Left Behind the Movie: Part 4

The movie then goes on to introduce the Rapture the right way -- with all-out panic. But it gets it wrong if it wants to show a disaster creeping up on people. If that's what it is trying to show, the way to do it would be to have Buck check in the restroom, find it empty, and have a creepy sensation. Then he would emerge, see another seat empty except for clothes, and feel even creepier. Then the passengers in coach would start waking up, noticing their children (and other loved ones) were missing, and start panicking.

Instead, one of the passengers in coach wakes up, sees her kids missing, and starts calling for them. The disturbance starts waking other passengers who find their children and other loved ones missing as well. The unobservant Buck, who apparently hasn't heard the commotion in coach, looks into the restroom, sees it empty, and is alarmed. Hattie tries to calm the frightened mother, but as more and more people awake in coach, the disturbance escalates into all-out panic. Hattie can't control it and flees. The lights go on in first class to reveal a lot of seats empty except for clothes which the really unobservant Buck apparently didn't notice on his way to the restroom. He draws back the curtain, steps out, and to his shock sees another set of chairs empty except for clothes. I personally think that given the scope of the disaster, all-out panic is the only way to introduce it, but if the movie makers want to introduce the Rapture as something seemingly innocuous and then escalate, they should at least do it right.

Not only children have been raptured. One person asks for grandparents. We get a good look at the abandoned clothes, including one seat with clerical garb. This raises two questions, one story-related and the other theological. I can understand parents who've lost their children behaving like parents who've lost their children. What else could be expect? By contrast any adult family member raptures must be what Fred Clark calls a Real True Christian (RTC), i.e., one who subscribes to the proper PMD theology, including belief in the Rapture. In that case, you would expect anyone who lost an adult family member to have had their ears talked off about the Rapture. They should, therefore, have some idea what is going on. But then again, panic can interfere with people's ability to think clearly, so maybe we shouldn't blame them too much.

The other one is about all the children being raptured. That comes from the original book. Apparently the author can't bear the idea of children too young to have reached the age of discretion being hell-bound. Well, not to put too fine a point on it, that is contrary to traditional Christian theology. Traditional Christian theology follows the doctrine of original sin, the belief that because of the Fall of Man, the entire human race is Hell-bound unless redeemed by Christ. Churches have disagreed on what "redeemed by Christ" means. To Catholics, Lutherans and many other non-Calvinists, it means baptized. Unbaptized children, including aborted fetuses,* are Hell-bound, but once baptized, people are only responsible for their own sins, and in children these are usually pretty trivial. Evangelical Christians are more ruthless. Redeemed by Christ means taking Jesus Christ as your personal savior. If you haven't done that, then baptism will not save you. The implications for children too young to take Jesus Christ as their personal savior are so grim** that most Evangelical Christians today, including the authors of Left Behind, prefer not to face them.

Anyhow, to continue, Hattie flees to the crew area where she just kissed Rayford and tells him, panicked, that passengers have disappeared. At first he thinks they just stepped off to the lavs, but she tells him about the people missing except for their clothing, so he goes to investigate. The passengers are in a state of all-out panic. As if to prove that panic makes people do irrational things, the strangely obnoxious passenger in first class tries to open to door! Steele tries to restrain him, but the passenger throws him back. Then Buck comes to his assistance, and together they pin him down. "What's going on, Captain?" Buck asks.

Meanwhile, back on the ground, Chloe is driving her car, leaving a message to her already-raptured mother apologizing for missing Raymie's birthday. So after lecturing her father about his family responsibilities, Chloe is apparently doing the same thing. Then she slams on her brakes as she sees a major pile-up caused by the Rapture.*** Chloe tries to offer assistance to an injured driver, looks into a semi-truck whose driver has been raptured, and goes to a hysterical mother and looks through the infant safety seat where her baby was. (There is also an empty school bus in the background, with all the passengers presumably raptured). While Chloe is distracted, the injured man throws the bag out of her car and drives off in it.

