RECAPITULATION AS CINEMATIC REMAKE

JUNE 9, 2017
DREW DIXON

Film professor, Craig Detweiler suggested that Jesus claim of stones crying out (Luke 19:40)

has come true in the film industry.1 He intended this claim as a reference to the reality that many

films communicate the message of the gospel. But it may be even more true than he realized. Film

industry does not only hint at the gospel inside the movies it makes, but also in choosing which

movies to make. In this paper, I will show how the industry trend of cinematic remakes functions as

a helpful way toward understanding Irenaeuss theory of recapitulation.

Cinematic Remakes

In the past year alone more than a dozen movie remakes have hit theatres. This increases

exponentially if we include sequels and spinoffs. The remake/reboot/sequel phenomenon can

perhaps be seen most clearly in the recent proliferation of superhero films. In the past two decades,

Batman and Spiderman films have been rebooted twiceeach iteration with sequels. Altogether,

these account for eight Batman films, seven Spiderman films, and more yet to come!

Many critics and moviegoers lament remakes and sequels as either a lack of creativity or

merely the cold reality of capitalist economics. But Ben Kendrick, a writer at Screen Rant, makes the

case that not all remakes and reboots are soulless attempts to exploit an established brand.2

Kendrick champions reboots as creative expansion rather than financial exploitation, emphasizing

that remakes reinvigorate and reimagine old characters and stories. Film professors Amanda

Klein and R. Palmer provide a historic corrective to naysayers, by explaining that these phenomena

1Craig Detweiler, Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century, Cultural Exegesis (Grand Rapids, Mich:
Baker Academic, 2008), 31.
2Ben Kendrick, Why Everybody Should Love Remakes & Reboots, Screen Rant, February 19, 2014,
http://screenrant.com/best-movie-remakes-reboots/.

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are filmmaking strategies dating back to the industrys first decade and are not a symptom of

contemporary cultures inability to create anything new.3

Film professor Constantine Verevis observes, Although the cinema has been repeating and

replaying its own narratives and genres from its very beginnings, film remaking has received little

critical attention in the field of cinema studies.4 He brings attention to this phenomenon by

drawing it into three primary categories: industrial, textual, and critical.5

Remaking as an industrial category primarily considers business and financial aspects of

remaking movies. Verevis first considers the profit of remakes, noting that, because of audience

familiarity, remakes are consistently thought to provide suitable models and something of financial

guarantee.6 Verevis also considers the expense of remakes, noting, the customary studio practice at

the time of purchasing the rights to novels, plays and stories in perpetuity meant that a company was

able to produce multiple versions of a particular property without making additional payments to the

copyright holder.7 In other words, if a studio has purchased the perpetual rights to a story, then they

have the right to continue remaking it. This was the case in our previous example as all three

Batman franchises came from Warner Bros and all three Spiderman franchises from Sony.

Remaking as a textual category moves from the cold business of economics to the warm

creativity of storytelling. As he discusses this category, Verevis draws heavily upon the work of

Thomas Leitch, a literary scholar whose work warrants a closer look.

3 Amanda Ann Klein and R. Barton Palmer, Spinoff City: Why Hollywood Is Built on Unoriginal Ideas, The Atlantic,
March 20, 2016, https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/cycles-sequels-spinoffs-remakes-and-
reboots/474411/.
4 Constantine Verevis, Film Remakes (Edinburgh University Press, 2005), 1.
5 Ibid., 2.
6 Ibid., 3.
7 Ibid., 6.

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 Leitch briefly addresses the industrial nature of movie remakes by discussing how remakes

compete with their precursors.8 He also admits the critical nature of remakes by attributing the

success of a remake to the audiences response.9 In fact, central to his discussion is the paradox that

audiences expect the remake to be just like the original, only better.10 He then delves into the

textual category by analyzing types of remakes according to how they respond to this paradox.

Leitch writes, A given remake can seek to define itself either with primary reference to the film it

remakes or to the material on which both films are based it can take as its goal fidelity to the

conception of the original story or a revisionary attitude toward that story.11 From these categories

Leitch determines four primary textual stances for a remake. The first he calls the readaptation,

which has as its goal, fidelity to the original text.12 The second he calls an update, which is

characterized by an overtly revisionary stance toward an original text.13 The third he calls

homages, which present themselves as valorizations of earlier films which are in danger of being

ignored or forgotten.14 I would suggest that a sequel can also act as a homage, reigniting energy

around a franchise. The final stance he calls the true remake, which combines a focus on a

cinematic original with an accommodating stance which seeks to make the original relevant by

updating it.15 Furthermore, he states, this fourth variety of remake depends more than the other

8 Thomas M. Leitch, Twice-Told Tales: The Rhetoric of the Remake, Literature Film Quarterly 18, no. 3 (July 1990): 138.
9 Ibid., 141.
10 Ibid., 142.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid., 143.
14 Ibid., 144.
15 Ibid., 145.

