It’s time for a film that I was really impressed with. The Miracle Maker is a solid film that chronicles the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It adapts a whole lot of events from this period in the Bible and does so in a relatively short time frame. It links all of the events very well too. While there are some creative liberties taken, there is nothing I saw that directly contradicts the source material or that seemed to be there for dishonest reasons. Mainly they seemed to be there in order to connect the events and foreshadow others ahead of time.

The film is mainly in stop motion animation which of course isn’t my favorite. I will admit that this one didn’t really change my view on that but hey it still tells the story it set out to tell so that’s what counts. When it comes time for the parables and dream sequences it does change to hand drawn though which tends to look really great. In particular Judas has a really intense nightmare that makes use of the hand drawn style extremely well. The stop motion itself is also done well so they’re not cutting corners or anything like that. The production is well done the whole time.

The voices are good and the writing is on point. In terms of the foreshadowing and extra detail, it’s really solid like I mentioned before. Seeing Judas start off for the wrong reasons in wanting to be on the right side of power and slowly descending into darkness was solid. Likewise having many of the people Jesus healed appearing before they got sick was a nice attention to detail. Mary getting hit with the demons and being a background character for a while before we actually get to her plot was also nice.

There are of course a lot of details and moments that can’t be squeezed in as well. The price for adding all of these extra details and using some more obscure moments is some of the big classic moments are also taken out. No walking on water, feeding the masses, the angel on top of the stone, etc. It’s a fair balance I would say because realistically you can’t adapt literally everything unless you were ready to make this a complete epic. Even then it is extremely difficult and you can usually expect some things not to get adapted.

You still have the sense of scale here and there is definitely a lot of drama. The film is also completely revolving around Jesus at the center which is the way to go. All of the characters have their own agency and moments but when it comes time for an event to happen it is always centered around him. I would say Jesus also gets more dialogue than in other films and while the exact wording can sometimes be things that weren’t in the Bible, again it doesn’t feel out of character.

This also helps to capture the fact that he would talk a lot. He was a teacher/pastor in addition to performing miracles. He would tell all of these stories to the Disciples and we do get to see many conversations among them so it’s reasonable to assume that he was fairly talkative. I couldn’t picture him ever being more on the quiet or aloof side and this film did a better job of really showing that compared to most.

We also get to see a bit more of him after the resurrection which is usually a portion that doesn’t get adapted as much. The films tend to mainly have him resurrect and then the movie ends real quick but technically he did stay on Earth for a little while after that. So this time we get to see one of the conversations he has with the Disciples in addition to appearing before them. It’s the little details like this that help to make the film really stand out and also shows that the creators were really invested and did their research.

Overall, The Miracle Maker is definitely a really good film and one that was really perfect to watch for Easter. I would definitely recommend checking this out, it does a good job of adapting most of the biggest moments from this part in the Bible and keeps you engaged the whole time. It tackles a lot of advanced subjects but never gets all that violent so it is a good watch for all ages as well. So if we need stop motion to get more titles like this then I’d say lets go for it!