4) Cranky God
The God of the Old Testament is a character in a story more than our modern conception of the Almighty. He often resembles the gods of Greek myth, exhibiting blatantly human emotions like jealousy and vengefulness. He even gets described as a physical being in Genesis when Eve sees him walking through the Garden of Eden. Just the Heavenly Father going for an afternoon stroll.
Noah, like with most other unsavory aspects of these traditional stories, does not shy away from the Lord’s contempt and fickleness. After all, he is the guy sending a flood to kill innocent children and animals, as well as some innocent adults, surely. He is understood, both in Genesis and in the movie, as a powerful being, a kind of tyrant whose kingdom starts to slip away from him a little bit. He creates the world, and does a bang-up job, but somehow doesn’t foresee humans desiring knowledge and succumbing to evil temptations (how knowledge is evil is one of the Lord’s odd philosophies) or legions of angels turning their backs on him for being a hardass. I mean, how could he have seen all this coming—it’s not like he’s omniscient or anything.
This is a deity who generations later would bring another patriarch in Abraham to the point of sacrificing his most prized possession to prove his loyalty, a rather sick proposition that seems to come from a deeply insecure supreme being. Noah cleverly alludes to this characterization of God in a late and daring plot development, and the story is richer as a result.
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