080720 Tom Cruise Can Fly

As long time readers know, I enjoy taking in the matinee on Tuesdays and this summer has supplied a better than average collection of films. This past Tuesday, my lady friend and I went to see Hancock after seeing that the drive in had no plans on bringing it in. Now if there is one actor in Hollywood whose work I respect it’s Will Smith, but at the end of the movie when I saw that he had produced the movie, I got worried.

I do not want to spoil the plot for anyone out there who has yet to catch the picture but as the story unfolds, a case of amnesia causes Hancock to have no idea who he is or why he has the amazing powers that he does. He finally gets an explanation but, for me, the answer raises more questions than it resolves. It was not until the end credits that I had a theory. Hancock » Will Smith » Tom Cruise » Scientology.

I remembered reading that Tom Cruise had been trying to recruit Will Smith into Scientology.

There are people out there who insist that Scientology is not a religion. I am not one of them. I think Scientology has everything that all of the so called “real” religions have. I don’t mean to offend any believers out there. There is a long history of hard core believers tossing infidels into lion pits, or stretching them on the rack or waging jihads or, in the case of the Scientologists, sending out armies of lawyers.

Scientology seems specially made for Hollywood celebrities. It tells them that they are gods among men. Church doctrine states "that man is a spiritual being whose existence spans more than one life and who is endowed with abilities well beyond those which he normally considers he possesses." Much of the core beliefs of Scientology are kept secret or “confidential” and only revealed to practitioners as they advance through Operating Thetan levels and make financial donations. Special efforts are made to recruit celebrities and they advance through OT levels quickly by writing large checks.

At OT level III, members are allowed to learn the story of how Xenu became the alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." In order to quell free-thinkers and remove any threat to his rule that kind and just people would create, Xenu brought billions of people to Earth seventy-five billion years ago. He transported them in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. Their souls then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living and continue to do this today. Hubbard called these clustered spirits "Body Thetans," and advanced-level Scientologists place considerable emphasis on isolating these alien souls and neutralizing their ill effects.

Of course, when science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard first created the basic doctrines of Scientology in 1952, he termed Scientology as a “study of knowledge”. It was not until 1960 that he termed it “a religion by its basic tenets, practice, historical background and by the definition of the word 'religion' itself.”

So what was the meaning of Hancock? Does Will Smith see himself as a superhuman placed on the planet by an alien force? Did Tom Cruise get to him?

I do not follow celebrity “news” closely enough be in the know if Will Smith makes a statement about this.

I also find that I need to worry that the infection may have spread to Jason Bateman. If the “Arrested Development” movie comes with anyone other than Tobias Funke joining the church, I will be suspicious.