r/AskScienceFiction • u/throwaway321768 • 2d ago
[Hellraiser: Revival] Can the Cenobites choose to ignore a summoning when a Configuration is solved?
Spoilers for events of the game: the game features a cult that worships the Cenobites and wants to ascend to Cenobite status, but the Cenobites are unimpressed by the cult's efforts and even voice their rejection of the cult's leader. Funnily enough, the cult has used the Genesis Configuration (a similar device to the Lament Configuration of the movies, but with extra abilities) several times to summon the Cenobites and one high-ranking member has survived multiple trips to the Labyrinth.
Considering how dismissive they were, could the Cenobites just ignore any further summons from people who annoyed them?
"A summoning at 6 pm? It's those annoying cultists again, let's not even bother showing up."
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u/TheDefeatedCause 2d ago
A huge problem with the canon is that after the first couple of movies, Pinhead was just an outright villain. In another case, the other Cenobites were about to take a little girl who opened the Configuration before calling his guys off and telling them to go after the person who made her open it.
So... Canon-wise, the Cenobites ARE actual monk-figures who have rules, but those rules seem to be bound by their "consience" and Pinhead, the most devout among them, calling the shots.
They are bound to follow said rules, but how they're actually enforced isn't clear. For all we know they're essentially just a small cult with powers from another dimension.
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u/Pollia 2d ago
The comics are all over the place too.
In one pinhead gets summoned in a subway and proceed to massacre everyone in the subway car. Gore fuckin everywhere.
And yet in those same comics one my favorite moments has them being summoned by a poor abused little girl in her attic.
Pinhead shows up and she straight up asks "are you angels" to which his response is to say "to some" then he looks in her eyes and says something to the effect of how she already understands suffering.
The next page is her coming down the stairs to her abusive alcoholic father talking about how she wanted to introduce him to her angels before pinhead drags his ass to hell.
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u/Cunting_Fuck 2d ago
Well your second one is someone being punished who didnt even open the box
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u/Pollia 2d ago
And importantly had nothing to do with opening the box.
Which is strange
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u/SparklingNomad 2d ago
Knowledge of the IP is super surface level, so spitballing:
Pinhead still has a violent streak and there is a substantial difference between getting massacred vs. actually dragged to their dimension for happy fun times, the latter having relatively stringent rules?
Maybe I'm just making excuses for shit writing.
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u/garbagephoenix 1d ago
An important thing to remember is that, for the Cenobites, this is all a very sexual thing. They get off from the suffering because they're chasing sensation. They think that the torments they bring are a gift to those who come seeking it. That they are doing good by sharing the pleasures and pains that their experiences have opened them to. The 'wrong' attitude, as seen in Revival, disgusts them.
The Hell Priest isn't really one for moral outrage. But disgust? He'll act on that. And there's nothing we've seen anywhere that says he wouldn't be disgusted by a grown man beating on a four year old girl until she thinks that a no-nippled leather twink with nails in his head might be an angel. (The fact that some would agree with her is immaterial.)
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u/effa94 A man in an Empty Suit 1d ago
The 'wrong' attitude, as seen in Revival, disgusts them.
this is also kinda seen in the 2022 movie, where a guy opened the box for immortality. so they give him that, by stringing his nerves up into a ticking box and shoves it into his chest that keeps him alive in pain
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u/warsmithharaka 1d ago
He wanted Liminal, if memory recalls, thus the endless sensation.
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u/DickButtPlease 1d ago
Best part of that is when he heals and has like 3 seconds of peace. Then he gets impaled by an enormous, novelty sized hook.
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u/a_singular_perhap 2d ago
A non-neglectful parent wouldn't allow their kid to sit there and obsess over a puzzle box in an attic. In a way it's their neglect that allowed her the space to complete the box.
