I’m seeing more and more offers for free passes to DVC, which strikes me as a sign of a lack of faith in the film’s drawing power on its own – so we’re going to give away tickets then hope for word of mouth…I’ve heard that there are free passes attached to purchasing DVD’s of Monty Python and the Holy Grail and another film..I just this morning an email came through asking me to update a an anti-virus program and get a free pass.

Meanwhile, Tom Hanks is saying it’s "hooey" and that critics of the film are making a big mistake..  Well, let’s have Tom tell that to those who believe the DVC claims, in one form or another.

That said, I’m looking for caution in the reaction to the film. It’s such a fine line – I have never been totally sure how to walk it, but what I’ve tried to do is use the moment to teach without taking the book or the film too seriously. As I said, I’m not sure if I’m doing it right, but there’s a point at which both the insistence that this film could be an excellent starter to serious dialogue, and therefore is essential to see and the assertion that it’s horrific blaspehemy that MUST BE STOPPED risks giving this thing too much credit.

Those who are influenced to take DVC seriously are mostly doing so because it affirms some points they already believe: namely this sense of the 1st century events related to Jesus being either unknown or unreliably told. That’s the core issue, at it’s being affirmed at every side by scholars who are finding their way on to TV and the best-sellers list (ahemBartEhrmanahem – his Misquoting Jesus is still selling very well – it’s been in the top 1 or 2 on religious bestsellers for weeks now, sometimes rising above Rick Warren, etc.)  – that’s the bigger issue – and that’s what I hope are the notes of the wake-up call to a Church that’s been all about introducing young people to the Gospels by deconstructing them for too many years now.

I also have a prediction, based on what I sort of know about the screenplay and the clips I’ve seen: the Langdon character is going to function as the witty skeptic in all of this – he is going to be far less on board with the "theories" in this film than the character in the book. He even has a moment near the end in which, based on an experience he had as a child, in which he muses that "Well, Jesus could be God, huh?" and then of course, we’re back to "Who knows? No one knows! Pick a story! Any story!"