Fallen Angels And Failed Adaptations: Why It Matters To Respect Faith Narratives
(REVIEW) “Fallen,” the epic love story of a girl loved by a fallen angel, has been adapted to the screen twice since the original book was released in 2009. Its most recent adaptation to television, an eight-episode season now streaming on AMC+, suggests a more negative view of religion that’s developed over the past decade — and it’s worse off narratively for not embracing the original story’s theology.
The story takes place at a reform school and centers around the story of Lucinda “Luce” Price, a new student who’s been sent to the school after being accused of starting a fire that killed one of her former classmates. There, she grapples with her mind and her past and meets a cast of eclectic characters — Daniel most important among them.
Daniel is the fallen angel who’s loved Luce for centuries, and when they meet here there’s another instant connection. Luce comes to learn of Daniel’s identity and the fact that she’s been reincarnated for several lifetimes, always finding Daniel and keeping him away from making the choice between good and evil.
It’s an interesting premise — particularly for those who have an eye for media that explores theology in a thoughtful and interesting way. Based on biblical narratives but including concepts like reincarnation that exist outside of Christianity, “Fallen” has the potential to be more interesting than many.
The author of the novels, Lauren Kate, grew up in a household that was both Jewish and Catholic in the Texas Bible Belt, which she says gifted her with a fascination for theology. Her inspiration for the novels came during a Bible course she took in graduate school. While reading Genesis, she came across a passage about the nephilim — angels cast out of heaven for having relationships with humans — and the story began to take shape.
“I started thinking about what it would be like to be a normal girl — suddenly the object of an angel’s affection,” Kate said in a 2010 interview with The Children’s Book Review.
In the process of writing the story, Kate researched Christianity a great deal, but her work didn’t stop there. She incorporated theology from several major world religions as far back as Zoroastrianism, which is one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions.
“I suppose I’m trying to do a bit of justice to millennia worth of history, narrative, and lore without hinging Luce’s story too closely on any one faith,” she said. “I’m trying to incorporate some of the great mysteries and mythologies of a variety of religions, and to push myself to reconsider preconceived notions of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil.’”
Of course, Kate believes the story is not inherently a religious one and merely uses religion as its narrative base; the story is still, at its heart, a teen romance about forbidden love. That is to say that any religious narrative isn’t at the forefront of the story and must be pulled out by the audience, but its place in the story is one that creates a rich inner world worth delving into.
The 2016 movie by the same name retains most of this storytelling, opening with a monologue that explains the fall of the angels in general terms and visiting the students in their religion class at the reform school where they discuss the most important theology. It’s a fun movie if a bit charmingly corny — it is a 2016 teen drama, after all.
It skimps, no doubt, on the theology of the book, but again, it’s a movie with a runtime under two hours, so there’s only so much that can be accomplished, and the message — challenging the audience to consider the difference between good and evil — remains the same.
The show, unfortunately, can’t make the same boast. With eight 50-minute episodes, the “Fallen” TV show manages to accomplish very little in the way of a story, character development or interesting theological discussions. It’s a shame, really, because such a lengthy adaptation should be able to really explore the themes of the book — but the show is just too cowardly to go there.
It reveals crucial plot information in fits and starts, usually in the most confusing way possible. It makes hints to cultish religious undertones that aren’t ever properly explored. It somehow manages to be more offensive about psychiatry and mental illness than its previous iterations, which is ridiculous for a new release. It explodes in a climax it doesn’t really earn. It presents a very black-and-white view of good and evil rather than a nuanced one — one that reads “religion bad, human choice good.”
That’s a fine stance to take, particularly when dealing with a controlling and harmful religion as is practiced by the angels of the reform school. It just doesn’t take that stance in a way that’s thoughtful or compelling at all.
It’d be easy to mark this down as a bad adaptation, which it is, but it serves as proof that plenty of storytellers still don’t take Kate’s intellectually curious approach to religion. That’s the ultimate disappointment here.
Not every story has to be religious, but the ones that use it as a serious storytelling device should be taken equally seriously themselves — a courtesy the “Fallen” series hasn’t yet been given.
Jillian Cheney is Religion Unplugged’s Senior Culture Correspondent. She writes about film, TV, music, art, books and more. Find her on Twitter @_jilliancheney.