Analysis: The Miracle Maker
The movie, The Miracle Maker, illustrates many individual stories taken from the Bible, overall conveying the life of Jesus Christ. In this claymation, we begin with Mary Magdalene running around town like a “crazy lady” screaming and causing a scene. She comes in and out of the movie between other scenes many times. It quickly moves into John the Baptist & the baptism of Jesus. Satan then tries to tempt Jesus a couple different ways, in which He does not fall for. Several different scenarios are shown of Jesus making miracles happen, such as healing Jairus’ daughter and the paralyzed man.
The movie switches to the well-known story of the twelve disciples. This seems to be another one of the main aspects of the video, along with Mary Magdalene. It does not seem to focus much on the death of Jesus like most movies do, although it shows a brief overview of it. It emphasizes the resurrection of Jesus & everyone in the city’s reaction. The first one to find that Jesus had risen was Mary Magdalene, so the citizens did not believe anything she said because they thought she was still crazy. Others then say they have witnessed Him walking through the town, quickly realizing that what Mary has told them is actually true.
This movie references the four canonical gospels of the Bible: Matthew, Mark, Luke, John. The story of John the Baptist and His baptism of Jesus is shown in Matthew and Mark as well as being mentioned in Luke. The book of John shows no signs of Christ being baptized. It simply explains the testimony of John in little detail.
The story of Mary Magdalene is depicted in several instances. The healing of Mary is shown in both Luke & John. As in the video, this portion of the story quickly comes and goes. Not going into major detail, it simply says that Jesus got rid of the demons inside of her. As for the resurrection of Jesus, Mary Magdalene is the first one who sees Him after He has risen from the tomb. This is shown in all four gospels, however, this portion of the video is most similar to the story in John. In this canonical gospel, Mary is the only one who goes to the tomb where Jesus was left. However, in Mark, she is not the only one who goes to the tomb, but she is the only one when Jesus appears to speak to her. In the other two books, she has at least one other women with her, and they do not tell the story of Jesus telling her specifically to go inform the rest of the people that He is risen.
In the Miracle Maker, Jesus finds some fishermen cleaning the nets near their boats. He climbs in the boat and tells the men to push the boat out. The men seem skeptical but obey anyways. Jesus begins to tell them that they need to throw out their nets to catch the daily fish. They reply to Him saying He must be crazy if He thinks they are going to catch anything now if they had been out all day without catching a single thing. They let down their nets and they begin to fill with fish so full that they must get help to bring the nets in. Jesus tells them that if they follow Him, He will make them fishers of men. They realize that they have doubted Jesus, so they pull their boats back into shore and follow Him. This exact story is told in Luke. In the books of Matthew and Mark, the same story is told, excluding the scene of actually going out on the boat. In the book of John, we see another version of this story. It does not include the denial of being able to catch fish when Jesus asked to let down their nets. It also has some extra information such as going to cook the fish when they get back to shore with Christ.
The story of Jesus healing the paralytic man is depicted in the movie for a short period of time. It begins with Jesus sitting in a house as the roof begins to fall. As a portion of the roof falls, a man is lowered into the house. He says that they should just let him die because it is no good. He cannot walk, so Jesus lays His hand on
