The Dangers of an Unchanging Foe

Like so many other things regarding End-Times speculation, apocalyptic enemies are full of paradoxes.  They are at once particular to the Final Days – such as the Antichrist or al-Dajjal – yet are also composed of perennial foes – heretics, schismatics, hypocrites, violent oppressors, non-believers, demon-influenced, etc.  Some traditions and sub-traditions emphasize some of these more than others, and the identification of serious threats often changes, though some groups (unfortunately often Jewish people) are frequent targets of accusations of satanic involvement.  Yet above and beyond merely attributing nefarious intentions to a single group across centuries, some people excited by the idea of apocalypse take the idea of a perennial threat a bit further.  To them, there are not many threats but, in fact, only one.

The idea behind an unchanging foe pairs with those who believe that those who are good, righteous, and virtuous have been isolated to a single group throughout history as well.  Righteousness, to such people, has not entailed historical change, illumination, and development but has been complete and crystal clear from the beginning.  Morality was fully developed and comprehensible 4,000 years ago, and nothing since has added to it, and nothing must in any way be taken away from it.  This is an extreme view even among the Abrahamic faiths, since Jewish, Christian, and Muslim religious thinkers recognize historical change and in-time revelation.  But if such be the case, that a single, obvious, unchanging morality has always existed, then immorality must be equally timeless and comprehensible.  And if there has always been a group of divinely blessed individuals abiding by the eternal moral code, according to such belief, it only makes sense that all the evil throughout time shares not only the same moral failings endemic to humanity but an organized will hell-bent on opposing divine goodness.

Certainly Satan has frequently been invoked in these speculations as the demonic mastermind behind human evil.  But this is not what I mean.  I mean, and so do those who frequently espouse such ideas, a very human threat.

Since even before the Protestant Reformation, the pope has been called an (or the) Antichrist.  After Martin Luther in the 16th century helped establish the many Protestant churches, the entirety of Catholicism came to be seen as in league with Satan (of course, Catholics would say similar things about Protestants).  But accusations of wickedness and heresy were not new.  By definition, no Christian heresy could trace its origin before Pentecost, though one might be accused of having Jewish or pagan influence.  But in the mid-19th century, a new argument emerged.  What if the Catholic Church were older than Jesus Christ and had its origin not in Judaism but in satanic paganism?  That is what Alexander Hislop, a Scottish minister, argued in his work, “The Two Babylons: Papal Worship Proved to be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife” (1853).  Hislop wrote that Nimrod, the king in Genesis responsible for building the tower of Babel in mockery of God, founded a pagan religion that survives to the present day.  Its deities, ceremonies, festivals, organization, goals, methods, and (especially, despite the anachronism) anti-Christian beliefs were preserved after the fall of Babel in many pagan cultures.  A core part of its followers, however, were always aware of its origins and held an immortal hatred for “true” godliness.  After Christ came and departed once more, this “Babylonian” religion first tried to destroy Christianity.  When that failed, it instead became Christianity in the form of the pope of Rome and the Catholic Church.  For over a thousand years, the Church was actually an anti-Christian organization.  Any opposition to the hierarchical church before 1517 was not based on historical pressures particular to the time and place they occurred but rather the elect of God, hidden among the ungodly, trying to break free.  Though that finally happened with Martin Luther, the Catholic/Babylonian Church continued to exist.  Why?  Because it is the Babylon spoken of in Revelation 17, that is, the ultimate foe for Christians at the End of Time.  Thus, according to Hislop, a secret war has been waged by Babylon for thousands of years against God.  Though many are ignorant of the true purpose of Babylon, its leaders are not.  Its form has altered, but its essence has been unchanging since the Beginning and will remain so until the End.

