The falls trilogy, for me, was about two people moving at completely different speeds and primarily where unconventional love fits within the church. Following two characters, at the exact same starting point and watching as they navigate their lives, while in very similar situations, take completely different paths to end up at the exact same place makes for a very emotionally impact full watch.
The role that the Church and religion in general has in these movies, for this point specifically, the third one, makes for a great opportunity to define characters based on their opinion on the churches teachings. When you put two characters in one movie, put them in the exact same situation, but give them different opinions and instincts on how to navigate through said situation offers, not only a great contrast of two characters but also a great conflict that cant and wont be easily resolved.
Also, this movie stands out in the way that religion is portrayed. Often times, religion is put in queer movies as an obstacle or something just 'bad' in general, but in the Falls trilogy, I think they do a really good job at accepting religion, mainly ones that restricts a way of living, and faith as a way of life that shouldn't be looked down apon just because it doesn't fit your idealistic.
When religion is portrayed like this light, its often light hearted and often just a one time thing but pure hypocrisy, nonetheless.
Extending on my second point, the specific situation in the first and second movie, is extremely unique which also makes for interesting conflict between 2 characters, even if not the two main characters, the two main family's, or the two main characters verses the church. As the 1st movie feeds into the 2nd one, often times it feels as if its one of the main characters verses the church alone. This is due to the character feeling so confined within the church that they become one in the same, preach becoming practice.
A second conflict I personally would've loved to have seen more explored was Chris's wife's opinion on the whole situation, and how she deals with it all. Plots like the 2nd movie are more common now a days, very few exploring the emotional distress of anyone but the two main characters. In the 2nd movie, during the confrontational scene, we see Chris's wife in more upset then we see any of the other characters that movie, but after that scene we don't see her again and her plot is sort of discontinued. This purely couldve been from lack of quality writing, which on a surface level, tends to be a very reoccurring thing for these movies, or it could be from lack of care of what really happens to her, which I find sort of upsetting mainly because I find the conflict of her and Chris and RJ a very interesting topic aswell as the fact we get to see Chris's family's, specifically his father explored a lot more in the 3rd movie. And also she had a kid with Chris, which I get we see he gets full custody of in the 3rd movie but like where'd she go??
Stereotypes, fortunately, fail to be something I came away from this movie, experiencing very frequently, expect the unexpected, obviously to an extent, considering the topic, is what I would recommend to anyone who wants to watch this. This goes hand in hand but by like halfway through the 2nd movie I stopped baking any bias opinions about characters because the character development in this movie is crazy.
When people hear character development, often they expect quite straight forward arcs to come to play, like good goes bad, bad goes good but when battling things like the church, it should be expected thay characters opinions by the 3rd movie are sort of all over the place and it's deemed hard to come to a place of comfort regarding the topic. There's a lot of ups and down, between churches and family's and relationships its very crazy but done very well compared to how its often portrayed, also, this might because its over the course of three movies but I think its a happy ending that's not extremely forced.
