CAUTION: SPOILERS EVERYWHERE.

I once was blind, but now I see.

I wanted to discuss this one portion of Paul in my review because it tempers my criticism of the film and actually depicts the filmmakers as more creative and thoughtful than I’d given them credit for, but it would have given away the ending of the movie. While there’s an implied knowledge reviewers have, for having seen a movie, that readers don’t yet have – i.e. what the movie is about, whether it’s good – I hate sounding coy and only hinting at things in reviews that I actually want to write about. So I left it out over there, and am including it over here.

If you’ve seen the movie, or haven’t and won’t, or haven’t and don’t care, you know that Paul eventually reaches his destination where a ship will pick him up and take him home. His road there is filled with violence and some death, and one key moment where it seemed as it he’d be a goner. Simon Pegg’s character is shot and seemingly done for – though we know from before that Paul has brought other living beings back to life. But doing so for a human might prove too much, and it’s apparently the case. For a moment. Then he makes it out alive and heads on home, E.T.-style.

After I left the theatre, I had been clearly affected by the atheist-Christian (false dichotomy) conflict of interests and still had them on my mind. I thought back to my school days and thus considered Paul as a Christ figure: Peaceful, extra-terrestrial. Living on Earth but not entirely of it. Healing powers, giving sight to the blind (figuratively and literally, though literally might or might not need quotes), returning to the sky after his time on the planet. And, near the end of the movie, prepared to sacrifice his life for someone close to him (Pegg’s character in the movie, humanity as a whole in reality). If they were to have Paul die and stay dead, the allegory might be complete and, despite all the earlier cartoonishness, we’d in the same movie have a specific illustration of Christ’s best-known characteristics. Which, in its way, would be an intelligently subversive criticism of the more fundamental interpretation of Christianity, perhaps just coming out and saying that Bible-thumping intolerance is not the message, man, it’s something much more practical and humanistic. It’s in finding the common ground with your fellow man, not focusing on whatever differences you might have, physiological or ideological or otherwise.

But: Paul lives. And my train of thought goes careening off the tracks: Paul’s “death” is temporary – he’s alive at the end of the film as he was at the beginning. That has Jesus written all over it. So my point about the filmmakers beating up on Christianity, while true on the surface, might just have more to it. Stripped of all labels, the story itself is largely the same, persecution and all, though the circumstances are different. Now, Paul doesn’t have to be a Jesus story, but if we’re affected by one we might surely be affected by the other. Even if, as presented as such, it’s hard to believe the story as anything but science fiction.

Does this exploration change my perception of the movie? Well, yes. The rating’s the same, the grade’s the same, but I’ll rest a little more comfortably after giving it a second thought.