**Spoiler Alert: This post explores various theological questions and topics that are present throughout the film's storyline**
When David, Teddy and Joe arrive in Manhattan and find the place “where the lions weep”, they find a young boy who looks identical to David. David asks, “Is this the place where they make your real?” Then David asks the second boy his name and discovers he is also named David and he erupts in an uncontrollable rage bashing in the head of the second mecha boy, screaming, “I am David! I am special! I am unique!” Dr. Hobby comes in and tries to calm him, reassuring him that he is special, that he is “the first of a kind” and that he is real because, in his quest for the Blue Fairy, he has succumbed to “the great human flaw – [wishing] for things that don’t exist.”
Questions: Where do find our identity? How do we experience the difference between who the world says we are and our identity as God’s children? What makes us or our lives real? What icons or idols do we chase?
When Dr. Hobby leaves David to assemble the other team members, David wanders around the offices and discovers a production line of Davids and Darlenes, child mechas in various stages of assembly and packaging. The scene changes and David is sitting on the edge of a windowsill overlooking the sea and he jumps, tumbling into the depths. Joe watches from the helicopter they were using and then fishes David out of the sea, depositing him inside the cockpit. Inside, David tells Joe he saw the Blue Fairy at the bottom of the sea. In a final confrontation between orga and mecha, the police arrive and drag Joe off; as he gets pulled into the sky, Joe yells, “I am. I was.” and pushes the button to submerge David and Teddy into the water so that they can go to David’s Blue Fairy.
Questions: Are there times in our lives when we have tumbled down in despair and been rescued? How do we respond? Where do we find hope?
David maneuvers the capsule toward the Blue Fairy, the remnant of a Coney Island Pinocchio attraction, and parks himself there, praying “until the sea anemones died… the ice encased [him].” With open eyes, David stared “through the darkness of the night and the next day and the next day….”
Questions: How is our faith childlike? How do we pray? Do we pray expectantly?
The scene shifts and we see a snowscape and the Blue Fairy, no longer under water but part of the frozen landscape. A subtitle indicates two thousand years have passed. David is awakened by a new being and climbs out of the capsule but when he reaches out to touch the Blue Fairy, she shatters and disintegrates.
It doesn’t matter though because here in this world, the new beings tell him that because he knew living people, he is “unique in all the world.” They create for him, from his memories, the house where he lived with his mother and Martin, but when he asks , “Will Mommy be coming home?” they explain she cannot because she is no longer living. When they tell him that they are able to regenerate people from pieces of DNA, we discover that Teddy is still carrying a lock of hair from David’s mother. They agree to bring her back but they explain to David that the experiment is not perfect; after the first day, the recreated humans die again when they fall asleep at the end of the day. David insists and he has his “perfect day” with his mother, finally closing his eyes when she does, after she says, “I love you, I have always loved you.”
Questions: What are the stories we have in Scripture about being raised to new life? What does a new life in Christ look like? Read Lamentations 3:22-26,31-33. How can we talk about grief and compassion in light of God’s mercy?
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