Constantine Director Francis Lawrence should pay closer attention

Listen to Constantine director Francis Lawrence.

Mixing religious themes with a comic book sensibility, were you worried about how it might be received by the hardcore Christian audience in America?

I wasn’t worried. I thought it was going to be more offensive than it has been. What’s been really weird is that once the movie was finished we were showing it to religious press and they’ve actually kind of embraced it, because they see a guy struggling with his faith and the battle between good and evil and the redemption. And what they aren’t seeing are some of the jabs we’ve made at the Christian right, with characters like Gabriel in the movie. It’s been fascinating – I thought they’d be much more offended than they are.

First, he thinks the religious press embraced Constantine? Uh, Mr. Lawrence, you might want to look again at what Christian press critics said about the film. Some are willing to accept certain aspects of it. But overall?

Then he says that we missed the jabs thrown at the Christian right. Uh, no we didn’t. They were painfully obvious. And those who missed them learned about them when a sneering Tilda Swinton bragged about them in The New York Times before the movie even opened.

Once again, someone’s assuming Christians have their heads buried in the sand. Perhaps the reason they don’t see the truth of the matter is that their OWN heads are buried in something or other.