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32 Waiting for the End of the World Christian Apocalyptic Media at theTurn of the Millennium Heather Hendershot IN THE FINAL months of 1999, Y2K anxiety reached a frenzied peak in America. The world might end, do you have plenty of batteries and bottled water? The nightly news gave regular updates on how to safeguard personal computers, and the Sunday New York Times featured articles on how the rich were stocking up on canned goods to prepare gourmet dishes that did not require refrigeration. Meanwhile in movie theaters, a few films tried to tap into the zeitgeist. The Arnold Schwarzenegger apocalyptic thriller End of Days, for example, told the story of a cop who hit the bottle after his family was gunned down. An atheist, he finds redemption by helping a damsel in distress, a virgin whom Satan intends to impregnate on New Year’s Eve. If the Prince of Darkness succeeds, the world will end. The film is tedious, but Gabriel Byrne plays Lucifer with panache. He engages in a ménage à trois with his henchman’s wife and daughter and blows stuff up by setting his own thick black urine on fire. He is, in short, a bad ass. Cut to another apocalyptic flick, also released just before the dawn of the new millennium. This one stars Michael York as the Antichrist, “a fictional cross between . . . Romano Prodi, current president of the European Commission, and Rupert Murdoch.”1 He has brought about global peace, and the world is ready to worship him as the new Messiah . Our hero, who feebly attempts to stop York, is a motivational speaker who rejected God after his mother was killed by a drunk driver. He hides biblical decoder disks from the Antichrist and is ultimately redeemed when he asks Jesus to save him. Nobody in this film is a bad 332 ass. The film is called The Omega Code, and it was the first feature-length evangelical Christian film to receive a national theatrical release. The Omega Code is an odd piece of the jigsaw puzzle that is American popular culture. On the one hand, it is a typical Hollywood film, with lots of action and a lost-yet-redeemable hero. And films about the devil and the end of the world are certainly nothing new. On the other hand, the film offers a “family values”–type Satan who could only (maybe) frighten a born-again Christian already well versed in end of the world eschatology. The film is ostensibly designed to win souls, although, as a number of dubious Christian viewers have pointed out, there is only one overt mention of Jesus in the whole film.2 If you weren’t already “saved,” you probably wouldn’t get that the hero’s “Save me Jesus”—shouted as computer-generated demons swirl around him—is supposed to represent a born-again experience. In sum, the film seems to be preaching to the choir. The Omega Code was made for just over $7 million. It took in more than $2 million its first weekend, ranking number ten in per-screen box office gross. With $7,869 per screen, The Omega Code surpassed Fight Club’s per-screen box office average. Fight Club opened on two thousand screens. The Omega Code was on three hundred, mostly in Bible Belt cities, but also in a number of large midwestern cities and on the East Coast.3 Advance tickets were sold through the national Family Christian Bookstore chain.4 Churches in Jacksonville, Phoenix, and Oklahoma City bought out whole theaters for weekend screenings.5 In Portland, Oregon, a thousand advance tickets were sold, the most advance tickets sold in local history, with the exception of The Phantom Menace.6 As of December 1999, The Omega Code had grossed $11.5 million, and revenue will continue to roll in with TV broadcasts and video sales. Why did this film succeed? One obvious answer is that there are millions of evangelicals in America, so there was an untapped market for the film.7 Eamonn Bowles, president of distribution for Manhattan’s Shooting Gallery, compared the film’s audience to that of Robert Duvall ’s 1997 film The Apostle, which Duvall promoted by appearing on Christian talk shows and by inviting ministers to preview the film.8 Jimmy Daddabbo, a secular producer, even compared evangelicals to black women and the success of The Omega Code to the success of Waiting to Exhale.9 Both films filled vacuums...

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