Absolutely nothing in Hislop’s theory is historically accurate, so I will not trouble disproving it here.  Nevertheless, Hislop’s ideas (both regarding Catholicism in particular and conspiracies in general) have endured.  An older, equally absurd, yet still persistent and harmful conspiracy involves Jews as secretly in constant, universal contact, plotting various crimes.  In both the distant past and more recently, accused groups have included members of the Masonic Lodge, pagans, witches, communists, Knights Templars, and the always ambiguous Illuminati.  In popular culture, Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code has made the Priory of Zion, the powerful but secretive keepers of the knowledge of Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s child, a similar type of organization.  For the Ubisoft game series Assassin’s Creed, the Knights Templar (historically formed in the 12th century but, in-game, dating back far longer) fill the role of eternally nefarious secret organization.  The Templars are opposed by the equally undying and virtuous secret order of Assassins.  And in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins (2005), Ra’s al Ghul reveals to the hero, “The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.”  One-world-governments frequently play into such conspiracies, both expressly fictional and those repeated in earnest.  Though Hislop was merely peddling religious bigotry, it is easy to see why he gained fame for it: conspiracy makes entertaining stories by weaving historical events together into a larger pattern of absolute good against absolute evil.

Of course, that is the problem.  When something is obviously a story, it can be fun.  But when a real life group is cast as an eternal enemy, a foe that has remained true to its secretive and evil plans – plans that are antithetical to any sense of morality and goodness – for hundreds if not thousands of years, terrible things happen.  The salacious anti-Semitic hoax known as “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” (1903) was used to grave effect against Jewish peoples in the 20th century and still finds advocates of its lies to this day.  But perhaps you think that conspiracies like that are quickly spotted these days and easily dismissed?  Sadly, that is not true.

On the political stage, since his declaration of candidacy for president in 2015 to the present, Donald Trump has cultivated the myth of an eternal, unchanging enemy.  In these efforts, he has found many targets: Mexicans, Muslims, the European Union, Democrats, journalists, socialists, the “deep-state,” and a host of others.  Don’t be confused: he does not simply target these groups as enemies but as “eternal” enemies.  Trump frequently gives way to exaggeration (when not outright lies), especially superlatives.  But he also tends to dilate the length of a grievance.  Note how he uses “always” or any reference to “for a long time now.”  He uses such words and phrases frequently when talking about his enemies.  He does not place (even valid) grievances in an historical context but into a vague perpetuity.

The Orwellian line, “We have always been at war with Eastasia,” (or, “We have always been at war with Eurasia”) is apt.  This line is often quoted to mean one is to think a former ally is now an enemy because the state says so.  The “always” is unconsciously thought to mean “you were mistaken if you believed we had been allies last week.”  But “always” is also very vague.  This bit of propaganda from Orwell’s 1984 does not give any details.  Why should it?  Details are harmful to propaganda.  It does not say, “We have been at war with Eastasia since we were attacked on such-and-such a date.”  Eastasia is not a new enemy with historical reasons for enmity with Oceania (us).  It is a perpetual enemy – until it becomes an ally, in which case it has always been one, while Eurasia has always been the enemy.  Saying what caused the war or when would only lead to thinking, which would interfere with obedience.

Trump’s vague language about grievances is in perfect lock-step with ideas regarding an eternal, unchanging foe.  It is no surprise that he also casts these foes (whomever they happen to be) as the worst of all possible enemies, whose very existence threatens the life of this country.  Eternal, unchanging foes are inherently powerful and apocalyptic.  Any violence against them is justified.  Any accommodation with them is treason.  Their defeat must happen, or else all is lost.  When they are defeated, a great evil will pass from this world.  What could be more apocalyptic?

And of how much evil has such thinking been the cause?

Heresy and Apocalypse: Then and Now

“A man that is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, reject.”  -Titus 3:10

In Orléans, France, 998 years ago, heresy became punishable by death for the first time in Europe for more than half a millennium.  For centuries after 1022, people accused of heresy would continue to be persecuted and subjected to capital punishment.  But just because heretics had not be executed for hundreds of years before 1022 does not mean authorities, both religious and secular, had not thought of heresy in that time.  This was especially the case within apocalyptic and eschatological literature.

I suspect most people have heard of the so-called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse mentioned in the 6th chapter of Revelation.  While they are usually seen as destroyers today, they have been interpreted in many ways for the last 2,000 years, including eras of history.  In fact, the first who rides a white horse was seen in many commentaries from the early Middle Ages as Jesus Christ himself.  The other three – one a red, black, and pale green horse, respectively – were seen as perennial threats to Christianity: bloody red persecutors, false brethren whose black actions harm their fellow Christians, and heretics who abide with death, often portrayed as sickly, pale green.  These early medieval commentaries, however, did not think Revelation applied only to the End Times but to all Christian times.  Nevertheless, heresy, like violence and hypocrisy, was a tool of Satan that would be used by both antichrists throughout history and the Antichrist at the End of Time.

