Sunday, May 31, 2009

The Gospel According to "X-Men Origins: Wolverine "


A lot of negative comments have been made about Wolverine as being "shallow" when it comes to philosophy and character development. While I agree that there was little character development, I disagree that it had nothing to say about the human condition. As a character, Wolverine is always walking that razor edge between his humanity and beastial - bezerker nature. He constantly is making choices as to whether or not he is going to be rational or give in to his rage. I think that this was explored in the movie.

The movie also explored the idea of "choice". Wolverine chose to undergo the antimantium process because he wanted the added powerto kill Victor Creed whom he believed killed his lover, Silverfox. After Stryker tried to wipe Wolverine's memories and then later tried to kill him, Wolverine told the nice old man who helped him after the he escaped from Weapon X that he had no choice but to seek revenge. The old man called him on that...that we always have choices. I find that when we, as people, say "I have no choice." what we mean is that "I have no other choice that I would rather make". I mean Wolverine could have chosen to walk away and not look for Stryker or Victor, but he didn't. Okay, had he done that there would not have been a movie, but again, he could have done it.

So that gets me to thinking. "Do we, as people, have free will?" I've been studying what the Bible says about Free Will. I have come to the conclusion that it depends on how you define what "Free Will" is and is not. Many folks define "libertarian free will" as the ability to make decisions without being led, coerced, or contrained. This definition is not the way the Bible talks about how people function. The Bible says that God does everything according to his will....not ours. Nothing happens without God knowing about it. I want to write more on this subject. I'll be giving more in another post coming soon.

Read a review on my Favorite Fiction blog.

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