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three on the triangular relationship among the remake and its two sources.16 The figure below

shows Leitchs remake type scheme with a modern example of each:

Goal of Fidelity Revisionary Attitude

Primary reference to Readaptation Update
Source Material Batman Begins Sherlock (BBC)
Primary reference to Homage True Remake
Original Film Star Wars: The Force Awakens Cinderella (2015)

Returning once more to Verevis, he concludes by considering remaking as a critical category.

This final category considers the contribution that audience knowledge and industry discourses

make to an understanding of remakes as well as the role of the film canon.17 As remakes and

sequels increase, audience knowledge and canon establishment have become increasingly vital to the

success of a film. If the audience did not have prior knowledge of a film like Power Rangers or

Transformers, or if the recent continuation of Star Wars had deviated too much from the beloved

canon, then these films would have likely been downright failures.

Verevis and Leitch each have provided helpful categories for sorting through the increasing

remake phenomenon and will prove helpful for putting it in conversation with theology.

Atonement Theories

In her recent magisterial tome on the crucifixion, Fleming Rutledge writes, Since Anselm of

Canterbury at the turn of the first millennium, and especially since the Reformation, the history of

the church has been marked by disputes about the message of the crucifixion.18 These particular

messages of the crucifixion are often called theories of atonement. Each seeks to explain and interpret

what happened at the cross. Rutledge argues, theory is a poor word to choose when seeking to

understand the testimony of the Bible, The Old and New Testaments to not present theories at any

16 Ibid.
17 Verevis, Film Remakes, 30.
18 Fleming Rutledge, The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, 2017, 8.

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time. Instead, we find stories, images, metaphors, symbols, sagas, sermons, songs, letters, poems. It

would be hard to find writing that is less theoretical.19 Through centuries of Christian thought,

these stories, images, and metaphors have coalesced into three primary theories.

The first, and earliest, of these is called Christus Victor. This theory emerged in the first

centuries of the church as theologians and pastors such as Irenaeus in the second century, Origen in

the third, and Gregory of Nyssa in the fourth wrote about Christ.20 This theory takes a primarily

narrative approach by telling the story of Christs coming, death, and resurrection. The atonement

was accomplished in the unfolding of the whole narrative which culminated in the victory of the

resurrection. The emphasis on the unfolding narrative is most clear in Irenaeus understanding of

Jesus life as recapitulation, which will be revisited below. Christus Victor will remain the primary

understanding of atonement until the turn of the millennium.

The second theory is called Satisfaction and emerged in the eleventh century from the writing

of Anselm of Canterbury. Anselms theory takes a primarily legal approach, using elements from the

medieval feudal system to expound upon what happened at the cross. The satisfaction theory

emphasizes how Christs sacrificial death offers satisfaction to God for the debt owed to God by

sinful humanity.21 In this theory, Anselm transformed the meaning of the cross from an unfolding

story to a justifying legal system.

The third theory is called Moral Influence and also emerged in the eleventh century. This

theory was developed by Peter Abelard as a response and critique to Anselm. Abelard takes a

primarily moral approach, rejecting Anselms use of the feudal system to interpret the cross. Baker

19 Ibid., 9.
20Mark D. Baker and Joel B. Green, Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and Contemporary Contexts,
2nd ed (Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2011), 143-148.
21 Ibid., 151.

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and Green describe, Rather than a payment to or victory over the devil, or a satisfaction of a debt

owed to God, Abelard sees Jesus life and death as a demonstration of Gods love that moved

sinners to repent and love God.22 With Anselm and Abelard the debate of atonement theories

began that has carried on for another thousand years to our present day.

All three theories find some grounding in scripture. As Rutledge writes, The action of God

in the cross of Christ has elicited various theories because the New Testament speaks about it in

various ways.23 Christus Victor is seen most clearly through the gospel narratives and the

proclamation of the resurrection throughout the epistles (1 Corinthians 15). Satisfaction is seen most

clearly in the legal language of justification throughout Pauls epistles (Romans 5; Galatians 2).

