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"Noah" is a bizarre movie.

It's a modern blockbuster, chock full of the visual and aural and narrative tics we expect from modern blockbusters: flash-cut nightmares and hallucinations, prophecies and old wise men, predictions of apocalypse and a savior's rise, computer-generated monsters with galumphing feet and deep voices, brawny men punching and stabbing each other, and crowd scenes and floods and circling aerial views of enormous structures being built, scored to tom-toms and men chanting and women wailing.

But wait: this is not the latest Marvel Comics epic. Nor is it a standard-issue messianic sci-fi film along the lines of " Star Wars " or " The Matrix ." "Noah" is more of a surrealist nightmare disaster picture fused to a parable of human greed and compassion, all based on the bestselling book of all time, the Bible, mainly the Book of Genesis.

More specifically, "Noah" is writer-director Darren Aronofksy's interpretation of the story of Noah and the flood. He's made a few changes.

Okay, more than a few. Way more. This is the Book of Genesis after a page one rewrite.

Among other things, Aronofsky has stirred in ideas from earlier film versions of Noah's story, plus bits from other religions and mythologies, including the Kabbalah, pre-Christian paganism and, it would appear, J.R.R. Tolkien and "The Neverending Story." And he's worked in what comic books or long-form TV watchers would term "callbacks" to earlier parts of the Old Testament, including the slaying of Abel by his brother Cain, the death of Noah's father Lamech, and Adam and Eve's ejection from the Garden of Eden. The film's most visually inventive sequence is an ellipsis in the main narrative: a self-contained, time lapse retelling of the birth of the universe—essentially a Big Bang story that could be dropped right into either version of the great science show "Cosmos." And of course, the international cast speaks with English accents, or tries to, English accents being Hollywood's way of conveying "foreignness" or "antiquity" without making ticket buyers read subtitles. All the actors have elegantly sculpted eyebrows and gorgeous hair, particularly Russell Crowe 's Noah, who in one scene sports a teased-up 'do that makes him look like a beefy version of Christopher Walken in "The King of New York."

Noah is still the anchor of this partly-waterborne epic. But in this version he is more of an action hero. When the flood waters rise, he changes again, becoming an antihero, and a menace to his own family; their ranks include Noah's wife wife Naameh ( Jennifer Connelly ), his sons Shem ( Douglas Booth ), Ham ( Logan Lerman ) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem’s wife-to-be Ila ( Emma Watson ). The latter was adopted by Noah as an infant. Much is made of the inferiority complex Ila suffers because of her infertility. She has a supernatural scar on her stomach and cannot bear children. Or so we're told.

Ila's infertility proves important later, when she ends up in the belly of a 300x50x30 cubit ark alongside the birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians and insects under her adoptive daddy's protection. Before the flood, God spoke to Noah, not in a voice but through a series of mysterious dreams that connect the events of Genesis 6-9 with earlier sections. It goes like this: Adam and Eve were banished from the Garden after Eve fell prey to the serpent's charms and ate the forbidden fruit (from a tree that looks very much like the Tree of Life in Aronofsky's " The Fountain "). The descendants of Cain and Abel waged war against each other. The descendants of Cain allied themselves with the The Watchers, a race of fallen angels or seraphim who were encrusted by hardened magma created when they fell from Heaven to earth like shooting stars and smashed craters in the ground; these creatures now lumber across the landscape like Transformers, or like the Ents as visualized in Peter Jackson's "Rings" movies, grumbling and roaring and making pronouncements in the heavily-filtered voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella (who were probably told they had gravel voices at various points during their lives, but never imagined they'd be put to use in quite this way). The Watchers are big and scary, and at first they seem as though they'll be obstacles to Noah's mission, but they soon have a change of heart and end up helping Noah and his family build the Ark to beat the flood. But it's not all hearts and flowers after that, because Noah's gotten it into his head that only the animals should survive—that after the flood he will have to kill his wife and children and himself, to prevent sinful humanity from angering The Creator again.

And it's here that things take a turn toward modern-day allegory. As Time's Richard Corliss points out in an excellent long analysis of "Noah," the last "adaptation with anything like Aronofsky’s sociopolitical seriousness was the 1928 silent film Noah’s Ark , which compares the flood ('A deluge of water drowning a world of lust') to World War I ('A deluge of blood drowning a world of hate!')."

Aronofsky's film seems to have the same aims but different concerns. "Noah" ties God's wrath to the indiscriminate despoiling of the land and the slaughter of earth's animal population by greedy and hungry humans. (Noah and his family are vegetarians and view the consumption of meat as a sin against God, referred to here only as "the Creator.") The deluge, vividly described by Noah as "the waters of the earth meeting the waters of the sky," is depicted as kind of a nautical version of a panini press that sandwiches the earth's creatures between slices of roaring water and crushes the life out of them. In this Biblical epic, water doesn't just rain down and creep up toward the Ark, it gurgles up from the soil, the cracked earth filling up like blood welling in wounds. Sometimes it erupts with geyser-like force. An aerial view of the flood spreading across the land evokes cancer spreading. A spectacular pull-back from the endangered planet shows the atmosphere dotted with dozens of hurricane cloud-whorls.

Aronofsky has also added an action film subplot bulked up with obsessive antihero craziness and daddy issues. He's inserted the chieftain of Cain's descendants, Tubal-Cain, described in Genesis as “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron," into the story. The character is a warrior-despot enemy of Noah's and (intriguingly) a dark mirror of Noah's gravest flaws and worst impulses. As inhabited by Ray Winstone , who plays this sort of raging bull character better than anybody, Tubal-Cain is a creature of pure appetite, and super-macho. The dude put the patriarch in "patriarchal." He's all privilege, all entitlement; he thinks everyone and everything (including life itself) exists for his sake. He thinks Noah's concern about the rape of nature is just a bunch of girly-man whining, stopping just short of calling him a hippie or a tree-hugger. He is determined to take over the Ark and fill it with his own tribe, or barring that, to get on board himself, to survive the flood he once dismissed as false prophecy.

Get on board he does, and once Tubal-Cain and Noah are trapped within the same space: Tubal-Cain peeling off the dissatisfied members of the clan and working them, the way the serpent worked Eve; Noah losing his grip on sanity and goodness and turning into a mad sea captain. Suddenly it's a haunted-house psychodrama, with two bad daddies terrorizing women and children in the bowels of a waterborne Hotel Overlook. As Noah becomes more unhinged, he starts to physically resemble Tubal-Cain. By the time the two men trade blows, Noah isn't just fighting a murderous stowaway, he's fighting to suppress he own worst impulses.

This is, as you've gathered, an immense, weird, ungainly, often laughably overwrought and silly movie, an amalgamation of elements from various literary and cinematic forebears. Some elements fuse beautifully and others seem to repel each other; still others float onscreen in isolation, like bits of wreckage carried along by floodwater. Aronofsky will rightly be criticized for adding a lot of images and notions that make Noah's story less, rather than more, special—elements you can't escape at movie theaters because every modern fantasy and sci-fi film and disaster picture seems to have been imagined by the same screenwriting hive-mind, and envisioned by the same boring CGI software. The Watchers with their clomping feet; the early scenes of tribal combat and "You killed my daddy!" emoting; the scenes between Noah and his aged grandfather Methuselah ( Anthony Hopkins ) that turn the latter into sort of a Biblical equivalent of Yoda or E.T.; Noah and Tubal-Cain whaling on each other in the belly of the ark: you've seen it all in recent years, over and over, in all manner of Hollywood blockbuster.

And yet there's still a ferocious originality to "Noah." Despite its assemblage of borrowed and stolen and re-imagined pieces, you have never seen anything quite like it. It's a disaster movie with environmentalist overtones and CGI rock-beasts and animals and apocalyptic events, and musings on the primal roles of the father and the mother, and the parents' desire to control their uncontrollable children, and all of this is periodically interrupted by flash-cuts of the serpent in the garden, and a glowing hand picking forbidden fruit, and Cain bashing Abel's brains in silhouette. Aronofsky's "cubits" are actual cubes: the finished Ark is comprised of blocks, and when it bobs on brackish waves it looks like a giant wooden Lego brick. Sometimes Aronofsky puts everything else on hold so that Ray Winstone can deliver a monologue about why man is not just entitled but obligated to kill and eat animals and use the land however he sees fit, or so that Russell Crowe can tell the story of the Big Bang by candlelight or sing an infant to sleep in a quieter version of his Inspector Javert voice from "Les Miserables."

Throughout the movie's running time, a word kept flashing in my head: "fervor." Aronofsky is a fervent filmmaker. He always has been, from his debut feature " Pi " onward. Many aspects of "Noah" feel like an organic continuation of themes and elements that have obsessed him for the past fifteen years: husbands and wives and fathers and mothers and sons and daughters protecting, dominating, excluding and terrorizing each other; the alluring power of obsession, be it for drugs (" Requiem for a Dream "), romantic nostalgia and denial of death's finality ("The Fountain") or artistic ambition (" Black Swan "); the intrusion of supernatural or mythical or uncanny events into "normal" life; the notion that sanity and rationality are fragile mental states that can be easily shattered by trauma or disaster.

If I had to compare "Noah" to any previous Biblical movies, I'd go with Mel Gibson's " The Passion of the Christ " and Martin Scorsese's " The Last Temptation of Christ ," not because the stories are similar (obviously they aren't; Old Testament vs. New) but because, even when you're confused or disgusted or bored, you still feel the director's mad passion radiating from the screen. Aronofsky has made a major, perhaps catastrophic tactical error, in that we can always feel his obsessive certainty but we can't quite translate it into our own terms, as we should be able to do with any fable or cautionary tale that's meant to illuminate or instruct. What's onscreen often feels more like a visual transcript of one man's fantasy or nightmare, with all the baffling or nonsensical juxtapositions of this and that and the other thing left intact, exactly as Aronofsky's sleeping mind first encountered them.

The net effect reminded me of one of my favorite passages from the New Testament, 1 Corinthians 14.4: "Anyone who speaks in a tongue edifies themselves, but the one who prophesies edifies the congregation." Aronofsky is speaking in tongues here, edifying himself but not the congregation. But it's not every day that you get to see a major American filmmaker speak in tongues, babbling to a theater full of strangers about the astonishing dream he had, a dream that he's sure is important, even though he can't explain precisely why. You don't see movies like this everyday. You don't see movies like this ever. That's not nothing.

Matt Zoller Seitz

Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large of RogerEbert.com, TV critic for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism.

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Film credits.

Noah (2014)

Rated PG-13

Russell Crowe as Noah

Jennifer Connelly as Naameh

Emma Watson as Ila

Logan Lerman as Ham

Douglas Booth as Shem

Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah

Ray Winstone as Tubal Cain

Kevin Durand as Og

Darren Aronofsky

Director of Photography

Matthew Libatique

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Noah Reviews

The film questions a creator’s obligations at earthly and spiritual levels, with complications that concern masculine privilege to color the margins. "Noah" doesn’t preach to the choir. It dares the choir to keep up amid minor chords & melodic inversion.

Full Review | Original Score: 4/5 | Apr 7, 2024

As an exercise in retelling the story, it'll draw more laughs and grunts of incomprehension than actual admiration. Still, Noah is a brave film – and that's always worth appreciating.

Full Review | Apr 18, 2023

Ancient mythology and modern cosmology come together in the story of Genesis, told in Noah’s own words and illustrated with imagery reminiscent of Cosmos, a wedding of science and religion in a way respectful of both.

Full Review | Jan 7, 2023

It’s a movie that teases us with what it could have been but ultimately stumbles because of what it actually is.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 24, 2022

In the end, perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to Aronofsky is that he’s made a compelling discussion piece, but a frustratingly uneven one.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Aug 15, 2022

A thought-provoking take on a familiar story that will keep you guessing until the end credits roll.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021

It's a film that makes one think and feel and, yes, wonder.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/4.0 | Sep 18, 2020

The film is a visceral spectacle in Darren Aronofsky's catalog. [Full review in Spanish]

Full Review | Original Score: 7/10 | Jun 25, 2020

I didn't hate it.

Full Review | Apr 27, 2020

Who knew that the infamous 40 days and 40 nights could have that much of an edge to it?

Full Review | Original Score: 3/4 | Apr 6, 2020

Missed opportunities.

Full Review | Mar 26, 2020

If any disclaimer is necessary concerning its loose inspiration from Christian mythology, it's that the ambitious venture is colossally silly and unerringly stale.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Aug 29, 2019

Bolstered by strong performances by the entire cast, strong visuals, and a filled out script, "Noah" may be one of the better biblical adaptations.

Full Review | Aug 8, 2019

It takes all of five minutes for Noah to deliver a Dikembe Mutombo-like swat to expectations of Sunday school bible study.

Full Review | Original Score: A | Aug 6, 2019

However conflicted this flawed representation of archetypal mythology may make you feel, it is certainly worth seeing.

Full Review | Original Score: 3.5/5 | Jul 31, 2019

Despite Noah's vivid surface appeal, it ultimately fails to recreate the tale's original sense of thematic unity, and thus becomes acutely aware of its own deprived meaning.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2019

A cinematic enigma -- both maddening and magnificent... "Noah" requires a leap of faith, but if you are willing to take a chance it is a film that will challenge and impress.

Full Review | Feb 1, 2019

Throw in some plot holes that left me annoyed, and it was a rough way to spend two hours and 18 minutes.

Full Review | Jan 29, 2019

Noah is a worthy, ambitious mess of a movie, and as a deeply personal new take on an old tale, it's the kind of mess we could use a bit more often from Hollywood.

Full Review | Original Score: B+ | Dec 22, 2018

Once the film has blown it's CGI load, it turns into a kitchen sink drama, an episode of Eastenders as directed by Mike Leigh.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Dec 11, 2018

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Film Review: ‘Noah’

Man builds ark, survives flood, then wonders what it was all for in Darren Aronofsky's long-awaited, hotly debated biblical epic.

