Just this, from Remy Wilkins,

Josh Gibbs recently said to me, “I’m incapable of seeing in movies any worldview but Christianity,” a comment similar in tone to something GK Chesterton once said, “The more you know of truth the more you see it everywhere.”

I have read the reviews talking about Hero’s dramatic use of color and lushness, but each Christian reviewer has begged off criticism with a scant charge of Buddhism. My imagination is too lacking to find that and the reviews too cursory to convince me, but what I did see was a short history of the Gospel.

The conflict in the movie is of a King conquering the seven kingdoms of ancient China with the story centered on a warrior’s tale of killing three of the king’s most dangerous enemies. The warrior, known as Nameless, describes how he went to Broken Sword, the king’s enemy, under the guise of learning calligraphy because it held the secret to a swordsman’s skills. The warrior requests to see the most complex character for sword, an ideogram to be decoded like a symbolists painting. This trophy is later presented to the king who, at the climax of the film, interprets it.

The first stage of the warrior the sword is in his hand. Man and sword become interchangeable, here even a blade of grass is a lethal weapon. The second stage of the warrior the sword is in his heart, even without a weapon the warrior can slay from one hundred paces. The third stage the sword disappears and peace fills the land for the ultimate ideal for a warrior is to lay down his sword.

The story is persuasive because this is the history of the people of God. Under the Old Covenant Yahweh was known as the Lord of Hosts, a War God, and Israel conquered with the sword. With the New Covenant came a new sword, the Word of God, the Prince of Peace. This new sword was written on our hearts and we conquered through other means. David slew his ten thousand, but Christ slew more than the stars in the sky and sand in the sea. The third stage is the New Jerusalem, where every knee is bowed, where every tear is wiped away; where the sword becomes a plow.

Luther’s ‘Flood Prayer’.

Almighty eternal God, who according to your righteous judgment did condemn the unbelieving world through the flood and in your great mercy did preserve believing Noah and his family, and who did drown hardhearted Pharaoh with all his host in the Red Sea and did lead your people Israel through the same sea on dry ground, thereby prefiguring this bath of holy baptism, and who through the baptism of your dear Child, our Lord Jesus Christ, have consecrated and set apart the Jordan and all water as a salutary flood and a rich and full washing away of sins: We pray through your same unbounded mercy that you will graciously behold _____ _____ _____ and bless him with true faith in the Spirit so that by means of this saving flood all that has been born in him from Adam and which he himself has added thereto may be drowned in him and engulfed, and that he may be sundered from the number of the unbelieving, preserved dry and secure in the holy ark of your Church, serve your Name at all times fervent in spirit and joyful in hope, so that with all believers he may attain eternal life according to your promise; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

HT: barlow