Paul Asay

 
Award-Winning Author, Journalist and Blogger
Religion, Movie and Pop Culture Geek

When you think about it, Thanksgiving is a very Hollywood-friendly holiday. The whole Thanksgiving story is like a screenplay for your typical inspirational blockbuster: A group of plucky outcasts hop on a ship and deal with incredible odds and impossible hardships to follow their dreams. It’s like a cross between The Goonies and Guardians of the Galaxy, maybe. Only with dowdier clothes and a lot more prayer. So perhaps it’s fitting that tomorrow, we mute the football game and put down the gravy and give thanks … for the movies. ...
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Paul Asay is a senior associate editor at Plugged In, a ministry that reaches more than 6 million people with movie reviews that help people understand popular cultural trends and how they intersect with spiritual issues. Paul is an award-winning journalist who covered religion at The (Colorado Springs) Gazette and whose work has been published by such outlets as The Washington Post, Christianity Today, Youth Worker Journal and Beliefnet.com. Paul has a special interest in the unexpected ways faith and media intersect. He lives in Colorado Springs with his wife, Wendy, and two children.

















I haven’t seen Exodus: Gods and Kings yet. I’m going to see it tonight, actually, and you can see my full review at Plugged In the day the film officially releases (Dec. 12). I still hope that I’ll have some good things to say about it. But I have to admit, I’m a little worried. Much of the early buzz doesn’t center on Christian Bale’s turn as Moses or the plague of locusts, but director Ridley Scott’s decision to cast God as an 11-year-old boy....
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Posted December 7, 2014, by Paul Asay
SHOWING POSTS 1-1 of 125    VIEW MORE »


So why write a book about Batman? Why not Superman or Spider Man or The Avengers?
When I was a little kid, maybe 6 or 7, my best friend Terry and I would pretend to be superheroes every chance we got. He was always Superman or Captain Marvel or someone impossibly strong and powerful. But I was always Batman. For me, even though Batman wasn’t the strongest superhero around, he was always... Read the rest of this answer.

Batman may be a hero, but he’s a pretty dark one—particularly the hero we see in Christopher Nolan’s recent movies. Why did you pick him to use as a spiritual exercise?
God-honoring stuff can be found in really rough and messy circumstances sometimes. We’re living a world that no Christian should be comfortable in, just as the Apostle Paul was. But Paul used elements of the culture to speak into people’s lives. And even today, I believe that God’s fingerprints can be found on everything... Read the rest of this answer.

Batman’s been around for nearly 80 years now, and he’s more beloved than ever. What’s the secret to his continuing popularity? 
Well, he just looks cool, for one thing. One look at the guy, and you know not to mess with him. And then there’s the fact he has so many awesome gadgets, drives an amazing car and could buy a handful of Caribbean islands if he really wanted to. But an even bigger reason, I think, is that he’s recognizably human, just like... Read the rest of this answer.

Is Batman Christian?
That’s a hard question to answer. In the end, I think it depends on who Batman’s caretaker is at any given time. Batman’s first origin story shows him praying to God after his dad dies—praying for the strength to fight evil and, in essence, become the hero he’d eventually grow into. But he’s always been a man of... Read the rest of this answer.