Interpreting whether or not the stories in the Bible are completely and historically accurate has been a debated topic for hundreds of years. Some take it literally, others figuratively, and others don’t find any value in it all.

Regardless, Hollywood has continuously found a way to bring some of these stories to the big screen, most recently with the release of Noah by director Darren Aronofsky. Although after two weeks it’s still number one at the box office, the film is being criticized on many of its aspects.

For Biblical literalists, the fact that the new film does not exactly follow the Bible’s story seems to completely censor the other themes and motifs shown throughout- this is not surprising. It is baffling, however, that the movie is also upsetting right-wing Christians (who aren’t fundamentalists) for the same reason. Surveys show that this might have something to do with the fact that Aronofsky is an atheist, thus some Christians feel as if his film is an attack on Christianity.

To be fair, when looking at the context of the movie compared to the real story in Genesis, there are some major differences. For example, the movie depicts the flood as happening many years after humans had been fighting in some sort of large world war- all that the Bible says is that there had been a great drought.

Similarly, the film contains an extravagant amount of special effects. Whether or not if this is what is upsetting Christians is undetermined, but some leeway should be given in this aspect when comparing the two works.  It’d be hard to keep an audience in the 21^st century attentive to a movie without any sort of flash to it.

Despite all of the negativity towards the movie, it has remained at number one since its release. Only time will tell how Noah fares in the future.