The new Omen movie is came out on June sixth, making the date written in Arabic numerals as 6/06/06, which is sort of, but not quite the number of the beast in the book of Revelations. Back in the day when Revelations was written (First Century Rome) letters substituted for numbers so that a word also had a numerical value because letters were interchangeable with numbers. Pretty neat, huh? The problem was that it depended on what language you were doing it in, and for all you Apocalypse nuts out there - none of those languages was twenty first century English.
The Omen was a movie that really, really didn't need to be remade. The first Omen, I recall, was sort of scary for its time and kind of a ground breaker with its use of cinematic techniques. Now, unfortunately, that ground has been broken and it's just trite. The story's the same: Damien is taken in as the adopted son of an American politician in England and he seems to develop horrible supernatural powers and he has the '666' birthmark hidden in his hair. He must be stopped or else he will grow up to be the Antichrist (I think) and bring forth the Apocalypse and awful stuff.
My question is simply: Why is Damien so evil? It can't be nurture because his adopted family does a satisfactory job of providing him a proper upbringing. Of course, many respectable families have children that turn out horrible through now fault of their own, and a lot of famililes that look respectable really aren't. So, we can't let them totally off the hook, but I think the point of the movie is that Damien's father is really the devil - so it's all in the genes. Wouldn't you think?
But if it's in the genes, then Lucifer could only provide half of those genes, meaning that Damien can only be half pure evil, because who was his mother? In the movie, I think he was born from a wolf or something, but he doesn't look half-wolf at all. The wolf, I believe, must have only been a surrogate mother and the real mother was somebody else. That person must be a mystery, but still, whoever the Mother is she can't be pure evil because the Devil is already pure evil, so at best she can be only partly evil and Damien must have some good in him being a sort of half-breed.
Supernatural creatures sure tend to lose a lot when they translate into the real world. They can usually move things with their minds by staring at it real hard, but they can't move much. In fact, they'd all be better off with handguns then with their faulty telekinetic powers. And beings like the incarnated son of the Devil are in human form and have human frailties. In other words, they have to poop. How frightening is the most powerful demonic man on Earth when he has to run off and take potty breaks? Not very, I would say.
In the Omen series Damien assumes his full power when he's an adult in his thirties. The thrill of these movies, if you're well versed in Christian lore, is that it might be kind of true. There might an Antichrist out there growing up in obscurity but fated to take over the world and bring forth Armageddon. However, if you're one of the lucky true believers you'll be raptured up into the sky before all this happens. For the rest of us - if you go by the Omen movies - we have about thirty or so years until this all happens, and I don't know about you, but that's plenty of time for me.
