The first trailer for Timur Bekmambetov’s remake of Ben-Hur is here and looks nothing like what audiences might expect from the director of Wanted and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. Instead of given us a steaming CGI, speed-ramping action mess, the new Ben-Hur has chosen to take a more pious route in an obvious effort to grab the attention of the Christian evangelical audience that made movies like The Passion of the Christ, Heaven is for Real and God’s Not Dead ooze money.
Check out the trailer 2016’s Ben-Hur remake for yourself:
After some clunky exposition between Messala and Judah Ben-Hur (who apparently needed to be reminded his brother’s “an orphan your father took in”), the first Ben-Hur trailer launches right into the first of many Jesus cameos. Apparently, Jesus works for Ben-Hur’s family, providing a perfect platform for him to test out some of his early material before the disciples get to it.
Then that music begins, urging us to “love unconditionally” and suddenly Ben-Hur looks nothing like the Hollywood action movie we’ve come to expect from Bekmambetov.
It looks like Hollywood is beginning to learn some lessons in courting evangelicals. While the creators of Noah hoped merely portraying a Biblical story would attract Christians, it didn’t work out. After the success of evangelical indie films, studios are learning the cultural signifiers necessary to indicate a movie is not merely a Biblical historical epic, but explicitly designed for the modern evangelical audience. On the surface that means Jesus quote mining and whiny music.
But the first trailer for 2016’s remake of Ben-Hur also understands the persecution mentality motivating much of modern, conservative evangelism. As culture has become more progressive, American religious traditionalists often feel besieged by sweeping societal changes with respect to LGBT people, the equal treatment of women and access to reproductive control. The best method for attracting evangelical audiences to movie theaters has been the story of principled opposition to a dominant order. Martyrdom is at the heart of both The Passion of the Christ and God’s Not Dead, which dramatize the persecution of the pious innocent by a tyrannical system.
This is the story the 2016 Ben-Hur is clearly giving us, as Ben-Hur himself learns to lay down his arms and transcend the oppressive temporal authority through submission to God’s will.
So is this first trailer for Ben-Hur just canny targeted advertising for evangelicals, or does it reflect the actual movie? We’ll find out Aug. 12 when Ben-Hur hits theaters.
