A second chance for The Second Chance?
By S Simmons. Filed in Editing, Movies |
On Saturday I saw a locally (Nashville) produced motion picture called The Second Chance. It was directed by Christian industry veteran Steve Taylor and was the first starring role for contemporary Christian artist Michael W. Smith. The film was most certainly a “religious” movie as the story revolved around a suburban mega-church and an inner city ministry the big church funds. The movie was well made and the themes were certainly universal enough that Christian and non-Christians alike should be able to enjoy the movie.
The thing that I find most interesting is the movies release. We all know that we live in a world where all Hollywood cares about is box office baby! Movies live and die by their opening weekend and even the most casual moviegoer can see weekend box office scores on Monday morning in the CNN crawl at the bottom of the TV screen. There are the occasional break-outs that slowly build success by word of mouth, Crash and What The Bleep Do We Know are two recent examples, but they are the exception, not the rule. The Second Chance was released by Sony’s Triumph label. I don’t ever remember hearing of Triumph but we all know of Sony. Now I’m not under any illusion that marketing and promoting a major motion picture is a cheap thing to do. There can be magazine ads, tv time, newspaper space, internet resources and many other things that go into movie promotion. Not a cheap proposition. But Sony is apparently relying on the ‘word of mouth’ idea in the promotion of The Second Chance. In Nashville, which would be the most ideal market for the movie, I haven’t seen a single advertisement anywhere! I’m sure Sony is counting on the “Christian” market that made Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ a mega-hit but even with the word of mouth in full force, that movie had huge marketing muscle and the media behind it. I guess we will see as the weeks unfold how successful the picture becomes. I saw the movie during its second weekend and the theatre was pretty full. The home video market can always help recoup some of the costs but the theatrical box office is always looked at as the main example of a films success. I do hope The Second Chance is successful, not just because it grew out of the local filmmaking community that I am a part of, but because it is a good film that has something meaningful to say. Now I love sex and violence just as much as anybody, but those types of films are a dime a dozen these days and movies with a message, be it a religious, social, ethnic, or anything else, are becoming increasingly rare, and unless they are successful, there will be even less of them.
My wife brought up a point about the “Christian” market that the movie is partly trying to reach. She said there are a lot of Christian “believers” (like her own mother growing up) who don’t go to the movies at all or even partake of popular culture and entertainment because they don’t see it as glorifying God or furthering his kingdom. I was quite puzzled by what she said and do not really understand that thinking at all. It seems to me that entertainment that does a positive thing and furthers one’s beliefs should be embraced and supported by the group that it is targeting. But that is coming from a guy who is equally happy watching either a 9 hour socially redeeming PBS special, a G-rated documentary about the migratory pattern of birds, or a teen slasher flick about half naked co-eds (of fully naked) getting killed in the woods! Content is vitally important to a movie (or any other form of entertainment) but there are always people who should not see and cannot handle certain things. In the case of a movie like The Second Chance, “believers” and “non-believers”, young and old, Christian, Jewish, Catholic, whatever…most should be able to find something about it that they enjoy. Go see it before it goes away. It fell by 43.1% this second weekend so there may not be much time left.