By Scott Foundas

Scott Foundas

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Having made movies about obsessive characters looking for God — or something like Him — in the numerology of the Kabbalah (“Pi”), at the end of a heroin needle (“Requiem for a Dream”), and in the outer reaches of the galaxy (“The Fountain”), surely it was only a matter of time before Darren Aronofsky got to making one about a man with a direct line to the Creator. And so we have “Noah,” in which the world’s most famous shipwright becomes neither the Marvel-sized savior suggested by the posters nor the “environmentalist wacko” prophesied by some test-screening Cassandras, but rather a humble servant driven to the edge of madness in his effort to do the Lord’s bidding. Counterintuitive, perhaps, but by no means sacrilegious, Aronofsky’s uneven but undeniably bold, personal, visually extravagant take on the Old Testament tale will surely polarize critics and audiences while riding a high sea of curiosity to strong initial worldwide B.O. Only time — and word of mouth — will tell if it can stay the course for anywhere near 40 days and nights (and top “Black Swan'”s $329 million global cume).

Whatever comes of “Noah” (which opens this weekend in several foreign markets, including Mexico, a week ahead of its March 28 domestic launch), the film certainly ranks alongside “The Great Gatsby” and “Gravity” as one of the riskiest director-driven passion projects to be gambled on by today’s ever more cautious major studios. And if Aronofsky’s $130 million, 137-minute movie ultimately feels compromised at all, it’s less by studio interference than by its director’s own desire to make a metaphysical head movie that is also an accessible action blockbuster (where “The Fountain” tilted heavily toward the former). “Noah” does not always sit easily astride those competing impulses, but it is never less than fascinating — and sometimes dazzling — in its ambitions. Once upon a time, the famously austere French director Robert Bresson was enlisted by Dino De Laurentiis to film the Noah story for his planned “The Bible … In the Beginning,” only to be fired when he told the producer he didn’t intend to film any of the animals, just their tracks upon the sand. And there may be no better description of Aronofsky’s film than to say that it has one foot in the world of Bresson and the other in that of Jerry Bruckheimer.

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For starters, “Noah” doesn’t look like any biblical epic we’ve ever seen before, with the verdant hillsides and ashen volcanic flatlands of Iceland standing in for the deserts of the Middle East, photographed with rugged grandeur by Aronofsky’s longtime d.p. Matthew Libatique. Likewise, the costumes (by “American Hustle” Oscar nominee Michael Wilkinson) eschew robes and sandals in favor of heartier attire that might best be described as proto-army surplus. As for the supposed “liberties” Aronofsky and co-screenwriter Ari Handel have taken with their sacrosanct source, they aren’t boldfaced transgressions so much as interpretations, additions and embellishments designed to flesh out the spare Noah narrative to feature length. This includes making the characters far younger than those described in the Good Book — which, if followed to the letter, would have yielded an antediluvian “Amour” (another movie, one should note, with a role for a symbolical white dove).

Aronofksy’s Noah (superbly played by Russell Crowe ) doesn’t hear God’s voice booming down from the heavens like in Bill Cosby’s celebrated standup routine, or sit on the stoop shooting the breeze with the Creator like Steve Carell in “Evan Almighty.” Rather, the looming flood and the mission of the ark come to him in the course of two vividly rendered hallucinogenic dreams — one natural, the other induced by some special “tea” served up by Noah’s grandpa, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins, leaving no bit of scenery unchewed). And because the story lacks a natural antagonist, the film corrals one from elsewhere in Genesis in the form of Tubal-cain (played as a youth by Finn Wittrock), a descendant of the Abel-slaying Cain first seen in a brief prologue delivering a fatal blow to Noah’s father, Lamech (Marton Csokas) — a scene that, like much of “Noah,” feels straight out of a 1940s frontier western. Later, as a full-blown supervillain (Ray Winstone) hip to Noah’s survivalist scheme, Tubal-cain and his rogue army vow to hitch a ride on the ark or else die trying. (This leads to a large-scale battle sequence which, while impressively staged, is easily the film’s most conventional passage — an extended outtake from Middle-earth.)

Here is where you feel Aronofsky and Handel laboring intensely, with only partial success, to turn what has traditionally been something of a one-man show into more of an ensemble affair. Where Noah is the model locavore, who takes from the land only as much as he needs and strives to be at one with his surroundings (but who, being Russell Crowe, can also kick serious butt when need be), Tubal-cain personifies the debauched, resource-plundering wastrels God seeks to smite from the universe. And though Winstone plays the part with sinister flair, the character never becomes much more than a stock bad guy, on hand to pop up like a jack-in-the-box at the least convenient moments, and to try wooing Noah’s petulant, Skywalker-ish son, Ham (Logan Lerman), over to the dark side. Ham, meanwhile, may be patient zero for middle-child syndrome, spending most of the movie sulking about wondering when he’s going to become a man, and staring dolefully at the beautiful Ila (Emma Watson), an orphan girl who was adopted as a child by Noah and his wife, Naameh (a solid but underused Jennifer Connelly), and who becomes betrothed to their eldest son, Shem (Douglas Booth). Even Ila gets her own inner conflict in the form of a barren womb that makes her feel like an unworthy bride — especially, you know, given the pressure of repopulating the earth.

But if the interpersonal dramas don’t quite fully engage, as spectacle “Noah” rarely disappoints, commencing with the building of the ark itself. Designed by production designer Mark Friedberg (and built, to the actual dimensions specified by the Bible, on a New York soundstage), it is an awesome thing — not the traditional sailing vessel of many an artist’s interpretation, but rather an enormous wooden warehouse that makes the Maersk Alabama look like a lifeboat. In its construction, Noah is lent several (huge) helping hands by the Watchers (the film’s version of the biblical Nephilim), fallen angels exiled to earth for their loyalty to mankind and imprisoned inside towering granite bodies that they lug about like walking mountains. Intricately designed and voiced by the likes of Frank Langella, Nick Nolte and regular Aronofsky featured player Mark Margolis, these weary witnesses to all the wonders and horrors of creation are skeptical at first of Noah’s intentions, but eventually rally to his aid, and they become the most special (and emotionally resonant) of the movie’s many elaborate special effects.

The arrival of the animals, which appear to self-organize by phylum, is a similarly marvelous sight (even if the creatures retain a conspicuous CGI appearance). Then comes the Frankenstorm, in which the waters of the earth quite literally rise up to meet those of the heavens — a suitably Dramamine-worthy sequence, expertly rendered by Aronofsky and all his technicians. Not soon to be forgotten: the image of humanity’s last dregs clambering for a foothold on a lone rocky outcropping as it, too, is finally swallowed by the sea.

Yet it is only after the tide has ebbed and a new day has dawned that “Noah” seems to come to its real place of purpose. Taking inspiration from a line in Genesis about Noah’s post-flood descent into drunkenness, Aronofsky and Handel imagine an exhausted hero who can’t understand why, if all mankind was meant to perish, he and his family should be saved. And since that telephone to the heavens only receives calls, Noah has no one to ask. Crowe is incredibly good in these scenes — you feel his torment as if it were a fire burning him from the inside out — culminating in a terrifying moment of near-infanticide that, intentionally or not, recalls James Mason’s explosive lament from Nicholas Ray’s “Bigger Than Life”: “God was wrong!”

The purists will blanche — injections of existential angst and self-doubt into Scripture are always guaranteed to rankle (as “The Last Temptation of Christ” proved). But it’s here that one feels fully why Aronofsky wanted to make this movie in the first place, as Noah’s own age of anxiety seems to echo directly into our own. The movie leaves us with a crystalline image of a man who feels most adrift when he is finally standing on dry land — and who, regardless of what faith one subscribes to, cannot relate to that?

For all its visual flourishes, “Noah” offers an equally dynamic sonic experience, with immersive, multilayered effects designed to take full advantage of the new Dolby Atmos sound system, and a richly orchestrated score by regular Aronofsky music man Clint Mansell that alternates thunderous percussive beats with New Age-y twangs and hums.

Reviewed at Paramount screening room, New York, March 10, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 137 MIN.

Production: A Paramount release presented with Regency Enterprises of a Protozoa Pictures production. Produced by Scott Franklin, Darren Aronofsky, Mary Parent, Arnon Milchan. Executive producers, Ari Handel, Chris Brigham. Co-producers, Amy Herman, Cale Boyter.
Crew: Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Screenplay, Aronofsky, Ari Handel. Camera (color, 35mm), Matthew Libatique; editor, Andrew Weisblum; music, Clint Mansell; production designer, Mark Friedberg; supervising art director, Dan Webster; set decorator, Debra Schutt; costume designer, Michael Wilkinson; sound (Datasat/Dolby Atmos), Ken Ishii; supervising sound editor, Craig Henighan; re-recording mixers, Skip Lievsay, Craig Henighan; visual effects supervisor, Ben Snow; visual effects producer, Andrew Fowler; visual effects and animation, Industrial Light & Magic; visual effects, Look Effects, Inc., Technicolor, Mr. X Gotham; special effects supervisor, Burt Dalton; makeup effects and creature design, Adrien Morot; stunt coordinators, George Aguilar, Douglas Crosby; assistant director, Richard Graves; second unit director, George Aguilar; second unit camera, Lukasz Jogalla; casting, Mary Vernieu, Lindsay Graham.
With: Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Nick Nolte, Mark Margolis, Kevin Durand, Leo McHugh Carroll, Marton Csokas, Finn Wittrock, Madison Davenport, Gavin Casalegno, Nolan Gross, Skylar Burke, Dakota Goyo, Frank Langella.

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Noah: 'Russell Crowe is just about the only actor who could have pulled this off' – first look review

D arren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan and Requiem for a Dream, has here created a sombre, powerful biblical epic, shot through with a certain beserk grandeur and gloomy portentousness. Its desire to do justice to the spirit, if not the letter, of the scriptural source should not be doubted; Aronofsky, who co-wrote the script, has given us a grimy, roughened Noah story – one spattered with the blood of sacrificial victims, coated with snot and tears, and mostly lit by smoky torch flames.

In fleshing out, and embroidering, on the biblical narrative, Aronofsky and his co-writer Ari Handel have conceived of their Noah as an doughty warrior with a husbandman's conscience – early on, he tells his son off for picking one of the sparse flowers growing out of the rocky soil, saying: "We take only what we need, only what we can use." His boatbuilding mission is constructed as an implacable desire to ensure the earth – or "creation" as it is tenderly rendered – is eradicated of all humankind, including himself and his family: another scene has him cheerfully informing his young children in which order they'll bury each other, and which one will die alone.

Little of this, of course, is in Genesis; nor is there much of the intricacies of Noah's family life, though Aronofsky and Handel have taken their cues from what is there. Noah's middle son, Ham (played by Percy Jackson's Logan Lerman), becomes the lightning rod of dissent, rebellion and betrayal; in the bible, he is the one whose child is cursed after witnessing Noah's nakedness. (Incidentally, this latter scene, which appears to have upset US Christians, is in fact a model of Pasoliniesque brevity and decorum.) Shem, played by Douglas Booth as a bland scrubby-bearded hunk, is the good son, marrying Ila (Emma Watson), who appears to have been entirely invented for the film – largely to provide Noah with a character-redeeming decision that sets up the film's moral climax. Jennifer Connelly, as Noah's wife, becomes a substantial character, posing questions for the patriarch and acting in effect as his suppressed conscience.

As for Noah himself, Russell Crowe is just about the only actor who could have pulled off the mixture of muttering, furrowed-brow intensity and slice-and-dice combat (occasionally in concert with some rather preposterous CGI human-smashing giants made from rocks) that the role calls for. Crowe's commitment is entirely commendable, and he brings his A game: the furious singleness of purpose, the savage whispering, the unadorned machismo. It's this, in truth, that carries the picture through its sporadic longueurs and intermittent structural lurches; it also helps get over the occasional absurdities of the sonorous, cod-biblical dialogue.

Visually, as you would expect, Aronofsky's film looks a treat, alternating between push-in-the-face handheld camera and large-scale apocalyptic tableau that wouldn't be out of place in John Martin or Breugel . He also injects some of his utterly distinct fast-cut "hip hop" sequences, which work surprisingly well – and there's a brilliant five minute segment in the middle of the film accompanying Crowe's description of creation that must have been conceived in similar spirit to the birth-of-the-universe scene in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.

Impressive as much of his film is, however, Aronofsky never quite solves the main challenge of the semi-literal biblical adaptation: what is so economical, and beautifully expressed, on the page can become a heavy, lumbering beast when translated into conventional narrative. There are plenty of good inventions along the way – such as the anaesthetising of the animals in the ark, or the dried snakeskin that becomes an amulet, wound phylacteries-style round the forearm – but also a bit too much stiff-armed posturing of the kind beloved of the modern fantasy epic. Still, Aronofsky keeps things eminently watchable – at two and a half hours he has to.

First look review
Russell Crowe
Darren Aronofsky
Emma Watson

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REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s <i>Noah</i> Movie: Better Than the Book

REVIEW: Darren Aronofsky’s Noah Movie: Better Than the Book

M ovies aren’t supposed to be this good this early in the year. The first three months of 2014 have served up a top animated feature ( The Lego Movie ), a splendid documentary about a mad artist ( Jodorowsky’s Dune ) and that indescribable delight of The Grand Budapest Hotel . Now, to round out the trimester, Darren Aronofsky brings wild ambition and thrilling artistry to one of the Old Testament’s best-known, most dramatic, least plausible stories — Noah and the ark — with Russell Crowe infusing the role of God’s first seaman and zookeeper with all his surly majesty.

In Genesis 6:8 , God is displeased with the wickedness of men and resolves to kill all humans along with the rest of the earth’s creatures. (What did they do?) “I will blot out from the earth the human beings I have created — people together with animals and creeping things and birds of the air, for I am sorry that I have made them.” God commands the one righteous man, Noah, to build an ark, summon his family and two of every kind of living thing, and fill it with provisions for the entire menagerie. SPOILER ALERT FOR INFIDELS ONLY: After many months at sea, the water subsides, the ark’s inhabitants disperse and God promises Noah, “I will never again curse the ground because of humankind … nor will I ever again destroy every living creature as I have done … Be fruitful and multiply.” Like a golfer with an indulgent scorekeeper, humanity gets a mulligan. The penalty: all but one family must die.

