We were robbed 😭 her design ended up being the design for Saul’s wife/Jonathan’s mother, Ahinoam

David 2025

THIS TOOK WAY TOO LONG, IT TOOK ALMOST

A DAY. It crashed THREE times. But anyways,

did this in honors of Valentines Day a bit, and bc

I like Jonavid art♡♡

Yk, | wondered if when David got to Heaven,

Jonathan was already ready to beat the living

soul out of him for what he did to Bathsheba

and Uriah🐱

So I watched the David animated movie bc I promised my mom I'd go with her....and I'm really glad I did. It was actually INCREDIBLY fascinating. The whole story and tone of the movie is very goofy Inspirational Christian Movie so like. That's the vibe. Lots of cringe Kids Movie Humor that was like ehhh whatever. But I actually ended up having a lot to say about it! I don't have images because I saw it in theaters, but I want to write my impressions here.

Designs:

But I was especially intrigued by the visual designs, which were absolutely gorgeous. My images here (pulled quickly from Google) do NOT do it justice. The compositions and colors of this movie were incredible.

Lots of research and thought put into shape language, environments, TEXTILE DESIGN. So much detail in the textiles!!!. It's all clearly stylized but it was neat to get something that felt so very bronze age fantastical. There are a lot of anachronistic elements–characters notably ride horses, not riding chariots, for example; in the background you can see some women wearing outfits that evoke Palestinian and middle eastern folk wear from the past couple centuries á la philosemitic 19th century biblical artwork rather than ancient silhouettes. Another anachronism that made me raise my eyebrows was the prominence of stylized menorah (or menorah-like) imagery all around the movie–i don't have visual examples but it seems to be associated with the burning bush, which I found extremely intriguing, if under explored and a little corny.

The Designs are not really meant to be super archeologically accurate, and a lot of designs are exaggerated or elaborated on, but I liked how rich and original the world felt, and there was definitelj a lot of though out into it even if maybe some decisions were a bit strange. (There were various points regarding some statues and other visual designs where I was like GIRL!!! THE GRAVEN IMAGES!!!! ....but then again also in Samuel we have the account of Michal using an idol to help David escape, so perhaps it is more accurate than my knee jerk reaction)

I was particularly excited by the Philistines and their very "sea people" stylized looks, they were very exaggerated and full of adornment and just overall fun to look at. The depiction of Goliath in particular was INCREDIBLY intriguing and I'd love to see the concept art of how they designed him–he was very unique looking for the brief screentime he had. I was curious how the movie would depict one of the most famous stories ever and add suspense, but it managed to do so. When goliath prepares to face off against David, you get the feeling he is approaching the fight like an ancient heroic warrior, someone from a different type of epic story than the biblical one–and this adds very interesting insight to his brief scene. For those curious about watching the movie yourself, I will keep it vague because I think the impact is great on its own.

Religion and Story

Speaking of gods, this is probably the one time I would say that, when it comes to works like this, this kind of movie would have been better if it had been MORE religious, not less! There's a lot of talk about God, believing in God, the power of God–We don't get a solid sense of the cultural importance of this God, and his relationship to the characters and people. The most we get is characters reverently looking up in the sky at God's mention. Maybe we get a soft pan over the landscape. Which is neat and all but I got the feeling if u went into this movie somehow not knowing anything about God or religion in general you might be very confused as to What is Going On, since it kind of assumes the watcher knows already what the deal is. But it's not established!

We get a brief look at the richly adorned Tabernacle, of the high priests, and in a sequence we get to see a brief images of earlier stories from the Hebrew Bible, such as Moses and the burning bush, the parting of the red sea–examples of God's expression through the natural world. But the specifics of how David, Saul, Jonathan, etc relate to their religion and society is vague and vibes based. (Probably bc it would've become very uncomfortable very quickly, given the role of religion, war, and sacrifice in these books particularly, but its absence leaves a hole.) This keeps the story flowing, but I think removes a lot of the "worldbuilding" and stakes. This partially comes from the fact that in the books of Samuel, it's more a political-social drama, but still! If God exists in the text of your story, which takes place in a very specific ancient Hebrew culture, I think it should've been incorporated in a better thematic way.

I think they were going for like....a moral, eucatastrophic kind of approach (there are even some scenes that are very reminiscent of certain Tolkien adaptions, in a very corny way) but it kind of falls flat, and not just because of the imposing later Christian imagery and themes onto a complicated story about messy ancient Israelite figures acting duplicitously. It ultimately wasn't exactly satisfying for people like me, who know how the story of David continues after the credits roll.

Characters 3/10

Most David stories tend to fall very flat because people cannot help making his character be a goody-goody. And boy, what a Goody-goody he is! The David movie takes the Samuel narrative and presents David as quite the bowdlerized hero. David is a leader, a protector, a poet, but not a warrior. His power (which comes from God) is his musical talent and ability to convince. When we see his and Jonathan's exploits as young men, it's not in war, but rather building and rescue missions. (No collecting philistine foreskins here!). While he is the anointed king, his gentleness and humility is contrasted with Saul's violence and instability, and is alluded to as the reasons for his eligibility. There are multiple scenes reminiscent of Stilgar in Dune Part 2–"he denies he is the chosen one....that just gives even MORE reason!" In a world where most of us see monarchy as inherently unjust (and in 1 Samuel 8:10, this exploitation is harshly prophesized), we need to always show the man who will be king as someone who is Deserving and Good. If they have flaws, the flaw is that they are just TOO humble and TOO self effacing.

