There are the various Passion plays and medieval morality plays. But again, not sure that’s the direction we’re going. Though I think one could argue modern ‘gospel’ films have a closer relationship to those sorts of plays than they do to preaching.
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Recommend that folks read Amusing Ourselves To Death by Postman if they haven’t already.
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I think we have to be careful here. In a play, you have actual image bearers playing roles. In film, you are interjecting man-made images between the audience and the performer. You are also fixing a performance in time, such that it removes the live, spontaneous, incarnational aspect of theater. In a live performance, there is an organic relationship between the actor and the audience who are in the same physical space. You’re dealing immediately with real men and women made in God’s image, rather than with man-made images of those men and women.
This is related to what we’ve all been discovering with Covid: there’s a world of difference between virtual worship and in-person worship.
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I think we might be spiritualizing to watch or not to watch. It’s true, that for some such entertainment forms are unhelpful, while for others it is just entertainment. Certainly we have to detach and not take our doctrinal cues from these films but whether they have any real power has more to do with our dependence on the truth and our shepherding of our families. And this I would say about all form of entertainment, especially secular.
I was thinking about this very thing today and wondering: should we throw away all of our Superbook episode that that have a portrayal of Jesus in them? I think the answer is yes. This seems to be a big blind spot for American evangelicals, I know it has been for me!
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Sometimes the most ‘Biblical’ films are the ones which aren’t actually about the Bible; Chariots of Fire being a case in point, but I can think of more. The Railway Man (starred Colin Firth) is another. But I think we would agree that using film in a Gospel context is subject to diminishing returns, and that quite rapidly.