A new three-year study of the Top 25 movies released in 2006-2008 earning the most money overseas shows that international moviegoers prefer clean movies with strong or very strong Christian, moral and/or redemptive content and values.
This study is significant because it matches our annual study of the Top 25 Movies at the Box Office in America and Canada and the top home video sales annually, and because Hollywood now makes more money overseas than it does in the United States.
The Movieguide study found that 20 of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2006-2008, or 80%, contained strong or very strong Christian, moral, redemptive, and even biblical content, earning $8.39 billion out of $10.59 billion total, or 79.2% of the money among the Top 25.
That’s an average of $419.5 million per movie!
A couple of the best examples are “Spider-Man 3” and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” both of which actually made it into the Top 10 movies overseas in 2006-2008.
“Spider-Man 3” has a very strong Christian worldview with very strong redemptive themes, where the hero goes in repentance to the foot of the Cross to shed his sins. The new “Indiana Jones” movie shows the hero rejecting the evil tyranny and mind control of Communism and ends with a brief church wedding scene that quotes the words of Jesus Christ in Matthew 19 and Verse 24 of Chapter Two of the Book of Genesis in the Old Testament!
None of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2006 to 2008 were R-rated, but nine of them were rated G or PG. Also, only three of the Top 25 had more than 25 obscenities and profanities, only three had any depicted sexual content, only two had any sexual nudity in them, only four had any very strong action violence, only five (20%) had any drug references, and only 10, or 40%, had any scenes of drunkenness or alcohol abuse.
Moviegoers clearly prefer clean movies with strong Christian, moral, biblical, and redemptive content. They want good to triumph over evil and justice to prevail. They want to be inspired.
The following chart lists the kind and percent of moral, theological and political content Movieguide found in these Top 25 Movies:
Top 25 Movies at the Overseas Box Office, 2006-2008
|
Content |
Percent |
|
Strong/Very Strong Christian, Moral and/or Redemptive Content |
80% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Pagan or Mixed Content |
36% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Capitalist, Pro-American and/or Patriotic Content |
32% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Anti-Christian or Anti-Biblical Content |
12% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Occult Content |
12% |
|
Strong/Very Strong False Religious Content |
12% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Political Correct Content and/or Revisionist History |
12% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Romantic/Liberal Philosophies |
8% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Pro-Environmentalist Content |
8% |
|
Strong/Very Strong Unrebuked Anti-Capitalist or Anti-American Content |
4% |
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Besides “Spider-Man 3” and the “Indiana Jones” movie, the study also included such top movie releases in 2006, 2007 and 2008 as “The Dark Knight,” “I Am Legend” (which had a several Christian worldview), “Wall-E” (which had a very strong redemptive Christian worldview focusing on a heroic example of the Christian definition of love), “Ice Age: The Meltdown,” “Prince Caspian” (based on a Christian novel), “Iron Man,” “Transformers,” and the last two “Pirates of the Caribbean” movies (both of which contained overt Christian references at the center of an ultimately redemptive plot).
A Movieguide study of the Top 25 movies overseas in 2005, 2006 and 2007 showed very similar results to the new three-year study.