And doesn’t Leftist Hollywood’s refusal to take on Islam add up to a politically incorrect and culturally insensitive insult to Muslims? As Penn Jillette Tweeted so elegantly last week:

“I believe the most damning thing that can be said about Muslims is saying you’re afraid to say anything.”

Or as an agnostic friend of mine emailed last night: 

“Your headline needs to read, ‘Comedy Central Determines That Christians Are Nicer and More Tolerant Than Muslims’”

So I guess that means we Christians should take the announcement of what looks to be another tired, old, cliched, cinematic attack on our faith as a compliment, right?

Hayden Christensen has signed on to star in Snakes of a Plane/Cellular/The Final Destination director David R. Ellis‘ big screen adaptation of John Case’s thriller novel The Genesis Code.

And what is “The Genesis Code” about? As though you have to ask. From the press release announcing the film [emphasis mine throughout]:

The story follows a former national security expert, played by Christensen, who, while investigating the murder of his only sister and her young son, discovers that a religious sect called The Shadow of the Cross may be involved. With the help of his sister’s friend Ana, they follow the clues to a clinic in the mountains of Italy, where a terrifying secret experiment has been conducted – successfully. The results are so threatening to the foundation of the Church that they will do anything to keep it from being revealed.

From the filmmaker’s own description, at best the Church is portrayed as threatened by a truth they’ll do anything to keep secret. If that sounds vaguely familiar to another Catholic-bashing franchise starring our friend Tom War-of-Racism Hanks, you’re not alone. From a couple of rave customer reviews on Amazon:

I read a lot of thrillers, and I really enjoyed THE GENESIS CODE for the most part. This novel resembles the DA VINCI CODE in the sense that it’s a religious thriller, and the villains and assassins are far-right Catholics.

Another:

Science vs right-wing religion? Hmmm … haven’t we heard that somewhere before?

The good news is that Hayden Christensen’s been cast to lead the potential franchise. So if he’s as inept and over his head at undermining religious faith as he was at mythologizing Darth Vader…

We may not live to see the day, but eventually the truth will be told and the history will be written and it will not be kind to this Hollywood generation. Not kind at all.  They are not only on the wrong side of history, and this war, but they know it and rather than fight they have chosen instead to bow and scrape — to go morally AWOL. 

As the “South Park” censorship and the rest of this report proves, all the Big Talk during the Bush years from our artiste class about questioning power was just as we suspected: a bull shit fig leaf for partisan cowards.  

There are notable exceptions in 90210-Land, but for the most part and for the first time since the invention of this wonderful art form we call the motion picture, The Men Who Make The Movies are nothing close to men. They’re hardly even artists.

What we have instead is an industry infected with partisan Leftists; gutless appeasers of the highest order who at best have chosen to run from this fight and at worst have joined the other side.

NOTE: As always, I want to offer my insincerest apologies for breaking the well-known rule that only allows Hollywood’s big elite stable of butt-boy writers to speculate about an unseen film.

The Pope is dead and to elect the new Holy Father, the ancient ritual of the Conclave is set to begin when the four Cardinals most likely to be chosen, the preferiti, are kidnapped. An ancient brotherhood known as the Illuminati takes responsibility. They have no demands and only wish to teach the Church a lesson for a violent purging of their scientific “free thinkers” hundreds of years ago and to do that they have promised to violently kill one Cardinal an hour, each in a different location, with the grand finale being the complete destruction of Vatican City with an anti-matter bomb stolen in the film’s opening scene.

The only clues offered that might save the day are also meant to further the Illuminati’s pro-science stance. Each clue is based on the four altars of science: earth, air, wind, and fire and to help unravel these symbols, Harvard Professor Robert Langdon is called in. Joining him is Vittorio Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), the gorgeous Italian scientist who helped create the anti-matter and the best hope to disarm it.

Before the story even has a chance to get going, “Angels & Demons” seals its fate as an episodic snoozer. For the first forty minutes, using awkward asides and clumsy exposition, the Langdon character uses every opportunity (and creates a few of his own) to chastise the Catholic Church for its historical secrecy, hatred of modern art, book burning, anti-science posture and a violent past borne of intolerance and fear of truth. Now, I’m no historian, so all of this might carry some credibility (or not), but I also understand that another word for Leftist Kryptonite is “context” and that never once is the overwhelming good the church does given a hearing (other than a single sentence tossed off by an unsympathetic character). The result of this relentless demonizing is to completely undermine the story’s tension and suspense. In other words: Why should we care whether or not this horrible institution survives? This may be the first mainstream Hollywood thriller where our protagonist isn’t racing to save something worth saving.

Make no mistake, the filmmakers here are smart professionals who have been around a while and who fully understand that in order to tell a compelling story the audience must be emotionally invested in the outcome. Unfortunately, with their relentless stream of (at best) out-of-context Catholic bigotry, they’ve made the conscious choice to undermine our sympathizing with the very institution in danger, and this is done at the expense of telling what could have been a much stronger story. You might as well make a film with someone in a race against time to save Charles Manson.