Finally, Moral Influence can be seen most clearly in the Johannine texts that speak of love and self-

sacrifice (John 15:13; 1 John 3:16).

Atonement and Cinema

As we begin to put atonement and cinema in conversation with one another, one of the first

observations is that the three theories and categories that have been discussed share some measure

of resonance with one another. Vereviss industrial category roughly correlates with Anselms

satisfaction theory in that both focus on some kind of transaction; that of a studio purchasing the legal

rights for a story and that of Christ fulfilling the legal rights of salvation. The critical category

roughly correlates with Abelards moral influence theory in that both look primarily at response; that of

an audience or critics responding to a film and that of a disciple responding to Christs self-sacrificial

love. Finally, the textual category roughly correlates with the ancient Christus Victor theory in that

both unfold in the world of narrative. On the one hand, there is Leitchs analysis of how a film

22 Ibid., 162.
23 Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 7.

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remakes its original text or texts; on the other hand, there is Irenaeuss description of how Christ

recapitulates humanity, which we shall now explore more closely.

Recapitulation as True Remake

Irenaeuss theory of recapitulation can be summed up in his own words, God recapitulated

in Himself the ancient formation of man, that He might kill sin, deprive death of its power, and

vivify man.24 Also, our Lord Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become

what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself.25 The redemptive power in

recapitulation is that God came in the form of a human. By becoming like us, in flesh, he has made a

way for us to become like him, in spirit.

Irenaeuss theory of recapitulation was both theological and pastoral. It emerged from

theological reflection on Pauls extraordinary presentation of Christ as the new Adam in Romans

5.26 It also emerged as a pastoral response to Gnostic heresies of the day, which claimed that Jesus

did not really come in a body but only as a spirit and that flesh is ultimately bad. Irenaeus took these

ideas to task. If Christ had not come in the flesh, then we would not be saved; because he did come

in the flesh, even our flesh has been redeemed. As Gregory of Nazianzus would say two hundred

years later, That which He has not assumed He has not healed.27 Therefore, the incarnation is

essential to redemption.

However, as Hans Boersma notes, a number of theologians have gone even further and

argued that for Irenaeus the incarnation itself is already salvific and by itself enough to give people

24Irenaeus, Against Heresies, in Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 1 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library),
accessed May 24, 2017, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01, 3.18.7.
25 Ibid., 5.Preface.
26 Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 537.
27Gregory of Nazianzus, Select Letters, in Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, ed. Philip Schaff, vol. 7, 2 (Christian Classics
Ethereal Library), accessed June 8, 2017, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207, 101.

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eternal life.28 This is not only a grave theological error as Hans Urs von Balthasar argues

thoroughly, There can surely be no theological assertion in which East and West are so united as

the statement that the Incarnation happened for the sake of mans redemption on the Cross,29 but

is also a misunderstanding of Irenaeus. For Irenaeus, recapitulation is not merely that Christ came in

the flesh, but how he came. Just because two films feature human actors does not mean the later one

is a remakethey must share the same story as well. Irenaeus goes at lengths to demonstrate this.

According to Irenaeus it was not only Christs incarnation nor only his crucifixion that led to

redemption, but the whole narrative of his life. This narrative aspect led Rutledge to declare, the

theme of recapitulation can be understood as incorporating all the others.30 As such, Irenaeus

begins before the incarnation and shows that Jesus birth, life, and death were all necessary for our

redemption because they recapitulate the human story. Concerning Jesus birth, he writes, [Eve]

was led astray by the word of an angel, so that she fled from God when she had transgressed His

word; so did [Mary], by an angelic communication, receive the glad tidings that she should sustain

God, being obedient to His word.31 Concerning Jesus death, he writes, [the Lord] was making a

recapitulation of that disobedience which had occurred in connection with a tree, through the

obedience which was exhibited by Himself when He hung upon a tree, the effects also of that

deception being done away with.32 The ancient Apostles Creed confesses Jesus birth and death,

but Irenaeus also affirmed the significance of the life he lived in between: He came to save all

through means of Himselfinfants, and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. He

Hans Boersma, Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker
28

Academic, 2006), 123.

29 Hans Urs von Balthasar, Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000), 20.
30 Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 537.
31 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.19.1.
32 Ibid.

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therefore passed through every age, becoming an infant for infants, thus sanctifying infants; a child

for children, thus sanctifying those who are of this age33 By living through his entire human life

he sanctified our human life. Truly he has healed that which he assumed!

