With 2014 turning into the year of religious movies, “Noah” opened the biblical box office with a bang when the story of Noah’s ark hit theatres on March 28.

Starring Russell Crowe as Noah and Jennifer Connelly as his wife, Naameh, Noah receives a prophecy that the world as he knows it will end in water.

Noah knows these premonitions are from God and understands that his purpose is to save the “pure” – animals and his own family.

Noah, not knowing where to start with his new task of building an ark, visits his grandfather, Methuselah (Anthony Hopkins). At the same time, Noah’s distant uncle, Tubal-cain (Ray Winstone), leader of all evil men, seeks his own army in order to fight to take the ark for himself.

In this movie version, time is shown through the growth of trees and expansion of rivers along with the aging of Noah’s three sons, Shem (Douglass Booth), Ham (Logan Lerman), and Japheth (Leo McHugh Carroll), and his adopted daughter Ila (Emma Watson).

The first half of the movie consists of Noah’s family building the ark.

The second half takes place on the ark, where Noah’s family protects sleeping animals and searches for any land not covered by water.

As the movie progresses Noah becomes conflicted with the idea that God maybe wanted all men dead and struggles to decide whether or not to kill his own family or allow them to survive and be the last of their kind.

Some of the most interesting scenes are complete computer graphics, while other stunning views are of real hills in Iceland, where most of the movie was shot.

The only similarity the movie version of “Noah” holds with its counterpart biblical story is that it is simply about a man that receives a message of God that He is going to rid the Earth of all evil and start anew.

After that, not much is same.

So Noah builds an ark, just like in the story, but after he begins his task, “Noah” becomes less of a Bible story and more of an adventure-drama.

Aside from this basic plot, and the very short Bible story, director Darren Aronofsky had little to go on.

He inserted women where there were none mentioned and included millions of animals that didn’t even exist.

In an interview Aronofsky said, “[All of the animals] are slightly tweaked designs of real existing animals” and that no real animals were used at all.

He managed to turn a short tale into a two-hour-long movie. But every scene in the film feels significant and not many words are wasted.

The dream sequences are especially amazing to watch. Not only are these digressions vibrant, but they are equally creepy with the floating corpses and blood soaked mud.

“Noah” is vastly different from its original text and although it is religious, it is only slightly so.

Most of the movie is drama and rain and beautiful scenery. Every actor was fantastic. I give it 3 of 4 Grizzly paws.