To qualify “Angels & Demons” as a movie would be naïve in the extreme. What we have here is a big, clumsy cannonball in the culture war launched, not by filmmakers, but by ideological warriors who know how to use film.

But even if Howard and company had wanted to tell the best story they could, A&D would still have its problems. Having one Cardinal executed each hour in the grisliest of fashions with the promise of a big boom to top it all off may sound like the perfect way to structure a thriller, but Harvard Symbologists are a long way from Indiana Jones.

Hanks must have been bored stiff.  Langdon is all about the wash – rinse — repeat, but it goes like this: Puzzle to solve — furrow brow — light comes to eyes — point somewhere with authority – speak in academic tongues – dash off screen-left – jump in car – drive through ridiculously busy streets but still arrive barely in time in a way only Jack Bauer could relate to. But to the hero of “24’s” credit, with only an hour between murders, he’s never stopped to wash up, change clothes, enjoy a refreshing cup of coffee and chat up the help like Langdon does in a truly surreal moment.

As far as the most awkward moments, it’s hard to choose between the awkward stem cell debate between protesters the camera thrusts us into or the awkward shoe-horned shot at the energy industry near the film’s end.  There might have been PETA posters on the Vatican walls but Howard likes his cinematography dark, so it was hard to tell.

Too much of the suspense is as contrived as these political moments trying to disguise themselves as a theme. Langdon’s a College Professor, Vetra’s a scientist, and yet the Vatican police sure do leave them alone in the most dangerous of circumstances an awful lot. But even then you never feel Langdon’s in any real danger. I counted at least three times where the killer could’ve easily offed him and didn’t.

For a PG-13 film, A&D is loaded with a surprising amount of graphic violence and the performances vary. Armin Mueller-Stahl comes off best as a senior Cardinal whose motives remain in doubt until the very end, Ewan McGregor enjoys some good moments until a preposterous climax undoes all his good work, Hanks is Hanks, and the fetching Zurer just doesn’t have a whole lot to do.

Big movie. Big stars. Hard to stay away. I get that. But if you remember that “Angels & Demons” wasn’t conceived with the goal of telling the best story possible, you won’t be as disappointed.

I’m a fan of Ron Howard. I’m also a Roman Catholic. So when Howard recently defended his upcoming film, Angels and Demons, on the Huffington Post from criticism leveled by William Donohue of the Catholic League, I sat up and took notice.

Here’s an understatement for you: Not everybody likes William Donohue. Whereas some admire him as a passionate defender of the faith, others view him as a hectoring, self-righteous censor, with a tendency to get red-faced and a bit shouty when locking horns on one of the ubiquitous news talk shows.

Howard, of course, is always calm and collected. Besides, he’s Opie; and who doesn’t like Opie? So I enter this fray with the greatest trepidation, fully expecting to regret every minute of it.

Howard’s panoply of defenses included that familiar old warhorse: don’t knock it if you haven’t seen it. Ordinarily I have a lot of sympathy for such an argument. In this case, however, Howard’s new film is based on a novel of the same name first published nine years ago. And it was written by Dan Brown who also penned The Da Vinci Code, which Howard rather faithfully (no pun intended?) adapted into a movie with the same star (Tom Hanks). So, score one for Donohue.

But this isn’t about Howard vs. Donohue, as entertaining as that MMA match may be. It’s about Angels and Demons, alighting in a theater near you May 15.

A few years ago, intrigued by the fuss surrounding The Da Vinci Code, I read Angels and Demons. Why? Code was still in hardback, and Angels was only $7.99. I wasn’t about to give Brown the satisfaction of my $24.99 — not that I think his bank account noticed.

Later, I watched Code on cable (once again, not eager to give my money to an arguably anti-Christian work. So I think I’ve got sufficient standing to comment.

Reading Angels and Demons, I wasn’t so much struck by the work’s bigotry as by how badly it was written. The cliched style is the literary equivalent of cotton candy. And for someone with so much animus toward religion, Brown employs the deus ex machina more frequently than the Old Testament.

But more disturbing is Brown’s commingling of fact and fiction disguised as fact, aimed at convincing his readership that the Catholic Church is vehemently, even violently anti-science, and therefore anti-progress and anti-reason.

By fiction disguised as fact, I don’t mean standard historical fiction techniques like creating new characters against a backdrop of actual historical events. I mean massively altering or fabricating historical events and chronologies. For instance: virtually every historical fiction writer fudges dates a little, but Brown shifts key timelines by more than a century.

Perhaps Brown counts on most of us to be too lazy or obtuse to fact-check his work on the Internet. And judging from his hordes of unquestioning fans (and, usually, myself), he’s probably right.

