Faith Driven Consumers, a consumer advocacy group, reports that faith-driven audiences rate biblical accuracy as the number 1 factor in considering a film. Ridley Scott’s Killing Jesus, produced for National Geographic, got 3 out of 5 stars according to their system of ranking.
Ranking Categories:
Overall Faith and/or Biblical Relevance: 2.5 stars
Faith-compatible Depiction of Characters and Character Relationships: 3 stars
Faith-compatible Depiction of Situations: 2 stars
Family Viewing Suitability: 3 stars
Entertainment Value: 4 stars
The miniseries, which is based on Bill O’Reilly’s best selling book of the same name, tells the story of the historical figure of Jesus and leaves the supernatural claims of Jesus out of the equation.
The point to this retelling of the story is not the influence Christ had on the world, nor the perfect life he lived. While it does have plenty of blood and suffering in the movie, such scenes do not dominate the film as they did in Mel Gibson’s The Passion. This movie wants to make clear who was responsible for the death of Jesus. And to some degree it succeeds.
Killing Jesus premiers Sunday March 29 on the National Geographic channel.