As such, the search for and condemnation of heretics often went hand in hand with apocalyptic excitement.  When writing about the heretics executed in 1022 at Orléans, the chronicler Rudolphus Glaber saw the event as one of many that presaged the apocalypse.  Heretics were the primary servants of the Satan, a sign that he had been released after a thousand years of captivity (due to Christ’s earthly mission), and important allies for the Antichrist when he revealed himself to the world.  As such, when some were burned in Orléans, Glaber was glad to see that “the follow of these wicked madmen had been rooted out” (Glaber, Histories, 3:31, Blum trans.).

Not all those who looked on the fires in Orléans with approval expected to see the Antichrist in their lifetimes, but they certainly thought they saw the power of Satan and a foretaste of hell for the damned.  To them, what burned were not humans exactly.  Not anymore.  They were carriers of a malignant disease who were unwilling to accept a cure that could only be administered to a willing patient.  If the disease of heresy spread, which could damn those who contracted it, it could bring eternal harm to an entire region.  This is precisely the kind of language used in the Middle Ages when speaking of heretics.  But as scholars have shown, language of disease was and has since been used to dehumanize victims of oppression and violence.  Humans deserve support and sympathy, even if they have sinned.  But vectors for disease are a public health threat.  A sinner may atone for their sins over time and emerge a paragon for others to follow, but an unrepentant heretic who infects the minds of Christians with damnable beliefs will do nothing but harm.  It was for the common good, therefore, that heretics be burned, or so it was thought.

Such dehumanizing and apocalyptic fears surrounding “heretics” are not limited (nor were they universal) to the Middle Ages.  Disease-language continues to be used for minority and at-risk populations whose very existence is seen by the majority and powerful to destructive of society as they conceive it.  The implicit (and sometimes explicit) suggestion that society will tumble to ruin in an apocalyptic cataclysm “sooner or later” because of them reinforces the same idea that calling them vectors of social diseases does.  It makes it easier to justify the unjustifiable, to undertake violence against a few for the supposed good of all.

Heresy accusations, however, are different than other attacks aimed at minorities in this regard: the heretic is someone who might under different circumstances be seen as an insider rather than an outsider.  Immigrants, different ethnic groups, followers of another religion: all of these are seen by oppressive groups as outsiders who might disrupt “our” society.  Heretics, on the other hand, were part of “our” society until their voiced an opinion in a manner that was perceived as threatening to the overriding authorities.  In more just societies, they would simply be said to have differing opinions.  But to more oppressive powers, these “traitors” should not voice dissent but instead support those who rule and their neighbors who do the same.  This dissent, more than any other perceived threat from without, can be the cause of intense fear and recriminations.  A shared enemy is one thing, but for the paranoid powers, an ally voicing opposition is the stuff of apocalyptic doom.  Or at least, presenting such dissent as apocalyptic is useful.

Yet for those who voice dissent, for the “heretic,” overturning society is seldom a founding goal.  As Malcolm Lambert showed years ago, “Reform and heresy are twins” (Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, p. 390).  What he means by this is that both heretical and reform movements spring from a common desire to see something wrong in society be changed for the better.  Movements that express themselves and act in a way that find approval come to be called reforms, but those that receive disapproval are condemned as heresies.  Sometimes the only things that differ between a reform and a heresy are its relationship to power – not its means, not its goals, and not its rhetoric.

Heresy, therefore, can be another word for an attempted reform that has drawn the ire of those in power.  And as history shows, that ire, when combined with language that dehumanizes and implies societal collapse, leads to violence.

“In reality, bias against ‘heretics’ is felt today just as it used to be. Many give way to it as much as their forefathers used to do. Only, they have turned it against political adversaries. Those are the only ones with whom they refuse to mix. Sectarianism has only changed its object and taken other forms, because the vital interest has shifted. Should we dare to say that this shifting is progress?”  -Henri de Lubac, Paradoxes of Faith (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1987), pp. 226-227

Defining the Apocalypse

Death: When next we meet, the hour will strike for you and your friends.
Block: And you will reveal your secrets?
Death: I have no secrets.
Block: So you know nothing?
Death: I am unknowing.

