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Duke: I told you to read that manual.
Ripcord: There's a manual?
Yes, there is a manual and it will guide you through this life.  It is the living word and give for reproof, correction, guidance, wisdom and power.  So, what could be more important than reading the manual, except maybe, memorizing key parts of it.

Summary:  In the near future, weapons expert James McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) has created a nanotechnology-based weapon capable of destroying an entire city. His company MARS sells four warheads to NATO, and the U.S. Army is tasked with delivering the warheads. Duke (Channing Tatum) and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans) are delivering the warheads when they are ambushed by the Baroness (Sienna Miller), who Duke recognized to be his ex-fiancee Ana Lewis. Duke and Ripcord are rescued by Scarlett (Rachel Nichols), Snake Eyes (Ray Park) and Heavy Duty (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje). They take the warheads to The Pit, G.I. Joe's command center in North Africa, and upon arriving rendezvous with General Hawk (Dennis Quaid), the head of the G.I. Joe Team. Hawk takes command of the war-heads and excuses Duke and Ripcord, only to be convinced to have them join his group after Duke reveals that he knows the Baroness.

McCullen is revealed to be using the same nanotechnology to build an army of soldiers with the aid of the Doctor (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), planning on using the warheads to bring panic and bring about a new world order. Using a tracking device, McCullen locates the G.I. Joe base and sends Storm Shadow (Lee Byung-hun) and the Baroness to retrieve the warheads with assistance from Zartan (Arnold Vosloo), inflicting casualties on several G.I. Joe soldiers. After a fight, Storm Shadow and the Baroness retrieve the warheads and take them to Baron DeCobray, the Baroness's husband, for him to weaponize and use them to destroy the Eiffel Tower to serve as a showing of the warhead's destructive power. Making their way to Paris, the Joes pursue them through the streets but are unsuccessful in stopping them from launching the missile. Duke manages to hit the kill switch, but in doing so he is captured and taken to McCullen's base under the Arctic.

Contrary to popular belief, I know exactly what I'm doing. 

Sometimes when we follow the will of God, our actions will cause those around us to question our sanity.  Often times, the logic of the world does not apply to our calling or decisions.  We should pray for God's wisdom and not act foolishly or too swiftly without counsel but in the end, we must go where God leads and serve how He desires.

Our Church is at War!

How true this is. We are in a constant state of spiritual warfare and in need of the protection, wisdom and power that onlhy comes from the Holy Spririt.

"Greater is HE that is in us than he that is in the world."

A beloved pope passes. Subatomic particles collide. Influential priests vanish. An ancient adversary of the Catholic Church reemerges. And one cryptic word ties it all together: Illuminati. Such is the stuff of Angels & Demons, the big-screen sequel to 2006's The Da Vinci Code.

Swept into the center of the ominous intrigue that engulfs the Vatican is renowned symbologist Robert Langdon. Though there's no love lost between the skeptical Harvard scholar and Catholic Church officials, he's the man they call when four cardinals, all top-ranking candidates for the now vacant Holy See, go missing.

The perpetrators, if a cryptic note left behind is to be believed, are agents of the Illuminati, a shadowy underground brotherhood bent on retribution for the Church's persecution of scientists four centuries before. But the group's goals are bigger—and far more sinister—than just kidnapping and executing the cardinals.

The Illuminati's endgame is nothing short of the decimation of Roman Catholicism itself, a plan to be achieved by detonating a pilfered container of powerful antimatter engineered by nuclear physicists in Switzerland. In other words, using a cutting edge scientific advancement to level a religious organization with a long history of suppressing scientific advancement.

Racing against time to save the cardinals and the Vatican itself, Langdon finds allies in Italian physicist Vittoria Vetra and the man entrusted with the papal office's administrative authority between pontiffs, an earnest young priest named Patrick McKenna.

But as Langdon and Co. uncover clues, search crypts and dodge bullets, the chilling extent to which evil has infiltrated the Church becomes ever more clear.

Langdon serves as the Church's unlikely defender as he and Vittoria delve into the mystery surrounding the Illuminati's sudden reappearance. He is tenacious in his pursuit of hidden knowledge that offers critical clues regarding the Illuminati's next steps. But Langdon's not content to dig through ancient documents while piecing together old clues; he's committed to trying to rescue the kidnapped cardinals—all by himself if he has to. In so doing, he and others often risk (or lose) their lives.

