Audio only:
In this episode Trent reviews the new film David and discusses one problem it has that affects many portrayals of David.
Transcription:
Trent:
On Christmas, I took my family to see David, a new film from Angel Studios that follows the life of the patriarch David from Humble Shepherd to King of Israel. And in today’s episode, I’m going to talk about my one problem with the film that comes up a lot in stories about David. But first, we need to talk about the film itself, which I would rank as good or even pretty good. Although I feel like someone in the production said, “Can we get the guy who did Prince of Egypt?” And someone told him, “No, but we can get his brother. And I hear he’s just as good,” except he’s not just as good. My eight-year-old said the songs weren’t very good, but I just call them forgettable. None of them had me cringing, but I don’t really remember any of the songs except for the Shalom song that David sings to Saul, which better be good because it’s supposed to illustrate God’s gift of music to David.
But overall, the songs were nothing to write home about. In contrast, I can still belt out, look at your life through heaven’s eyes, na, na, na, na, na, na, na, from Prince of Egypt. Which by the way, Samuel and David looks a bit like someone re-skinned Jethro in Prince of Egypt. The animation style in David is very good highlighting the character’s features, but also feels like a mashup of Disney’s and Canto mixed with the blockiness of the characters in the 1960s Marionette show, Thunderbirds. And the story is structured well for a film about David, because you might be surprised that David’s fight against Goliath happens midway through the film, and there’s still a lot to cover after that, which is a good time for me to talk about what I call the Goliath problem. The trailers for David do a good job of hiding Goliath’s face because when he appeared, I nearly burst out laughing.
He looked like a 12 foot tall, pasty Roman emperor due to his sharp facial features. My son also leaned over and asked me, “Dad, why is Goliath white?” Since everyone else in the film is Middle Eastern, to which I wanted to say. Oh my God, Karen, you can’t just ask people why they’re white. I was worried that the fight between David and Goliath would have a modern Marvel action pacing to it. Something where David uses his speed and agility to avoid Goliath attacks and then bring him down with his sling. But I was pleasantly surprised that instead of this, the camera shows Goliath taunting the God of Israel, who he sees as a more worthy foe than David. This loosely corresponds to one Samuel 17:43, which says the Philistine cursed David by his gods. As Goliath looks up and taunts Yahweh, the camera zooms out high into the sky away from Goliath and his voice becomes quieter and quieter.
The camera retreats and focuses on the midday sun hovering overhead, revealing that the God of Israel is infinitely bigger and more powerful than any supposed giant among men. The shot is then interrupted by David’s sling and Goliath is brought down. Though to keep the PG rating, they omit the part of the narrative where David cuts off Goliath’s head. In fact, there are lots of thorny issues about the Amalekites and how Israel fought them that the film bypasses, which makes sense given its scope and target audience. So it’s something I’ll probably address in a future episode. Instead, my main problem with the film, and it’s not a huge problem, but it’s an issue that always bothers me is how Goliath is portrayed. In children’s animation, Goliath is often portrayed as a ridiculously large Giant, maybe as big as a house. Goliath seems like he’s 20 or 50 feet tall.
Now, one Samuel 17: four says Goliath’s height was six cubits in a span or almost 10 feet, which would make Goliath taller than any historically verified person. However, older manuscripts from the Septuagint, the Dead Sea scrolls and Josephus say Goliath was four cubits and a span or about six foot nine inches, which places Goliath’s description within the known range of size for human beings. The Bible also says Goliath’s weapons were heavy with a spearhead that weighed 15 pounds and armor that weighed about 120 pounds. That would mean Goliath may have resembled someone with a large, strong man build. Someone like Javier Julius Bjornson who plays the mountain on Game of Thrones and is also six foot nine inches tall. Here he is lightly sparring with UFC fighter Connor McGregor, who himself is five foot nine, but looks like a preteen in comparison to Bjornsen. And for a more shocking comparison, Bjornsen’s wife is only five foot two inches tall.