—The Seventh Seal, 1957, dir. Ingmar Bergman

Last October, I gave a lecture to a medieval history class about apocalyptic beliefs.  I opened the class the same way I have similar ones.  I asked, “What does ‘apocalypse’ mean?”  (My advisor starts his apocalypse course in a similar way, and I have adapted his approach.)  The answer, even from some of the non-traditional adult students, was typical.  They defined it as a disaster, the end of all things, human extinction, the end of the world, and so forth.  I think the vast majority of people would give the same answers.  They are all right in terms of popular culture, but quite wrong when discussing the apocalypse until relatively recently.

“Apocalypse,” derived from Greek, means “to unveil” or “to reveal.”  That is why the last book of the New Testament is called variously The Apocalypse or The Revelation of St. John of Patmos—it is the vision “revealed” to him of future events.  There is a long series of changes in the history of the word, but it isn’t too hard to understand that, over the course of 2,000 years, the word for the knowledge John received became a shorthand for the book he wrote, which in turn came to denote its frightening contents.  While “apocalypse” will almost universally be used today to mean something horrible of global significance, it is important to not forget its use and meaning in days long past.

As scholars have discussed (but especially Norman Cohn in his book, Cosmos, Chaos, and the World to Come: The Ancient Roots of Apocalyptic Faith), the concept of linear cosmic time is relatively knew and was an innovation from cyclical cosmic time.  In other words, long before the Abrahamic faiths, people in the Near East tended to believe in gods of order that were part of an endless struggle with the forces of chaos.  Victory was always temporary, and renewal was a typical motif for these ancient religions.  When monotheism began to develop with the Hebrews and Zoroastrians roughly 3000 years ago (though the timing is quite debatable), the traditional view of the cosmos began to change.  These people believed in one God who was not only all powerful, the maker of heaven and earth (which might also be subject to ultimate destruction), but was also a moral judge, a being who cared not just for maintaining a static cosmic order by any means necessary but one who wanted things done according to a code of right behavior.  These two ideas came together in trying to solve the problem of evil: why do bad things happen to good people and not only to bad people?  The answer for previous peoples had been: if you suffer evil, you must have deserved it somehow.  The new answer, however, was tied closely to a monotheistic god’s absolute power, his role as moral judge, and the belief in a finite amount of time to human history (that is, linear time leading to a conclusion rather than cyclical time continuing forever).  This new answer was: if bad things happen to a good person now, in the world to come after this life, God will provide the perfect judgment for eternity that is lacking in this present life, even if we don’t know or can’t understand it yet.  In other words, the mystery of why good people suffer will remain hidden until a later day when God will reveal the truth, and we will understand his ultimate purposes.  Since that answer was formulated many centuries ago, there have been people who have claimed to have received special revelations about what is hidden behind the veil that separates human knowledge from divine knowledge.  John of Patmos, the author of the last book in the New Testament, is one such person, though there are many others.  Because “apocalyptic” knowledge of the future was closely tied in with awaiting the just reward for good people who had suffered and the righteous punishment of the wicked who had prospered, many apocalypses tended to speak of violence before humanity would received complete divine understanding, but apocalypses certainly did not require such horrors.  Nevertheless, it is John’s vision of dragons, beasts, the four horsemen, two-faced leaders, plagues, global disasters, and wars on earth and in heaven that most people in the United States think of when they consider “apocalypse” in a religious sense.  Modern secular apocalypses owe much to John as well, even when spiritual matters are the least of their concerns.