A Vatican official in the film describes the event as "a dark stain on the church," a position that more characters than not seem to adopt. Though some in the church are depicted as slow to embrace this message—one official wonders, "If science has the power to create, what is left for God?"—the film ends with a new pope reiterating and reinforcing the idea that faith and science do not have to be enemies, that the world needs both. He even takes the name Luke—the first pope to do so—as a reference to the gospel writer's scientific profession.

There's also a lot of conversation between Langdon and other characters about the subject of faith. McKenna asks the scientist," Do you believe in God, sir?" Langdon replies, "I am an academic, and my mind tells me I will never understand God." McKenna rephrases his inquiry: "And your heart?" Langdon responds, "It tells me I'm not meant to. Faith is a gift that I've yet to receive."

Along similar lines, an old cardinal named Strauss tells Langdon, "Thanks be to God for sending someone to protect His Church." When Langdon protests that he doesn't believe God sent him, the cardinal smiles and tells him, "Oh, my son, of course He did." Strauss also emphasizes that religion—not God—is by nature flawed because the human beings who conduct it are themselves flawed individuals.

Elsewhere, a hostile Vatican security agent says to Langdon, "My Church comforts the sick and the hungry, comforts the dying. What does your church do?"

And Strauss seems dismissive of the possibility of many Catholics and cardinals dying, saying that they'll all go to heaven anyway. He also talks about God's will being done (when it looks like things are going his way in a power play) and condescendingly tells McKenna, "God answers all prayers." But one of the prayers McKenna offers, it turns out, isn't to God at all but to the deceased pope.

A kidnapped cardinal tells his assailant, "May God forgive you for what you've done." The violent kidnapper quips in response, "Father, if God has issues, it won't be with what I've done, but with what I'm about to do." An assassin claims that the church made him a sinner, and mentions the Lord, Allah and Yahweh in a confused speech aimed at trying to justify his vocation by saying that people of all faiths employ him to kill in the name of God. Indeed, he claims that he's imitating God, who is vengeful. Similarly disturbed, a man prays, "Father, into your hands I commit your spirit" before committing suicide.

After scientists successfully create a small quantity of antimatter, one says solemnly, "We are in God's hands now." Describing her research into antimatter, Vittoria says that it has been dubbed the "god particle" because scientists believe that such matter was present at the moment of creation.

Of note is the fact that Angels & Demons cinematically details the selection process for a new pope. We're shown how the Church's cardinals are sequestered in a decision-making process called the conclave, as well as how the voting procedure (supposedly) works. At times, it seems quite messy as various factions vie for power. And the new pope's first official act is to spin the events of the past day, letting lies leak which frame the Church in the best possible light. Other times, the messiness is depicted as something under divine control. One cardinal, for example, talks glowingly of relying upon the Holy Spirit's guidance throughout the process.

"Your father was the captain of the Enterprise for 12 minutes and he saved 800 lives.  I dare you to do better"

Last time we saw James T. Kirk on the big screen, he was a highly respected captain-turned-admiral-turned-captain for the galactic Federation—a near legendary figure with a curious speaking cadence and a penchant for derring-do. Oh, sure, he was a little unorthodox at times, but he was a hero, through-and-through.

One might chalk it up to good parenting.

Little did/does he know that, years before/after, a ticked off Romulan evildoer actually killed his father before the elder/younger Kirk even had a chance to meet his newly born son, thus taking away half of the "good parenting" equation and sending Kirk's past/future trajectory into an entirely different space quadrant.

Yes, it's confusing. But this is science fiction—one of the few genres where the past can be present, the future past and the present all mixed up. The upshot is that this movie's Kirk—a swaggering force of nature with charm to spare and some seriously bad intentions—is a ne'er-do-well Iowan who seemingly couldn't care less about the future. This Kirk has one eye on trouble and the other on the shortest skirts he can track down. This Kirk thinks nothing of picking a fight with a handful of fledgling Federation soldiers.

"Get two more guys, and then it'll be an even fight," he brags.