In David’s time, the average man in Israel was about five foot five inches tall, so fighting a six foot nine Goliath would’ve seemed like a death sentence. But David may have been much taller than five foot five because the Bible never says David was small. When Samuel comes to anoint David, he thinks David’s tall brother Elieb will be king, but God reminds Samuel not to judge his man does because God sees what really matters. And when David is presented, all that said is that he was rutty and had beautiful eyes and was handsome, not that David was a shrimp in comparison to his brothers. After David petitions to fight Goliath, Saul tells David, “You are but a youth and he has been a man of war from his youth. Notice Saul doesn’t say David was too small to fight. And when Goliath taunts David, he basically calls him a pretty boy and mocks his lack of experience and proper weaponry, not his stature.
Finally, when Saul offers David his own armor for the battle, David rejects it, not because it doesn’t fit or is too big, but because David wasn’t used to wearing armor like this. Now here’s the kicker. Saul was kind of a giant in his own right. First Samuel nine: two says that from his shoulders upward, Saul was taller than any of the people. And if David was much smaller than Saul, he would’ve given David another soldier’s armor, not his own armor that would’ve been too big for David. First Samuel 21 also implies that David was strong enough to wheel Goliath sword as a weapon. Now, Saul said that shepherd David could not fight because he wasn’t experienced in warfare, but you know who was experienced in warfare? Saul. Saul had loads of combat experience. Since one Samuel 14:52 says there was hard fighting against the Philistines all the days of Saul.
In fact, Saul’s mental decay and madness may have been related to post-traumatic stress disorder from the harshness of ancient warfare. These details are important because most of us think of the story of David and Goliath as a story about David’s success, and it is, but it’s really a story about Saul’s failure. God gave Saul everything he needed to lead Israel, even the stature to fight the Philistines. The film does have a line referencing this when Saul’s son Jonathan tells Saul he can take on any Philistine, but Goliath’s cartoonish size obscures his detail. However, I appreciate that the film focuses a lot on Saul as the antagonist and how he fell from grace by pridefully thinking God had abandoned him when the opposite was true. As a result, Saul clung to his kingdom and tried to kill David in a paranoid fit of rage when he saw David as a threat to his power.
And that’s why we shouldn’t confuse animation with cartoons. When we treat stories from sacred scripture as cartoons, children can unintentionally categorize these stories with other cartoonish stories and treat them like fiction when they get older. But that doesn’t mean though that biblical stories can’t be created in mediums geared towards children from time to time. The 2017 film The Star is basically the nativity story mixed with the secret life of pets. It’s a cartoon film, but for what it’s trying to do, it doesn’t disrespect the source material and I show it to my children. The Prince of Egypt, on the other hand, is not a cartoon. It’s an animated film. It’s something children can appreciate, but it wasn’t created only for children. Adults also love this film. That’s why I usually pass on veggie tales and prefer to show my kids Hannah Barbera’s the greatest adventure series.
I mean, here’s how veggie tales describes the justification for Noah’s flood.
CLIP:
Because the oith is going to be flooded, Jim. Okay. It’s a what? God has seen that no one cares about doing what’s right anymore, so he’s going to start over.
You really?
The ark will save us from the flood. And
Trent:
Here’s how Hannah Barbera does it.
CLIP:
So God said to Noah, “I am going to put an end to all people for the earth is filled with violence and corruption. Because of this, I am going to destroy both them and the earth.” Thus, because wickedness are bounded everywhere, mankind had condemned itself to extinction. In all the land, only Noah and his family were righteous.
Trent:
When it comes to 2025’s David, I would call this a good animated film. It’s not Prince of Egypt, but it doesn’t fall into cartoonish slapstick or ADD pace nonsense. It does a good job of discussing complex themes such as the need to honor God above temporal goods like power and to have faith in God even in our darkest hours. It also has some elements pointing towards Christ’s fulfillment of the Davidic Kingdom, which I won’t spoil here, but are very good because they’re very subtle but powerful, though my 10-year-old son was able to spot them. As I said, it’s not the most memorable film, but if you want a good film the whole family can enjoy, which is a rarity nowadays, then David is definitely worth it. After the film, my five-year-old asked, “Dad, can we have David on our TV?” So I’d say that’s a pretty good endorsement.
And if you like more recommendations on faithful films to watch, check out my previous episode on Christian films you should watch with non-Christians. And if you want to join us in over 30 other Catholic creators at our first conference, April 11th here in Dallas, then visit conferenceoftrent.com and get your tickets today because half of them have already been sold. And if you want to help us create more content like this, then please support us at trrenthornpodcast.com. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.