The shift in meaning for “apocalypse” carrying the sense of an “unveiling” to one of death and destruction, as I said, is a long one.  I think, however, that world events in the first half of the 20th century greatly helped to encourage the more recent definition.  Art also played a large part.  The 1957 Ingmar Bergman classic, The Seventh Seal, is a prime example, coming at about the time when the old definition of “apocalypse” ceased to have much meaning for the general public.  The story of The Seventh Seal follows a knight named Bloch, his cynical squire, and companions they meet along the way.  The story takes place during the Black Death, a time in the 14th century when 1/3 of people in Europe (not to mention huge numbers in Asia and North Africa) died of the bubonic plague.  Bloch, returning home after many years away, sees the widespread death around him.  He does not fear death as such (he even plays a friendly game of chess with a personified Death in order to buy himself time to get home).  No, what troubles Bloch is not death but the silence of God.  It was Hamlet’s “undiscovered country, from whose bourn no travel returns,” that gave him pause.  Block refused to believe like his squire that nothing but oblivion awaited us after death, but he lacked any evidence to refute him.  At one point, Bloch speaks to a young woman (condemned to be burned as a witch) to see if he could have a word with Satan.  Surely he must know something about God!  But the devil does not come.  Even Bloch’s banter with Death over chess gives witness to the knight’s hope that he will be able to peak behind the veil and gain some assurance that there is a divine plan and what it might be.  When Death says he cannot answer Bloch’s questions, he explains that it is not because he as Death has secrets to keep or because he knows nothing.  Rather, he says, death is the antithesis of knowledge.  “I am unknowing.”

The story of The Seventh Seal highlights (though I will not say “caused”) the change in modern culture when “apocalypse” lost its old meaning of “to reveal” and took on the now ubiquitous sense of death and mass destruction.  The Seventh Seal is certainly an apocalyptic movie.  Indeed, the title is a reference to a art in John’s book.  But it is apocalyptic in both senses of the world.  It is a story about a man wanting to received a revelation, but one that he is never given in life.  It is also the story of the Black Death, when millions were dying and one might have thought the Last Days were at hand.  I think most people, if they saw The Seventh Seal and then were asked to explain if, how, and why it was “apocalyptic,” would answer, “Because of all the death from the plague.  But it wasn’t really an apocalypse, I guess, because the world didn’t end.”  But I think someone with an understanding of the older meaning of the word would see the movie as apocalyptic because of Bloch’s agonizing search for meaning.  I have not studied this aspect of the film’s production, but I strongly suspect that is the sense Bergman would have favored.

Over the last half century or so, as society has moved away from believing wholeheartedly in divinely ordained universal truths—thus reducing the drive for revelation in most people’s lives—while becoming ever more aware of potential world-ending events, it makes sense that “apocalypse” has transformed its meaning.  Death is easier to imagine than the unimaginable knowledge of God.  We—even those among us of faith—have largely consigned ourselves to the belief that there will be no new revelation in this life.  Like our ancestors thousands of years ago, puzzling over the problem of evil, we can only say that Heaven remains silent, at least for now.

“And when he had opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven about the space of half an hour.”

—Revelation 8:1, KJV

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Human Hubris, and Doubts about Our Self-Sufficiency

“The spirits I have summoned I cannot now banish.” –Goethe

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice is known to most due to the musical short in Disney’s Fantasia starring Mickey Mouse. The story has an older pedigree, however, dating back 2000 years, though it was a poem by Goethe 200 years ago that established the primary form we know today. For those unfamiliar with the tale, it can be told briefly as follows.

Once there was a sorcerer of great power who had a young apprentice. Despite wanting to learn how to perform all the magic of his master, the sorcerer gave his pupil few lessons in casting spells. Instead of casting great spells, the apprentice spent his days and night sweeping floors and fetching water, tasks he thought beneath him not to mention pointless since he knew his master capable of performing all of these things through magic with hardly any effort.

One day the sorcerer retired from his enchantments to rest while leaving his apprentice to finish bringing in the buckets of water to put in the enormous caldron. The apprentice, however, had a different plan. As soon as his master had left, the young man, who had been peaking at the sorcerer’s book when he wasn’t looking and listening closely to his incantations, decided it was time to show how powerful a wizard he could be. He cast an enchantment on a broom, bringing it to life, and commanded it to do his chores for him of fetching water. The spell worked and soon the caldron was full. The apprentice was very pleased with himself.