[SPOILER ALERT: The rest of this article contains spoilers. If you don't like spoilers and haven't read or seen Angels and Demons yet, then you shouldn't read further. On the other hand, maybe you should read on, because at least you'll be armed against the falsehoods that pervade Angels. It's up to you.]

So, I got off my duff (a matter of speech — I actually sat on my duff throughout this ordeal) and actually (gasp) looked up some of the claims Brown makes in Angels and Demons.

Here are just a few inaccuracies (hardly an exhaustive list) I picked up in several exhausting minutes on the Web:

Brown claims: Copernicus was murdered by the Catholic Church.
Fact: Copernicus died quietly in bed at age 70 from a stroke, and his research was supported by Church officials; he even dedicated his masterwork to the Pope.

Brown claims: “Antimatter is the ultimate energy source. It releases energy with 100% efficiency.”
Fact: CERN, the lab which plays an important role in his story, actually debunked this claim on their website: “The inefficiency of antimatter production is enormous: you get only a tenth of a billion of the invested energy back.”

Brown claims: Churchill was a “staunch Catholic.”
Fact: Any history buff could tell you that Churchill wasn’t Catholic, he was Anglican; nor was he particularly religious. The only things Churchill was staunch about were cigars, whiskey, and defending the British Empire.

Brown claims: Pope Urban VII banished Bernini’s famous statue The Ecstasy of St. Teresa “to some obscure chapel across town” because it was too racy for the Vatican.
Fact: The statue was actually commissioned by Cardinal Cornaro specifically for the Cornaro Chapel (Brown’s “obscure chapel”). Moreover, the sculpture was completed in 1652 — eight years after Urban’s death.

Brown claims: Bernini and famed scientist Galileo were members of the Illuminati.
Fact: The Illuminati was founded in Bavaria in 1776. Bernini died in 1680, while Galileo died in 1642 — more than a century before the Illuminati were first formed.

This last falsehood bears further examination, because the Illuminati are so integral to the plot of Angels and Demons. The great Baroque artist Bernini is also a central figure in Brown’s tale.

It may seem like a small “white lie” to change the timeline so drastically, and to make Bernini a key player in an Illuminati plot against the Catholic Church. But Bernini was an extraordinary Baroque artist who deserves better than Brown’s treatment.

Imagine that someone made a film that portrayed Steven Spielberg as a closet anti-Semite and Holocaust denier. Movie fans would be justifiably outraged.

But Dan Brown wrote a book (soon to be a movie!) identifying another great artistic virtuoso, Bernini, as a secret atheist who hated the Catholic Church. In reality, though, Bernini was a devout Catholic who went to mass every day and pursued the spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, which include up to five hours of daily silent meditation.

In one of the movie trailers (since taken down — I wonder why?), Tom Hanks chastises Vatican officials — “You guys don’t even read your own history!” — for not knowing about “La Purga,” the branding and execution of four Illuminati scientists in 1668.

The irony’s so rich, it could pay off the national debt. Because, you see, it’s Hanks’ character who doesn’t know his history. Repeat after me: there were no Illluminati before 1776. (Of course, that’s just what they want us to believe! Mwu-hahaha!)

Most of Brown’s historical misrepresentations tend to malign Christianity or the Catholic Church in particular. If these were just haphazard mistakes, you’d expect roughly half to be positive. But the book’s agenda clearly is to tarnish the Church’s image.

Some might argue that the Church has done a good enough job of that on its own, what with the Crusades, the Inquisition, the child-abuse scandals, and other shameful episodes in its past. Brown is like the cop who plants evidence on a suspect because he thinks he’s guilty. If his case against the Church is so strong, why make things up?

Nevertheless, Ron Howard encourages William Donohue to see the movie version of Angels and Demons for himself. The only reason that could make a difference is if the movie tones down some of the anti-Catholic aspects of the novel. So perhaps that’s a kind of acknowledgement that the book was too harsh, and the movie will, indeed, be different.

Well, there is one area, apparently, where we already know the film will stray from the novel. One of the bad guys is the Hassassin, whom Brown described as a “mahogany-skinned,” misogynistic Middle Easterner. According to the movie’s IMDb page, however, the actor portraying this character is… Danish.

His character name is altered from Hassassin (related to the Persian term for a Muslim sect) to the more generic-sounding Assassin. Some on the IMDb message boards suggest that the filmmakers changed him from a Middle Easterner because they were afraid of potential controversy.

So let’s get this straight: It’s okay to bash the Catholic Church as a violent institution opposed to reason. But don’t you dare make one bad guy (out of several) a Middle Easterner.

Why? Because Catholics may gripe, write letters, boycott, even sic William Donohue on you. But they won’t riot. And they won’t behead anybody.

To quote one of my favorite movies, “How do you like that? I buried the lead.”

Part II to come later…. Maybe….