OK, so this new/old Kirk may actually act a lot like the old/new Kirk. But we can't really compare them because the space-time continuum is ripped and, for all we know, Kirk might bypass Starfleet altogether and get a really good job as a bouncer and—

Well, let's not go talking all kinds of crazy here. No matter how tattered the continuum may be, Kirk is still destined to become captain of the new/old NCC-1701, aka the Starship Enterprise, aka the snazziest set of space wheels in the whole known galaxy. He's still destined to hook up with Spock, Bones and the rest of sci-fi's most famous space crew. He's still destined to lead hordes of red-shirted yeomen to their appropriately noble deaths, to fire phasers first and ask questions later, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

But the certainty of Kirk's future/past doesn't erase the uncertainty surrounding him in the present. That ripped continuum thing has got everybody walking around like cats on a hot tin roof. It seems that much of what we thought we knew about the Star Trek universe is no longer applicable. (Dedicated Trekkers will tell you, for instance, that the Federation didn't find out about Romulans until after Kirk was comfortably ensconced as captain.)

Kirk was supposed to have had a long, fulfilling relationship with his father. So if Kirk doesn't have a pops, what other big changes could be in store for us? Will Spock break out into song—"Feelings," perhaps?

[Note: The following sections include spoilers.]

Kirk never met a dare he didn't like, and so he begins the periodically disrupted process of making something of himself. He starts to unveil all the attributes we've come to expect from the guy—loyalty, bravery and the ability to take a punch—along with a few more overlooked traits: compassion, intellect and, believe it or not, the ability to follow an order. (Sort of.) When Kirk runs into an aged, future/past version of Spock, the older Vulcan tells Kirk to take over the ship from the younger Spock, all the while keeping the existence of the older Spock a secret from the younger Spock. Kirk agrees.

Spock shows his own bevy of good points. Along with his oft-displayed logic and common sense, the pointy-eared one risks his life to try to save his parents, along with a handful of Vulcan leaders, from a planetary catastrophe.

Both Kirk's and Spock's good points cut both ways, of course, and there are lessons in that, too: Kirk does follow the older Spock's orders, but in so doing, he purposefully hurts Spock by questioning whether he ever loved his mother. Spock responds—in a frightening display of emotion—by nearly coming unhinged. Note to future Starfleet recruits: Never make Spock mad.

This reboot, though, is about as faith-free as anything has ever been in the Star Trek franchise. On this voyage, director J.J. Abrams steers well clear of spirituality as he heads straight for the galactic amusement park.

"Does this mean our lives are guided"

If ever there was a time when most of us should feel like rending our garments and gnashing our teeth, now might be it.

The economy's tanked. Coffee costs $4. We're overworked and underemployed. Our 401(k) accounts are shot. Al Gore keeps talking about the polar ice caps. Our kids are sick. Our toasters are broken. Our spouses keep drinking milk straight from the carton, no matter how many times we've told them not to. Our favorite franchise quarterbacks are feuding with their teams.

Yes, we as a nation are in collective need of some comfort food—meatloaf and mashed potatoes, maybe. We need something to help us forget our trials and travails ... a nice hunk of cinematic escapism, perhaps. We need something that will remind us that, in the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "Tomorrow is another day."

And what do we get instead? Knowing—a movie that tells us "tomorrow" might be the end of the world.

But I get ahead of myself. The story opens in the sweet-and-innocent 1950s, when all we had to fret over were Russians and nuclear war and whether we really needed to see Elvis shake his pelvis on national TV. The children—at least the children at William Dawes Elementary School—are full of optimism and hope: When their teacher asks them to draw pictures of what they think the world will look like in 50 years—pictures to place in a time capsule—they draw rockets and flying cars and iPods.

Well, except for one little girl named Lucinda, who instead covers her paper with lines and lines of numbers. So absorbed is she that she doesn't even get to finish writing before the teacher whisks her paper away.

Fast-forward 50 years, and a new generation of William Dawes students opens the capsule to marvel at these bright pictures of the future. Well, except for the kid who sees Lucinda's numbers.

The kid—Caleb's his name—brings home the paper and obliquely suggests that it might be a code of some sort. John, Caleb's father and a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, decides (after a few whiskeys) that Caleb could be right. In fact, many of the numbers seem to correspond with the dates of every major tragedy in the last 50 years, along with the number of those killed. 9/11? It's on there. Tsunamis in southeast Asia? Check. Oklahoma City bombing? Check.

John sees that there are just three dates left on the sheet—and all of them are set to take place over the next few days. Which leaves John to ask himself some pretty hard questions:

Does this mean that our lives are guided?

That our fates are predetermined?

Can we change our future?

Am I going crazy?

Could this sheet of paper represent an even more ominous future than a few plane crashes?