I know my take on Wicker Man was lib as hell but even I'm not this delusional. rewatched it; it's good, more humanizing of both sides than I remembered BUT it's clearly more slanted on Howie's side. being a well-meaning fool is better than being a murderer
both sides of the argument are missing subtext; Howie WAS portrayed as overzealous, closeminded & easily manipulated; that part IS true. but the villagers' situation clearly mirrors the flaws of the protagonist & the media literacy guy somehow missed this!
my issue was "no matter how hard you humanize both, a largely Christian anglophone 70s audience would still read it as 'Christianity, good Paganism bad' cuz murder supersedes Howie's flaws". but EHHH, nah; authors aren't responsible for people reading moral absolutes into fiction
the fact that I thought "the pagans' general beliefs & practices aren't bad" just shows the movie did its job in humanizing them, not that it was saying "it's all evil because they took it too far". I don't think the movie was ignoring that "Christians can also take shit too far"
going beyond the history of religion & seeing the characters as individuals, though, it's obvious the pagans are worse people than Howie. you'd have to be brainbroken by internet politics & guilty of the same ideology the movie is criticizing to think killing him was epic & based
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