jcmorgenstern:

I think there are different categories of evil: There is cruelty and there is destruction and you look at societal evil of today [where] you have things like sexual assault and rape and burglary and murder — there are many different layers of what is evil. And I think one thing with Langdon that you come to recognize, and a choice that I really wanted to center Langdon on, is that Langdon doesn’t think about destruction, he thinks about creation. Where everybody else thinks he thinks about burning the world down, he knows that he’s burning the world down because from that, something new will bloom. And the world has come to a place where there is so much hatred, there is so much war, there is so much crime — everyone is betraying everybody, there is greed, there is jealousy, there is rage — and he, of course, is the son of the devil, who is absorbing all of this and thinks that there is a new way.