God's Not Dead: A Light in Darkness

I liked the 1st and 2nd one better. Too much drama in this one and everything just dragged on.

With a new director the series now walks in a better new path. While the first two movie had stereotypical characters, especially regarding the government and atheists are abandoned. This time there are no "good or bad" sides since everyone had an argument to present. This film attempts to deal with the extent of faith which could mean that the studio itself could be apologizing for the first two movies. But the movie can still be shortened by removing a few aspects that drag on and it still cherry picks legal events to present its thesis. The movie is rough around the edges but it stands above its predecessors and thus worth to watch.

Compared with the first two movies this one is way better in terms of story, acting and overall tone. Instead of having overtly atheist two-dimensional straw men as in the first two films, all of the characters both religious and non are drawn with some depth. And instead of the religious characters being unambiguously good and everyone being evil, both character types are given to actions both good and bad.

I can't say that this is a "good movie" in comparison to big budget titles, but within it's trilogy and within the genre it's a cut above the rest.

Full transparency; I am an atheist, but not a fallen Christian. I watch these movies to get a sense of what this segment of the Christian community is saying about people like me. And where in the first two movies I was laughing at the naive portrayals, this one was much more balanced.

In summary, It's pretty much a Hallmark movie, but with more overt religiousity. If you're into that, give it a go.

And coming from an atheist, that's saying something.

The first "God's Not Dead" was a two sided ego match between the good Christian student and his evil atheist strawman of a professor. It wasn't deep, it was actually rather hateful against anybody who was non-Christian. But like most Christian movies it wasn't made with the intention to change hearts or minds but instead to preach to the already converted.

It also made a lot of money so damn right they'd make a sequel.

And in some ways the sequel was even worse because it focused around a total non-issue. A history professor mentions Jesus in class and for this she's sanctioned, put on leave and needs to go to court to defend her rights. Meanwhile the evil ACLU, who have actually defended the rights of Christians to pray in the real world, are portrayed as hating Christianity for no good reason. I mean they cast Ray Wise as the lead prosecutor and had him play it as demonically as possible. I'm not kidding. They really wanted to make it seem like he was the actual devil.

It also made a lot of money so of course they'd made a sequel.

But somewhere between the making of the second and the third something changed. We actually got a real movie with a message but one that didn't paint atheists as being the bad guys. In fact Reverend Dave, played by David A.R. White, is seen as being a much more understanding and caring individual than he has in the previous movies.

The end result is a surprisingly decent movie with a Christian message. What was even more surprising was how so many Christians seemingly didn't go see this movie for whatever reasons they had, Maybe this only goes to show that they're not interested in a movie that changes hearts and minds but only repeats to them what they already have in their own minds.

And quite honestly, I think that's really sad.

Michael Manson did a great job as a 1st time director.

The first few movies in the "God's Not Dead" franchise were so corny. The antagonists in the first few movies were stereotype atheists and borderline cartoon characters. GND3 actually seemingly had real characters that had real relatable issues and doubts about their faith. It actually tackles the problems with Christian victimology without being too heavy handed. v

The problem with this movie is the that it has too many unnecessary scenes. There are boring stretches of time that could have been cut out.

Even though it has some serious slow parts I give it points for attempting to tackle a different point of view than the originals.