In pop culture, the ark story has multiplied dozens of times, usually with a smile. John Huston played Noah as a benign patriarch in his 1966 The Bible … In the Beginning . Danny Kaye sang his way through the role in Richard Rodgers’ Broadway musical Two by Two ; and in Evan Almighty , Steve Carell was a modern Noah who got pooped on by birds and beasts alike. A rare adaptation with anything like Aronofsky’s sociopolitical seriousness was the 1928 silent film Noah’s Ark , which compares the flood (“A deluge of water drowning a world of lust”) to World War I (“A deluge of blood drowning a world of hate!”). Opening a year before the stock-market crash — which could be seen as heavenly judgment on the Jazz Age — and meant as a message of peace, Michael Curtiz’s movie stoked its own fatalities: three stunt players died during the shooting of the flood sequence.

(READ: Tim Newcomb on the battle over Noah )

The waters are mostly digital now; no humans were killed in the making of this Noah . But Aronofsky, emboldened by the $330 million worldwide box-office take of his last film, Black Swan , took some huge artistic and canonical gambles with this dead-serious, borderline-delirious movie. (So did Paramount Pictures and the movie’s other backers; Noah cost about $130 million to produce.) Sampling from the Old Testament and its apocrypha, plus bits of The Whole Earth Catalog , the director has hatched his most daring film since the 2006 The Fountain , a sadly underappreciated work that imagined the world’s violent past and utopian future through the eyes of a man (Hugh Jackman) trying to find a cure for his wife’s spreading cancer.

Noah is about a man whose mission is to obliterate Earth’s past and godfather its future. Replacing the word God with Creator and taking other scriptural liberties, the movie risks confusing those who don’t take the Bible literally and alienating those who do. The movie has been banned in several Muslim countries, including Indonesia , Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates . In the West, it has won some converts. Crowe and the Noah team secured an audience with Pope Francis , and an urgent campaign from Paramount brought a flock of evangelicals aboard Aronofsky’s ark.

(READ: Religious leaders give their blessing to Noah )

That’s a coup in itself, for Noah recasts the first doomsday story as the first climate-change tale — a disaster-movie scenario that could soon recur. For the Old Testament God, simply insert nature’s God (the Founding Fathers’ name for the Creator) and see the flood as a predictor for nature’s rebuking modern industry for polluting and overheating the atmosphere. Scientists predict that within decades most of the world’s coastal cities will be underwater if emissions are not drastically curtailed. Aronofsky’s text, disguised as a fable, is a warning of this inconvenient truth . He might be paraphrasing the old spiritual: “No more fire, the flood this time.”

In Aronofsky’s Bible-era setting for this toxic environment, Noah is a survivalist taking revenge on urban iniquity. Seeing the industrialized cities around him as wicked for their destruction of the environment as much as their sensual excesses, Noah assumes power of life and death over all living things. This fable of early man is The Croods with a Mensa IQ — and when the rabble storms the ark, it’s a home-invasion thriller of a family taking refuge in their divine-fallout shelter. As the unsaved hordes climb the hulls of the boat like zombies scaling the Jerusalem walls in World War Z , our hero fights to keep them out. It’s the end of the world as they know it, and he feels fine: Apocalypse Noah.

(READ: TIME’s reviews of The Croods and World War Z )

In the Genesis version, God does all the talking; Noah is his silent servant and enabler. But in the gospel according to Aronofsky and co-screenwriter Ari Handel, the Lord doesn’t boom basso profundo or soothe in Morgan Freeman’s baritone. Indeed, he speaks not in words at all but in visions that might be dreams aided by hallucinogens. The Aronofsky Israel is a land of magic, where rock giants that were once men (the Nephilim) stride the earth, where trees instantly bloom around Noah to provide wood for the ark and where animals flock to the building site as if from supernatural bidding. (Once inside, they are sedated so as not to devour one another.) In this mythic realm, Noah’s trance-revelation — of being submerged as creatures swim past him toward a boat on the surface — has to be the Creator’s command to build the ark. “Fire consumes, water cleanses,” Noah says. “He destroys all, but only to start again.”

To buttress the biblical recounting, Aronofsky imports elements of fantasy literature — the Nephilim, the stone-man Watchers, similar to J.R.R. Tolkien’s Ents, who help Noah construct the ark and fend off invaders — and Shakespearean tragedy. From Genesis 4 the movie borrows the character of Tubal-Cain, “the forger of all instruments of bronze and iron.” (Called the King of the Nephilim in the 1928 Noah’s Ark , he nearly succeeds in stowing away on the boat — a plot device Aronofsky expands on.) Here, as played by the fiercely swaggering Ray Winstone, Tubal-Cain is not only the thug chieftain of the city sinners, leading the charge on the ark, but also the man Noah saw kill his own father. One of his sons is Ham, but Noah’s true spiritual kin is Hamlet.

Ransacking genres far and wide, Aronofsky also samples art-film cosmology. He recapitulates the first chapters of Genesis (Noah was just the ninth generation after Adam) with quick images of a snake and an apple that pulses like a human heart, and when Noah briefly doubts his mission, he sees himself in reptilian form, as if he were in danger of becoming his own evil-twin snake. Aronofsky’s visual summary of the world’s creation, a story that Noah tells his sons, is like the 17-min. history of the universe in Terrence Malick’s The Tree of Life retold in a minute or two, but no less imposingly oneiric.

(READ: Corliss on The Tree of Life at Cannes and beyond )

This Noah is not a genial Doctor Dolittle. Burdened by his foreknowledge of the flood and its consequences, he’s in no mood to talk with the animals. Even in the early scenes, he’s more herbalist than PETA activist. He is sobered by the realization that his awful task is to save his family — wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly, who won an Oscar as Crowe’s wife in A Beautiful Mind ), sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll) and Shem’s betrothed Ila (Emma Watson) — while letting everyone else die. Naameh and the rest realize that too. They respect Noah’s leadership even as they must question some of his decisions.

ACTUAL SPOILER ALERT: Once devoted to replenishing the earth with his children’s spawn, Noah now accepts his and the world’s mortality. “Everything that was beautiful, everything that was good, we shattered,” he says, proclaiming, “We will work, complete our task and die with the rest.” Naameh is past child-bearing age, and Ila was rendered barren from a beating she endured as a child. Noah is disturbed when he learns that his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins) has laid a shaman’s hands on the girl and restored her fertility.

(SEE: The trailer for Noah )

In the movie’s two most intimate and shocking sequences, Noah keeps Ham from saving Na’el (Madison Davenport), a sweet refugee from Tubal-Cain’s land, and bringing her on the ark as his bride. He then tells the pregnant Ila that if she bears a daughter, he will kill the newborn. He has become the angry Old Testament God who ordered Abraham to slay his son Isaac before calling off the sacrifice. Apparently the Almighty’s genocidal impulse in his flood scheme is contagious; it has spread to a man who has an even more severe view of humanity, deeming it unworthy of a do-over.

In the 1967 comedy Bedazzled , when Peter Cook as the devil boasts of his satanic powers, Dudley Moore as a modern Faust shouts, “You’re a bleedin’ nutcase!” “They said the same of Jesus Christ,” Cook protests, and Moore retorts, “They said it of a lot of nutcases too.” The very pertinent question in Noah is whether its hero is God’s chosen or a nutcase. Is he a visionary or just seeing things? Methuselah has told his grandson, “You must trust that he speaks in a way that you can understand,” so viewers are encouraged to take on faith Noah’s decision to build the ark. Later, when he must rely not on the whispers of the deity but on his own fallible resources, he may be only a willful man — a beautiful mind — driven toward fatal delusion. END SPOILER ALERT.

(SEE: Seven other movies based on the Bible )

In this Old Testament passion play, the director seemingly had the same influence on his actors that the Creator did on Noah. Along with Crowe, giving his strongest performance in years, they rise to meet Aronofsky’s ferocious commitment. Connelly, who looks as if she had been hewn from flint, is the voice of reason, the heart of besieged humanity. Watson reveals a mature intensity far beyond Harry Potter ‘s Hermione; her tears could be mankind’s own keening elegy. Hopkins, the one jolly soul in the family, is a sage from an earlier age — the mesmerist as optimist. And Winstone, representing all that is wily and rapacious, works from an animosity toward a God that will speak to the ark builder but not to him.

As Noah threatens to go off the rails, so does Noah . But that’s inspiring too: proof of a grownup artist struggling with big issues, and then resolving them to create a crazy-great statement that is also a superb entertainment. In its grand recklessness the movie is closest to Aronofsky’s debut feature, the 1998 Pi , in which Max Cohen, a neurotic mathematician, gets mixed up with a Hassidic sect that believes the string of numbers Max has discovered is a secret code sent by God. That movie cost $60,000, this one about 2,000 times as much. But both films live by Max’s creed: “I’m on the edge, and that’s where it happens.”

(SEE: Corliss’s review of ᴨ , aka Pi )

Big-time directors and the studios that bankroll them prefer to dwell in the comfortable, familiar center, where mammon is God and the only divine word comes from focus groups. So for Aronofsky to construct an expensive spectacle, and to throw liturgical and dramatic challenges like lightning bolts at every member of the audience, is hardly less an achievement than to build and float an ark 300 cubits long (450 ft., or 137 m). Rarely has a film that flirts this solemnly with ambition bending toward madness been so masterly in carrying its spectators to its heights and through its depths. On both levels, Noah is a water thrill ride worth taking.

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Screen Rant

Is noah worth watching breaking down the 2014 russell crowe movie's reviews & rotten tomatoes.

Darren Aronofsky's 2014 biblical film, Noah, is trending on Netflix. Here's what critics and audiences have had to say about it since its release.

Noah's unique adaptation of the biblical tale is praised for its visuals and performances, making it worth a watch for fans of thought-provoking dramas.
Rotten Tomatoes scores don't tell the whole story - Noah received mixed reviews, but its visuals and cast performances were positively recognized.
Noah is an off-beat addition to Darren Aronofsky's filmography, blending biblical origins with fantasy and adventure elements for an entertaining story.

Darren Aronofsky's 2014 biblical epic, Noah , has found its way to trending on Netflix, but its reviews indicate the film isn't for everyone. Orchestrated by one of the most fascinating 21st-century filmmakers, Noah is an off-beat addition to Darren Aronofsky's filmography , as it's his only massive blockbuster. Biblical stories tend to be divisive in film, with movies like The Last Temptation of Christ being some of the most controversial ever made. Therefore, the film has mixed reviews, but Rotten Tomatoes and IMDb scores don't always tell the whole story.

One of the film's evident virtues is that Noah has a fantastic cast starring Russel Crowe, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and more. It's based on the biblical story of Noah's Ark, though it takes its creative liberties for Hollywood blockbuster purposes. Those decisions are bound to stir up controversy, as audiences have differing views on how adaptation should be handled in cinema, particularly when it involves such sensitive material. Noah mixes its biblical origins with fantasy, adventure, and more , resulting in a story that can be entertaining for the right audience.

Noah Has A 75% Score From Critics On Rotten Tomatoes

The movie has a rotten tomatoes audience score of 41%.

Darren Aronofsky's Noah has a 75% score, which places it in the middle of the pack in his filmography. A 75% score isn't anything to write home about, especially when his film The Wrestler boasts an outstanding 98% score. However, it's only a bit less than Requiem for a Dream , which is considered one of his critically acclaimed masterpieces yet only has a 78% Tomatometer. The point being that Rotten Tomatoes scores don't always tell the whole story . A 75% score isn't bad by any means, and many critics praised it for its performances and awe-inspiring visuals.

Based on Audience Score perception, Noah is a loose adaptation at best and is better watched with the desire to view an epic fantasy adventure movie rather than a biblical tale.

While critics mostly praised the film, audiences on Rotten Tomatoes were distasteful of the biblical epic. Noah has a dreadful 41% Audience Score, with many low scores attributed to the lack of faithfulness to the biblical tale. That creates a vital question when deciding whether to watch the movie, as the original story's meaning can play a significant part in one's perception of the film. Based on Audience Score perception, Noah is a loose adaptation at best and is better watched with the desire to view an epic fantasy adventure movie rather than a biblical tale.

10 Best Biblical Epics Of All Time

Noah's reviews praise its visuals & cast performances, the biblical epic brilliantly showcases darren aronofsky's unique direction..

Noah's positive reviews consistently praise Darren Aronofsky's visuals. No matter the budget, Aronofsky has been able to create striking visuals throughout his career, from movies like Black Swan to complex movies like The Fountain . He continues this trend in Noah , where sprawling historical/fantasy imagery keeps the audience engaged throughout . Noah relies heavily on CGI, but it works in crafting an engaging, visceral cinematic experience.

Critics also praise the performances in Noah. Even though none of its cast members are at their best, their natural talent and star power bring an enjoyable perspective to the film. The 2014 film isn't one of Russell Crowe's best performances , but he's a star who's hard to go wrong with, bringing his usual intensity and imposing screen presence to play the titular character. Sir Anthony Hopkins, Ray Winstone, and Jennifer Connelly are also exceptional in their supporting roles, bringing the story to life with sophistication.

Noah Is Worth Watching For Fans Of Darren Aronofsky, Russell Crowe & Thought-Provoking Dramas

The movie's adaptation of noah's ark still proved divisive among audiences..

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is undoubtedly a divisive film that isn't for everyone, but it's certainly worth trying for fans of the filmmaker, Russell Crowe movies, or generally thought-provoking dramas. For lovers of Darren Aronofsky's usual style, the inflated budget and excessive CGI aren't detrimental to the writing techniques that compose his more acclaimed movies. As previously mentioned, it also has some of the director's most engaging visual spectacles, making it worthwhile for those who enjoy painting-like cinematography.

Russel Crowe was past his prime in Noah , but he's always been an exceptional actor, and the 2014 film allows him to be charismatic and incredibly entertaining. His star power alone would make Noah worth the watch for those who resonate with his performances. Lastly, the film may be grand in scale, but it offers profoundly human storytelling, giving audiences something to ponder long after its completion.

