This week on MovieJawn, we are celebrating our favorite movies that turned 25 this year. All week long we are going to Party Like It’s 1999!

by Emily Maesar, Associate TV Editor

For the last twenty-five years, people have been saying that 1999 was the “best movie year ever.” There’s even a book about it! It is, quite literally, written into the record now. And it’s in the year that brought us The Matrix, The Blair Witch Project, Eyes Wide Shut, Fight Club, The Sixth Sense, The Virgin Suicides, Magnolia, American Beauty, Being John Malkovich, and Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace that Kevin Smith released his fourth feature film. 

In his essay for the special edition of the DVD, Kevin Smith recalled that some of the concepts that would eventually make their way into Dogma were in his head before he even thought about his first film, Clerks (1994). But they stayed there until after Clerks found distribution, which was when he began working on the first draft of Dogma. By the time the film was shot, a lot of elements had changed—and I think they’re for the better. Some of those cut concepts would appear in other films and some were just re-worked within Dogma, itself. For example, the lead was originally a stripper, not an abortion clinic worker, but the strip club was just reworked into the second half of the film.

Now, the plot of Dogma is specific, but relatively simple. Two angels, who were thrown out of heaven eons ago, have discovered a loophole in Catholic dogmatic law (hence the title) that would allow them to re-enter the Kingdom of Heaven. However, to prove God wrong (in this case, She cast them out of heaven and degreed they could never return) would unmake the universe. So, in order to stop the unraveling of existence, Heaven has tapped the Last Scion (the only person on Earth with a blood relation to Jesus Christ) to stop the angels.

Thus, Bethany Sloane (Linda Fiorentino) is called upon by Alan Rickman’s Metatron to travel with the two prophets Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith) from Illinois to New Jersey. Along the way they run into Rufus (Chris Rock), the 13th Apostle, Serendipity (Salma Hayek), a muse, and the angels themselves, Bartleby (Ben Affleck) and Loki (Matt Damon). The final stand-off at the church is a blood bath, resulting in Bartleby killing a human Loki before trying to enter the church once he’s become human. He’s stopped by God (Alanis Morissette), who Bethany and Silent Bob save from the form She’s stuck in, and the Metatron. See, normally God would have just stopped Bartleby and Loki, Herself, except when She came to Earth to play skee-ball, She was attacked by Azrael (Jason Lee) and his minions, which put Her in a coma. Hence the Last Scion getting called into action. 

It’s a film about faith in the modern era—both the capitalistic bend that faith seems to have, but also the ways your faith can be tested and found wanting. There’s a lot of conversation about Jesus, as one might imagine, but also how Bethany is just like him. She’s an abortion clinic worker whose husband left her when she couldn’t get pregnant, and she used to be a devout Catholic. Bethany tells her co-worker that she used to feel moved by going to church, but now feels nothing. When she realizes that this is all very much for real, she has a big “why me,” moment. The Metatron notes that Jesus said the same thing. Rufus talks about how little of Jesus’s life, from the time he was born until he died on the cross, was really recorded. Without having him actually be a character, Dogma does a lot to humanize Jesus Christ and allow Bethany to exist within the very human framework it creates for Biblical figures. All of that in conjunction with what I think is the central intention of the film: Rufus’s point about ideas versus beliefs. “I think it's better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier.”

It shouldn’t be unsurprising that specific parts of the Catholic community were… not particularly happy about Dogma. Despite Smith being raised Catholic, and still being pretty devout at the time of them making the film, the Catholic League (among other religious groups) found the film to be particularly blasphemous—though it should be noted that the Church, itself, never made a statement. Perhaps what set off the religious groups was the pretty liberal stance on abortion and euthanasia or that famous atheist comedian George Carlin was playing a Cardinal. Buddy Christ, as an image, certainly didn’t help. Nor did making God a woman. But, of course, these are all things that make the film work. Because even though Smith was a practicing Catholic when making the film, he wasn’t conservative. Not to mention the conversations about faith and belief in the film are some of the most interesting and deeply thought-provoking things that Smith has written to date.

Not that you could watch it very easily, though, once it left theaters. Financially, Dogma did okay. It had a budget of $10 million and earned almost $43 million. Now, those aren’t numbers that would break any box office records, but certainly not horrible by any means (Mallrats (1995) was his worst box office performer, up to that point). However, the real trouble came, as it so often does, with the Weinstein brothers. For a very long time, Miramax distributed (and sometimes produced) Smith’s films. They took a chance and bought up Clerks when no one else did at Sundance in 1994 and they would continue to be involved in all his major films (excluding Mallrats) until Cop Out in 2010. 

However, because the film (and television) industry is messy as all get out, something… specific happened with Dogma because both of the Weinstein brothers owned part of the film in a deal that pre-dated streaming (which is why the film is impossible to stream or digitally rent anywhere). When Harvey Weinstein was convicted of rape in 2020, he reached out to his brother about buying Bob Weinstein’s rights to the film, convinced they could repackage it, finally get the film on streaming and, potentially, patch up their relationship with Kevin Smith. To which Bob Weinstein refused, seeing it as “another Harvey con.” Not to mention that given Smith’s statement on the rights issue, “my movie about angels is owned by the devil himself,” probably means there’s no relationship to patch up. 

And yet! There’s a shockingly happy ending to the story of Dogma as, in June of this year, Smith announced that the rights to the film had finally been purchased from the Weinstein brothers. He later confirmed that he was working with the company that bought them to do a home video re-issue, a theater roadshow, and a digital release of the film, hopefully in 2025. He also expressed a desire to potentially explore the world of the film in sequels, television, or otherwise continue it in some way. So, we very well may see more angles in hoodies sooner than we think! And in the meantime, we must consider the noble sport of skee-ball, the Lord’s favorite activity on Earth.