Angels & Demons

I liked the book Angels & Demons much better than The Da Vinci Code, so I was particularly excited to see the movie with my brother (who gave me all the Dan Brown books for Christmas one year) and my wife earlier this week.

I’ll start off by noting that the filmmakers reworked the story so that it happens after The Da Vinci Code, rather than before it as written in the books.  This makes for some nice drama between Langdon (our protagonist) and the Catholic Church (our other protagonist).  They didn’t stop there, however; while I haven’t read the book for some time, I noticed that they changed which characters fill certain roles in the film, and even changed the design of significant props.  The biggest change was how it all went down in the climax.  I don’t want to spoil anything, but I will say it is significantly different than in the book.

I’ll tell you now that I certainly liked the book better; however, this story stood up very well as a film.  Had I not read the book, I’m sure I’d have liked the film even more (mostly because I wouldn’t have been pulled out of my suspension of disbelief on a number of occasions where something happened differently than I expected).  If you’re interested in checking out this story in film and book form, I’d recommend starting with the movie.

For those of you wondering about the religious connotations after all of the buzz surrounding The Da Vinci Code, I can tell you the film goes out of its way to suggest that while humans are flawed, nothing they do or write (in the way of science and religion) precludes the existence of a creator.  After all of the backlash that The Da Vinci Code received from the Catholic church and its followers, I was surprised to learn that they were not upset about this movie (after they saw it, of course; during filming they wouldn’t let the filmmakers shoot on any locations in the Vatican).  The movie does spoon-feed you its message at times, though.  In addition to what I mentioned above, that message includes the postulate that science and religion can and should co-exist.  Like in the book, one of the scientists in the film is a devout Catholic.

I was mixed on the special effects.  The film overdid the antimatter effect, yet hit the event in the climax spot-on (although the first second or so had me worried).  I’m guessing that a number of the locations were CGI, but I had trouble detecting which.  The music, written by The Da Vinci Code composer Hans Zimmer was good and included many themes from the previous movie.  The story, while different, was good and kept the movie going along.  This is the second movie in a row that I’ve seen that didn’t get slow in the middle.

Whether you are religious or scientific in nature (or both), I can see no reason why you wouldn’t enjoy this movie.  As with the books, I felt this movie was better than The Da Vinci Code, so if you liked that movie, you’re sure to like this one.

Rating (out of 4):