Event Horizon is such a strange movie, because it feels like it's trying to be two films at once: a moody psychological thriller where all the storytelling's in haunting details, and an edgy gore-fest about the tortures of Hell, and those two things don't actually go well together. If I like the movie, it's because I love the first sort of movie, and when it gets too gory I close my eyes. I guess I'm still rather squeamish. I close my eyes during Paco Rabal's death scene in Dagon, too.
One of the most quietly fascinating characters in Event Horizon is Smitty. He's established as Catholic, although you might be forgiven for not noticing—you have to watch out for the moments (to which no special attention is drawn) in which he furtively crosses himself. But there's not a speck of religious flavor in any of his dialogue. Smitty's the most prosaic, practical man on Lewis & Clark—even plain blunt Capt. Miller has a poetical streak in him, but you'll get none of that from Smitty. He's devoted to his job and his ship, and alone among the crew he seems immune from being haunted. Smitty has no time for Event Horizon's ghosts.
But Dr. Weir's freaky science experiment cracks Smitty's composure. And he says something very telling:
Miller: Smitty have you seen...anything unusual at all?
Smitty: No, I haven't seen anything and I don't need to see anything sir but I can tell you, this ship is fucked.
Dr. Weir: Well, thank you for that scientific analysis, Mr Smith. [smirks]
Smitty: Yeah, well you don't exactly have to be a scientist to figure it out, do ya? [grabs Dr. Weir by his uniform]
Miller: [pulls Smitty away] All right, all right!
Smith: You break all the laws of physics and you seriously think there wouldn't be a price? You went and killed the last fucking crew, and now you wanna kill us as well!
Think about that. Within the reality established by the movie Event Horizon, the faster-than-light spaceship created by Dr. Weir must obviously satisfy "the laws of physics", within that universe, because otherwise the ship couldn't have been created in the first place. Obviously the thing doesn't work properly, but it's still capable of remarkable feats. Those feats, however, must surely be allowed by the laws of physics in this particular universe. Plainly there was some "new physics" discovered, the same way that our familiar Earthly physicists are always on the prowl for evidence of hitherto-unsuspected physical laws. The laws of physics are always provisional, subject to being rewritten by fresh discoveries.
Smitty, however, treats the faster-than-light drive as an obscenity, and this is typical of scientists who've internalized Christian values. It's been going on for hundreds of years: scientifically-minded Christians have interpreted the findings of the physical sciences as though they were revealing the unalterable laws of God, and therefore they tend to fall into the fallacy of scientism: they forget that scientific laws are provisional things and treat them like unbreakable commandments. It's useless for Smitty to rage against Dr. Weir for breaking the light-speed barrier; it's a done deal, it's accomplished physics. Nevertheless Smitty acts as though he were empowered to enforce the laws of physics with his fists.
Applicability of this fictional exegesis to the behavior of "gender critics" (both Christian and crypto-Christian) who act like gender transition is a violation of science itself is left as an exercise to the reader.
~Χαρά