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u/Heavyweighsthecrown 1d ago edited 1d ago
That's because Hellraiser is largely american christian wish fulfillment. Kill people in crowded public transportation because you hate smelly sinful collectivity, and kill a child abuser because of virtue-signaling and it's the easiest brownie points ever (remember how 'protecting the kids' is the easiest low hanging fruit for every conservative politician).
When you think of it, 99% of horror movies (and even moreso if from the US) is just either A) christian wish fulfillment, B) christian propaganda, or B) christian fear. But mostly christian fear for the largest part. Always a some-kinda-hell to send someone to or fear going to, always punishing sinners, always something about banishing or protecting from a devil figure, always something connecting paganism to unavoidable suffering, and always a deathly sickly fear from unknown / other / older religions. At the best of times is simply horror that stems from such philosofical questions that would challenge christianism...... in other words christian fear again.
When you make this connection, horror movies become flat and boring. It's almost always the same broad angle, whether it's self-aware (very rarely) or not (more common cause brainwashed).
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u/MozeeToby 2d ago
There is an in universe explanation for Pinhead's change though, the second movie ends with Pinhead being reminded of his prior humanity, something which he blocked (either by himself or presumably Leviathan) from remembering previously. Hellraiser 3 explicitly opens with Pinhead having his humanity ripped away from him.
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u/CitricThoughts 2d ago
The Cenobites generally let people go only when they're banished with the box or when they have a plan. With the cult it seems they did ignore them sometimes. However, they ultimately decided to use them as ingredients rather than as recruits. I think an important thing to remember is that if you annoy or try to ding-dong-ditch the freaking Cenobites you're probably gonna end up on the hook for a lot of pain. A lot of pain.
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u/Calcd_Uncertainty 1d ago
ding-dong-ditch the freaking Cenobites
What are you chicken? Bawk-bawk!
I triple-dog dare you!
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u/lightsofdusk 2d ago
If they really don't want you to continue summoning them they'd either kill you or take the box to you, or both. But I think as a general guideline they'll always show up because why not. If gateways to my apartment kept forming I'd always take a look
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u/trebory6 2d ago
If gateways to my apartment kept forming I'd always take a look
Ok but now imagine the gateways are always just from some 12 year olds at a slumber party being edgy. After the first 100 or so times of being summoned you'd probably be pissed.
That's probably how the cenobites would end up feeling.
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u/lightsofdusk 2d ago
That's more of a Bloody Mary dilemma, lmao
Revival and the movies imply that the cenobites do have some degree of control over where the box goes through proxies who handle that on our side of reality. At some point a dude who looks like a homeless guy is gonna break in and take the box back from those kids
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u/MKW69 2d ago
Doesn't this happen in the second movie?
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u/BrainWav 2d ago
No, they still show up. They just go after the doctor instead of the girl who physically solved it.
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u/W1ULH Midnight bomber what bombs at 3:50pm 2d ago
I always took that as they go after the person who's intent summoned them... not always the person who's hands did it.
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2d ago edited 2d ago
[deleted]
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u/W1ULH Midnight bomber what bombs at 3:50pm 2d ago
Then again, they still tried to take Christy in the first film even though she had similarly no idea what the box did and obviously didn’t intend to summon them, so who knows.
There was no one else there with any intent... the only intent was her desire to open the box... it was a meager offering, but it was there.
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u/Cunting_Fuck 2d ago
The 4 we see aren't the only ones, so, yes they can ignore it, in the game only Pinhead turns up when Aiden opens it
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u/Malphos101 1d ago
The motives of an unknowable force can be seen as evil or righteous when the actor itself intends the opposite or both or neither.
To an ant, a human backing out over them on the driveway is evil but the human isnt really trying to be. That same human might step over an ant another time, not because the human feels merciful but because he is worried he might track ant goop inside.
The Cenobites motives are so beyond our experience that even when they try to explain, its like a human explaining to an ant why they had to drive the car over the ant. The ant has no understanding of what a human job is or why the human doesnt check for ants before backing out.
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