*Availability in US

Darren Aronofsky's Noah is an epic biblical drama starring Russell Crowe as the titular character. The film tells the story of the legendary man chosen by God and the ark he builds to save his family and the world's animals from a great flood. Jennifer Connelly, Emma Watson, Ray Winston, Anthony Hopkins, Logan Lerman, and Douglas Booth round out the rest of the main cast.

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Movie Review

'Noah' review: a biblical fever dream

Darren aronofsky and russell crowe take a weird and wild trip.

By Bryan Bishop on March 28, 2014 03:00 pm 642 Comments

It’s been easy to snicker at Darren Aronofsky’s Noah . The notion of the Requiem for a Dream filmmaker taking on a Bible epic was enough to raise eyebrows, and trailers framing the film as a Day After Tomorrow -style action ride only added to the confusion. Controversy swirled, and as news broke that Paramount was testing out alternate cuts in an effort to appease religious audiences, it begged the question: just what was Aronofsky up to?

As it turns out, he was making a much more challenging and compelling movie than anyone saw coming. Whether it will ever find an audience… well, that’s another story entirely.

I’m not going to worry about the religious veracity of Noah — and if you hope to enjoy it, neither should you. Paramount is touting the film as being "inspired" by the Book of Genesis, but Aronofsky and co-writer Ari Handel pull in elements from other texts and freely move pieces around to benefit the narrative. But the major plot points remain intact: several generations after humanity was kicked out of the Garden of Eden, wickedness and cruelty have spread across the world. The descendants of Cain — the first human to commit murder when he killed his brother Abel — are largely to blame, and God decides to reboot Earth entirely. In a series of visions, Noah (Russell Crowe) is told there will be a great flood, and that he and his family must build an ark to save the animals of the world so they can repopulate the planet.

From the opening moments it’s clear there's never been a religious film quite like this. A quick, impressionistic prologue jumps through Genesis, and then we’re introduced to a world of green mountains, rocky plains, and glowing skies. This proto-Earth is a visually striking fantasy world — more Lord of the Rings than Passion of the Christ — but there’s an immediacy to it thanks to the gritty, handheld camera work of cinematographer Matthew Libatique. Aronofsky’s penchant for nightmarish imagery also serves him well as Noah is overwhelmed by the horrific visions sent his way; one moment he’s standing in a blood-soaked plain, the next he’s screaming beneath the ocean surface as thousands of corpses float beside him.

Noah and his family are assisted by a group of stone titans called Watchers, fallen angels bound to Earth for helping humanity in the past. Imagine if Michael Bay’s Transformers were made of rock and you’ll get the idea, but the concept actually plays thanks to the film’s larger fantasy canvas. When it comes to the legions of animals, Industrial Light & Magic’s visual effects hit a perfect note of stylized realism — something that’s really utilized once the rain begins to fall.

Quite simply, the great flood is a marvel. I don’t know that simulated water has ever looked this real before, and as tidal waves rush in to batter the ark every other disaster movie fades from memory. But the spectacle’s not the point. Noah is a man haunted by the darker side of prophecy. Once the ark is afloat he hunkers down inside, tortured as the screams of those outside swirl around him. Convinced that his creator wants to wipe humanity out completely, he pushes his family away by drawing an impossibly hard line with his wife and children. He curses the actions he feels forced to take while simultaneously insisting he has no alternative. In many ways Noah is a Bible story about the destructive nature of blind faith, an audacious choice that gives the story weight even though we already know the ending (spoiler: humanity survives).

The grand setting also serves as a playground for unfortunate melodrama, an issue that Aronofsky’s run into before. Ray Winstone and Jennifer Connelly are both wonderfully consistent actors, but here — as Noah’s nemesis and his wife, respectively — they barrel into the land of groan-worthy theatricality, particularly when playing off the quiet, resolute side of Crowe. As Methuselah, Anthony Hopkins chews the same scenery he’s been working on in the last two Thor films, while Noah’s three sons come off as vague outlines. It’s Emma Watson (the Harry Potter series) that steps in to bind the cast together. As Noah’s adopted daughter, Ila, she’s vulnerable and human, providing the gut-level emotional stakes the movie desperately needs once everyone heads inside the ark.

It’s such an odd mix of styles and choices that it’s hard to believe it holds together at all — but thanks to Aronofsky’s earnest commitment, it does. More than anything else, the movie calls to mind Bram Stoker’s Dracula , another inventive take on a well-known tale that dazzles even while carrying the burden of some significant flaws.

In a sense, Noah seems almost designed to underwhelm at the box office. Rather than leaning on spectacle or the easy crutch of a well-known tale, it challenges audiences with its portrayal of a mysterious, often cruel creator. It dares the viewer to hate its hero, and the unrelenting beliefs turning him from man to monster. And then Noah reveals its true areas of interest: the giving nature of the human heart, and the power of free will in the face of dogma. Those are noble sentiments to explore no matter what you believe in, but it takes such a weird and wild boat ride to get there you start to wonder who the film is for. Despite those weaknesses, however — or perhaps because of them — Noah delivers the one thing that is so often missing from tentpole movies: a soul.

Darren Aronofsky’s Noah is now playing. Images courtesy of Paramount Pictures.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Dark biblical tale is brutal, violent, gory.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

Faith guides you where you need to go, but as a hu

Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prep

The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory.

Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to b

"Damned" is as salty as it gets.

A man drinks a brew that brings on visions. It'

Positive Messages

Faith guides you where you need to go, but as a human, you also have the power of choice. Man's connection to and responsibility toward the environment is also a theme.

Positive Role Models

Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prepared to do anything that God requests. His wife Naameh is devoted to Noah and their family. But they're not depicted as perfect. In fact, they struggle with their humanity.

Violence & Scariness

The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory. Enemies club, stone, stab, or spear each other to death. A few scenes show mass graves, underwater and on dry land. Corpses are shown close up, some without limbs. A character threatens to kill babies. Humans resort to violence in a fight to stay alive. Lots of destruction shown from flooding, as well as fires and battles.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to bed people of the opposite sex in order to procreate.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

A man drinks a brew that brings on visions. It's not clear what it is. Later he's shown what appears to be a substance that makes him drunk.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that this epic tale from director Darren Aronofsky ( Black Swan , Requiem for a Dream ) takes on a character of biblical proportions, Noah. As befits the mayhem recounted in the bible, Noah is filled with catastrophe. The skies rain down from the heavens, drowning nearly everything, and humans are nearly feral as they battle each other for survival. There's no real swearing, just the word "damned," but plenty of brutality and gore: mountains of dead bodies are shown, sometimes close up, humans beat each other to death, sometimes with rocks, knives and spears. To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

Videos and photos.

Community Reviews

Parents say (34)
Kids say (52)

Based on 34 parent reviews

Violent and deviates from Biblical story, but still compelling

What's the story.

Russell Crowe plays Noah, a descendant from the line of Seth, son of Adam and Eve, who's beset by visions that reveal God's plan for the future: a devastating flood that will wipe out humans and help the remaining beings, including a pair of each animal roaming the earth, start over. But first he must build an ark, one that can withstand the assault of a massive flood, as well as the humans who want a place on the ark even if Noah doesn't want them in it. He must also struggle to make real God's plan while balancing his God-given ability to make choices. Meantime, his wife Naameh ( Jennifer Connelly ) and sons Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and adopted daughter Ila ( Emma Watson ), struggle to be by Noah's side, even as they balance their own needs and doubts about Noah's big plan. All this, as Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone) vies with Noah for supremacy -- and the ark.

Is It Any Good?

NOAH is a feat of filmmaking. Every frame, every angle, every shift speaks to the able hands of director Darren Aronofsky. It's a dark and gloomy version of the Biblical tale told here: Noah is tortured -- yes, tortured -- by his visions, not always at peace with the mission God sends his way. Anyone expecting an uplifting version about a man of deep faith heeding his Creator will be disappointed. Yes, Noah heeds. But he does so with plenty of doubts about his and his family's worthiness to survive, a complex and unnerving concept that some young teens may grapple to understand. This Noah doesn't pull its punches.

The film's laden with special effects, most of which is deployed in a way that serves the story. But some audiences may balk at the Watchers, hulking beings made of stone and gifted with Herculean strength that look like they belong in a Star Wars movie, not a Biblical epic. (Also, not sure these beings appear as they do in the Bible's text, one of many parts of the movie that could incite debate.) The film's mid-section feels paunchy and a little plodding, and the music gravitates toward ponderous. All this to say it's imperfect, but its epic sweep and grandeur deserves an audience.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the violence depicted in this movie. Is it necessary? What's the appeal of watching so much brutality? How else could this story have been told effectively?

Is this a religious movie? Who is the target audience for this film? How can you tell?

Movie Details

In theaters : March 28, 2014
On DVD or streaming : July 29, 2014
Cast : Russell Crowe , Jennifer Connelly , Emma Watson
Director : Darren Aronofsky
Studio : Paramount Pictures
Genre : Action/Adventure
Topics : Brothers and Sisters , History
Run time : 138 minutes
MPAA rating : PG-13
MPAA explanation : violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content
Last updated : December 15, 2023

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Movie Review

Rain, Heavy at Times

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By A.O. Scott

March 27, 2014

The information supplied about Noah in the Book of Genesis is scant — barely enough for a Hollywood pitch meeting, much less a feature film — but his story is among the strangest and scariest in the Hebrew Bible. At its center is what appears to be an unnerving example of divine self-doubt. Disgusted with his creation, God decides to wipe the slate clean and start again, only to relent and allow Noah, a 500-something-year-old father of three, to save his family and a boatload of animals.

Many versions of the tale — including that Sunday-school and summer camp song that has been stuck in my head for decades — emphasize the happy outcome: the rainbow, the dove, the cute paired-off beasts, the repopulation of the flood-cleansed earth. But Darren Aronofsky, in his ambitious fusion of Old Testament awe with modern blockbuster spectacle, dwells on the dark and troubling implications of Noah’s experience. “Noah,” Mr. Aronofsky’s earnest, uneven, intermittently powerful film, is both a psychological case study and a parable of hubris and humility. At its best, it shares some its namesake’s ferocious conviction, and not a little of his madness.

Through five features, from “Pi” to “Black Swan,” Mr. Aronofsky has refined his taste for extremity and his mastery of a queasy, feverish camera style. He specializes in intimate portraits of people whose sense of reality is coming undone, and Noah, played with rabid gloominess by Russell Crowe, is no exception. The difference between him and Mr. Aronofsky’s earlier protagonists is that Noah’s mental equilibrium is bound up with the fate of humanity, and that his actions may have a lesson to teach us.

But even though the scale of this film — the size of its budget and the breadth of its themes — is larger than anything this director has attempted before, “Noah” is less an epic than a horror movie. There are some big, noisy battle scenes and some whiz-bang computer-generated images, but the dominant moods are claustrophobia and incipient panic. The most potent special effects are Mr. Crowe’s eyes and the swelling, discordant strains of Clint Mansell’s score. Once the waters have covered the earth and the ark is afloat, a clammy fear sets in, for both the audience and the members of Noah’s family: We’re stuck on a boat full of snakes, rats and insects, and Dad’s gone crazy.

Noah’s instability — he walks up to the boundary that separates faith from fanaticism, and then leaps across it — is not, strictly speaking, in the source material, and I will hardly be the first or last to note that Mr. Aronofsky, who wrote the screenplay with Ari Handel, has taken some liberties with the text. For example, while the Bible does note that “there were giants in those days,” it does not specify that they were six-armed stone colossi with the voices of Nick Nolte and Frank Langella. These figures, known as watchers, are cousins of Peter Jackson’s Ents and Michael Bay’s Transformers, and part of a vividly, if not always coherently imagined, pre-diluvian reality.

The earlier chapters of Genesis (the snake, the forbidden fruit) are rendered as brightly hued hallucinations, but the post-Edenic world is a blasted, desolate, shadeless landscape from which Mr. Aronofsky and his cinematographer, Matthew Libatique, have drained every warm and living color. (That is, until the CGI trees sprout from a magic seed to supply building materials for the ark.)

Noah, one of the last descendants of the peaceful line of Seth, is a vegetarian and a nomad, camping out on the brown hillsides with his wife (Jennifer Connelly) and their children. The family is occasionally harassed by marauders from the line of Cain, a clan that has blighted the planet with greed and industry, killing off animals and strip-mining precious minerals. Their leader is a shaggy, bellowing warlord named Tubal-Cain (Ray Winstone), conveniently the object of Noah’s justified vengeance as well as of fully merited divine judgment.

But Tubal-Cain is also something of a humanist, or at least a proponent of the idea that humanity, for all its cravenness and corruption, might be worth saving. He has a sly, passionate energy that the terrified, humorless Noah completely lacks, and he tempts Noah’s middle son, Ham (Logan Lerman), to betray his father. Tubal-Cain may be a brute and a deceiver, but his nemesis is, at least potentially, a genocidal lunatic. The way Noah sees it, he has been chosen not to save mankind but to ensure its annihilation.

Mr. Crowe has no problem playing this kind of monster. He specializes in portraying righteousness pushed to the point of murderous, monomaniacal rage. He also benefits from the presence of gentler, more emotionally flexible performers, and here he has, in addition to Ms. Connelly (in a variation on her role as the capable, patient wife in “A Beautiful Mind”), Emma Watson and Anthony Hopkins.

Mr. Hopkins is gleefully hammy as Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather and the film’s resident wise wizard. Ms. Watson is Ila, a character invented as the love interest for Noah’s eldest son, Shem (the blankly pretty Douglas Booth), and as a partial answer to the “be fruitful and multiply” imperative. Ila’s presence quickens the ethical dilemma that supplies the film’s dramatic pulse, as Noah is forced to choose between obedience and love, with potentially suicidal results either way.