The story does not end with a bloody conquest or battle, but takes a bizarre if fascinating turn that really shows the blatant Christian spin being put on this story, in a scene that was so baffling and shameless to me plot-wise I couldn't help but be entranced. If you've watched Kpop Demon Hunters and saw how that movie ended you may have an idea of how this ending happens as well, but once again, i will leave the actual sequence and execution up to your imagination in case you decide to actually watch.

A lot of this David depiction reminded me of my frustration with the Philip Augustus depiction in Solomon's Crown, where the main character is ostensibly supposed to be a king and conqueror bu the story is allergic to showing what the implications of being or becoming King and Conqueror actually is. David does no violence, takes no real active action, he does "moral" actions to show the people and the characters how Good he is, but you can't seriously see him as someone wielding power. Which is maybe good for an individual lesson to show kids on how to be idk kind and love your neighbor etc but like....this is a story.

Biblical Yaoiz 8/10

I will say: I was surprised that they notably did NOT heterosexualize no-homo the Jonathan and David dynamic as much as I thought. Probably because Real Biblical David was busy collecting wives and concubines and oops we can't show that in our Christian manga. But yeah Zero Michal but we get lots of bromantic Jonathan and David interactions where they are, indeed getting their hands all over each other, which, I will say, I'm a simple fujo I was absolutely kicking my feet in the theater. I think this was because their actual screentime together (as adults) was very short so they had to really establish that they LIKE each other a LOT. Not even gonna call it queerbaiting because I have common sense and I am not losing chess to that dog. But my goggles: strapped ON!!!!

A special shout-out to my guy King Saul, my favorite tortured man of the Bible. I loved him in this full stop. His design was absolutely gorgeous, he was very beautiful and tragic and emotive. My one qualm is that he should've had a beautiful villain song about being jealous of the new twink in town but he did NOT!!!!

The secret chord...that did NOT please the Lord (the Music: 0/10)

Music is important in this film. David is a musician, many of his psalms are referenced, music is weaved into the story as a major device for montages and moving the story along. Or so it is intended. Personally, I could not fucking STAND the music in this movie. I've grown up in church, I've heard enough Phil Wickham and inspirational upbeat CCM to fill me for a lifetime. It'd great for a motivational jogging playlist at most, but just is very ill-suited to narrative music. I hated the soundtrack, hated how the songs were NOT catchy and dragged their sequences along. Even the gorgeous and energetic visuals of this movie could not make up for it. If I was King Saul and David came to me on his kithara playing this positivity bullshit to lift me out of my schizophrenic paranoia and fear of being abandoned by God and betrayed....I would just throw ANOTHER spear at him!!!!!

Obviously, it's unfair to compare to stuff like idk full production Disney films and Stephen Schwartz's amazing work on The Prince of Egypt and such. Not everyone can afford that....but I feel like generally if you're making a narrative musical like this especially one where MUSIC is a main focus....it helps to maybe pull from like ...other animated musicals? Since I'm no music expert so pardon my layman gripes but I feel more theatrical music for musicals tend to cover a wider range of emotions and narrative beats and have more clarity to them rather than just "sounds good on a playlist." And if you DO wanna be disonnant and have that kind of music, it shouldn't be the DIEGETIC music....that's just my take.

Also there was a lot of usage of what sounded like traditional instruments in the soundtrack, but since the instruments were just basically accompanying basic Christian pop music beats they really didn't add anything at all, it didn't feel like transporting u to the story or world that much. Depressingly bland!!

Conclusion?

Overall I didn't expect to enjoy the movie as much, but despite the awful music and bowdlerized story, there was a lot to enjoy, as a lover of fun designs and bronze age inspired fantastical works. There is clearly a lot of love and passion put into this work, and I'd LOVE to see an art book.

In a weird way, even though I'm baffled and amused by the weird changes to the story to make it all child friendly, I'm also, admittedly, a little relieved. I was worried a bit when seeing the movie promo that it might turn out to be more of a militant story, since the original ancient accounts are very much about violence and war and power struggles and such, especially against "pagan enemies." And since it seems to be aimed at families taking their kids to a Christian Movie Event, I wouldn't want them really internalizing that kind of message that many are undoubtedly already receiving at home. (I remember John Dominic Crossan being concerned about the first Narnia movie being very christian and war-oriented in the 2000s as well).

So someone on that team knows a ton and a half about lighting and camerawork oh my gosh the way I noticed how much seamless movement there was in the camera shots, like it was dancing along, very feature film musical.

The stylization was very charming, very caricature in places on extras and side characters like you'd see in older Disney work.

The foreshadowing with David having compassion on the lion that was trying to kill his sheep????? (Not to mention that gorgeous shot where we pan from Saul on one side of the waterfall in the mercy cave to David inches away on the other side in the scene proper.)

Someone on that team is also clearly a fan of Lord of the Rings because we got a big Cue The Sun army charge lol. AND CAN I TALK ABOUT DAVID GETTING STRUNG UP AS A CHRIST FIGURE AND HOW THE CLIMAX BLENDED THREE DIFFERENT SONGS FROM EARLIER IN THE FILM SEAMLESSLY????

I am wigging out this was such a cool and fun and lovely movie and oh I hope it does well, I hope it does very well because I want to see more from this creative team.