If you grew up with religion in your life, this story that played out on the screen is one you have heard a million times growing up and every easter, your church probably does some sort of easter play about it. I know the church I grew up in did.
We did Christmas pageants and easter pageants and musicals etc etc.
This isn't a new story, it isn't even really a new telling of the story.
It's the same old story.
With a bigger budget.
I found it overly bloody. Like excessive.
Maybe it happened that way and maybe it didn't. We will never really know because the story of his crucifixion wasn't actually written down until some 50-60 years after the fact.
I wasn't impressed with it at all.
Not because I'm a non-believer but because I grew up with religion and have heard the story a million times and just found it to be overly bloody and truth be told, rather boring.
There was nothing magical or moving about it.
There was no moment of overwhelming need to believe.
I was simply not impressed.
For the amount of money spent making it and the amount of money and time spent hyping it, it should have been something great.
It was the same old story told the same old way and left me feeling blah.
I let the boys watch it and they quickly got bored and if it was meant to convert people and make them want to believe, it did a bad job.
Mark said when it was over, that it did nothing to prove that Jesus was the son of god and in fact, made a more compelling argument against that theory.
I need to stop talking to him so much about law and stuff. He's using big words back at me.
He said that all the times Jesus cried out for his father and nothing happened, it just proved that there was no god. His father never answered him and all his faith was for nothing.
Now believers would say that that is because Jesus was meant to die for us and save us from our sins and this is how it was meant to be but when trying to convert new people to the faith, that story sort of backfires.
I think if I were to ever show the boys a christian movie again, that I would have to go with Jesus Christ Superstar which actually did more for my beliefs way back when I went to church and didn't disbelieve as I do now.
That movie had a much more profound effect on me simply for the way it was told and the music which can do so much more to stir peoples emotions than a language which has been dead for thousands of years.

My advice, save your money and wait for your church to put on it's annual easter pageant.