Let's Rewrite the Characters From God's Not Dead Part One

 

God's Not Dead had a lot of potential that it didn't live up to. The film was a runaway success in theaters, but critics didn't like it so much, as evidenced by Rotten Tomato's scoring of the film.

I am going to rewrite some of the characters to what I think would've made a better film. First, I'm going to go through a list of common things I deemed flaws:

1. Vanishing characters, character's arcs are left hanging or are settled in an unrealistic way, such as Ayisha's arc.
2. The endings to character arcs aren't consistent with the rest of the film, like Professor Jeffery hating God because he didn't heal his mother, but when he dies at the end he doesn't seem to care about that.
3. People don't act like people because plot. Mina Shelley broke up with her boyfriend without any real thought about it.

Now I'm going to start with the first rewrite. Let's start with Professor Jeffery Raddison because the villain is always a large part of the story. 

Raddison's character arc in the film looks something like this.

1. He has his class sign a paper saying that God is dead. Josh refuses, and Raddison challenges him to convince him that God isn't dead.
2. Josh is able to counter one of Raddison's arguments, injuring his pride.
3. Raddison says that he hates God because God didn't heal his dying mother.
4. Raddison's girlfriend, Mina, leaves him because he is a Christian, apparently leaving him angrier than ever.
5. He debates Josh in front of his class, but Josh gets him to lose his temper and he screams that he hates God in front of the class, and Josh uses this to prove that God isn't dead. 
6. Raddison reads a letter from his mother and decides to try to get back together with Mina, his girlfriend.
7. Raddison is hit by a car as he is trying to find Mina, and a nearby pastor talks to him about God and accepts him into his heart as he dies. 

I think that Raddison is probably the character that the writers for God's Not Dead did the best job on, mostly because his character resolution isn't him just listening to a song. Still, you can see that his character resolution does almost nothing to the drama that came from him in the rest of the film. He hates God for not healing his deceased mother, yet when he dies all he says about that is, "God says no a lot," and that's it. He also has further reason to hate God because his Christian girlfriend broke up with him about it and he was embarrassed by a Christian freshman in front of his whole class. The first thing I would do is make a stronger link between Raddison's getting jilted and his increasing anger. Instead of having Mina, his girlfriend, just walk up and say, "I'm done see you around," they have a conversation where Mina says that she doesn't like it that he thinks that she is a fool for believing God's not dead. Then have a scene where we see how that infuriates Raddison, maybe in the same scene when he and Josh are in the elevator. To bring that even closer to home, when Raddison screams that he hates God for taking his mother, he also screams about how God took his girlfriend from him. We'll also say that when he reads the note from his mother, he reads a part saying that God is taking her home, not taking her away indefinitly. Finally, the ending needs a few tweaks as well. Instead of saying, "God says no a lot," the pastor helps him see how his anger and sin have been destroying the things around him, not God and asks God to take away his sin. Then he dies, because, you know, dying is dramatic.