Headscratchers / Constantine (2005)

Per wiki policy, Spoilers Off applies here and all spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned.

Money

• How does Constantine pay for that apartment, and his food, and alcohol, and cigarettes? Do people pay exorcists? Are you supposed to tip? How much?
  • Since all Catholic exorcists are ordained priests, deacons or members of a monastic order, maybe the Church pays him a salary.
    • This would also explain why he never kisses Angela – it would be breaking his vows.
  • This is never outright confirmed, but the scene where he investigates the scene of Hennessy's death seems to suggest that he has some experience with investigating crime scenes. It's possible that he works as a private investigator on the side when he needs the money.
  • I took this version of John Constantine is, essentially, Harry Dresden. He's a wizard for hire by people who believe in wizards.

Tendons

• If Constantine can't use his lighter for One Last Smoke due to cutting the tendons when he slit his wrists... how did he ever manage to give Satan the finger?
  • The novelization of the film reveals that it's not Constantine doing that - it is in fact, God.
  • Constantine could simply cut only through the tendon close do the thumb that is crucial to ignite the classical lighter, not so important to giving the finger. Tendons responsible for other fingers are on the other side of the forearm.

Suicide

• Why was Isabel damned to hell for her actions? Sure, she technically committed suicide, but it was a sacrifice on par with Christ's death. She kills herself to prevent a satanic ritual, continues to aid the protagonists from Hell, and in the end it takes a Deal with the Devil to save her soul? Doesn't God get the concept of heroic suicides?
  • She wasn't damned for the suicide - it was for the act of divination that LED to the suicide.
  • Catholics do consider suicide to be a mortal sin, normally resulting in damnation. But there can be extenuating circumstances. In this case, the fact that she was mentally ill and possibly not in her right mind would be one of those. So no, it's not as cut-and-dried as the characters made it sound when talking about a funeral.
  • It's common in the comics for the supernatural/the afterlife to be shown as more of a Celestial Bureaucracy where God and Satan Are Both Jerks and people often get the exact opposite of what they deserve. This is carried over into the movie in some scenes like where Constantine tells off Gabriel over system having an over-emphasis on rules. Presumably, the film is going for making Isabel sympathetic in her situation because the extenuating circumstances should have prevented her from being damned, but the actual rules (as opposed to what organized religion thinks the rules are) are inflexible and don't account for anything other than the suicide.
  • Alternatively, God knew how this would all work out via Omniscient Morality License.
    • The novelization has Angela ask Constantine about this and Constantine affirms that the rules of the afterlife mean that suicide is automatic damnation regardless of the circumstances.
  • Also likely – since she's denied him his manifestation on Earth, Mammon dragged her soul with him to hell as revenge, and that's usually a one-way road. Then it would be regardless of her choices.

The cow thing?

• Anyone have any idea what the deal was with the cow noise toy was? apparently it was of important enough to pay for a huge carton of cigs, and apparently rare items such as a beetle from amityville, and Dragons Breath which is mentioned to be hard to get, was it a relic or something? its the only part I don't understand barring that one demon who could manifest in the the human world.
  • Maybe it's a case of Worldbuilding, where we're not suppose to know EVERYTHING that goes on, but it shows that yes, there is 'a great wide world out there'. (The same thing with Corinthians having 'more chapters'; of course it's just a line in the movie, but it's to show a part of Like Reality, Unless Noted.) — Curled Up With Dakka
  • I mostly think it was just to show what an absolutely weird dude Constantine's connection was, but yes the worldbuilding thing of showing how inexplicable priorities can be in the setting also works.

Constantine's fight with The Worm That Walks demon

• Shouldn't a fight like that in front of dozens of onlookers completely shatter The Masquerade by turning up on the news next morning? Even if demons are Invisible to Normals in this world, a man being flung around by an invisible force and crashing into cars would still turn up on the news just as fast. Constantine should be being swarmed by the paparazi!
  • It’s LA. That shit happens every other Tuesday.