Legion/Fridge

Fridge Logic:

Why did none of the angels try to possess the people inside the restaurant? Michael handwaves this by saying that they can only posses people with weak hearts; however, for most of the movie one can hardly call Charlie "strong hearted", and Sandra, who spends the whole movie doing nothing useful and even tries to kidnap the baby to give him to the angels in the end of the movie, would certainly be an easy target to possession. One also have to wonder why they bother possessing people, instead of just going with their strong, metal-winged bodies like Michael and Gabriel.
- Michael and Gabriel are not simply angels, they are archangels. Maybe the ones possessing people are of a lesser rank.
- As to why they didn't possess Sandra, maybe there are only so many angels and they were all already possessing people.
- Since the possessed could not touch the child when it was born, possibly it's power-radius extended to the inside of the diner while it was still in the womb.
Even if the angels couldn't possess anyone inside the diner, there were easily enough of them to storm the place and overwhelm the defenders anyway.
The whole plot is fridge logic. The pregnant woman is carrying the child who's meant to be the second coming of Christ. God has decided he's had enough of mankind so he's sent his angels to kill the woman, prevent the second coming, and end the world. Except, Christ is God, so...
- Why would He want to come back down here if He's decided it's a Crapsack World, anyway?
- Christ is God? Says who? The film pretty well establishes that Christian mythology isn't exactly completely accurate, so it's not bound to support such assumptions.
- Common christian mythos is that Christ and God are the same person, Christ is simply an earthly form. Also, iirc, the second coming was supposed to happen After the End; The very well known hallelujah chorus meant to be the soundtrack for the second coming is actually part of a larger suite and that song comes up just as Jesus makes his return... to come in and clean up the mess left by the apocalypse.
  - Exactly. This movie more or less uses Judeo-Christian theology, even if it takes artistic license. Since Jesus is normally established as God, or at the very least, the Son of God, then the movie should have explained the exact nature of the child. It's a very glaring plothole.
  - To be fair, the official materials this troper has read describe the child as "a Messiah". The word "messiah" doesn't refer SPECIFICALLY to Christ (it simply means "savior" or "rescuer" and has been applied to several Old Testament figures as well as Christ himself), so this child doesn't have to be the Second Coming. Having come from a theological tradition that holds God and Jesus as two separate beings, the "the kid isn't Jesus" theory makes more sense to this troper than the idea that A) Jesus is defying God's will or B) that God would initiate the End of Times and then change his mind and decide to wipe out humanity.
  - It's still the filmmakers' job to explain who/what the child is regardless.
Why is a frying pan to the head (with sufficient force to snap vertebrae) not enough to kill a possessing angel, but being shot is?
- That was merely Bob's assumption. Flying Pans to the head are still a rather unorthodox and rare form of fighting, so there isn't much ground for reference. Besides... people have survived more spectacular injuries and kept ticking.
- Maybe one needs to destroy the heart?
- The force was enough to snap an old lady's neck but probably not enough to snap a regular person's head. Judging from what the possessed can do, they probably have just a bit more endurance than a healthy adult.
Gabriel wields a spiked mace, also known as a Morning Star. Morning Star is another name for Satan. I feel the movie is trying to make some clever suggestion that the supposed Adversary is really God's right-hand angel playing the role of assassin
- A Morning Star is a mace head connected to the handle by a chain. What Gabriel used was just a mace.
So, the Creator of the Universe, ect., ect. is going to kill off humanity by...what, now? What happened to God's usual methods of natural disasters and plagues? Why bother to send angels when a well-aimed meteor will do the job efficiently? It's not even given the dignity of a Plan on God's part to get humanity to let go of its Idiot Ball and stop being such bastards.
- Possible justification: Humanity is quite a bit better these days at dealing with natural disasters and disease than in the old days. An army of body-snatchers is something we've never faced, and is also something that actively seeks to kill us.
Why did Michael cut his wings off? It couldn't be to free himself from Heaven's control; he was clearly capable of rebellion before he did that. Symbolic gesture? Maybe, but this Michael is portrayed as very pragmatic and so it wouldn't make sense for him to cripple himself needlessly (Gabriel even remarks on that).
- Probably in order to easier blend in and pass for human. Walking around in public with 2,5 meter wide, metal scale wings would draw way too much attention. The freak factor would most likely scare off Charlie as well, making it even harder for Michael to accomplish his mission.
- When he hacks off his wings, his collar falls off. When he first lands on Earth, he's beaten up and bloody; maybe he had to fight the collar's influence to get out of Heaven to begin with, and ditched it as soon as he could.
- Many stories use the plotpoint that if an angel cuts off his/her/it's wings it becomes human. In fact it's so common that half of the time nobody even bothers explain how or why it would work. Possibly a person more familiar with the source material could say if this has something to do with the various canons?
If the attacks on the diner were meant to kill Charlie's baby, why did Evil Granny screw around like that? She could have torn Charlie (and thus the baby) apart before anyone else knew what was going on.
- The lesser angels couldn't touch the child because of it's immense power... perhaps even before it was unborn. But most likely it was merely suspension of disbelief for the sake of suspense.
- Also the possessing angels seemed to have a touch of sadism about them, "I just want to play with the baby" and so on.
Why did they need all those guns in their car at the end? God already called off his attack.
- Could be that the already possessed were still about and unable to be recalled. Could also be that God had not called off the attack, merely called off Gabriel to give the kid a chance.
- When you're going around wearing tattoos in Enochian script claiming to be searching for Prophets and in the company of the Reborn Savoir right after the Angel Apocalypse, I'm sure a little fire power is a good thing to have on hand just in case the townfolk have trouble believing you.