Perhaps the most interesting thing a Christian review of Ron Howard’s new movie, Eden (2025), can say about the movie is that it’s not like any Ron Howard movie you have ever seen. Oh yeah, and you will also get a full frontal of Jude Law’s junk.
Not a typical Howard film
One of the things audiences love about Ron Howard is that he’s not afraid to leave an audience feeling good at the end of his movies. In this respect, Howard has definitely swum against the current in Hollywood. Howard understands his job is to entertain, and we are more entertained by movies that incite positive emotions rather than negative or ambiguous ones. Howard understands better than most that movies should be made for an audience, not for the filmmaker. He has also understood it’s not necessary to show us an A-lister’s rack or junk to keep us engaged.
To the extent Eden is a departure from the uplifting themes we’ve seen from Howard, it’s because the movie is based on a true story. In Eden, three different groups of people escape a post-World War I Europe barreling toward fascism for a deserted island in the Galapagos Islands. The island is a blank canvas, a chance to start over, where they expect to build something better than the world they escaped.
An honest and engaging movie
Unfortunately (spoiler alert) they end up learning the problem with those who try to escape the world is that wherever they go, there they are. In short, they learn they are the problem. How the hoped-for paradise of Eden’s characters devolves into chaos is, at times, practically unwatchable. This is not a criticism but a nod to Ron Howard’s expert knowledge of his craft.
In one scene, Margret Wittmer (Sydney Sweeney) gives birth alone in a barn while surrounded by wild dogs threatening to attack her and eat her newborn baby. The movie is definitely engaging, even if, like me and others in the theater, you have to repeatedly look away (even apart from the nudity).
As raw and visceral as Eden is at points, from a Kingdom perspective the movie is rooted in Truth. Eden rightly identifies the problem with the world. It is not, as Jean-Jacques Rousseau said, that man is born free but everywhere is in chains. It is that man is the source of his own, and others’, chains. The movie is honest.
Eden is entertaining, but not in the way one would expect form a Ron Howard film. The narrative keeps one’s interest and the film never drags. Also, there is resolution at the end of the movie. There is no subjective, relativistic worldview-pimping, ambiguous ending leaving the audience to fill in the blanks as to what it all meant “to them.” This story really happened. Howard tells the story, and the audience must deal with it. We don’t get to choose our reality or “my truth.” This is the world, untempered by the filters of society.
Why you’ll probably not see this movie
Now, back to Jude Law’s wedding tackle.
This scene, I’m sure, was intended to demonstrate the raw character of Law’s Dr. Ritter, stripped of the pretense we use to make our corrupt and sinful selves acceptable in a civilized society. Of course, Howard doesn’t have to show us Law’s package to make that point. Howard is too good a director. Of course, neither does he have to show us Sydney’s Sweeney’s exposed breast for us to know she’s breast feeding, or Ana de Armas’s breasts to show she is indiscreet, or her lover’s bare arse to show us whatever he was trying to show us about him.
I’ve made it a point on this blog not to judge a movie by whether it contains profanity or nudity, as many Christian movie-reviewers do. Frankly, that contributes little to the conversation and provides nothing to a Christian audience who can get the same information by simply looking at the movie’s MPA ratings. I’ve stated here before my criteria for judging movies, which I’ve tried to derive from what I believe the Lord expects from cinema in a redeemed world.
The last thing I want to do is disqualify a movie because of its profanity or nudity. And here, but for the nudity–principle among it the public display of Jude Law’s Johnson–I would have highly recommend this movie. That is unfortunate because rarely have modern movies taken such an honest view of human nature. Maybe all this proves is that Ron Howard is no different than his characters in Eden, and that given enough pressure, he too will follow the Hollywood herd.
Bottom line: if you can see an edited version of Eden on television, watch it. If you can’t, don’t. GS
