What’s this all about?
Way back in 1995, Tyndale House Publishers released the first in the “Left Behind” series of novels, about apocalyptic life on Earth following a “rapture” event, in which all of Earth’s “good” Christians are instantly zapped into heaven.
This spawned a massive franchise made up of 16 novels, 5 movies, and even a PC game.
In 2014, the fourth movie, titled simply, Left Behind was released as sort of a high budget reboot of the original film from 2000. The original starred notorious wet blanket Kirk Cameron. This one stars notorious over-actor Nicolas Cage, and that’s why we’re here today.
2014’s Left Behind tells the story of an American family made up of an airline pilot father, a pious mother, a free-spirited adult daughter, and a boring little kid. When Jesus calls the faithful home, leaving the father and daughter behind, hijinks ensue.
Nick finds himself in the rather embarrassing situation of being the pilot of an in-flight plane when the rapture occurs, taking half of his crew, a good chunk of his passengers, and frankly, a surprising number of air traffic controllers out of the game. He’s forced to work with his daughter, her new boyfriend, and the stewardess that he used to bang at U2 concerts to safely land the plane before it runs out of fuel, or the group of gambling dwarves, Muslims and unwed mothers in the passenger cabin go nuts.
Who is Nick in this one?
Nick plays “Rayford Steele” (Come on, are we supposed to believe that’s a real name?), an airline pilot with a wife and child at home. He’s carrying on an affair with a stewardess, and would rather fly a plane to London than have lunch with his adult daughter. Having seen his adult daughter, I kind of get it
His dissatisfaction in his marriage seems to revolve around the fact that his wife has recently found religion, and wants to talk about it a lot. This bugs Nick, and Nick’s daughter, and probably the other people in line at the grocery store where Nick’s holier-than-thou wife shops, but we’re never explicitly told that.
Unlike many of the characters in the film, he pretty quickly realizes what’s happened when the rapture occurrs, and comes around to his wife’s point of view in much the same way that I come around to Sarah’s when she explains to me that a fireman’s pole wouldn’t be a great way to get from the living room to the basement. She’s right. I guess.
Who else is in this one?
Lea Thompson (Marty McFly’s hot mom) plays “Irene,” Nick’s wife. She wishes her family would love Jesus as much as she does. That’s it. That’s the entire role. What a waste of Lea Thompson. I nominate “Irene and Rayford” for 2014’s most fake sounding couple name.
Nobody else that you’ve ever seen before is in this movie, with the exception of Martin Klebba who plays the little person with an attitude. If you’ve ever seen a movie with a little person, and he’s salty, that was Martin.
Did you see that?
The bulk of this film takes place on an in-flight airplane. Apparently, though, no one involved in the production of this film has been on a commercial airplane since the year 2000. The movie is full of “that’s not how any of this works” moments.
For example, upon boarding the flight, the guy Nick’s daughter was going to hook up with walks into the cockpit to give him a pair of U2 tickets from his daughter. That’s right. Some guy just walks into the cockpit and talks to the pilot.
Later on, the stewardess gives the safety announcement to the passengers while talking into the wrong end of the PA phone.
Then, during the flight, Nick (the plane’s pilot) leaves the cockpit to walk around the passenger cabin and canoodle with a stewardess.
I get that this film is based on a novel released in 1995, and these things were marginally more possible then, but the movie is definitely not set in 1995. There are many cultural references that put it squarely in 2014.
Also, there’s a scene in which Nick’s kids go to the mall, and it’s jam packed with shoppers, and has a group of live breakdancers. I’m not sure the screenwriters were getting out enough. -Michael
During the big ending the plane had to crash land on a road. The special effects of this moment were laughably bad. It was just a CGI image of a plane sliding on the road without wheels, just the body of the plane, smoothly sliding on the cement road. Some minor sparks, but no damage at all to the road or plane and just smooth as silk for the passengers. -Sarah
What were Nick’s best parts?
After the rapture, one of the plane’s two stewardesses is gone. The remaining one is understandably freaking out, and Nick (who has also been sleeping with her) tries to calm her down so that she can help the passengers.
He calmly explains the rapture in simple terms. This was a prime target for Nick to speak very softly, then scream two random words, but he didn’t do it.
He delivered the line like a man with some corporate leadership training would have. I appreciated that. -Michael
Nick did well during this movie. It wasn’t his best work as an actor, but it wasn’t his worst either. I could tell that he was phoning it in, but he still did the decent job that a well-seasoned actor should be able to pull off every time. It really makes me wonder what went wrong with the other movies he phones in. Why do they get so much worse? Anyway, while he wasn’t bad, no particular scene really stood out to me as better than the rest.
I guess I enjoyed the early scene where he was walking through an airport with a flight attendant, whom he was clearly interested in, then saw his daughter and redirected to her. He did a great job portraying all the nuance of the moment. He covered well, but we still clearly got the message that he is the kind of guy that will cheat on his wife and effectively lie to his daughter to cover up. -Sarah
What were Nick’s worst parts?
While investigating the cause of the human disappearances, Nick finds the missing stewardess’ carry-on bag.
He searches it for clues.
He does so by taking each item out of the bag, and flippantly tossing it into the air before moving on to the next item. It’s like a scene from a cartoon. Who searches a bag like that?
Better yet, who looks at a scene like that and says, “that’s a keeper!”? -Michael
The scene right before the plane crash was by far the worst for Nick’s acting skills. He was bouncing all around to emphasize that they were crashing and piloting was super hard. Although, again, the CGI work to show what was happening on the outside of the plane did not match all the bouncing around. It looked like what a little kid would do while playing pilot. -Sarah
How was the movie?
The movie was excessively preachy, and looked like it was filmed on the budget for a soap opera. The sets were cheap looking, and the actors were largely cheesy. I can only imagine how bad the 2000 version of this film must have been.
Anyway, I looked it up, and this movie had a $16 million budget, which is shockingly small for a 2014 Nicolas Cage project. That Chinese nonsense, Outcast, from last week had a $25 million budget, and I’d never even heard of that one before. Left Behind brought in a respectable $27 million at the box office, which I feel is pretty good for something as niche as an evangelical Christian film about the apocalypse.
Overall, the film felt like everyone involved said, “oh, crap. It’s a religious picture. Let’s try to make it entertaining, anyway,” and did an OK job. None of the acting was great, but none of it was terrible. It was preachy, but really only at a few points. The story was marginally interesting, and the pacing was actually pretty good.
If someone handed me a copy of whatever fiction is selling well down at the Bible Book Store right now and told me I had to make a screenplay based on it, I’d be pretty happy if the result was this good.
To be clear, this movie is not good. But it’s better than it should have been. -Michael
I don’t really recommend it, but I also wouldn’t tell you to avoid it. Just go in with super low expectations. -Sarah
Yeah, but did you like it? (Michael/Sarah)
If you told me that I had to rewatch this, Outcast, or Rage, I’d pick this in a heartbeat. I sincerely hope that I never have to watch it again, but it wasn’t torture. -Michael
It was incredibly preachy, but ignoring that it wasn’t that bad. -Sarah
Where can I watch it?
It’s free on YouTube. Alternatively, you can probably find a VHS copy in the basement of your nearest evangelical church that they’d let you watch on the tube TV that they keep on a rolling cart with the VCR.
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