CNA Staff, Sep 2, 2025 / 08:00 am (CNA).
A new 2D-animated movie, told through the eyes of Jesus’ beloved disciple John, will be released in theaters on Sept. 5, taking viewers from the beginning of Jesus’ ministry to his passion, death, and resurrection. “Light of the World” is the first movie from the Salvation Poem Project, a nonprofit ministry and independent studio that crafts stories to share Jesus Christ with the world.
Brennan McPherson, producer of the film, told CNA in an interview that his team chose to tell the story from John’s perspective because he was likely the youngest disciple so they believe his perspective is the most relatable.
“Telling it from the perspective of a young teenager — young kids want to age up and they see themselves in that. Teenagers are going through those formative years, so they relate with it. And then adults know what that formative time in their life was like. So it made it more appealing to a full family,” he explained.
He added that the filmmakers “wanted to show how the Gospel changed a young boy’s life and how it can still change our lives today.”
For the filmmakers — who also create other forms of faith-based media — projects such as this one are an “an act of worship.”
“We’re nerdy animation lovers, and we wanted to make a beautiful animated film that honored God, that told the truth about the Gospel, and that could be used as a tool to share our faith with people in a way that’s nonthreatening and that is not just compelling but genuine and respectful towards the audience,” McPherson said.
“What we’re trying to give people is an experience of the goodness of Jesus and let that resonate on a heart level so that they can fall in love with him,” he added.
When deciding what parts of Jesus’ ministry to include in the film, McPherson explained that filmmakers were trying to answer the question “How do you tell the basic big fundamental beats that make the Gospel totally clear to someone who’s had zero background?”
With this in mind, all of the choices “were through the lens of how do we make the actual structure of the story basically symbolize the Gospel itself, show the Gospel in action, as opposed to just telling us about it.”
He also emphasized the importance the filmmakers gave to “the biblical accuracy, the theological accuracy, [and] making it accessible for children.”
As for what he hopes viewers will take away from the film, McPherson said he hopes “that they will see Jesus is beautiful and fall in love with him and decide to follow him with their lives.”
“We wanted to give people a very clear emotional experience of the Gospel so that it just poured into their hearts. We’re so busy in this culture these days that it’s hard to get people to stop and really think about the claims of Jesus, really consider who he was and whether or not he was true,” he said. “And so this is our way of just basically like, ‘Hey, this is the most beautiful thing to us. That’s what we want to spend our time making art about, and we hope that you see what we see in it.’”
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“As for what he hopes viewers will take away from the film, McPherson said he hopes that they will see Jesus is beautiful and fall in love with him and decide to follow him with their lives” (CNA’s Francesca Pollio Fenton on Movie Maker Brennan McPherson).
Now don’t get riled up. I’m not being critical of a worthy effort. Kids need what’s for kids. Although something is missing in the cartoonish Jesus and Apostle John. John wasn’t a child man as shown. He worked as a fisherman with a crew of fishermen. Nor was he a Man child. Nor was Jesus a loveable Man child. Analogously it reminds me of a manufacturer of food pills. We are shown wonderful red strawberries, golden pink apricots, dancing green peas and made to believe that all these good things are in the pills. It’s a kind of virtual reality that doesn’t work.
What is missing is a closer reality to the characters. Children can perceive beauty in adults. In fact you can walk into a classroom for the first time and kids can size you up with uncanny quickness. Although McPherson says that “young kids want to age up and they see themselves in that”. Adults can relate to what they themselves experienced. That’s a sound argument difficult to write off. From a personal perspective it seems a closer touch of reality would go further to convey Christ as a beautiful person.