Christ came the way that he did, lived the life that he did, and died the way that he did in

order to rewrite, retell, remake, and redeem the human story. Christs recapitulation is truly a

cinematic remake. Using Leitchs categories, Christs life is not merely a readaptation or an update to

the human story, and it certainly is not a homage to it! Christs life is a true remake of humanity! It truly

fulfills the paradox that Leitch described of being just like the original, only better.34 Leitch also

described true remakes as depending more than the other three on the triangular relationship among

the remake and its two sources.35 This is undoubtedly true in Christs recapitulation of humanity.

While a true remake depends on its relation to the source material and the original film that it

remakes, Christs life depends on his relation to the Word of God and the human story of Adam and

Eve. In Irenaeuss words, the Creator of the world is truly the Word of God: and this is our Lord,

who in the last times was made man36 Yet, Jesus story was not merely based on the source

material of the Word of God, neither was it merely based on the story of Adam and Eve. Rather, he

was the true Word of God made into the true flesh of humanity. Two hundred years after Irenaeus

this would be confessed in the Nicene Creed, We believe inone Lord Jesus Christtrue God of

true Godwho for us and for our salvationwas made fleshand became man.37 Jesus Christ

was and is the true remake of humanity and by remaking us, he has redeemed us!

33 Ibid., 2.22.4.
34 Leitch, Twice-Told Tales, 142.
35 Ibid., 145.
36 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.18.3.

Henry Bettenson and Chris Maunder, eds., Documents of the Christian Church, 4th ed. (Oxford; New York: Oxford
37

University Press, 2011), 28.

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 Resurrection as Sequel

In his birth, life, and death, Christ has recapitulated humanity. But the story does not end

there. Irenaeus wrote that Jesus, in His work of recapitulation, summed up all things, both waging

war against our enemy, and crushing him.38 This, Irenaeus wrote, fulfilled the prophecy that the

offspring of the woman would crush the head of the serpent (Genesis 3:15). Jesuss life was not only

a remake of the human story, but his resurrection went farther than the human story had gone,

fulfilling prophecies of the first story and providing a sequel for us to join!

Rutledge observes, Immediately following the Adam-Christ passage in Romans 5, Paul

moves the whole conversation about the second Adam into the realm of baptism.39 Thus the

recapitulation of Adam in Christ is inherently tied to the reality of resurrection in baptisma reality

that we are called to participate in. In recapitulation, Christ put on our flesh; in baptism, we put on

Christs resurrection (Romans 6:4-5).

Much like the present-day film industry, humanitys remake and sequel is an ever-expanding

universe. Through Christs recapitulation and resurrection, we are part of the ever-expanding

kingdom of God and invited to continue the work of remaking the story of the world!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Baker, Mark D., and Joel B. Green. Recovering the Scandal of the Cross: Atonement in New Testament and
Contemporary Contexts. 2nd ed. Downers Grove, Ill: IVP Academic, 2011.
Balthasar, Hans Urs von. Mysterium Paschale: The Mystery of Easter. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2000.

38 Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 5.21.1.

39 Rutledge, The Crucifixion, 542.

10
Bettenson, Henry, and Chris Maunder, eds. Documents of the Christian Church. 4th ed. Oxford; New
York: Oxford University Press, 2011.
Boersma, Hans. Violence, Hospitality, and the Cross: Reappropriating the Atonement Tradition. Grand
Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2006.
Detweiler, Craig. Into the Dark: Seeing the Sacred in the Top Films of the 21st Century. Cultural Exegesis.
Grand Rapids, Mich: Baker Academic, 2008.
Gregory of Nazianzus. Select Letters. In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaff, Vol.
7. 2. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. Accessed June 8, 2017.
https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf207.
Irenaeus. Against Heresies. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, edited by Philip Schaff, Vol. 1. Christian
Classics Ethereal Library. Accessed May 24, 2017. https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.
Kendrick, Ben. Why Everybody Should Love Remakes & Reboots. Screen Rant, February 19, 2014.
http://screenrant.com/best-movie-remakes-reboots/.
Klein, Amanda Ann, and R. Barton Palmer. Spinoff City: Why Hollywood Is Built on Unoriginal
Ideas. The Atlantic, March 20, 2016.
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/03/cycles-sequels-spinoffs-
remakes-and-reboots/474411/.
Leitch, Thomas M. Twice-Told Tales: The Rhetoric of the Remake. Literature Film Quarterly 18, no.
3 (July 1990): 138.
Rutledge, Fleming. The Crucifixion: Understanding the Death of Jesus Christ, 2017.
Verevis, Constantine. Film Remakes. Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

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