Fairy Tale Spotlight: The 2018 Samson Movie

I recently watched the 2018 movie Samson. Being that I recently wrote my own Samson story, I felt it might be a good idea to check it out and see how it stacked up. Did I like it? Did I hate it? Truth is... it's a mixed bag.

I was already expecting them to make Samson a mortal man empowered by God rather than a human/angel hybrid. I was even fine with that. I don't expect religious films to bother with the outer circle of spiritual phenomenon. So I was ready to experience a purely human Samson in all of his glory.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of complaints. This movie takes far too many licences with the truth. They threw in characters just to move the plot forwards. Characters who were not killed in the Bible were killed simply to add to the drama. The villains were cartoony and came across to me as more like comedy than something to really fear. But okay, so they wanted to make it clear they were bad. Fine.

There were parts that I genuinely enjoyed, and those came in way of the key moments where Samson used his strength to kick Philistine ass. The donkey jaw bone fight was my favorite. I loved these moments. If the whole movie was just them, it be a lot shorter, but probably better. I'll explain why.

Like I said, I did not mind them making Samson a mortal human, but dang! He was always depressed and crying about stupid stuff! When he wasn't using strength, he was all teary eyed. Every time he whined like a girl, it almost made me want to just stop watching the movie. This is not the Samson I was familiar from the Bible at all.

Another problem I had was that his strength was not presented as omnipresent. He sort of... had to... ask for it once in a while. Before he did this, he would sometimes seem weak and scared. There was one scene where he was running for his life. It was kind of silly seeing him like this. It was clearly done just to add extra drama to it.

Oh, yes. The running scene happened after he was found in a brothel. And he was oddly not comfortable being in such an ungodly place. I mean COME ON!

Is Samson worth seeing? Answer: No. It isn't. But I would recommend looking up the main milestone scenes on YouTube if you can. They are actually very good. But at the end of the day, this is a great story that is sullied by too much overthinking and the usual drive to spin a religious story as to not offend everyone. Hope this review helps.

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