SPOILER ALERT!
In Part 1, I reviewed the original Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Now we may now turn to the remakes.
The most well-known remake is Heaven Can Wait in 1978, using the same title as that of the play by Harry Seagall on which the original movie was based. Most of the differences are trivial. Joe (Warren Beatty) is a professional football player who wasn’t supposed to die in an accident, and what this Joe cares about is getting a body that will allow him to play in the Super Bowl. As we might expect, the plane has been updated to that of a Concorde. Messenger 7013 has become The Escort (Buck Henry), who must hate his job, because he is a sourpuss. Betty Logan (Julie Christie), whose name has undergone a different spelling, is not worried about her father, but about the environment. And so it goes.
Even though the Production Code ended ten years before this version was made, those that produced this movie must have still had some misgivings about taking a stand one way or the other on the matter of predestination. On the one hand, as with the original version, predestination is clearly implied. When Mr. Jordan (James Mason) inquires as to when Joe was supposed to arrive in this afterworld, he is told that he was supposed to arrive at 10:17 AM, March 20th, 2025. There are two things worth noting about this: First, it is precise, down to the minute. Second, it is what is supposed to happen. Now, that sounds like predestination, sure enough.
Unlike in Here Comes Mr. Jordan, where the word “God” is never uttered, in Heaven Can Wait, there are several occasions in which someone uses this word, usually as part of an exclamation, but in any event, only by people on Earth. Neither Mr. Jordan nor The Escort ever says the word “God.” When The Escort informs Joe that he will not be able to use Farnsworth’s body to play in the Super Bowl after all, he avails himself of the passive voice, saying, “It wasn’t meant to be.” And Mr. Jordan does likewise. He says to Joe, “You must abide by what is written…. There’s a reason for everything. There’s always a plan.” What he most decidedly does not say is, “You must abide by God’s plan, because he has a reason for everything. That’s why he wrote it down.”
With or without explicit references to God, all this is in keeping with the doctrine of predestination. But early in the movie, when Mr. Jordan asks The Escort what happened, The Escort confesses that he removed Joe’s soul just before the crash because he was afraid it would hurt. Mr. Jordan reprimands him, saying, “Every question of life and death is a probability until the outcome.” Well, that’s true for us mortals, who must consider what is likely or unlikely on a daily basis, but it makes Mr. Jordan sound like an actuary who works for a life insurance company. In any event, this notion of the probability of an outcome does not square with the precise time and date given above. Nor does it square with the notion that this was when Joe was supposed to die, with what was written, with the plan. My guess is that those who made this movie were as uncomfortable with taking a firm stand on predestination as Joseph Breen was, and they were trying to weasel their way out of it with a contradiction. When it comes to religion, that often seems to work.
The movie was remade again as Down to Earth in 2001, using the same title as the 1947 sequel to Here Comes Mr. Jordan. Regarding the sequel, I was lucky. It is not available on Netflix, so I have been spared the fate of having to watch it. As for the remake that goes by this title, in this version, Chris Rock stars as the Joe character, but going by the name “Lance Barton.” Lance is a professional comedian, and his problem is that he is not funny, and he always gets booed off the stage. However, his best chance for success will be if, just before the Apollo Theater closes for good, he can win a slot in the Amateur Night Contest = become Heavy Weight Champion = win the Super Bowl.
Lance’s day job, so to speak, is that of a bicycle messenger, and when he sees Sontee Jenkins (Regina King) = Bette/Betty Logan walking across the street, he gets distracted and is hit by a truck and killed. In this case, Keyes (Eugene Levy) = Messenger 7013 = The Escort, makes the mistake of plucking Lance’s soul from his body ahead of time, even though he is required to use a stopwatch to make sure souls are taken at the exact moment they are supposed to be. When we first see Keyes, he says he hates his job, which was something we always suspected about his avatars in the first two versions. It would have been blasphemous for Messenger 7013 to have said such a thing in 1941, and even in 1978, it would not have been acceptable for The Escort to say as much, though he is so miserable that we can hardly think anything else; but religion in the twenty-first century is no longer sacred, and the audience can hear Keyes make such a remark without thinking God would be offended.
There is no plane in this movie to take Lance to his final destination. Instead, Heaven is like the hottest nightclub in town, and he finds himself standing in line with other people waiting to get past the velvet rope. A good looking girl says that Mike put her on the list, and she gets to go right in. But when some dork tries to gain entry, he is told to go to Hell. Lance is admitted, and what he finds inside is an adolescent’s idea of Heaven, one never-ending party. Mr. King (Chazz Palminteri) = Mr. Jordan runs the joint, and as he explains to Lance, “The food is great, the women are beautiful, and the music, Lance, the music is hot. The fun never stops.”
