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The title of the book in the Bible is usually translated Revelation, singular. Why did you call the series Revelations?

Seltzer: We decided to call it Revelations to put it into a broader context. There are personal revelations involved for our characters. There are revelations of things surrounding the events of our day. There are revelations of the Bible itself. So revelation meaning enlightenment I believe we are making plural because it's enlightenment on a variety of levels as they pursue the mystery of this story.

[At this point in the teleconference, the segment with David Seltzer ended, and John Rhys-Davies got on the line.]

You've been in a lot of films with some sort of spiritual theme—the Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones films and now this. What's your attraction to movies with a faith angle?

John Rhys-Davies: Well, it's more an attraction to stories that are about good and evil, stories that have a moral argument. I think we're at our best as a people when we are morally engaged. And coincidentally, they happen to be the best stories as well. It's very rare that you can find a great story that does not have a moral dilemma in the middle of it.

John Rhys-Davies

In what ways does this story remind you of The Lord of the Rings, because they're both kind of end times stories?

Rhys-Davies: I suppose you could say it's a perennial challenge of good versus evil, that it is a time of great challenge. Lord of the Rings is basically about a group of people who, if they do not fight, will lose their civilization and their entire world. And similarly, Revelations is about a conflict between good and evil that comes to a particular head at this particular time. And if the battle is lost then we will lose mankind and it will be the end of days and the bad side will have won.

Does it seem that the industry is gravitating toward religion in its programming, and if so, to what do you attribute the shift?

Rhys-Davies: Filthy lucre would be the great motivator, wouldn't it? By and large, all the bad things you hear about Hollywood are true. There are very few people who actually understand that a good story done well may just attract an audience and make money. The people who are in charge of Hollywood really are not quite literate in any real sense, and very few of them actually understand what a good story is. But the reason Hollywood has discovered good and evil is that people believe in it.

Revelations looks beyond human good and evil to the realms of supernatural good and evil. Do you think viewers will take that side of the story seriously?

Rhys-Davies: First of all, Revelations is a marvelous script. I think it's an exceptionally good piece of entertainment. It is also I think going to be controversial. Some people will take very literally, and if you take it literally, it may well offend your worldview. But we always get back to a good story that impresses us. What if it over impresses us? What if it gives us nightmares? Does that make it a bad thing, or does it mean that the story was very powerful?

When you're faced with a supernatural threat, the trick is to remember that God managed to turn spirit into flesh, which gives him one up on the Devil, because the Devil can't do that. The old Dominicans used to say when you're faced with this great evil, just remind the Devil of his limitations—and the incantation was Jesu ad verbum caro factum est—Jesus and the Word was made flesh. It is the incarnation that gives the moral and spiritual value of good over evil that actually defeats the Devil in the imagination.

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