Just saw Spiderman III on DVD. Took a while as I wasn't going to risk the theatre's for this one. Too many bad reviews kept me away for some reason. In some ways I'm sorry I waited. Although the film went a bit overboard on the cheese at times, I found it quite interesting. The main point of intrigue for me was the overtly Christian mythology which undergirded this film's portrayal of evil. 

Some Christians read Isaiah 14.12 as a reference to Satan which was a misnomer promulgated by the King James' translators follow through on Hesiod's Theologia.  Isaiah reads, "How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!" However, most modern translations and commentaries translate the Hebrew helel from which Lucifer was derived as some sort of falling star that may have referred to an Icharus like figure in Canaanite mythology but in no way can be definitively related to what Isaiah would have known as Satan. Satan in the Old Testament is simply an adversary to God. That is what hasatan, means in passages like Job 1-2.  

In any case, looking past this caveat, the film draws upon this mythology by depicting evil falling from heaven like a star. This meteoric black goo then seems to attach itself to human hosts in a parasitic kind of way. The characters in the film find themselves dealing with traumatic events in their lives and then face a choice between forgiveness and revenge. When they choose revenge, this choice somehow creates the conditions for the evil alien parasite to take hold of them, empowering their vengeance and hate. Cinematically, the parasite expresses itself in a goth conversion in the human. For instance, as Peter Parker chooses vengeance his hair goes a shade darker, his eyes gain a hint of shadow and eye liner, and his Spiderman suit transfigures itself into a sheek black. Eventually Spidey lets evil get the best of him and he turns to the church to help him exorcise his demons in the bell tower.

I found this representation of evil interesting because of the overtly Christian references here. But then we need to ask if they are in fact Christian? As I said, Isaiah isn't considered a reference to Satan these days anymore but the way we conceptualize evil is still very important. Part of the political back drop of this film, like Half Nelson, is the way the Bush administration depicts some nations as evil or as part of an axis of evil. What these films are doing is raising questions about how we think about the dialectic between good and bad, and who is a villain and who is not. To overtly draw upon a Christian mythology only intensifies the importance of a bit of clarification on what is in fact Christian about the film's depiction of evil. 

At least since Augustine, and I will be reading a bit of Barth into it here, Christian theology has tended to understand evil as parasitic. That is, evil doesn't exist in and of itself. Rather, as people do evil, they negate goodness and work against God's intentions as the origin of all existence. To choose evil is to orient and direct oneself towards nothingness. A decision for evil draws us towards non-existence. In this light, when Paul says that the wages of sin are death (Romans 6.23), he is essentially saying that to choose evil is to make a choice towards the final end of existence.

The film therefore gets it right precisely where it gets it wrong when it represents evil in a parasitic way. Spiderman III does well to highlight the ambiguities we all face in our choices each day. We can choose vengeance or forgiveness and heroes and villains both possess these potentialities. All are open to grace and none are beyond redemption. It does well to move the battle on from villains and heroes to a battle against evil itself.  This film correlates well to the Christian backdrop which it seems to draw upon,  but it misses precisely in its physical representation of this parasite.

Interestingly the media interviews for Spiderman III raised this problem in their own way. I'm paraphrasing, but John Stewart asked Tobey Maguire on the Daily Show, "So where does this black goo come from?" Maguire laughed and said you have to suspend that question. It's just a movie. I suppose we could do the same.

However, maybe Stewart was asking a more important question than he realized. At least, it's a question Augustine deals with in his discussion of evil. If evil exists (as creepy crawly black goo or anything else for that matter), then where does it come from?  Augustine's solution is not to negate the question, but to negate the existence of evil. Augustine does not give evil an existence in and of itself and therefore doesn't have to deal with the possibility that God created evil. As such, evil arises only as a negation of goodness and in no other sense.

On the other hand, to choose God is to choose life and eternal existence. This depends upon an affirmation that God is in fact the origin and Lord of our existence. Restoration and forgiveness is therefore a reconciliation of our existence with its origins. As Christians live out that choice of forgiveness and reconciliation they are essentially choosing who and what they most are.  I would only add that this implies that no discussion of grace is adequate without a concomitant discussion of existence and the nature of our being. This is one reason why ontology and metaphysics are so crucial for Christian theology.

Although Spiderman III does well to capture the parasitic nature of evil, because it attempts to represent it physically it creates a confusing problem which film pundits and theologians alike should question. Augustine helps us to recognize the need for a meta-physical discussion of evil as we come to terms wtih the potentialities of our own existence.