Except it's not completely honest because several of the things God tells Noah to do in the movie never actually happened. God was perfectly fine with Noah bringing his entire family, or Noah wouldn't have taken them in the first place. Now, I'm not saying it isn't tragic that so much life was lost in the flood, even though many might have deserved it. But the movie can't have it both ways. It can't try to be honest about what will happen to most people if it's going to turn around and lie the next. And it also throws in complete nonsense with the vegitarianism thing. While I applaud the film for taking the risk of showing how other human beings rather than caricatures will be affected by the flood, it loses all my respect by shoe-horning in pointless sub-plots and false information. It could've been a great movie if it had simply been faithful to the actual Bible story, and showed how it affected others. But it didn't. It chose to rewrite the story for the sake of artificial drama, and it fails, horribly.
I'm a geek.
For the record, I was only pointing out the specific inconsistencies for the sake of other readers. I'm sure you probably already noticed them, considering you've read the thing.
I'm a geek.
I don't know if it chose to add them in for the sake of artificial drama, most of the additions felt like they had a point. For example Noah's freakout about the pregnancy was meant to first of all humanise the idea of the flood and show us what that sort of action feels like from a non-statistic side and also to really dig into the question since humans are corrupt then aren't the wars and exploitation going to start up again? Maybe it's right that humanity doesn't survive.
And I don't think God is encouraging Noah down that line, the rainbows get sent out at the end, not when the flood is finished but when Noah accepts that humanity will be shown mercy. I figured that was about zealotry and how it can be hard knowing what you're meant to do. You'll notice that there is one other character who says similar things as Noah at that point, as far as wanting God to talk to them, and that character is Tubel-Cain.
Even the Watchers are based very roughly on the Nephilim and apparently there are creatures called the Watchers in the Book of Enoch, which is a non-biblical book which the Jewish community was familiar with at the time parts of the Bible were being written. They're still not stone monsters but I think Aronofsky was deliberately playing up the fantasy aspect pre-flood because he was trying to give off the idea that the pre-flood and post-flood times belong to completely different worlds, in the same way he implied that Cain killing Abel was an event that took place across every moment of humans killing humans.
...so I think it was done with good intent, the success of which is always debatable of course. But you're right most of the events don't actually happen which is going to mislead people who haven't read the story, I think that's important enough for me to edit my review
Eh, Russel Crowe and Darren Aronofsky said quite a number of times its nor supposed to be a straight adaptation of Genesis.
And one thing that always bugged me about the story is the message "if you were descended from this evil guy then you're dammned to be evil too!"
It's true that they said that, but it's not necessarily apparent in the film so people reading my review could mistake what I said for it being accurate. I'm fine with it not being a straight adaptation as I've described above, but it is a trap people may fall into.
I never liked the descended from an evil guy thing either, on the other hand I do like that they stressed that everyone was fallen not just Cain's descendants. (And I'm pretty sure Emma Watson's character was descended from Cain? Apparently in Jewish tradition she's Tubal-Cain's sister.)
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Honest
There will be many many better films than Noah but there will be few as worth remembering.
There's a lot of cruft, it might be too long, strangely shot with weird adaptation decisions.
But none of it matters, it does exactly what a Noah story needs to do. It shows you the worst of humanity, how we can tear apart the earth and each other and then it shows you exactly how awful the flood is. It doesn't pretend there were no other children in the Earth. It gives it to you in real terms, the film doesn't lie to you to make anything easier.
And that's it. You can regret it or hate it or whatever any other appropriate reaction is.
EDIT: The film isn't however honest in it's content. Maybe as much as 80% of events in the film aren't in the original story. Whats included is included to enhance the feel and emotional impact of the ideas around the flood, but before you write off Noah as a literal attempted baby-killer it might be a good idea to check out the real story. It's only about 3 pages long