Light of the World (2025)

Light of the World is the second animated Jesus film to be released in 2025. The other – King of Kings – wrapped its adaptation of the Jesus story in a rather complicated backstory, featuring Charles Dickens retelling Jesus' story to his young child. Here though, access into the story is much simpler. The Apostle John son of Zebedee, is only in his early teens, when he encounters Jesus. 

This device gives the children in the audience a good way into the story, and while it's certainly not a traditional take on John's age, he has often been seen as young, so this is  perhaps not as tenuous as purists might fear. But if you're willing to accept that premise – and I very much am – then it does make for an interesting film. It's less dependent on solely John's Gospel than I imagined. Instead, it's harmonising of all four gospel traditions. It certainly starts and ends as John's tale, but in between, Mark, Matthew and Luke get drawn into it. 

Produced by the Salvation Poem Project (more on that later) its two directors, John J. Schafer and Tom Bennett have both been involved involved in biblical production before. Both worked on the Superbook reboot, and Bancroft also directed a few VeggieTales shorts. But Bancroft's portfolio is far more impressive than that, having worked for Disney during its golden years of 2D animation in the 1990s. 

Unsurprisingly, then, Light of the World's animation is great. The animation is primarily two-dimensional, and is certainly reminiscent of the films such as The Lion King, Mulan and Aladdin that Bancroft worked on and his experience and quality really shows. The quality of the animation is apparent even from the trailer, and the rest of the film delivers on that promise, with the filmmakers' determination to use those more traditional methods paying off really well. It's a bold step which really makes the point that not everything these days has to be CGI.

In addition to this, there's also a couple of scenes where the filmmakers switch to what the credits call paper animation. This includes the stunning opening creation scene and a later telling of The Good Samaritan. The way it employs this technique for these scenes is similar to how The Miracle Maker switches from 3D animation to 2D animation when it wants to tell scenes that people are primarily encountering in their heads.

Made for just $20 million, it's clear that a lot of the film has been made taking an all hands-on deck, family approach. It's produced by Brennan McPherson, who dad Matthew first set up the Salvation Poem project back in 2004 (and is credited as an Executive Producer), so clearly for them it's a real labour of love. The director's wife, Rebekah Schafer, plays a very Chosen-inspired Mother Mary (as she is called in the credits). The other director's twin brother Tony – another veteran of Disney – was head of story and animation director. The writers David and Drew Armstrong are brothers. I've seen productions in the past where the closeness of the production team perhaps explained the project's failure. Here nothing could be further from the truth. It exudes connections, a shared vision, that has strengthened the final product. 

It's to the film's credit that while it is definitely made with children in mind, it never feels like it's pandering to children in a desperate bid for attention. There's one brief chase scene where a centurion comes after John after an early incident with a fish, but such moments are used as sparingly as possible, and in a way that generally rounds out the story and provides a bit of a laugh. There's the occasional moment of slapstick, but of course John is at that age where bodies are growing faster than the mind can keep up. Importantly, it never feels like these moments are brought out at the expense of the overall story. Moreover, there are a couple of interesting little nods for adults as well. When a huge shoal of fish is miraculous caught in Zebedee's nets, someone says “we're gonna need a bigger boat”, tipping the hat towards Jaws (1975).  

The story itself is a fairly conventional take on the story of Jesus. The events of the nativity are briefly recounted later in the film. Instead, the film starts with a brief prologue where an even younger John hears his mother Salome retell the creation story. But it's brought to an abrupt close by the sounds of  Simon Peter's father being taken to jail for not paying his taxes.

The film then jumps forward a few years to the time when John, his brother James and his neighbours Peter and Andrew first encounter Jesus. There's a brief bit of establishing the characters and their names, but things get going when Zebedee is threatened with being thrown into prison by Matthew the tax collector. John, having failed to help his father once, decides to head off to try and find John the Baptist to help. On the way, he ends up meeting Jesus fixing a fishmonger's market stall, and, after sneaking his way into the wedding at Cana, manages to persuade him to help.

Jesus turns up, and performs the miraculous catch of fish enabling the tax to be paid, but not before Jesus has explained enough of his message to convert Matthew as well. A series of other miracles follow including healing the man who is lowered through the roof, liberating Mary Magdalene from the voices in her head, walking on water, and the feeding of the 5,000. Jesus' baptism, which occurs unusually close to his entry into Jerusalem, not only includes all the supernatural elements recorded in the Gospels, but also heightens them, rolling back the waters of the Jordan temporarily for Jesus to stand on dry land.

Some of these miracles feature in a nice montage which intercuts shots of Jesus performing miracles and spreading his teaching. This includes the use of some finger puppets when addressing a group of children, and it repeatedly cycles back to him teaching on a hill, with the audience growing with each iteration. It would be nice to witness a bit more of Jesus' teaching for ourselves. In what we do get though, writers David and Drew Armstrong mix direct quotations such as "Come all who are weary and I will give you rest" (Matt 11:28) with deft paraphrases "Sometimes the right path isn't the easy path" (Matt 7:13-14).

In addition to the paraphrasing, the film makes other attempts to make the religious language of the Gospels more intelligibile. One key example is the way the film replaces words like sin and fallenness and other complicated related concepts by talking about darkness, and of course, Jesus coming as the light of the world to banish that darkness. Certainly this is one of the key themes of John's Gospel. 

