it was as close to inhospitable as one could imagine. There were monsters, demons, and roaming packs of evil humans killing and kidnapping out of survival and sadism. But This is the End was funny, thanks to the people involved being funny.


It wasn’t the only Craig Robinson Rapture comedy to come out that year. Rapture-Palooza was about Lindsey (Anna Kendrick) and Ben (John Francis Daley) living their lives after The Rapture. Locusts tried to make people suffer. Giant flaming rocks fell from the sky; one of them killing Lindsey’s father (John Michael Higgins). Crows tossed around insults. The Anti-Christ had even shown up, in the form of Earl “The Beast” Gundy (Craig Robinson), a politician. When The Beast started lusting after Lindsey, she and Ben came up with a plan to lock him away for 1000 years. Things didn’t go as planned.

Rapture-Palooza went a different direction from This is the End. It wasn’t a survival movie with wacky, exaggerated characters during the apocalypse. The apocalypse was mundane and irritating. People were just trying to live their normal lives while flaming rocks fell and animals spewed profanities. It wasn’t about surviving and thriving. It was about living with what you were dealt. Everyone was going through the motions, like you do normally. Sure, there was The Beast, and a very pompous God to deal with. Otherwise, it was life as normal, with a few more obstacles in the way.

This was where The Rapture was hitting the mainstream. It wasn’t the subject matter of yet another faith-based film. It was, with the Revelation Road movies. But it was also breaking through to the masses. Theatrical comedies were dipping their toes in the pool that was The Rapture. They were taking the Biblical tale and using it as the basis for crude humour. I’m sure the fundamental Christians didn’t appreciate people poking fun at something they believed and something they feared would happen soon. It probably made the concept more palatable for the everyday person, though.


Things got more serious the next year. HBO premiered a new show called The Leftovers. It was based on a book that came out in 2011. It wasn’t a comedy. Instead, it was a serious drama about how the world changed in the aftermath of two percent of the population vanishing. It was The Rapture, on a smaller scale. It got into people’s minds. Their guilt. Their remorse. How life had to change and move on so people could reconcile their feelings, without ever truly reconciling. It was one of the best shows on HBO that didn’t get nearly the attention and praise it deserved. The second and third seasons really hammered home the personal stories being told by focusing on one character at a time before bringing everything together. It was a beautiful show that, if you haven’t seen it, you should seek out.

And that brings us back to Left Behind. Over the course of two years, there were seven major releases of Rapture-based fiction on screen. I say seven because all three Revelation Road movies came out within that two-year span. Seven different times, people wanted to represent, on screen, the vanishing of a major portion of the population and how the people who were left behind dealt with it. Some took a comedic approach. Some took an action approach. Some just went with straight-forward drama. They all shared one thing: The Rapture.

Filmmakers frequently pick up on the same story elements around the same time and run with them. There might be multiple alien attack movies or asteroid movies or White House siege movies at the same time. From 2013 to 2014, one of the major commonalities was The Rapture. That’s not to say that telling that story ended at that time. Not at all. There have been stories about The Rapture since. There was even a Left Behind movie released a week or two ago. But for those two years, there was a lot of The Rapture on screen. That was the time to be worried about the future of humankind, I guess.


Now let’s get some notes in here:

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