35 hours of flight have given me opportunity to catch up on three movies I wanted to see Watchmen, Valkyrie and Quantum of Solace.

Watchmen lived up to it’s hype as a painfully faithful recreation of the greatest graphic novel of all time. Alan Moore’s Cold War supernoir still stands up,  traditional comic panels, mock newspaper clippings, memoire excerpts, and side stories create a multi-layered masterpiece. The movie took decades to produce, and recreates the original frame for frame.

A plot to knock off a few has-been crime fighters is revealed to be a cover for a nefarious scheme to deter the U.S. and Russia from nuclear war. I was disappointed that the space squid did not make an appearance.

Moore’s asking, “how can man be kept from destroying himself?” The suggestion: only through violence and injustice perpetrated by the wiser and more powerful. Valkyrie asks the same question by following one-eyed Tom Cruise in an assasination attempt on Hitler.

Directed by Bryan Singer (also known for excellent superhero movies, X-Men and X-Men United) Valkyrie follows dissident Nazis through a nail biting series of assasination attempts on the most hated man of the 20th century. Only through the sacrifice of noble men and women can destructive power be stopped.

While they are both excellent movies, we as Christians must be careful to adopt either ethic. The champion ubermensch of Watchmen would have us strive to force our values on others, through whatever means neccessary. However, history will tell us that this leads us to theocracy-at best Calvin’s Geneva, at worst, modern-day shri’a states.

Valkyrie is slightly more subtle. While the sacrifices made by the characters are noble, Christians should take deep consideration in emmulating them. Violence begets violence, and Christ’s teachings, especially those of the Sermon on the Mount, should give us pause whenever we look to violence as a solution.

All that being said, I highly recommend both if you’ve got an internation flight coming up. Next time, Bond.