As Above, So Below
More killer angel stories, please
I recently finished reading Steven Brust’s 1984 novel TO REIGN IN HELL. It’s a strange duck of a book - essentially retelling John Milton’s 1667 epic poem PARADISE LOST but as a fantasy novel. Yahweh is a creature that, through sheer willpower, manages to free himself into sentience from the raw chaos and order of pre-creation. But he wasn’t alone. Along with Yahweh exists a group of creational firstborns, including Satan, Michael, Lucifer, Raphael, Leviathan, and Belial. The primary focus of these beings is on surviving the waves of chaos that attempt to reclaim them back into nothingness. Like the tide on a beach, each crash of chaos into their stronghold brings the creation of more beings - angels, you might call them. Each generation is less powerful than before, but all seem to have various supernatural gifts: the power to heal, the power to compose really good music, the power to transform into different shapes and as-to-yet-unnamed beasts such as dogs or dragons, the power to run really fast. Literature!
Things seem pretty peaceful - with the firstborn angels each being assigned a various kingdom in their new sanctuary (named Heaven, of course) - until Yahweh starts to plot a new DIY project - the creation of the Earth. Some angels rebel out of choice; some rebel out of boredom. The tragic hero of TO REIGN IN HELL is Satan, an angel who is essentially peer-pressured into rebelling because he has doubts about the need to build Earth if it means potentially sacrificing legions of angels in its creation.
TO REIGN IN HELL is deliciously blasphemous, but not in an obvious way. This isn’t DOGMA, Kevin Smith’s pop-colored fun trolling of Catholicism, or PREACHER, the Garth Ennis/Steve Dillon comic book that saw God depicted as a sex-starved coward. TO REIGN IN HELL commits the same sin as its damned protagonist - it merely asks the question, “Why?” Why do rulers make the choices they make? Why are rulers deemed worthy of ruling in the first place?
The book makes some fun choices - such as having Satan’s loyal servant be Beelzebub, an angel trapped in the body of a dog who speaks only in Shakespearian English. “Get thee behind me,” Beelzebub growls at his master during one anglic fight sequence. Good stuff, Mr. Brust. Very good stuff.
I’m not super familiar with the rest of Steven Brut’s work, but he seems to be a fantasy author through and through. His Dragaeran series mixes high fantasy with science fiction, and TO REIGN IN HELL takes a similar approach. There are dragons, spells, and court intrigue, but it’s all wearing Old Testimont skin. It’s like GAME OF THRONES mixed with THE PROPHECY.
TO REIGN IN HELL really feels like it has the trapping of some prestige television adaptation. If GAME OF THRONES can capture the imagination of non-fantasy fans worldwide, surely TO REIGN IN HELL could warrant a few seasons of a Peacock streaming show. To be fair, though, even Milton’s PARADISE LOST has struggled to be adapted into film or television. Alex Proyas (THE CROW) tried for a few years, with development beginning in 2012 and actors such as Bradley Cooper, Casey Affleck and Djimon Hounsou being cast. Instead, Proyas made GODS OF EGYPT.
It really is a shame because I would like to see the killer angel trope used more often. THE PROPHECY trilogy, which recently received a spiffy new 4K box set from Vinegar Syndrome, remains the gold standard. Christopher Walken plays Gabriel, an angel at the forefront of a new war in heaven. Humans are merely collateral damage as God’s flocked firstborn fight for their place in the cosmic standing.
LEGION was a 2010 action film starring Paul Bettany as Michael, an angel who stands alone against the rest of the angels after they are given orders to wipe out humanity after the second coming of Jesus is born. I was surprised to learn that there was a sequel television show based on the film that ran on SyFy for two seasons and 21 episodes.
Neil Gaiman wrote a couple of great angel stories, but we shouldn’t be talking about them right now, so let’s end on probably the greatest angel film to be released in the last ten years: THE DEVIL CONSPIRACY. This film is maybe a faith-based film. Honestly, I can’t tell. It feels like something that fell out of an alternate reality where LEFT BEHIND is the most-read book of all time and Asylum movies have the budget of the MCU. The movie is about Jesus' cloned baby being possessed by Satan. It’s a hard-R-rated faith film where giant angels that look ripped from a Zach Snyder film glower and the Shroud of Turan is used to bring about the apocalypse. I kind of love it. It’s just wholly batshit crazy, and in a just world, it would be a movie that everybody spent the last year talking about.
I guess, when it comes down to it, I’m just MASA: Make Angels Scary Again.