Anti-conspiracy conspiracy

Jim Pinkerton notes how effective the attacks on The DaVinci Code movie have been and dissects the missteps of making a film that attacks the faith of a large part of the nation.

Indeed, a book/movie this immersed in Christianity -- or, if you prefer, anti-Christianity -- can't help but get people thinking about Larger Things. It's said that some 45 anti-Code books have been published; does anybody think there would have been that much popular scholarship devoted to origins-of-the-church controversies without Dan Brown's provocation? And what about all those websites, each one a labor of agape?

I will bet that "The Code Controversy" is going to be remembered as a turning point in popular-religious culture. Christians flocked to see "The Passion of the Christ," which changed Hollywood, but then, two years later, they flocked to react to "Code"; they have created their own counter-culture, which will bear faith-fruit long after this particular movie is reduced to third-tier DVD-dom.

I hope he's right, but I doubt this will change the level of dreck coming from Hollywood.

Actually, the failure of the film is just people coming to their senses. Dan Brown's novel was the emperor's new clothes crying out for debunking. I found that the book was not as fast paced and suspenseful as advertised and many pages of exposition just can't translate to a movie, and making it two and a half hours long was a terrible mistake. Tom Hanks' character was not the likeable boy next door that most of his roles have been, but an arrogant know-it-all that I found hard to like. I haven't seen the film, but it would have taken a brilliant revision of the book to change that.

Of course, there's still a mystery that might make me go see it: how bad is it, really?