One thing that does come through clearly – to the audience if not to the disciples – is that while Jesus is the Messiah, he's not going to conform to people's expectations about the Messiah. Repeatedly through the film, the characters anticipate a kingly, (presidential?), warrior, messiah. While a few scholars question how widespread, deep-seated, and prevalent those expectations actually were in Jesus day it's certainly what comes through the remaining literature. We live an age where many Christians are increasingly seeking influence and looking to make the most of their current political power. Given that, it's good to have a portrayal of Jesus that not only shows a different approach, but emphasises that Christianity is a religion of the heart not of the sword.

Indeed, one of my favourite little moments of the film is very much in that spirit. As Jesus makes his triumphal entry into Jerusalem, members of the crowd begin to testify to his wondrous miracles. Someone calls out "he turned water into wine", another that "that he healed my legs, then the fishmonger calls out "he fixed my store... it was adequate". I guess what I like about this is that it keeps Jesus believably human (even while affirming his dual nature as God). He is exceptional in many ways, but his carpentry skills, were just OK. There's another great moment where John walks in on Jesus crying. This Jesus is certainly a kind of divine light of the world from heaven figure, but the film also does a very good job of also making him very human. 

I do have a couple of quibbles with the film. The first is that, for me, the emphasis on the Salvation Poem ultimately becomes a bit much. There are a number of relatively oblique references to it during the film which would have been fair enough, but after Jesus' ascension there's a very tacked-on altar-call type moment. Zebedee, having not shown any real interest in Jesus throughout the film, suddenly sees the light and prays along with his son in the words of this Salvation Poem. Then, two seconds after the credits roll, a QR code comes on the screen for people that also prayed the prayer. The poem prayer is then reproduced later in the credits as well.

So whilst the execution of the story and the animation and the voice work and all those things which are fantastic throughout this film are certainly very artful, it ends feeling very preachy. The film being a Salvation Poem Project suddenly overwhelms what has gone before. I can imagine that the producers of this film might take that as a badge of honour, and if so they're welcome to. But it seems like a bit of a shame and personally I'm not sure to what extent that might hinder rather than help the producer's aims.

The other concern I would have about the film is (as is so often the case) the portrayal of Jesus's Jewish opponents. Here there are only four of them, Caiaphas the high priest and three characters who I don't recall being specifically identified as Pharisees, but who are dressed all in black with tall headdresses which hang down to their waists. Again, the most costumically 'Jewish' characters in the film are dressed in black and cast as the bad guys. The depiction of Caiaphas, is even worse. He corresponds to bad Jewish stereotypes, with thick, heavy eyebrows; a hooked nose; and a pallid looking face. He's bent over and wizened. It's striking how similar their appearance is to their counterparts in The Chosen (likewise there are similarities with The Chosen's Judas).

These portrayals are a bit problematic. We don't know how often the high priest wore his ceremonial outfits. We certainly don't know to what extent the Pharisees had uniforms, if they wore them at all. And whilst there's a case for there being some costume element to mark them out as in some way special, I think the characterisation the film shows elsewhere could have been strong enough to do that without tagging them in this people-practising-Judaism-wearing-black-being-portrayed-very-negatively kind of way.

That said (and I suppose this could be entering into a spoiler territory) if you've seen your Jesus films, you know that often there are a couple of Pharisees who end up becoming Christians (usually Nicodemus and/or Joseph of Arimathea). It's aa reasonable inference from the text that these men both become Christians, if not in Jesus' lifetime, then certainly by the time the Gospels were being written. So it's not surprising that as the film progresses, it becomes clear that two of these three Pharisees are in fact Nicodemus and Joseph of Arimathea, and both turn to follow Jesus throughout the course of the film.{1} 

The other scene that could have been different in this respect is that of the crowd in Pontius Pilate's house. In contrast to Caiaphas, while Pilate is hardly good looking, he's tall and refined, with a big solid, cleft chin and a high brow. The crowd is very large, but fickle enough to be persuaded by the remaining Pharisee and Caiaphas call for Jesus' blood. That said, it's very clear that these are people whose minds are turned by what an authority figure is telling them, rather than people that are hating Jesus from the off, although what they're doing there in the first place is anyone's guess. 

Overall then, there is a lot of reasons to recommend this film. The pacing is excellent, as is the voice work. It avoids a lot of twee clichés and draws you into its world. It's bold creatively and has confidence in the team's technical expertise. The music is also good, there's a kind of nice little nod to Star Wars (1977), for example, at the end and a few other as it goes through, which really supports the film. And as I said above, the animation is really top-notch. 

For many years, if asked to recommend a version of the story of Jesus for a child I would previously have said The Miracle Maker. It's a film, I've been a fan of for a long time. Were I to be asked the same question today I would probably now say Light of the World. There are downsides to both films, of course, but Light of the World tells the story engagingly and with an artistic excellence which really stands out. 

1 - It would be nice for there to be room for a nice, normal, kind even, practicing Jew who encounters Jesus but decides, without any ill will towards his countryman, that he's happy to stick with Judaism, rather than everyone being passionately for or against Jesus. The real Jerusalem would have been packed with them that Passover.