“Noah” is occasionally clumsy, ridiculous and unconvincing, but it is almost never dull, and very little of it has the careful, by-the-numbers quality that characterizes big-studio action-fantasy entertainment. The riskiest thing about this movie is its sincerity: Mr. Aronofsky, while not exactly pious, takes the narrative and its implications seriously. He tries not only to explore what the story of the flood might mean in the present age of environmental anxiety and apocalyptic religion, but also, more radically, to imagine what it might have felt like to live in a newly created, already-ruined world, and to scan the skies for clues about what its creator might be thinking.

“Noah” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). “And every living substance was destroyed which was upon the face of the ground, both man, and cattle, and the creeping things, and the fowl of the heaven; and they were destroyed from the earth: and only Noah remained alive, and they that were with him in the ark.”

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Noah (2014)

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Action/Adventure , Drama , Sci-Fi/Fantasy

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In Theaters

March 28, 2014
Russell Crowe as Noah; Jennifer Connelly as Naameh; Ray Winstone as Tubal-cain; Anthony Hopkins as Methuselah; Emma Watson as Ila; Logan Lerman as Ham; Douglas Booth as Shem; Leo McHugh Carroll as Japheth

Home Release Date

July 29, 2014
Darren Aronofsky

Distributor

Paramount Pictures

Movie Review

It’s not easy being clean.

Nobody’s puppets, Noah and his family still try to live as cleanly as possible—to live as the Creator meant them to live. And they’re doing it in a very dirty age long before Babylon held the fertile crescent, before Egypt’s pyramids sprouted next to the Nile. They work in harmony with nature. They don’t wantonly kill either man or beast.

They don’t, in other words, operate like those other guys—the descendants of Cain who dominate the planet. Those thugs are fighters, not lovers, and they’ll kill anything that gets in their way, be it animals, people or the planet itself. They even went to war with the mysterious Watchers—towering rock-encrusted beings who, at one time, taught and guided humanity. These Cainanites are turning the Creator’s amazing work into a planetary landfill.

And the Creator has had enough.

He gives Noah a vision, showing him a world submerged in water. Noah, disturbed, treks to visit his grandfather, Methuselah, who holds what you might call a fruitless court in a cave. There, Noah receives another picture from heaven: a huge boat, bobbing on the water, animals swimming to meet it.

The Creator, Noah deduces, is going to push the reset button, destroying all that is bad so that things can begin anew. “The storm can’t be stopped,” Noah tells Methuselah. “But it can be survived.”

Noah has always followed his Creator’s wishes—but the way ahead is now unbelievably hard. Not only must he, his family and a few helpful Watchers build a massive ark, they must use it—as the rest of humanity screams and drowns beneath. They must be strong. They must show no mercy.

And what if the evil doesn’t die with the descendants of Cain, but lives inside Noah’s own family too? Does imperfect man have a place in the Creator’s perfect plan? Wouldn’t we just mess the world up all over again? Aren’t we all sullied by weakness and sin? Dirtied by fatal flaws? Even the righteous Noah himself?

Not easy being clean? It’s downright impossible.

[ Spoilers are contained in the following sections. ]

Positive Elements

Not all the morals of Noah , the movie, are likely the same ones you’d glean from the biblical narrative. The two stories are far too different for that to be possible. But there are worthwhile points to ponder here:

Noah teaches his boys what he believes the Creator would have him teach. And he always tries to follow his God to the very best of his ability—no matter how hard or painful the task ahead might be. He twists things up sometimes, for sure, and that turns him into a bit of a madman for a while, but Noah always sees himself as a servant—a tool in the hands of a mighty God—and thus is willing to subjugate himself to, by definition, a greater good.

Noah’s wife, Naameh, loves him through all of this craziness, sticking with him through, literally, high water if not hell itself. That loyalty, though, doesn’t dim her vision of what right is and how wrong looks. When Noah begins to believe that their own family should not be exempted from God’s righteous wrath, she furiously works to rein him in—to show him that love is just as important as justice and judgment. Likewise, Noah’s son Shem and his new love, Ila, staunchly protect their baby children, risking their own lives to keep them safe. And Ila spearheads the family’s rescue of an injured little girl whose own family has been killed.

The Watchers—who are said to have been created on the second day and then punished by the Creator for helping the sons of Cain and then slaughtered by Cain’s offspring for their trouble—take a cosmic risk by again aiding mankind. They help Noah build the ark and, when the evil Tubal-cain leads an army against Noah, defend the family and the ark with their lives.

Noah and his family are seriously committed vegetarians. But the movie’s environmentalism isn’t merely a call to stave off global warming by recycling: It’s used as a deeper metaphor, a way to further distinguish the mindset of Seth (which responsibly fosters God’s creation) with the mode of Cain (which is to pillage and destroy). Even a flower, Noah tells his son, serves the Creator’s will better in the ground than in someone’s pocket. “They have a purpose,” Noah says—to spread seeds and propagate. Or, as he will later say, to be fruitful and multiply.

Spiritual Elements

Noah goes pretty far off the Sunday school flannel board to tell its story, beginning with “the beginning.” Noah recounts the story of creation to his children, reciting what happened on each of the six days. Using time-lapse photography, his account blends the Bible with Darwinian evolution, as animals change into other animals in rapid-fire sequence. (And most of the creatures on the ark appear to be evolutionary forebears of the ones we live with today.)

Noah acknowledges that it didn’t take long for mankind to start messing things up. We see glimpses of Adam, Eve and the forbidden fruit, with Satan creepily slithering out of another snake. And Cain’s murder of Abel is seen as a critical turning point for humanity’s relationship with its Creator.

The Nephilim (who make just a cameo appearance in Genesis 6:4) are given significant roles here. They’re meshed with the concept of the Watchers (angels mentioned in Daniel and fleshed out in the apocryphal books of Enoch), and we’re told that they’re angels who were made into rock-like creatures as punishment for helping humans after the Fall. It’s said that God (only called the Creator here) has rejected them and refuses to let them return home even when they die. But after they help Noah, we watch them zoom up to heaven in a beam of light, finally accepted back into the Creator’s good graces.

Unlike the direct commands issued by God to Noah in Genesis, His will is obscured in Noah . The titular character receives only visions, their meaning never fully clear to him. And because Noah and his family deeply desire to do God’s will exactly, this exacerbating lack of communication creates some serious conflicts—an echo of sometimes our own uncertainty of what God would have us do now.

Methuselah, Noah’s grandfather, wields some mysterious powers: He puts Noah’s son Shem to sleep with a touch and, through his blessing, heals a wound. (Whether this is sorcery or a gift from God we’re never told.) A magical seed he gives Noah (he says it’s from the Garden of Eden) produces, when planted, a flow of water and then an entire forest of trees on a barren plane.

Sexual Content

Shem playfully tackles Ila in the forest and kisses her passionately, his mouth working its way to her belly, where she bares a deep scar. Ila makes him stop. She is, we’re told, barren because of a childhood injury, and she tearfully pleads with Noah to find Shem a wife who can provide him children and, thus, happiness.

In another scene Ila runs to Shem and begins kissing him like crazy, hurriedly stripping off clothes. (The camera briefly spies skin and then moves away.) Later, she discovers she’s pregnant, and the ecstatic couple ask Noah for his blessing.

Adam and Eve are seen naked (they’re glowing and the shot is from a distance), as is a drunken Noah. (Nothing explicit is seen.) Naameh’s draped top reveals quite a lot of cleavage in one scene. In a town, girls and women are traded for food.

Violent Content

We repeatedly see a silhouette replay of Cain killing Abel with a rock. And at one juncture, the sequence morphs into warlike conflicts throughout the ages, with the killer and victim becoming soldiers from ancient to modern times. In ditches and valleys piles of dead bodies and/or skeletons are seen multiple times. We watch men pull down and kill the giant Watchers. A fiery cataclysm decimates a throng of warriors. Fire from heaven kills even more. People are bashed and stomped and trampled and stabbed and hacked and, of course, drowned.

Tubal-cain kills Noah’s father with a hatchet blow to the head, with blood-squirting results. Noah kills quite a few assailants, showing himself to be pretty handy with a blade. Angry that hunters have shot an animal, he plucks the sharp projectile from the beast’s bleeding side and uses it to fight the four men responsible, killing at least a couple of them. Other animals have their throats cut or their guts grotesquely spilled. In a bloody marketplace, live animals are torn apart and eaten raw. Noah has visions of countless drowned humans and animals, and he walks on ground saturated with blood. A girl gets caught in an animal trap (metal points piercing her leg).

Noah comes to believe that God means to end the human race entirely. He tells his family that once they arrive in a cleansed world, they’ll all grow old and die—forbidding his children to take wives (and also actively thwarting them). When Ila gets pregnant, Noah tells her that if the baby proves to be female (and thus a potential mother), he’ll kill the infant as soon as she leaves the womb. Indeed, later we see him clutching a knife pointed at a baby’s face. And for much of the movie, Noah stands as a fearsome figure of death, glowering with his unsheathed blade. In one case, he callously allows a young woman to die by way of a trampling horde when he refuses to help her.

Crude or Profane Language

“D‑‑n” is uttered four times. (But in context, the word is used correctly, with Tubal-cain declaring that he’ll be “damned” by the Creator no matter what he does. And because he does what he does, he is indeed damned.)

Drug and Alcohol Content

Noah, believing he let the Creator down, gets rip-roaring drunk, spending what would seem to be days guzzling down wine. He finally passes out, naked. (We see him from a distance, lying face down.) Methuselah gives Noah some tea that appears to be drugged, leading to a strange vision.

Other Negative Elements

A prideful power play develops between Noah and his son Ham, leading the lad to nearly betray his own flesh and blood, and finally leave the family altogether. “Love” is said to be the “only thing they need to be good.”

Long before its release, Noah was deluged in controversy. Some Christians praise the film for its themes of redemption and love winning out over malevolence, others revile it for taking so many liberties with the biblical account.

Director Darren Aronofsky offers a spectacular and often moving story, but it’s obviously not the story of Noah. There’s more Tolkien than Torah here, really, and more of Aronofsky himself than both of those. Perhaps this director made the Creator in his own image—full of mercy, magic and environmental sobriety. If you uncouple the movie from the Bible and take Noah as imaginative, fantastic fiction, it can begin to work. But hooked as it is to such a sacred narrative, well, let’s just say it’ll be hard for some Christians to swallow whole this fractious fable.

Harry Potter fans expect Harry Potter movies to stay mostly true to the book. History buffs are known to require historical dramas to follow actual history. I think it’s reasonable, then, for Christians to ask that the stories most precious to them be treated with faithfulness—and that movies based on them would, y’know, stay at least in the ballpark. But Mr. Aronofsky has chosen a different tack, and so the ancient truth about Noah becomes more of a pretext for Middle-earth rock monsters and a tormented, half-mad Noah ready to kill his own kin.

Still, Jim Daly, president of Focus on the Family, believes there is redemption to be found. “Darren Aronofsky is not a theologian, nor does he claim to be,” Daly says. “He is a filmmaker and a storyteller, and in Noah , he has told a compelling story. The film expresses biblical themes of good and evil; sin and redemption; justice and mercy. It is a creative interpretation of the scriptural account that allows us to imagine the deep struggles Noah may have wrestled with as he answered God’s call on his life. This cinematic vision of Noah’s story gives Christians a great opportunity to engage our culture with the biblical Noah, and to have conversations with friends and family about matters of eternal significance.”

What kind of conversation might that be? Well, possibly one exploring just who God really is. We see glimpses of His character in Noah: His beautiful design, His sorrow that humanity ran away from Him, His righteous anger and determination to wipe the slate clean and start again. He chose Noah—whom the Bible calls “the last righteous man”—because he’s the guy who best understands God’s sorrow and anger and justice. Or, as Noah himself puts it, “He knew I would complete the task, nothing more.”

And sometimes it’s even in the things the film changes that spiritual lessons emerge. One example: As Noah drifts into the idea that he’s been tasked with ending all human life on earth, he comes to believe that the Creator is calling on him to kill his own granddaughters. He’s desperately determined to follow through … until it comes time to actually complete the terrible charge.

“I looked down at those two little girls,” he confesses, “and all I had in my heart was love.”

It’s poignant that Noah, the last righteous man, felt such love in that moment. Because that’s what God feels when He looks down on us. We are sinners. We constantly fail Him. We deserve death, He tells us. But in His eyes, we’re also beautiful. And God’s love for us—His mercy and grace—ends up saving us.

Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.

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CHRISTIAN MOVIE REVIEW

Review: noah, by janet rae contributing writer.

CBN.com - For the first time in cinematic history, the story of Noah comes to the big screen as a feature-length film in Darren Aronofsky's ambitious new release. The Academy Award nominated director and his co-screenwriter Ari Handel take audiences on a dramatic, provocative journey exploring the powerful themes of righteousness, courage, honor, temptation, sacrifice, faithfulness, grace, justice and mercy.

Noah takes on the momentous task of showing the Bible story when a man of faith obeyed God's command to build a boat before an apocalyptic flood covered the earth. Oscar winner Russell Crowe takes the lead as Noah, with Jennifer Connelly ( A Beautiful Mind ), Ray Winstone ( The Departed ), Emma Watson ( Harry Potter series) and Sir Anthony Hopkins ( The Silence of the Lambs ) in supporting roles.

This full-scale, visually epic presentation of Noah flashbacks to Creation and the fall of man, which ultimately leads to utter wickedness in the hearts of almost all of the earth's inhabitants. The state of humanity grieves God and in a series of artistic dreams, God reveals His plan to Noah. Aronofsky presents these plot points using his signature style of storytelling as he builds up to the devastation of the Great Flood. The film appropriately gives an authentic view of the events through the eyes of a mere man. The detailed representation of the ark and the beauty of God's creation are enchanting and wonderful.

Noah contains scenes of graphic violence and implied instances of sexual abuse. For these reasons and more (including a far shot of drunkenness and partial nudity), Noah is not recommended for children. The PG-13 rating of the film is warranted.

Though the film is full of visually compelling action and high intensity drama, some scenes do drag, prolonging the movement of the plot.

