A Missed Opportunity: King of Kings (Angel Studios, 2025)

Angel Studios released an animated story about Jesus called "King of Kings." The movie features a cast of well-known actors and Charles Dickens' work serves as its base. But still, the movie missed a significant opportunity and fell short of sharing an orthodox gospel. Instead, Angel Studios made it weird, again.

Using Charles Dickens as the narrator of Jesus' story launched this movie in the wrong direction from the start. I highly commend Dickens for using his abilities to do his best to disciple his children. He wrote his children a 127-page book of simplified and retold stories from the Gospels, creating a novel-style synthased story of all four gospels. Unfortunately, he did not understand the gospel. The closing charge to his children in the books reads,

"REMEMBER! -- It is christianity TO DO GOOD always--even to those who do evil to us. It is christianity to love our neighbour as ourself, and to do to all men as we would have them DO to us. It is christianity to be gentle, merciful, and forgiving, and to keep those qualities quiet in our own hearts, and never make a boast of them, or of our prayers or of our love of God, but always to shew that we love Him by humbly trying to do right in everything. If we do this, and remember the life lessons of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and try to act up to them, we may confidently hope that God will forgive our sins and mistakes, and enable us to live and die in Peace. THE END." (Life of Our Lord, Westminster: Philadephia, Penn, 1934)

On pages 27-28, Dickens argues that there is hope for the poorest of the poor, saying, "The most miserable, the most ugly, deformed, wretched creatures that live, will be bright Angels in Heaven if they are good here on earth." For Dickens, salvation is about doing more good than evil. It's a works-based salvation plan. Dickens emphasized Jesus' kindness and moral example for his children but dropped much of the more profound teaching about sin, judgment, and the theological depth of the miraculous signs. Dickens presented Jesus as a gracious healer and moral teacher, not the exposer of our sin or the Son who glorifies the Father through suffering and grace.

The movie "King of Kings" ran with a moral story and added a little weirdness of its own. Of course, there will always be Hollywood choices when a narrative goes from one medium to another- in this case, from the written word to a movie. This is expected and often not an issue when those choices involve unclear, unstated matters in the written medium. Such decisions were plentiful. At other times, artistic choices communicated some sort of message. For example, at Jesus' baptism, a spiritual-like dove came out of Jesus and went up toward heaven. On page 23 of Dickens' book, it is clear that the Spirit descended down on Jesus like a dove. This strange addition was all Angel Studios. Another odd moment turned Jesus into Charles Dickens and back, for no apparent reason, although clearly, Angel Studio was trying to make some statement with the change.

Other additions or changes caused a shortcoming in the theology. For example, at one point in the movie, the disciples notice a blind beggar and ask the famous question, "Who sinned, this man or his parents?" Jesus' response was shocking as he said, "It doesn't matter if this man or his parents sinned." He went on to say that the man was blind so we can learn that having faith is what heals—faith in what and why wasn't made clear. Dickens didn't even include this story. This was just an Angel Studios add-on. But sin does matter. While the disciples misunderstood the cause of his blindness, Jesus' point was that sin is universal and God's sovereign purposes stand above human assumptions, not that sin “doesn't matter.” Jesus has the authority to forgive sin, and the blind receiving sight was a sign to validate that Jesus is the Savior who fulfills the Old Testament promises.

When Jesus was about to be arrested, Peter wrestled a guard's sword out of his hand, and in the skirmish, the man's ear got cut off. It seemed clear that Angel Studios did not want to give Peter a sword. Dickens had no problem with Peter taking a sword with him. It was "his" sword in Dickens' account. Many minor details seemed just a bit off, but this particular one was a change against what the Bible says.

Most of the time, the movie hinted at things but did not offer any clarity. At one point, the Dickens child was processing the reality of Jesus. He was sad and struggling with Jesus' death and resurrection. Artistically, the boy was underwater, sinking as Peter did in an earlier scene. Then, a hand comes into the water to save the boy, and it seems that, like before, Jesus will pull the boy out of the water. Instead, they trade places and Jesus sinks as the boy heads up. Jesus ends up dead on the cross when he is at the bottom. Nothing was said, and this was the closest thing to explaining a substitutionary atonement anywhere in the movie. It was one of many missed opportunities.

At this point, readers might ask why I'm so negative about this movie. It's not worse than the next “Mission Impossible” movie, right? Maybe. This is both true and untrue. If one is going to watch a film for entertainment, it may be better to watch something with more redeeming value than less.

On the other hand, if the movie claims to be telling the story of God, salvation, and the redemptive work of Jesus Christ but poorly represents all of it, we have a problem on our hands. Unknowing people could go into the theater, hear an incorrect gospel, and then mistakenly follow a good-works, high-moral plan for salvation that does nothing to move them off the road to hell. That's a big problem.

While I would love to recommend a story about Jesus in the movie theater, I hesitate to recommend this one. It doesn't get the gospel right and opens the door to a truckload of other potential issues. Instead, open your Bible and read the gospel as they were meant to be encountered. Salvation is not about doing good or feeling sad at the right moments. It is a matter of trusting in the finished work of Christ, crucified and risen, for the forgiveness of sins. Anything less—anything else—is not the gospel.