Darwin Movie Controversial

This month marks the release of the British film Creation, all about the life of Charles Darwin. But according to producer Jeremy Thomas, for a while the film was just too controversial for any U.S. distributor to touch.

For a while the film was just too controversial for any U.S. distributor to touch.

Thomas’s comments remind us of the tragically lost status of modern Britain. “It’s quite difficult for we in the UK to imagine religion in America,” he told the Daily Mail. “We live in a country which is no longer so religious. But in the U.S., outside of New York and LA, religion rules.” He also stated:

The film has no distributor in America. It has got a deal everywhere else in the world but in the U.S., and it’s because of what the film is about. People have been saying this is the best film they’ve seen all year, yet nobody in the U.S. has picked it up. It is unbelievable to us that this is still a really hot potato in America. There’s still a great belief that He made the world in six days.

However accurate (or inaccurate) the producer’s assessment of American audiences, the film has since found a distributor in the U.S.: Newmarket, notes The Hollywood Reporter. And actually, considering what passes for appropriate entertainment in Hollywood, it’s strange that anyone would think Creation too edgy for the U.S.

Furthermore, the point seems to be lost on some of the backers of Creation that showing the human side of Charles Darwin won’t alter creationists’ scientific and logical appraisal of his ideas. Creationists are aware of Darwin’s many struggles over religious issues, especially as they related to his family and his ideas (see Darwin’s Personal Struggle with Evil, for instance). But an idea that goes against the status quo or that has harsh social consequences is not therefore correct.

As for us, we are still “the forces of darkness” in the eyes of evolutionists—those words used by Armond Leroi of Imperial College London when speaking with Channel 4 News about the upcoming film. Whether Creation will lead more viewers to agree with Leroi is yet to be seen.

To learn more about Creation, read Mark Looy’s Creation in the Making.

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