Hollywood Heroes

In Hollywood Heroes, Frank Turek and his son Zach take a look at a number of pop cultural icons and look at what makes them unique and appealing in the culture we are in. Characters/films covered include Captain America, Iron Man, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Batman and Wonder Woman.

If it were just that, it might be an interesting book for a lot of people. What they do next, however, is reveal how these characters reflect aspects of Christ and/or Christian values and how those of us who attempt to follow Christ can look at these characters and the films they are in and be strengthened in our faith and/or our walk, despite living in a culture which is increasingly anti-Christian.

It's an interesting concept for a book because there are SO many things that are “hidden in plain sight” which aspects of these characters reflect Christ. Yes, even in Harry Potter (which was almost shocking, honestly). Having been an avid watcher of all these franchises and a follower of Christ, it was great to see these aspects highlighted. They then take it to the next level in an apologetics sense for those people who might loosely consider themselves “Christian” without really knowing what that means.

In my opinion, this would be a great book for middle-school youth groups to read through over summer and then have discussions about. Also, for parents who are trying to instill Christian values, but who are wary of the Hollywood agenda, this might be a tool that is useful to have discussions with your kids. It's important because if you just ignore the culture and then send your kid out into it once they go off to college, so many of them will be confronted with their lack of understanding of Christ and be more susceptible to the culture they are going into. Having these discussions (or even just reading the book, I would imagine) should have an inoculating effect for them and make them better able to understand their own beliefs and maintain them through challenges.

The book is written in an engaging and conversational style that I think would be easy for anyone in their teenage years to read easily. That said, for the parents out there, like myself, there's quite a few nuggets throughout the book that make it worthwhile as well, especially if you don't have a deep apologetics background. It's also a great introduction for us regarding how we can engage with the culture we live in while maintaining our beliefs and faith without either giving up the war completely and turning our kids over to it, OR blindly ignoring it and thus putting ourselves and kids at risk due to our lack of preparation.

I do wish the Tureks would add in a revised version a chapter which creates a framework for looking at other pop culture properties that aren't covered. How does a Christian parent start the process so that we can get what is good out of these things? How do we go into it in such a way that we can then have these discussions with our kids that will put them in a better place with Christ and be stronger in their faith. What about some bad examples where things might look superficially good, but really undermine Christian faith or set us up for bad ideology?