Hellboy (2004)

A movie review

So here we are. Hellboy (2004), written and directed by Guillermor Del Toro, based upon the comic of the same name created by Mike Mignola.

Hellboy is the classic tale of the spawn of Satan being orphaned, adopted by a Christian Father, who becomes the undoing of the Hitler's chicaneries. Classic. The tale told a thousand times, to generations of innocent children needing bedtime . . . Wait. No. Nevermind. It isn't really actually the kind of story that you normally tell to children. . . . But it is the kind of story that needs to be told.

So here's the thing. It's a bit scary, and there are a few monsters. Nothing half as scary as the salt water crocodile, or the Giant Salamanders that live in the Japanese mountains. Just Hell-hounds, and evil sand-filled robot assassin scary. Sci-fi comic book action movie stuff. But it is fairly wholesome, with a few crass words here and there. Check one of those helpful christian websites that counts out the obscenities and use discretion, It is rated PG-13, so take that into account.

The story is fairly straight forward. Hitler attempts to co-opt the dark arts to the cause of the Reich, but American soldiers foil his plot by destroying the machine that created a portal to the underworld.

But guess what, the offspring of the Devil, you know, the beast who is supposed to bring in the Apocalypse, well, he’s a newborn who just happens to be out wandering, and he accidentally slipped through the portal. One of the men is a Christian, so he adopts the spawn of Satan and raises the little guy as his own son.

The problem is, he is a huge, red, Demonic looking monster, horns, tail, and all, that has one overlarge adamantine stone hand. This setup is really wonderful. There are so many places that you could go from here.

And the makers of this fine story go the most obviously appealing route in a society drenched with fatherlessness. Hellboy is put in a situation of having to decide between the faith of his biological father (if you can call it biology) and the faith of his adopted father.

I am torn on whether to go the route of spoiling such a wonderful set up, but then again, that is what I do. Here's the warning, and warnings, like bow-ties, are cool.

*Spoilers.*

The movie begins with the question, “What is it that makes a man a man? Is it his origins? The way things start? Or is it something else? Something harder to describe?” I know, right! What a great opening.

So the story opens with Hitler trying to get control of supernatural powers through the occult magic of Rasputin. He is going to release the seven gods of chaos, and out of the chaos, a new Eden will arise. A pretty accurate description of the insanity of modern revolutionary politics. Thankfully, the American army  arrives, the plot is thwarted, Hitler is stopped, and the portal to the gods of chaos is closed. But Satan's newborn snuck through. Since there is a Christian on the scene, someone knows what to do with an orphaned demon. You adopt him, baptize and rename him, and have him hunt monsters for the FBI’s, Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense Division. On the front desk it reads “in absentia luci tenebrae vincunt.' In the absence of light, darkness prevails.

Every morning, Hellboy wakes up and files off the horns given to him by his old father, and sets out to make his new father proud. He loves his father and wants to be like him, so he goes out and fights monsters for the light. There is a wonderful scene, that is the turning point of the movie, where Rasputin comes to Hellboy's father and explains to him that Hellboy was born for the purposes of his father, namely, the apocalyptic destruction of the world. Rasputin says, “If only you had had him destroyed 60 years ago, none of this would have come to pass. But then, how could you have known. Your God chooses to remain silent.”

Rasputin says that Satan has revealed to him the child's true name and asks if he would like to know it. His father's response: “I know what to call him. I call him son, and nothing you can do or say can change that.” Then he clutches the cross that he carries with him as he is killed. He dies trusting that his own Father in heaven will take care of his son.

Then comes the big final temptation. The name given him by his first father grows back Hellboy's horns transforming him into the key to unlock the gods of Chaos. His friends reminds him who his true father is by throwing him his father's cross, which is emblazoned onto his hand. At which point, he breaks the regrown horns from off of his head, kills Rasputin, and finds himself face to face with the ultimate evil god-monster. He fights him with a sword that he pulls from the hands of a gargoyle statue that sits in front of a cross. Then he goes into the tomb of the monster’s mouth with a bomb, destroying the death-monster from the inside, thereby saving his Isha, his Eve, his fire-bride, from the death that held her. 

Death loses its sting.

They kiss.

What a story. I still get chills every time I see it. But here’s the reason that it is such an important story arc for Christians. It’s the plot that daily plays out in our lives. Are we going to believe in our adoption into the family of God, our justification as the children of God, united to Christ, or are we not going to believe in our adoption, and follow after our biological Father. We have been removed from the line of Adam. Like Hellboy, our flesh still reflects our old father. But our adoption was sealed, our sonship was cemented when the only eternally begotten older brother died as our king.

This is the temptation we face: Whose son are we going to believe we are? We are sanctified by faith. We finish the same way that we started. By believing what God says about us. God tells us that he looks at us and says, "My Child. You are mine. Trust me, your Father. Follow your older brother Jesus. I am well pleased in him and I am well pleased in you. Leave behind the old dead man and his old dead works. Come and live. You are my son.

Just as Hellboy's realization that his adoption defined him led him to be like his father and lay down his life as an act of love, so should your realization lead to you taking up your cross. The

n you can bear in your body, the family resemblance of your true family.