The Tragedy of Prince Nuada

A new movie starring my favorite comic character, Hellboy, is currently playing in theaters across the U.S.  Hellboy and the Golden Army, directed by Guillermo Del Toro,  has the same kind of fantastic monsters as Pan’s Labyrinth.  There is also the same clash of realities – Christian and pagan.

How can I not love Hellboy,? He’s such a contradiction – a demon who wears a wrist rosary. Kind, brave, implusive, born a demon but raised a man, he is loyal to his friends and his mission. He make messes and gets in fights, but picks himself up and keeps at it.

In Golden Army, Hellboy comes up against Prince Nuada, an elf prince who wants to destroy mankind for making such a mess of the earth and laying waste to the environment.  One of the creatures Nuada summons as a tool of destruction is an Elemental. This green force of nature terrorizes and tries to destroy a neighborhood, but after a terrible inner struggle, Hellboy finally kills it. As it dies, its blood and body blanket the streets and buildings with beautiful flowers and vegetation. Instead of cowering, the people and their other-worldly protectors walk among the flowers, enchanted.

Hellboy finally succeeds in overcoming Prince Nuada, but at the cost of realizing his own mission also relies on death and destruction. He walks away from it, deciding to live for the joy of living, not following orders to destroy things that are different.

The film is an entertaining fable of good and evil. But it also can be seen as a darker allegory of the struggle between Christianity and paganism, a spirituality rooted in nature. Nature has some fearsome ways to retaliate, if humanity hurts it too much or tries to dominate at its expense. 

Christianity has a lot to learn about life, nature and natural law from paganism. Chiefly, don’t try to kill things you don’t understand or are afraid of. Much to our surprise, there may be flowers in the blood and body.

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