(Spoiler alert) It is noteworthy to mention that there are some surprises that could be a distraction for some audiences. Nephilim ("the Watchers"), though referenced in the Bible and other extra biblical sources, are not often associated with the Noah story, at least the Sunday School version most of us know. Their inclusion could cause some to disengage from these characters. Please know that this movie is not a reenactment of the biblical account, but one unique, cinematic take on the story. The filmmakers used the Jewish Midrash and the Book of Enoch as "extra" resources.

The overall presentation and artistry of Aronofsky's Noah is awe-inspiring. Its fluidity and attention to detail help to carry the plot through the story's end. The character development is provocative and humanizing, setting up introspective questions about justice, mercy, good, and evil. Noah affirms the biblical account found in the book of Genesis, Creation, man's original sin as the result of Adam and Eve, and the resulting wickedness in man that provoked the heart of God to release judgment. Scenes like these have never been seen on screen or depicted with such credibility.

Reminiscent of Gladiator and Braveheart , Noah has intense action and adventure sequences and heroic moments that will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Crowe is a very believable Noah, revealing aspects of God's heart in various points in the film. The performances by the entire cast are riveting, engaging audiences to experience the emotions and traumatic, yet adventurous, journey of Noah and his family.

Though Aronofsky's interpretation of this Bible story is misguided and shrouded in controversy, Noah is a cinematic spectacle. Sadly, it is a film that rates high in the craft of movie making but completely misses the mark on facts. The faith community will be highly disappointed in Aronofsky's inability to convert Biblical truths into onscreen movie magic.

On a positive note, it is a movie that acknowledges Creation, reveals the sin nature of mankind, shows God's judgment, but most importantly illuminates His mercy.

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The floods is threat’ning My very life today Gimme, gimme shelter Or I’m gonna fade away —The Rolling Stones

Pick your gospel: the Scriptures or rock & roll. Both figure into director Darren Aronofsky’s Noah , a biblical epic that follows no rules except its creator’s teeming imagination.

The damn nerve! Yeah, like you’d expect Aronofsky the firebrand to trot out a gentle story of Noah escorting animals two-by-two into his ark while God destroys the world by flood. The Book of Genesis tells us why the Lord wanted a redo on creation, but reveals nothing about what Noah was thinking.

Enter Aronofsky, 45, to grapple with the unanswered Noah questions he has obsessed about since his teens. His Noah, played by Russell Crowe like a gathering storm, is a figure of howling torment, bowing to God’s will even as he considers his own fragile humanity.

Heresy? Hardly – though the film will surely jangle scholars with its deviations, digital trickery, souped-up battles, pipe guns, sexual activity, an ark stowaway and what appear to be giant robot refugees from Michael Bay’s Transformers protecting Noah and his family.

My advice: Hold off on burning Aronofsky at the stake till you see Noah , a film of grit, grace and visual wonders that for all its tech-head modernity is built on a spiritual core. The Brooklyn-born Aronofsky and his Harvard roomie and writing partner, Ari Handel – “two not very religious Jewish guys,” says the director – are hellbent on making their Noah relevant for believers and skeptics alike.

An impossible task? Probably. Noah trips on its ambitions and a need to cram so damn much in. But you never doubt its passion to rise above formula and push boundaries. Aronofsky has been doing that since his 1998 debut feature, Pi , which used math and madness to discover, among other things, God’s identity. His movies, from Requiem for a Dream and The Fountain (a test of patience even for die-hard fans) to The Wrestler and Black Swan , differ wildly in style and themes, but all plunge boldly into the minds of characters in crisis.

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Crowe’s nuanced performance holds steady as the world spins around Noah. It’s a world including Noah’s wife, Naameh (Jennifer Connelly), unnamed in the Bible, and their three sons, Shem (Douglas Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman) and Japheth (Leo Carroll). The young-Hollywood quotient intensifies with Harry Potter ‘s Emma Watson as the orphan Ila, Shem’s intended. Ila is barren, which is a negative if you want to repopulate the world. One touch from Noah’s mentor, Methuselah (a nicely droll Anthony Hopkins), followed by a quickie with Shem, solves the problem.

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Stay with me. There’s Noah’s enemy, Tubal-Cain (the great Ray Winstone), whose followers are descended from Cain, the first murderer. They all want on the ark. The Watchers, fallen angels who look like Transformers made of stone, beat them off. Only Tubal-Cain manages to sneak on board, which causes no end of family strife, made worse when Noah wants to kill Ila’s baby, since Noah claims God wants only animals to inherit the Earth.

Got that? There’s enough plot here to fill 40 days and 40 nights of reality TV. But Crowe makes Noah’s self-doubt believable and moving. Aronofsky wants us to share the tension Noah feels between blind faith and free choice. And he’s reaching millennials on their own digital terms, making images, gloriously shot by Matthew Libatique, into metaphors in the manner of Bible stories. The ark, built to scale on sets in Long Island and Brooklyn, is a primitive and powerful vessel, much like the movie that houses it. It’s not just that Noah denies shelter for his fellow humans. In the name of God, he engages in the slaughter of enemies and innocents. Is he obeying orders or playing God? Miraculously, Aronofsky has spent $130 million of Hollywood money on a visionary art film that asks us to examine what we believe. In this flawed, fiercely relevant film, wonders never cease.

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(BB, CC, FR, EE, L, VV, S, N, AA, M) Ultimately, by the movie's end, a strong biblical, moral worldview with strong redemptive elements extolling justice, mercy, love, and faith plus a couple scenes of forgiveness retelling the biblical story of Noah and the Ark, but movie inserts some extra-biblical story elements to create a three-act structure with more jeopardy, including a subplot about a group of angels who disobey the “Creator” and help Cain's sinful descendants create “industrialized” cities to despoil the Earth, Noah is more conflicted and falsely interprets the visions God gives him to even consider infanticide, God doesn’t speak directly to Noah but gives Noah visions that Noah must interpret, an environmentalist spin is given to man’s sinfulness and also to the biblical passage of God giving mankind “dominion” over earth's plants, minerals, and animals, but movie shows Great Flood is global, Adam and Eve really existed, the Fall of Man really occurred, the Earth was created in six days, Cain kills Abel, God miraculously acts time and time again, and the story is interpreted as a story of justice, mercy, salvation, and faith; three or four “d” words uttered by main villain, Tubal-cain, a descendant of Cain; strong action violence includes “fallen” angels encrusted with rock club evil people away from the ark, Noah and his sons have to fight some evil men trying to get on the ark, Cain takes a rock in silhouette and starts to bring it down on Abel but impact not shown, little girl has a bloody wound on her belly, Tubal-cain slays Lamech, flood waters sweep people away, some stabbings, young woman gets her ankle caught by a steel trap, a birthing scene, man bites into lizard, gory image of a killed animal, Noah considers infanticide; no sex but some passionate kissing, and it’s vaguely implied Shem has gone off with his female partner (there’s no formal marriage ceremony in the movie, but the times are primitive, with no formal church) and Shem's "wife" becomes pregnant; partial upper male nudity; as in the biblical account Noah becomes drunk; no smoking or drugs but Methuselah gives Noah some “tea,” which seems to give Noah another vision; and, lying, Noah considers infanticide of his daughter-in-law’s progeny because he wrongly thinks God doesn’t want mankind to survive the Great Flood’s aftermath, covetousness, family conflict, and evil leader plans on killing Noah and taking his family.

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Paramount and Darren Aronofsky’s NOAH movie about the Great Flood is an epic adventure story, with a nice ending that wraps everything up on a hopeful note. It adheres to the biblical story of God’s creation of the heavens and the earth, the temptation and fall of Adam and Eve, and the basic story of Noah and the Ark. However, it adds some extra-biblical material to create a dramatic three-act structure and adds some modern environmentalist twists in a couple places. Also, God is only called the Creator throughout the movie and doesn’t speak directly to Noah but gives Noah visions that he must interpret. Throughout the story, however, it’s clear Noah and his family are dependent on God’s miracles and, ultimately, His Providence. In the end, the Creator’s justice and mercy prevails, but the relationship and covenant between God and His people isn’t quite as personal as some people of faith might want or as the biblical text shows.

The movie starts with Noah as a young boy being taught the Creation Story by his father, Lamech. Lamech mentions God’s creation of the universe ex nihilo and follows it up with allusions to the Fall of Adam and Eve and Cain murder of Abel. A group of angels called, the Watchers disobey God and help Cain and his descendents industrialize the earth but they have despoiled it. So now the earth has become a barren wasteland, like something out of a MAD MAX movie. For disobeying the Creator, the angels became encrusted with black rock.

Lamech and his son live off the land, but they also have to avoid marauding bands of evil men descended from Cain. Sure enough, three such men, led by a young Tubal-cain, kill Lamech, but Noah escapes.

Years later, Noah is married to Naameh. They have three boys, Shem, Ham, and young Japheth. Noah tells his sons they only use what they need. He gets a vision of the earth being devastated by a giant flood. He decides to consult his grandfather, Methuselah, on what the Creator wants him to do.

Noah takes his family to the mountain where Methuselah lives. Along the way, they find a seriously wounded young girl named Ila, and Noah takes her into the family. Noah’s wife says Ila’s wound will prevent her from having children.

At the mountain, Methuselah gives Noah a seed from the Garden of Eden, and Noah gets a vision that he must build an ark for the animals and his family to survive the flood. Noah plants the seed, which miraculously grows into a massive forest. With help from several of the Watchers, Noah and his sons begin building the ark.

Years pass. When the ark is about halfway built, Tubal-cain suddenly shows up with a small army. He demands to be included in the ark, but Noah says no. The Watchers with Noah prevent Tubal-cain from taking the ark. Tubal-cain vows to return some day with a larger army to defeat the Watchers.

Sure enough, with the floodwaters about to come, Tubal-cain returns. Meanwhile, Shem and Ila have fallen in love, but Ham and Japheth wonder where they will get wives to help re-populate the world. As the rain starts pouring, a final confrontation with Tubal-cain looms. Meanwhile, Ila miraculously becomes pregnant, but Noah decides mankind isn’t fit to live. So, he vows to kill the baby if it’s a girl. Only a miracle can save the day.

NOAH is a spectacular epic with a hopeful, inspiring ending. Although it stumbles along the way, it delivers enough modern spectacle and dramatic conflict to please most moviegoers. Director Darren Arenofsky uses a great deal of metaphor and symbolism to tell the story. The villain, Tubal-cain, is a bit one-dimensional, however, and the movie’s post-apocalyptic vision of the evil world that man has created is a bit derivative of other movies. Also, the invention of the giant angelic “Watchers” encrusted with rock is too reminiscent of the tree Ents in THE LORD OF THE RINGS.

Everything in the movie works toward the hopeful ending, where Noah prayerfully gathers his family for the new beginning after the Great Flood. This ending nicely sets the stage for the covenant God makes with Abraham and his descendants, including the provision God makes for the Hebrew priesthood under Moses.

Although the movie adheres to the basic biblical story of Noah and the Ark, it adds some extra biblical material with changes, twists, and spins, to create a three-act structure and add more jeopardy to the story. Instead of God speaking directly to Noah like in the Bible, the Creator gives visions to Noah that he must interpret. Doing this helps the movie turn Noah into a more conflicted, troubled man. In this way, the movie builds up conflicts between Noah and his family that aren’t in the biblical text. Although this material is extra-biblical, it does give the movie the tension it needs to build more excitement into the final act.

Also, the movie gives an environmentalist spin to the sinfulness of man. It depicts Noah as the first survivalist living off the land. At one point, the movie even seems to undercut Genesis 1:26 in the King James Version of the Bible where God gives man “dominion” over the earth by placing the words in the mouth of the villain. (Many Bible haters and humanist environmentalists like to twist this verse by misinterpreting it to mean that God allows man to pollute and abuse the earth, including the animals.)

Another problem with NOAH is its depiction of the “fallen” group of angels it calls the Watchers. It allows these fallen angels to seek forgiveness from the Creator by helping Noah build and defend the ark. This is not a traditional way of viewing God’s angels. However, to be fair, the movie never shows the Watchers siding with Satan, and Satan doesn’t appear in the movie other than some images of the serpent that tempted Eve. So, it may be argued that the disobedient angelic beings in NOAH are in a different kind of “fallenness” than the angels who sided with Satan.

Finally, the movie never mentions the word God, but only calls God the “Creator.” This may be an attempt to avoid controversy over the name of God, but it doesn’t quite work.

Despite all these problems, NOAH has a lot of positive things going for it. The movie shows that Adam and Eve really existed and that they were in a state of grace before their Temptation and Fall. Young Earth Creationists will be pleased that the movie says God created the earth in six days and seems to be a rather recent creation when Noah appears. The movie also shows that the Great Flood was global. The movie also shows that Cain kills Abel as a result of the Fall. In addition, throughout the movie, the Creator seems to act miraculously time and time again. Finally, the filmmakers interpret the story of Noah as a story of God’s justice and mercy. Thus, in the third act, Noah eventually learns that the Creator is a God of mercy and love as well as justice. It is this revelation that leads to the movie’s hopeful and inspiring ending. That ending includes a spectacular rainbow sent from the Creator. It also includes a nice foreshadowing of some Jewish religious traditions later developed under Moses in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

All in all, therefore, MOVIEGUIDE® advises a light caution for violence, the extra-biblical elements, and some intense moments.

Now more than ever we’re bombarded by darkness in media, movies, and TV. Movieguide® has fought back for almost 40 years, working within Hollywood to propel uplifting and positive content. We’re proud to say we’ve collaborated with some of the top industry players to influence and redeem entertainment for Jesus. Still, the most influential person in Hollywood is you. The viewer.

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Movie Review: Noah (2014)

Aaron Leggo
Movie Reviews
4 responses
--> April 17, 2014

Noah (2014) by The Critical Movie Critics

A conflicted man.

Giant rock creatures? A bevy of clichés? Another awful performance from Emma Watson? So this is what a biblical epic looks like in the new millennium. It’s also what Darren Aronofsky looks like with a big budget. Neither is very encouraging. Well, except for the rock monsters, of course. Aronofsky’s Noah is a non-traditional take on the material, which should sound potentially exciting, but beyond the rock people (a wild interpretation of the fallen angels known here as Watchers and elsewhere as Nephilim), this is a drab and often laughable flick busy revealing a sappy side of Aronofsky that has laid dormant for his entire directorial career.

