Eye candy. That’s what it is. A Wrinkle in Time is a joy to watch, but presents a challenge discerning its world view. I pegged it as a fun, kid’s movie until “It” came into the picture, and then I had to start thinking. What was It supposed to represent?
Every form of creative expression means something, if only blood—or sexual—lust. Okay, that may be a stretch for the words, “creative expression,” but even in porn, somebody has to yell, “Action,” and, “Cut.”
Disclaimer: If you haven’t seen the movie and intend to watch it, stop here! You may want to draw your own conclusions.
The first red-flag was the phrase, “It was, It is, It will be,” an obvious reference to the living, eternal One, who introduced himself to Moses as, “I Am that I Am,” and identified himself to John the Revelator with the words, I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the Ending, says the Lord, the One who is, and who was, and who is coming, the Almighty. (Revelation 1:8 LITV) As a kid movie, however, the Biblical reference to It will likely be lost on its target audience.
Hey, You! The guy who hasn’t watched the movie yet. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Wrinkle surprised me with several Biblical quotations from the “Witches” who weren’t really that. One of the trio was a shape-shifting, dead star, a nod to C. S. Lewis’ The Voyage of the Dawn Treader. The other two were beneficent women of some super-human race in another galaxy.
Any story is distinguished by the scale of its stakes, and in Wrinkle, they were as high as the universe’s very survival. A thick, smog-like cloud, invisible to mere mortals, spread across the universe and clutched planet Earth with its Darkness. Of course, its obvious analogy was sin in all its guises. And the master of the darkness? It!
If Steven King’s It! was evil, this nearly omnipotent being was evil to the nth degree. The ultimate antagonist, It appeared to be a humongous, writhing brain that controlled its enforcers, and through them, the home-planet’s population. In one scene, a teenage boy committed the crime of dribbling his basketball instead of bouncing it in cadence with all other Play Hour activities. Any demonstration of individuality was rewarded with “Remediation.” Not an enviable consequence.
Throughout what seemed to be the planet’s only city, a P.A. system blared such propaganda as, “Relax, It is in controll,” “It will take care of your needs,” “Give over to It,” and, “It was, It is, It will be.” This schtick sounded awfully religious, and I took it as a parody of conventional religious endoctrination. The whole system suggested to me a pseudo-theocracy. Am I too touchy about religious parodies? Maybe, but it seemed quite possible that young people or adults who are clueless about Christ’s Way, might generalize Wrinkle’s dark regime to represent all faith-based institutions.
Though It propagated the god-like image of an eternal being, it turned out to be nothing but a usurper. And the power it supplanted? The true eternal Power: Love. And what was its only vulnerability? The pure love of a big sister for her kid brother.
My question is, which message will prevail in impressionable minds?
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