Meanwhile, back on the plane, all-out panic is reigning. Buck, Steele and Hattie try to get the passengers back into their seats, but Hattie is on the verge of breaking down herself. Unable to stem the panic, Steele returns to the cockpit and and releases the oxygen masks. At last, everyone returns to their seats, straps on the masks, and sits quietly. The movie was made in 2000, i.e., pre-9-11. Looking at it from a post-9-11 perspective gives me an odd feeling. After all, the big lesson of 9-11 was that in case of emergency, passengers should overcome the customary passivity normally expected of airline passengers and take action. And the lesson here is that in case of emergency, the important thing is to keep passengers passive.****

Steele and his copilot radio back to report the emergency. And they learn that this is happening everywhere. Crews are missing, planes are crashing, air traffic controllers have disappeared. Steele says, "We're turning back." This raises two problems. One, that we have learned since 9-11, is that an emergency forcing down the entire air traffic system is a major logistical mess. Pilots can't be allowed to simply decide for themselves where to fly their planes. Air traffic controllers have to coordinate such a huge operation. Pilots go where they are told, and that is all. And this emergency makes 9-11 look trifling by comparison. But the movie was made pre-9-11, so the producers can be forgiven for not knowing all this.

The other problem is that I think Rayford's decision to turn back is intended as the first sign of his moral regeneration, even before his religious conversion, or even any thought of conversion. He neglected his duties to his wife and children to bury himself in his work (and Hattie), but now he's learned that family comes first, so his first thought upon learning of the scale of the disaster is to rush home to his family. The trouble here is that family does, indeed, come first so long as he is on the ground, but so long as he is at the control of the plane, his first duty is to his passengers. His passengers, after all, have families too. As a pilot, he can't just go off and take his passengers to Chicago so he can check on his family to see how they are.

Back on the ground, the police have arrived at the scene of the accident and are in charge. Chloe keeps calling on her cell, presumably in a vain attempt to reach her mother and Raymie. There isn't much she can do at the scene, so she throws her bag over her shoulder and heads home on foot.

In the airport, all-out panic and pandemonium reign. Little dogs stand on leashes, their owners raptured. Parents weep over their disappeared children. The speaker system announces a federal emergency. Buck keeps trying to contact Dirk Burton (remember him?), but all circuits are busy. Buck and others gather around the TV, reporting on the disaster. The President has died (apparently when his plane crashed, although that is not made clear), and other world leaders are killed or missing. Carpathia is interviewed, saying that the U.N. is taking a leadership role, and that we must all work together to help our neighbors.

Rayford walks down an empty corridor, blocked off by soldiers, with Hattie following. He desperately wants to get home to his family. Hattie, half-crying, begs him to stay with her. He says he can't, he has to go home. Buck, desperate to talk to Burton, whose rantings he unaccountably links to the disappearances, runs after Steele and says he's got to get to New York. Steele says the whole air system is shut down, and all he cares about is getting home to his family.

For Fred Clark's take, seehere.

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*The current Christian opposition to abortion, Evangelical or Catholic, is on the grounds that the unborn are the most worthy of protection because they are the most innocent among us. That is contrary to traditional Christian doctrine. Traditional Catholic opposition to abortion was based on the assumption that the unborn were guilty (of original sin) and therefore Hell-bound. Traditional Catholic doctrine held that abortion was worse than murder because the victim of murder had hope for Heaven, but an unbaptized fetus was necessarily damned to Hell.
**Jack Chick, a super-hardcore Evangelical Christian, is inconsistent on this matter. His tracts regularly threaten children with Hell unless they take Jesus Christ as their personal savior. On the other hand, he assures us that aborted babies are in Heaven, even though by definition a fetus cannot take Jesus Christ as its personal savior.
***And just then my version runs out so we continue with part 3.
****This being said, uncontrolled panic never did anyone any good and makes passivity look good by comparison.