Last night I forked over the $36.00 for two tickets for myself and fiancee to see 'Noah' in IMAX. Most know the general story of Noah and his family and the Great Flood, yet there is much in the movie that is absent in the Bible and much of the Bible story is absent in the movie.
To be clear, I am not a Christian and consider the Bible to be a work of fiction. As one with a background in environmental science and geology, the evidence on the face of the earth for a Great Flood is non-existent.
The Law of Superposition tells us that in a sequence of sedimentary rock layers, the layers are arranged chronologically with the oldest layer at the bottom and the youngest layer at the top. Pair this with the Law of Faunal Succession, which tells us that fossils contained within a common sedimentary rock layer share a common geologic period in which they lived, while those situated in subsequent rock layers are younger.
In addition, in a global flood you would expect to see sediment deposition occur in layers according to the size, shape and density of the sediment suspended in the waters. That is not the case. Anyone who has been to the Grand Canyon can see that the layers (strata) are not organized according to size, shape or density of the sediment. Instead, a different type of organization exists: that of the fossil record. The oldest fossils are found in the lowest layers and the youngest fossils are found in the top layers, as detailed in Faunal Succession. There are no "top layer" fossils found in the lower layers and there are no "lower layer" fossils found at the top. Surely the fossils didn't settle according to their age, but I digress.
Ironically, considering the fantastic biblical story of the Great Flood, 'Noah' is so far-fetched it makes that Bible story seem plausible. Noah is able to build his ark under the protection of fallen angels who crashed into lava and took the form of jagged, deformed giant rock men. Think of the Ent trees from Lord of the Rings mixed with Pyornkrachzark, the giant rock biter from The Never Ending Story.
These characters play the role of the fallen angels cursed by God, yet in the Bible it says these angels mated with humans. That is not the case in 'Noah'. God punishes them for seeking to aid man through deformation and exile. God is love, right?
According to the Bible, Noah is 600 years old when the flood waters arrive yet there is no indication of such old age in the film. If there is, it was so subtle that I missed it and I was looking for it. For a movie that clearly attempted to add fantasy to an already fantastic story, it's curious why this wouldn't be a part of the film.
---SPOILER ALERT---
What follows are actual details from the film so if you plan on seeing it, don't read any further.
There's an important difference between the Bible story and the movie that I think is necessary to point out.
In Genesis 7:7, the Bible says:
And Noah and his sons and his wife and his sons’ wives entered the ark to escape the waters of the flood.
In Genesis 7:13, the Bible says:
On that very day Noah and his sons, Shem, Ham and Japheth, together with his wife and the wives of his three sons, entered the ark.
Yet 'Noah' abandons his son Ham's girlfriend (they actually just met that day so they weren't even married) in the forest as the flood waters arrived. He allowed her to be trampled by a raging hoard racing to commandeer the ark (also not depicted in the Bible). Noah explains to Ham that she was unclean and needed to die like everyone else. This leads Ham to conspire to kill Noah in the months they're on the ark (also not depicted in the Bible).
In Genesis 9:1, the Bible says,
Then God blessed Noah and his sons, saying to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth.
In Genesis 9:7, the Bible says,
As for you, be fruitful and increase in number; multiply on the earth and increase upon it.
Yet, in the movie, 'Noah' believes it is God's will that all humans are killed by the flood - including himself and his family. It is simply their responsibility to secure the animals so that
they may live after the water recedes but Noah and his family are meant to die. He plans out which son will bury who and that his youngest son Japheth will be the last man on Earth. Thus, Noah vows to kill Shem's child if he has a daughter as soon as it is born in order to prevent the procreation of the species.
There are a variety of other inconsistencies but I found these two to be the most significant, as they greatly detract from the central theme of the Biblical Noah.
Interestingly, the movie does credit the creation of the Earth and sun to planetary accretion, a scientific model describing the formation of the solar system by the collision and coalescence of matter due to gravity. So, thumbs up there. The rest of it was Sci-Fi.