Unfortunately, the enchanted broom continued pouring water into the now overflowing caldron, causing the sorcerer’s chamber to be damaged. The apprentice tried to stop the animated broom but realized he had not learned the counter-spell which would have stopped it. Desperate to stop the broom before the room was flooded (and thinking he could still hide the fact he had been performing magic against his master’s will), the young man took up a nearby ax and struck the broom, splitting it down the middle. The apprentice sighed in relief, but his ease was short-lived. Suddenly, both halves of the broom stood back up and began carrying water even faster than before. The apprentice was at a loss, knowing there was nothing he could do and fearing how this disaster would end, if it ever could. But just as the room was becoming floored, the sorcerer returned. The apprentice cried out in fear and hope for his master’s rescue. The old wizard quickly perceived what had happened. With a single word, the enchanted broom halves froze and fell over, lifeless once again. The sorcerer surveyed the destruction caused by the water and his apprentice’s rash folly. The apprentice, ashamed for his presumption, returned to his chores.

This tale is not specifically apocalyptic in any sense of the word. Nevertheless, the general plot does a good job of outlining a type of apocalyptic narrative. Seen in eschatological terms, the Sorcerer’s Apprentice is an example of human hubris resulting in our (near) total destruction which can only be prevented by the intervention of the Divine or some other wise and powerful force which takes pity on mankind. If the apprentice represents humanity as a whole, then the lesson is we will cause our own destruction. This will not be through willful violence but because our misplaced pride in our own abilities. Examples of apocalyptic stories with this theme include Forbidden Planet, Avengers: Age of Ultron, and many others. Most of these modern stories use scientific advances rather than magical spells, yet the misuse of poorly understood power to make life easier is the same in either case.

The presence of the sorcerer at the beginning and end of this story is, I believe, very important for the stories endurance in the Western world. Though the original version came from pagan Rome (where the sorcerer was simply an educated Egyptian mystic and the apprentice a young friend of his), the form that Goethe and Disney adopted buzzes Christian overtones. The relationship between the two characters is very exact with multiple dichotomies: master and pupil, old and young, wise and foolish, restrained and impulsive, powerful and weak with the illusion of power, and so forth. It takes little effort to see these characters as potentially representing divinity and humanity. The fact that the sorcerer leaves but ultimately returns to save his apprentice when all hope is lost can be taken as the Christian conception of God’s return, either to rescue an individual from sin or Christ’s return during the End Times.

Curiously, there is no villain in this story. The enchanted, unstoppable broom is a threat to the apprentice, but it does wish harm on anyone though its actions, which are merely the results of the apprentice’s deem, will cause devastation. If there is no real villain, then how can this be seen as a Christian apocalyptic scenario? Where is the devil, the foe of mankind? The answer, however, is that, while much of Christian eschatology is often framed as a pitched battle between the forces of good and the forces of evil, that is not always the way it has been conceived. In many ways, the end of the world in the New Testament is not even a fight at all. Though John of Patmos speaks of wars in heaven and on earth in Revelation, Jesus in the Gospels speak of harvest time. In these cases, evil is not a foe but a weed. It poses no real threat as an armed enemy might, and someday the master or harvester will simply come to remove the evil and pitch it into the fire to be consumed.

This is the type of eschatology on display in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Sin (or ignorance) are and have been part of humanity’s character, which has caused them to make terrible mistakes. Like Adam whose downfall came from a tree (what else is a broom made of if not wood?), the apprentice thought that he could be like his master, like a god. His rash actions soon caused a flood, much like what befell Adam’s descendants. The apprentice was doomed because he did not know the right word to end the spell; for Christians, mankind is doomed without the Word to save them. But whether one tells the story in religious or secular terms, the message is that of a cautionary tale. We all want to run, but it is necessary to walk first. If we trip and fall in our excitement, hopefully there will be someone to pick us back up. If there is not then caution is all the more necessary because we may not be able to stand back up on our own.

For the text of Goethe’s poem, in German and English: http://germanstories.vcu.edu/goethe/zauber_dual.html

I encourage you to rewatch Disney’s Fantasia with the above in mind.

One final note. This post comes shortly after the theatrical release of the Avengers: Age of Ultron. I briefly cited that movie above as embodying themes of human hubris and impatience. The movie itself references Disney’s Pinocchio multiple times, but for those who have seen or will see it, I challenge you to decide whether the movie actually owes more of its inspiration to the Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Pinocchio is about a wooden boy brought to life, though not because of his creator’s powers. The broom is also a piece of wood brought to life, but the apprentice stole this ability from another. Watch the film. Is Ultron Pinocchio turned evil or the broom simply doing what it was told?