"World, Here I Come!”

In which the second Hellboy film is seen as an allegory for the Christian ministry.

In Hellboy II: The Golden Army, we are shown what happens when Hellboy sets out into the real world. HE is no longer some poorly hidden defender, but public knowledge. This is something he has always wanted, but he quickly cools to his new found fame.

It turns out that all those people you have been fighting to save don’t really like you, Hellboy. They are not the enemy, and they still need your help, but they would prefer never to have known you existed.

The real bad guys in this film are the other “supernatural” beings, or at least those bent on destroying humanity. In this story, there is a whole unseen reality that most people are unaware of. It is very much like the real world in that people live their whole lives with blinders on; unaware of what is happening around them.

Hellboy is once again a good picture of the Christian life. He is tasked with helping save people who are not aware of the complete reality of the world and who are in danger from the realities that they cannot and do not want to see. Not only do they not know they are in danger; they do not want the help that Hellboy is offering. They see him as the monster, in fact.

As with all analogies, this one falls apart in the end. It is just a fanciful yarn after all. In the end, Hellboy becomes somewhat fed up with all those clueless humans and decides to quite working to save them and just live a secluded, quite life away from the world… Oh, wait, I guess a lot of Christians end up doing that as well.