Outline and Guide to Jesus Christ Superstar
~the powerful 1973 movie version of Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice's amazing musical of Jesus' last days.
This guide was originally written by Neil MacQueen. He has revised and updated it for Rotation.org.
Excerpt from Neil's review of the movie:
Jesus Christ Superstar THE MOVIE is surprisingly brilliant. In fact, many pastors, teachers, and I have marveled at just how ON TARGET this production is. How did the Director who made Rollerball get it so right? Somewhere, God is smiling.
You walk away from this movie with a profound visual, emotional, and toe-tapping sense of the enormous political, social, religious, and military forces aligned against Jesus. The wild scene where Jesus responds to the dancing Zealots is the crux of the movie and of Jesus’ life. “Neither you Simon, nor the 50,000, nor the Romans, nor the Jews, ...understands what power is, understands what glory is, understands at all.” There’s a week’s worth of Bible study in the lyrics of that section alone.
The odd scene and song “Could we start again please” (I’ve been waiting to see you) is one of those other moments in the movie that is often overlooked. It's not in the Gospels, but it's quite possibly the other leg upon which the movie stands on. The disciples sing a last lament to Jesus who is standing apart and far across a valley. It visually reflects the separation between God and man, especially as it relates to understanding what power and glory are. It lyrically reflects the inability or unwillingness we have as disciples to fully comprehend and appreciate who Jesus is, and what he has done. Take your time there.