I should have said this is Heaven as envisioned by a male adolescent, and a straight one at that, for this is certainly no gay bar. Presumably, women exist in this Heaven to provide pleasure for the men, sort of like the seventy-two virgins for male martyrs in the Paradise of Islam. That’s why this nightclub Heaven is always pleased to welcome women who die young, while they are still desirable. I am trying to imagine a gender reversal, where a Josephine dies before her time, and is told by a Ms. Queen that the men in the night club are rich and powerful, and the marriage proposals never stop. But I may be way off base. I have known young males to indulge in such fantasies as presented in this movie, but no woman of any age has ever told me of her fantasies of Heaven.
In any event, regarding this nightclub Heaven as presented in this movie, most straight men would enjoy that sort of thing once in a while, but the prospect of being trapped in that nightclub doing the same thing over and over again for eternity is dreadful. The only way it could possibly be enjoyable is if it involves some kind of eternal recurrence: there you are in a fancy nightclub, feeling good from a couple of drinks, and dancing with a beautiful woman, who gives every indication she’ll be going home with you at the end of the evening; and then, after about fifteen minutes, your memory is washed away, and you start at the beginning again, on the dance floor with that same woman, oblivious to the fact that you have done this countless times in the past, and will do so countless times in the future. Ugh!
Mr. King comes across as a wise guy, an Italian with mob connections. When he realizes that Lance was taken before his time, which is precise to the minute, he says he talked to his boss and can fix things. Lance asks, “You talked to God,” and Mr. King says, “Yeah.” So, this is the first version in which someone in the afterworld acknowledges that there is a God, let alone indicates that God has agency, that he has chosen to allow Lance to be granted a new body rather than just have him stay in that nightclub.
One of the refreshing things about this version is that Lance quickly catches on to the mechanics of occupying the body of Mr. Wellington (Brian Rhodes) = Mr. Farnsworth. In the previous versions, it was exasperating the way it took Joe so long to understand the rules. One of the rules is that Lance continues to look like Lance to himself after he enters Mr. Wellington’s body, but not to others. Occasionally we see him through the eyes of others, in which case he looks like Mr. Wellington, an older white man, who is mostly bald with just a little gray hair left. So, when Lance is at the Apollo coming on like Chris Rock, telling black jokes to a black audience, as far as the audience is concerned, some white guy is making fun of them. And when others see him with Sontee, that’s amusing too. They are not only a mixed-race couple, as well as a May-December couple, but they also seem to be unsuited to each other as to their looks, for he is somewhat unattractive, while she is pretty. But then, he’s a billionaire, and such men can usually have their pick. In any event, when Lance moves into the final body of Joe Guy (Arnold Pinnock), another black comedian, he and Sontee make a more suitable couple.
Even though Mr. King admitted that he talked to God to get his approval for obtaining a new body for Lance, he resorts to the same old artifice when it comes time for Lance to give up Mr. Wellington’s body. When Lance objects because he has just asked Sontee to marry him, and she said yes, Mr. King says, “You’ve got to play by the rules.” When Lance keeps resisting, Mr. King says, “No one makes these rules, kid…. It’s fate.” Unlike genuine predestination, in which God ordained everything that happens from the beginning of time, fate is an impersonal kind of necessity, which characterizes the rules, according to Mr. King. Since God didn’t make the rules, he cannot be blamed for the rule that says that Wellington must be murdered. So, whereas God is allowed to be an active participant in what happens when it is something good, like that of getting Lance a new body, he is nowhere to be found when something evil takes place, such as the murder of Mr. Wellington.
And so, as with the first two versions of this story, predestination seems to prevail in this movie, though cast in an impersonal form. But I wonder if anyone cares anymore, the way Joseph Breen once feared they might. In a review on christiananswers.net, the author noted the profanity, sex, and references to drugs in the movie, but said nothing about the issue of free will versus predestination. Nor did any of the posted comments express concerns on this matter. I searched for other Christian websites that might have a review, but I found none.
In any event, the most remarkable thing about this movie is that, unlike the reaction I had when watching its predecessors, I think this version is occasionally funny. But, boy, am I in the minority! I have already referred to the Academy Awards for Best Story and Best Screenplay for Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and Elaine May got the nomination for Best Screenplay for Heaven Can Wait, but for the most part, the critics did not seem to care for Down to Earth. Roger Ebert gave it one star, saying that it is “an astonishingly bad movie.” I never laughed once while watching Here Comes Mr. Jordan, and I found Heaven Can Wait to be irritating. But when I watched Down to Earth, at least it did make me laugh once in a while. It’s not so good that I expect to ever watch it again, but as a one-timer, it’s not bad.
For the sake of completeness, I suppose I should at least note that there are four other remakes of Here Comes Mr. Jordan. First, there is Ice Angel (2000). This is the movie that Roger Ebert might well have deemed an astonishingly bad movie. It is unworthy of discussion. I understand that there are a couple of versions made in India: The Skies Have Bowed (1968) and Mar Gaye Oye Loke (2018). From what little I know of the religions India, I don’t think that predestination would be as contentious an issue in that part of the world as it is for Christianity. But my biggest regret is that I have been unable to see Debbie Does Dallas… Again (2007). I looked for it on Netflix, but no luck there. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.