A creative, visually ambitious mind like Aronofsky seems an intriguing fit for a new take on the story of Noah’s animal-stuffed boat, but who could have predicted that Aronofsky’s plan would be to drag out the big book of Hollywood conventions and thump it over the audience’s head repeatedly? Stranger still is that Aronofsky seems to be in genuine pursuit of an original entry point to this story. It’s hard to believe that a quest for uniqueness could come across so hideously recycled, but the director’s approach to the beleaguered protagonist’s internal struggle is clearly intended to offer something new. It seems that Aronofsky is more interested in Noah’s arc than, you know, his ark.

Considering the simplicity of the title and the casting of solemnly meaty actor Russell Crowe in the lead role, it’s no surprise that Noah is the star here and not the animals. The movie is quick to establish the brutal reality that this Noah and his family must endure, first employing a cheesy animated sequence loaded with text before revealing the practically post-apocalyptic wasteland that is Aronofsky’s vision of a diseased biblical landscape. Noah is acutely aware of the dangers that surround him at all times, having witnessed the brutal murder of his father at the hands of Cain’s vile descendant Tubal-Cain.

Years later, Noah has his own children to protect and apparently only ever encounters complete jerks. It’s pretty clear that Noah and his brood are the only decent people around, although when our hero starts having dreams of a flood that’ll wipe the earthly slate clean, Noah can’t help but form a guilt complex. Why him? It may seem obvious to us, but in the context of Aronofsky’s framework, it’s a fair question at first. Noah decides to seek out the counsel of his ancient, mountain-dwelling grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins, fully committed to the phoning-it-in portion of his career now), hoping that he can make some sense of his dreams. He ends up having some major hallucinations that send him away convinced that building a gigantic boat to save the world’s animals from the impending flood is now his duty.

So we end up where we expect to, with Noah prepping to build his ark, but Aronofsky tries to mix things up by leaving Noah with doubts. Since God (referred to throughout the movie simply as The Creator) has only communicated with Noah via images, the protagonist gets a bit confused and misinterprets his responsibilities as limited to the protection of the animals. Even though his family is clearly quite good, Noah remains under the assumption that all human life, including his own, must be eradicated during the impending flood. Noah knows that all people are flawed and so his journey is one of coming to terms with degrees of sin and his own imperfections. It sounds like a personal and possibly interesting focus, but the issue here is that Aronofsky’s method of approaching this angle involves treacly philosophical conversations punctuated with big, messy action sequences.

When Noah nears completion of the ark that he’s been building with the help of the Watchers and the plentiful trees that magically grew up around his family in a matter of minutes (no, really), Tubal-Cain (a predictably gruff Ray Winstone) gets word of what’s going on and figures he and his rugged followers should be allowed on board, too. Apparently the entire weight of humanity resting on one man’s shoulders isn’t enough conflict for the movie, so we end up with nastiness personified.

This horrible adherence to basic good-vs-evil movie conventions is made worse by the sheer ridiculousness of, well, everything that comes with Tubal-Cain. His forest camp is a gruesomely hilarious sideshow where he feeds his people by grabbing a live animal and tossing it into the teeming crowd where hands and teeth tear at the flesh and fur as only a zombie horde could do. This goofy juxtaposition makes its point about the way the rival forces treat God’s creatures with a laughable lack of subtlety. The tacky, overly exaggerated manner with which Aronofsky depicts this evil cesspool feels strangely out of character for a director who has generally ignored the need for traditionally tangible antagonists.

Tubal-Cain’s lust for life leads to a big brawling action sequence that involves the Watchers protecting the ark. Aronofsky has never tackled a big screen battle like this before and it’s clear that his often visually complex directorial efforts of the past have not prepared him for this. The sequence isn’t terrible or anything too egregious, but rather just a loud, messy regurgitation of so many blockbuster clashes seen countless times before. Seeing the Watchers in action is mildly fun since the effects that bring them to life have been given an old-fashioned stop-motion-like charm, so the imagery still has a discernible identity at certain times, fleeting as those may be.

The great ark.

Once the flood arrives and the ark takes off on its journey, Noah creatively checks out. If anything was working before, it definitely drowns in an earnest whirlpool of circling clichés by now. The animals are nearly forgotten, which seems a strange decision given the cinematic possibilities afforded by such a menagerie. Minor cameos during the construction of the ark are all the movie has to offer animal lovers, though it’s hard not to be entertained by the shots of birds storming the boat or tons of snakes all slithering over each other to get a good spot. More of these images would be welcome, especially considering that the brief attention to detail in the variety of shown species stands out as one of the movie’s only worthwhile contributions to the story.

But alas, instead of animals, we have a conflicted Crowe battling both his inner demons and, in one particularly pitiful scene, his external ones, too. We also get Jennifer Connelly as Noah’s equally serious wife who seems depressingly resigned to the fact that she has nothing to do. Logan Lerman is a young talent worth watching in some cases, but here he’s a whiny son who sees the journey his family is destined to take as a death knell for his chances to ever have a girlfriend. And then there’s Emma Watson, whose acting abilities seem to have been forever cursed. She has more to do than most characters in the movie, as well, so her missteps are front and center here. She can always put at least some of the blame on the script by Aronofsky and Ari Handel, which saddles her with some very silly scenes and a groan-worthy speech at the end.

Religious movies have strayed from the biblical text with great artistic success in the past (“The Last Temptation of Christ” remains the prime example) and Aronofsky has exhibited a spectacular skill for capturing character-driven quests with cinematic flair and imagination, so the failure of Noah is a curious conundrum. How did it ever come to this? Aside from the inspired designs of the Watchers and the somewhat feeble attempts to internalize the protagonist’s struggles, this big-budget stinker is awash with bad acting and soggy sentimentality. Aronofsky’s regular cinematographer Matthew Libatique pulls off a few nice shots and a quick-cutting style used to traverse wide expanses of land is kind of neat, but this revisionist take on the bible story simply deviates from one text so it can further explore the process of recycling Hollywood platitudes. Noah’s animals came in pairs, but let’s hope Aronofsky’s creative stumbles don’t follow suit.

Tagged: animals , ark , flood

You and I both know the truth. You just don't admit it.

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'Movie Review: Noah (2014)' have 4 comments

April 17, 2014 @ 12:09 pm Doug

It was appropriately apocalyptic and dark.

April 17, 2014 @ 12:35 pm tramzee

The movie has good things going for it — cinematography, a good outing by Russell Crowe, sound design — but it didn’t all come together for me. The sum of the parts didn’t equal a whole.

April 17, 2014 @ 4:16 pm Veritas600

Aronofsky didn’t water this down (no pun intended). It is a grim tale about the eradication of humanity that is tough to watch in some places. The scene with survivors screaming on the rocks was especially rough.

April 17, 2014 @ 5:58 pm InkShot

I respectfully disagree with your assessment. Noah is an absolutely amazing, thought-provoking film. It’s one of Aronofsky’s best.

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There is no doubt in the movie that God is the creator of the universe and of man. Noah (Russell Crowe) even presents the story of creation to his family and this was nice to see in the film. Crowe does a credible job playing Noah although the plot does steer off in some unusual directions, including an evil warrior, Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), making it on the ark with a plot to kill Noah. Noah misinterprets God’s plan after the flood, and believes that no-one, including Noah and his family, deserve to live. He carries this out to a nearly disastrous result. (Earlier in the movie, Noah said that the flood would not be the end of life but be a beginning). Fortunately the situation ends well. There are many instances of artistic license such as Noah’s own sons attempting to kill him. It was generally disappointing that Mr. Aronofsky steered so far from the Biblical account of the story.

This movie is not “anti-Biblical”, but it is “extra-biblical” to a fault. It concentrates more on the flawed character of Noah than on the Biblical account of the building of the ark and the flood. One of the most unsettling scenes involves angels called “Watchers” who came to earth wanting to help Adam and Eve after the fall but were encrusted in rock so that they would remain on earth. In this movie they help Noah build the ark. During a battle between the evil men and Noah’s family these creatures appear to rise up to heaven!

The intense violence and men’s magic in the place of God’s power keep us from awarding Noah the Dove “Family-Approved” Seal.

Dove Rating Details

A lot of violence including a stake in an animal causing bloody wounds; an animal's throat is slit with spurting blood; battle scenes with several people being killed; a character's neck is snapped; a man's leg is stabbed with blood seen as a result; a man is impaled by a spear; the rock creatures kill many people; scene of man with bloody feet; a "shadows" scene in which Cain kills Abel with a stone and we see it twice; skeletons and skulls are seen on poles; corpses are seen and one with eyes open; blood seen on ax; a girl is trampled to death; bloody wounds; bloody meat seen being chopped.

Implied sex between a couple who do make a commitment afterward as husband and wife and the wife has children; kissing between a young couple and between a husband and wife.

A man drinks wine and becomes drunk; a character is given a tea-like liquid to drink that causes him to have a "vision."

A man is seen from a distance naked from the side but it is not close enough to see anything graphic; cleavage; shirtless man; a young woman's bare shoulders.

Although not anti-faith, several scenes present a revisionist account of the biblical Noah including Noah's sons attempting to kill him; Angels called "Watchers" rising up to heaven; Magic taking the place of God's power.

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Noah Parent Guide

It's impossible to take a biblical account this well known and create a film that will please everyone. for many, the violence may drown what little scriptural meat is offered..

The biblical story of Noah (played by Russell Crowe) makes a big splash on the big screen. The movie recounts his prophetic decision to build an ark to protect his family, along with the Earth's animals, before God sends a global flood.

Release date March 28, 2014

Run Time: 138 minutes

Official Movie Site

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

Possibly the biggest complaint an audience will make about a movie based on a book is their disappointment when the director’s interpretation doesn’t match their own vision. Those who approach this film with some knowledge of the original story may also leave wondering if director (and co-writer) Darren Aronofsky was reading from the same pages.

In his version, Noah (Russell Crowe) is a peaceful man who lives his life completely in accordance with the will of “The Creator.” He roams the barren mountains looking for vegetation to feed his wife Naameh (Jennifer Connelly) and and three sons Shem, Ham and Japheth (Douglas Booth, Logan Lerman and Leo McHugh Carroll). They, along with his grandfather Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins), are the last of the line of Seth, one of Adam’s sons. The rest of the Earth is populated with hoards of descendants from Cain, another son of Adam, who committed the world’s first murder. Playing on the premise that evil begets evil, these people are bloodthirsty carnivores led by Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone). During the first few minutes of the movie, this warrior-like villain kills Noah’s father, believing now all of Seth’s posterity are extinct.

With the help of his wife, sons, an adopted daughter they saved as a child (Emma Watson) and some friendly rock monsters that are actually fallen angels covered in hardened lava (I’m not joking…) they get the boat project built just before the rains fall. At about this same time Tubal-cain and his masses realize there’s only one ship leaving port and they are determined to be on board. It leads to a huge battle that quickly depopulates the cast of extras, with the rock monsters throwing and tromping most of the aggressors, and providing Noah and his crew a chance to get afloat.

At this point there is still close to an hour left in this biblical epic. Time enough for Noah to tell his family (and us) what The Creator’s ultimate plan is. It certainly is a literal interpretation of Genesis and asks for everyone to eventually pay the ultimate sacrifice. Again Noah is determined to demonstrate complete obedience to God. The problem is, other than the aforementioned drug induced vision, we see very little evidence that this man, who is referred to as a prophet in Genesis but never within this movie, ever speaks with God.

Religious perspectives aside, there are other reasons you may not want to sail into these choppy waters with children in tow. Violence occurs throughout, with blood effects. There are depictions of countless people being thrown, beaten, pummeled and stabbed. Scenes show parents attempting to sell their children for undisclosed reasons. While this takes place in darkness, which obscures the details of what’s happening, it will nevertheless still be scary for young viewers. A couple of brief sexual interludes occur (with no details or nudity) and Noah uses mysterious potions to keep the animals asleep for months.

Of course it’s impossible to take a Biblical account this well known and create a film that will please everyone. For many, the violence (while somewhat justified) may drown what little scriptural meat is offered in this movie. That leaves Noah barely floating at C-level for family viewing.

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Rod Gustafson

Noah rating & content info.

Why is Noah rated PG-13? Noah is rated PG-13 by the MPAA for violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content.

Violence: The image of a man killing his brother with a rock is repeatedly shown. A child watches as his father is murdered in front of him. Frequent scenes show hand-to-hand combat, along with the use of swords, spears and other weapons. Characters are beaten, stabbed and impaled. Blood is seen dripping from a weapon after a man is killed. Graphic and realistic bloody injuries are shown. A child has a serious sword injury that later makes her barren. Animals are killed and chopped apart. A wild dog is shown with an arrow in his leg. A character is caught in a bear trap and later run over by a mob of people. Characters are shown with blood splattered over them. Several scenes of corpses or bodies floating in the water are seen. A man threatens to kill a child with a knife. Frightening monsters (that resemble Transformers) are depicted, along with other nightmarish imagery. Characters are engulfed in flames. Explosions are depicted.

Sexual Content: A boy and girl engage in a sensual moment in the woods. In another scene she aggressively kisses him and begins to remove her clothing. Later, she announces she is pregnant. Couples kiss on several occasions. A partially naked drunk man is shown on a beach.

Language: The script contains a handful of mild profanities.

Alcohol / Drug Use : A character has a “revelation” after being drugged. Animals are put to sleep with a specially concocted smoke (and remain asleep for many months). A man is depicted as a drunkard.

Page last updated July 17, 2017

Noah Parents' Guide

The movie shows the seven days of creation, along with the Adam and Eve story. How does the depiction of evolution in this sequence differ from the Biblical account of events? The rock warriors (that look like Transformers) are not mentioned in the Bible either. Nor is the sleep-inducing smoke that makes the animals slumber indefinitely. And missing from the script is the fact that Shem, Ham and Japheth all had wives. Are theses, and other departures from the original text, meant to make the story more engaging? Does the inclusion of this artistic license work, or does it become a distraction for people who are familiar with the Bible?

