Paul Asay

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

Director Alfonso Cuarón’s Gravity is being hailed as perhaps the best space-centric flick since 2001: A Space Odyssey. The story is taut and relentless. The special effects are amazing. It’s both intimate and epic, and I imagine we’ll still be talking about this flick come Academy Awards season. But in the midst of this straightforward story of two people trying to survive in the not-so-friendly confines of space, there’s a resonant, deeply spiritual message at play. ...
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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.

















Thor: The Dark World rolled into American theaters this Friday, and it’s pretty much exactly what we’ve come to expect from Marvel superhero movies: big, fun and a little silly. One does not expect a lot of complexity from a film whose main character wins arguments with, quite literally, a big hammer. Nor would one expect to find much Christian faith in a film whose heroes and villains were plucked straight from Norse pagan mythology. And yet, when we look at the story of Marvel’s odd-couple brothers, Thor and Loki, I’m reminded of a couple of other brothers who had their own problems....
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Posted Nov. 7, 2013, by Paul Asay
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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.