Oh, I definitely noticed it. Also, according to the trailer it looks like there is going to be a certain handshake in the movie as well.

I’m actually looking forward to seeing the film. Sometimes I like a good trainwreck of a movie. It actually doesn’t bother me all that much that they’re showing those things. I mean, really, what can we do about it? Freak out and get offended and demand the filmmakers cut out that portion of their film? Nah, that will only give them exactly what they want. What they don’t want, however, is for people to recognize how bad the film is and not go see it. (the irony being that for that exact reason I want to see it)

The three reviews I’ve read about this movie all say it’s terrible. I can’t imagine anyone with half a mind will actually take it as real history. In fact, I don’t think anyone will see it anyway.

arJ: As such an endeavor as you suggest would not be considered “faith promoting” by the brethren, I doubt any official source at all would be of help. In fact, ask that question of the wrong people and you’ll get called into the bishop’s os SP’s office, I would guess. We don’t talk about anything temple-related outside the temple, and we most certainly don’t talk about former temple ritual and changes over the years.

arj, the definitive treatment is Buerger’s article “The Development of the Mormon Temple Endowment Ceremony” from 1987 Winter Dialogue. It was expanded to book length and published as The Mysteries of Godliness by Signature Books. The book includes a bibliography of every major published account of the temple ceremony.

I’m disappointed they didn’t tap ol’ Richard Moll to play Brigham Young. After his performance as Joseph Smith in Brigham, and then a great run as a baliff on Night Court, I would have thought he had matured perfectly for the character.

I guess Jon Voight has a better “evil madman” look.

Other than seeing the trailer online, I haven’t seen ANY promotion of the film. If it weren’t for the bloggernacle, I wouldn’t even know the film existed.

Rusty,

My concern is the international impact. Even the crappiest US movie gets dubbed and played over and over again on international TV. As missionaries we heard about it each time a movie made any mention of Mormons. We even heard about movies that didn’t feature Mormons such as Deliverance and Witness. There was an obscure made for TV movie about the Singer/Swapp standoff that we heard about for weeks.

This movie will flop in the US and be forgotten here. Then it will play for years in areas where there is a lot of missionary work going on.

Over on eBay, I bought a used VHS tape of the 1940 movie “Brigham Young”. It stars Tyrone Power as a non-Mormon, who is friendly to the church, in love with a Mormon girl. It features Dean Jagger as Brigham Young, and Vincent Price as Joseph Smith. There are some obvious historical inaccuracies, but nothing anti-Mormon in it.

ARJ: Don’t worry. BY said that the only direction you can kick the church is up-stairs. Even bad publicity can be turned to good, and gets people talking about the church. Especially the outrageous stuff, as it gets honest people to ask us “Why’d they say that?”

Every anti-mormon sermon makes neutral people more curious about us.

In the scene with the full temple robes, who are the dark suited individuals standing behind the robed people (i.e. what function are they supposed to be fulfilling)?

Like Rusty, I am actually looking forward to the movie. I like a good western (although some have said it’s also aesthetically bad and not just sensationalistic). Movies are fun — great for the imagination. Novels are great too.

The endowment is claimed to be relevant to the MMM because of the “oath of vengeance” which was once part of the endowment. However, at the time of the MMM, the oath had only recently been added to the endowment, there were no temples, and the Endowment House was only two years old. I wonder how many of the principals in the MMM had actually taken the oath, or even were familiar with it. They would have had to have been endowed within the last few years, certainly post-Nauvoo. The first endowments for the dead were not performed until the St. George Temple was dedicated, 20 years after Mountain Meadows, so people would not have experienced the oath during proxy work. Has anyone done any research on when the MMM participants were endowed, and whether they had taken the oath, or were familiar with it?

The movie doesn’t seem too concerned with historical accuracy, but I suspect that the temple scenes are included in order to play up that angle.

This movie has been pulled from imminent release twice now, both times (probably) due to really bad reviews at the screening audiences. It was initially supposed to be released right around the time of the PBS special. When I read all the criticism of Whitney spending so much time on MMM, I could only think that it was a GIFT that so much of the documentary was spent on the subject. Any LDS who gets questions about MMM because of this pathetic joke of a movie can refer people to the PBS documentary. Nobody expects a PBS documentary to be so favorable to the subject matter.