This movie doesn’t include any use of the word God, even as a profanity. Why do you think the director choose to avoid terms of Deity in a biblical story?

Noah becomes increasingly unstable as the story goes on. Is there any indication in the Genesis that God believes all mankind is bad and wants them destroyed so only animals inhabit the earth? Why is Noah unable to see the good in his sons? What is Noah’s wife willing to do for her children?

Learn more about the universal nature of the flood story and read the biblical account of Noah in Genesis chapters 6 trough 9.

Learn more about the inspiration for the character Tubal-cain .

The most recent home video release of Noah movie is July 29, 2014. Here are some details…

Home Video Notes: Noah

Release Date: 29 July 2014

Noah releases to home video (Blu-ray/DVD/Digital Copy) with the following bonus features:

- Iceland: Extreme Beauty

-The Ark Interior/Exterior Featurettes

Related news about Noah

Aronofsky’s Noah Isn’t My Noah

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Golden Globe Nominations for 2015

Moview Review: Noah

by Matt Slick | Mar 31, 2014 | Book and Movie Reviews

Paramount Pictures released Noah (2014) starring Russell Crowe, written by Darren Aronofsky. The two hour and 19-minute movie was a failure from the beginning. Though it borrowed from the biblical story of Noah, it significantly altered the story so much that the whole ordeal became a farce. You would think that Hollywood might take its head out of its collective rear and consider the fact that Christians hold the Word of God dear to them. I had hoped they would have treated this topic with its proper reverence, but all I can say is, “What was I thinking?” Hollywood remained true to form and so butchered the account of Noah that the movie became laughable. I strongly recommend Christians do not go see this movie. Don’t provide financial support to the corruption of God’s Word.

It starts off with the fall to earth of some sort of angelic beings, called Watchers, who wanted to help Adam and Eve after they rebelled against “The Creator”; not God, but “The Creator.” These Watchers were cursed to be encased in rock, and so they lumbered around noisily and ominously. Later, we find these creatures helping Noah build the Ark. Why does the Ark need to be built? Because “The Creator” was going to destroy mankind. But, why was “The Creator” going to destroy mankind? Because the people were abusing nature. Abusing nature? That’s right. People were eating meat and not taking care of the land. I have to ask where they got this . . . from the Book of Deuterectomy ? Biblically speaking, God destroyed creation because of the wickedness of man (Matthew 24:37-39; Luke 17:26-27), not the abuse of nature and not because people ate meat. But hey, why bother with man’s sinfulness against God when it comes to Hollywood’s moral standard. Instead, the movie offers a more politically correct “sin,” which is the lack of proper vegan philosophy and land management.

In the Biblical account, God tells Noah to include the wives of his sons (Genesis 6:18), Shem, Ham, and Japheth when they enter the ark. However, in the movie, the sons have no wives. Well, let me correct that a little. Early in the movie, they had rescued a girl who later fornicates with Shem (or perhaps I missed it that they were married in the movie) and she gets pregnant. So, Shem is set but unfortunately for Ham, his attempt to get a pre-flood babe failed when Noah let her get trampled by the people trying to overtake the ark when the rain began to fall. As far as Japheth goes, well, apparently he was just out of luck with no antediluvian hottie to hope for.

But, to my utter surprise (yes, it actually surprised me), after Noah and his family had exited the ark on dry land, there was a kind of storytelling compilation of visuals that represented what looked like the evolution of life from the earliest form up to primates. I actually dropped my mouth open at the subtle propaganda. Now, right when the primates were standing erect, the visual presentation switched to a glowing Adam and Eve who then partook of the forbidden fruit. Facepalm!

Anyway, the movie had spectacular special effects and all the actors did a superb job. Aside from the obvious non-biblical and politically correct propaganda, it was well done. But, would I recommend it? Definitely not. Don’t give your financial support to Hollywood for such an atrocious presentation of an important biblical theme.

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Transformers and G.I. Joe Crossover Movie Is Officially Happening

This is the first official confirmation has arrived following the ending of transformers: rise of the beasts..

Following a tease during the ending of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, Paramount has officially confirmed at CinemaCon 2024 that a Transformers and G.I. Joe crossover movie will be released in theaters in 2025 or 2026.

While we didn't learn anything else about the movie, it was confirmed that Steven Spielberg will be an executive producer on the project and Lorenzo di Bonaventura, Mark Vahradian, Michael Bay, Tom DeSanto, and Don Murphy will serve as producers.

For those unaware, the ending of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts saw Noah being interviewed for a security job by a mysterious agent played by Michael Kelly who hands him a business card with the G.I. Joe logo on it. Because of Noah's experience, he has actually been recruited to that top-secret military organization that many of us loved growing up.

This crossover has been teased for many years, with Bonaventura calling it a "possibility" back as early as 2014. Having Transformers and G.I. Joe together is a big deal as it has never happened before in live-action or even in animated form. There were crossovers in the comics beginning with 1986's G.I. Joe and the Transformers, but that was it!

This movie is very likely to be the next entry in the Transformers franchise following Rise of the Beasts, a film we said in our review "proves that the Transformers franchise is accelerating in the right direction, delivering solid Autobots action and a solid voice cast behind the infamous robots in disguise."

The animated film Transformers One also got a behind-closed-doors first look at Paramount's CinemaCon presentation, and it showed a young Optimus Prime and Megatron as lowly worker bots who can't even transform. To earn their ability to transform, they must go on a journey to the surface world.

The Transformers Movies in (Chronological) Order

Are you looking to watch the Transformers live-action films in chronological order? Check out the following list...

We also got a glimpse of Bumblebee and Megatron going up to the surface world via a supply train and Elita working in search of the Matrix of Leadership.

Transformers One will be released on September 14, 2024, and stars Chris Hemsworth as Optimus Prime/Orion Pax, Brian Tyree Henry as Megatron/D-16, Keegan-Michael Key as Bumblebee/B-127, Scarlett Johansson as Elita, Steve Buscemi, Laurence Fishburne, and Jon Hamm.

For more, read more about how Transformers: Rise of the Beasts sets up this crossover and how Skybound's Transformers has reinvented the franchise by going back to its roots.

Have a tip for us? Want to discuss a possible story? Please send an email to [email protected] .

Adam Bankhurst is a writer for IGN. You can follow him on X/Twitter @AdamBankhurst and on TikTok.

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‘franklin’ review: michael douglas is a flatulent founding father in apple tv+’s poorly focused drama.

Benjamin Franklin struggles to get French support for the American Revolution in this new eight-episode period drama co-starring Noah Jupe and Eddie Marsan.

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When he arrived in France in 1776, Benjamin Franklin had a sort of global fame that’s hard to completely fathom, given a world of slow-traveling news in which “social media” took the form of arduously printed and even more arduously distributed pamphlets. He’d been a diplomat, journalist, publisher and prolific inventor, but he was more widely known for semi-apocryphal things like “inventing” electricity, as well as his mastery of glib wisdom we’d call “sound bites” today.

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IMAGES

Noah Movie (2014) Review
Noah Review: Russell Crowe Brilliantly Builds an Ark
Film Review: Noah
NOAH (2019)
Noah 2014 Movie Review
Noah movie review & film summary (2014)

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Noah Movie Explain In Hindi & Urdu
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COMMENTS

Noah movie review & film summary (2014)
Matt Zoller Seitz March 28, 2014. Tweet. "Noah". Now streaming on: Powered by JustWatch. "Noah" is a bizarre movie. It's a modern blockbuster, chock full of the visual and aural and narrative tics we expect from modern blockbusters: flash-cut nightmares and hallucinations, prophecies and old wise men, predictions of apocalypse and a savior's ...
Noah
Noah must build an ark large enough to hold his wife (Jennifer Connelly), adopted daughter (Emma Watson), sons (Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth, Leo McHugh Carroll) and their wives -- plus breeding ...
Noah review
Sun 6 Apr 2014 04.00 EDT. "The snakes are coming too?" Thus speaks Noah's wife, Naameh, as a carpet of slithering CGI serpents joins the menagerie of digital beasts in this utterly preposterous ...
Noah (2014 film)
Noah is a 2014 American epic biblical drama film directed by Darren Aronofsky, who co-wrote the screenplay with Ari Handel.Inspired by the biblical story of Noah's Ark from the Book of Genesis and the Book of Enoch, it stars Russell Crowe as Noah, along with Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, and Anthony Hopkins.. The film was released in North American theaters on ...
Noah
A thought-provoking take on a familiar story that will keep you guessing until the end credits roll. Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 1, 2021. Richard Propes TheIndependentCritic.com. It's ...
Noah (2014)
Noah: Directed by Darren Aronofsky. With Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins. Noah is chosen by God to undertake a momentous mission before an apocalyptic flood cleanses the world.
Noah: Film Review
March 20, 2014 10:00pm. Darren Aronofsky wrestles one of scripture's most primal stories to the ground and extracts something vital and audacious, while also pushing some aggressive ...
'Noah' Review: Uneven But Undeniably Bold Take on Biblical Tale
Film Review: 'Noah'. Man builds ark, survives flood, then wonders what it was all for in Darren Aronofsky's long-awaited, hotly debated biblical epic. Having made movies about obsessive ...
Noah review: 'Russell Crowe is just about the only actor who could have
Noah's middle son, Ham (played by Percy Jackson's Logan Lerman), becomes the lightning rod of dissent, rebellion and betrayal; in the bible, he is the one whose child is cursed after witnessing ...
'Noah' Movie Review: Darren Aronofsky Directs, Russell Crowe Stars
The waters are mostly digital now; no humans were killed in the making of this Noah. But Aronofsky, emboldened by the $330 million worldwide box-office take of his last film, Black Swan, took some ...
Is Noah Worth Watching? Breaking Down The 2014 Russell Crowe Movie's
Darren Aronofsky's 2014 biblical epic, Noah, has found its way to trending on Netflix, but its reviews indicate the film isn't for everyone. Orchestrated by one of the most fascinating 21st-century filmmakers, Noah is an off-beat addition to Darren Aronofsky's filmography, as it's his only massive blockbuster.Biblical stories tend to be divisive in film, with movies like The Last Temptation of ...
'Noah' review: a biblical fever dream
Movie Review 'Noah' review: a biblical fever dream. Darren Aronofsky and Russell Crowe take a weird and wild trip. By Bryan Bishop on March 28, 2014 03:00 pm 642Comments.
Noah Movie Review
Noah is a man of deep faith, so deep he's prep. Violence & Scariness. The violence is epic, bloody, and sometimes gory. Sex, Romance & Nudity. Some passionate kissing. Allusions to needing to b. Language. "Damned" is as salty as it gets. Products & Purchases Not present.
Russell Crowe Confronts Life's Nasty Weather in 'Noah'
Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Action, Adventure, Drama. PG-13. 2h 18m. By A.O. Scott. March 27, 2014. The information supplied about Noah in the Book of Genesis is scant — barely enough for a ...
Noah (2014)
NOAH (2014) **1/2 Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Ray Winstone, Anthony Hopkins, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman, Douglas Booth (voices of Nick Nolte & Frank Langella) Epic and grand undertaking by filmmaker Darren Aronofsky (who collaborated on the adaptation with Ari Handel taking many liberties with its source) depicting the final days of Earth before the biblical 'great flood' laying waste to ...
Noah
Movie Review. It's not easy being clean. Nobody's puppets, Noah and his family still try to live as cleanly as possible—to live as the Creator meant them to live. And they're doing it in a very dirty age long before Babylon held the fertile crescent, before Egypt's pyramids sprouted next to the Nile. They work in harmony with nature.
Noah: Christian Movie Review < Movies
CHRISTIAN MOVIE REVIEW Review: Noah By Janet Rae Contributing Writer. CBN.com - For the first time in cinematic history, the story of Noah comes to the big screen as a feature-length film in Darren Aronofsky's ambitious new release. The Academy Award nominated director and his co-screenwriter Ari Handel take audiences on a dramatic, provocative journey exploring the powerful themes of ...
'Noah' Movie Review
The young-Hollywood quotient intensifies with Harry Potter 's Emma Watson as the orphan Ila, Shem's intended. Ila is barren, which is a negative if you want to repopulate the world. One touch ...
NOAH
Also, the movie gives an environmentalist spin to the sinfulness of man. It depicts Noah as the first survivalist living off the land. At one point, the movie even seems to undercut Genesis 1:26 in the King James Version of the Bible where God gives man "dominion" over the earth by placing the words in the mouth of the villain.
Movie Review: Noah (2014)
The great ark. Once the flood arrives and the ark takes off on its journey, Noah creatively checks out. If anything was working before, it definitely drowns in an earnest whirlpool of circling clichés by now. The animals are nearly forgotten, which seems a strange decision given the cinematic possibilities afforded by such a menagerie.
Noah
Russell Crowe stars as Noah in the film inspired by the epic story of courage, sacrifice and hope. This movie is directed by visionary filmmaker Darren Aronofsky. Disclaimer from the Official Website - The film is inspired by the story of Noah. While artistic license has been taken, we believe that this film is true to the essence, values and integrity of a story that is a cornerstone of faith ...
Noah Movie Review for Parents
Why is Noah rated PG-13? The PG-13 rating is for violence, disturbing images and brief suggestive content. Latest news about Noah, starring Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, Anthony Hopkins, Russell Crowe, Emma Watson, Logan Lerman. and directed by Darren Aronofsky.
Noah movie review from a Christian perspective
by Matt Slick | Mar 31, 2014 | Book and Movie Reviews. Paramount Pictures released Noah (2014) starring Russell Crowe, written by Darren Aronofsky. The two hour and 19-minute movie was a failure from the beginning. Though it borrowed from the biblical story of Noah, it significantly altered the story so much that the whole ordeal became a farce.
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Noah Berlatsky. Alex Garland's "Civil War" has mostly been discussed as a reflection of, and a warning about, America's current partisan divisions. That's understandable, especially ...
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Film Review: ‘Noah’

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Reviewed at Paramount screening room, New York, March 10, 2014. MPAA Rating: PG-13. Running time: 137 MIN.

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