Review: Watchmen

Warning: If you have not read the graphic novel or seen the film and you want to see the movie later without knowing anything about the story, then you should skip this article until after you have seen the movie! I'll try to skip really big details.

I went to see Watchmen the day it was generally released. The first word that comes to mind to describe the experience is "mind-blowing". When you see the movie and think about the source material from which it comes you have to remember that for over 20 years many people did not believe that this story could be feasibly made into a movie. It was too epic...too grand...too fantastic to be told in a "limiting" media such as film. A snooty opinion I know, but nonetheless it was an opinion shared by many. I have been aware of Watchmen for years, but I had never read the actual book. Everyone who has ever studied anything about the history of comic books knows of the impact the Watchmen graphic novel made. Anyone who has picked up a comic book or seen a film based on comic books since 1986 have been influenced by this story. When I heard that the movie was being made, I purposely decided not to read the graphic novel until after I saw the movie. I wanted to go see the movie without judging it against the graphic novel. In seeing it, the movie gave me a lot to think about. This post will focus on just the movie and it's worldview.

The film takes place in 1985 and has flashbacks of events that happened in the past 40 years. The interesting thing is that the story takes key events in world history and asked the question "What if it happened differently?" The story is the culmination of all those differences. In this world there are costumed heroes who fought crime but all of whom have no superhuman powers except one man. They are more-like Batman...men and women who dress up and fight criminals. Unlike our reality of 1985, Richard Nixon is still President. I think that he is President because America won Vietnam (due to superhuman intervention), there was no Watergate scandal; term limits were constitutionally repealed. Like the reality of 1985, the world stood on the brink of nuclear war.

The film, due to length, leave out certain aspects of the story that the movie studio released in other ways. For example, in the story The Keene Act was released in 1977 which made masked heroes illegal. By the time of the film most heroes retire and quit adventuring. Warner Brothers released a mock news video that the explains the Keene Act. It is
cool.




Unfortunately, this is a problem that some folks who are hard-core fans have with the film. Some favorite plot points from the novel was not explored.

One thing that I really did enjoy in the film is the use of music. The music matched every scene. And the music matched the time period of the scene too. Here is an example from the opening montage.



There were a lot of characters shown during the opening that you would not have known anything about without knowing the novel. I realize that it was a nod to the fans of the novel and thankfully none of them were integral to the film so this was not a problem for me. In addition, the story is so broad we do get deep character development. I suppose its not as deep as the novel but still interesting. The characters, in my opinion, drove the story. I thought about the character called "The Comedian" was amazingly complex. He died in the beginning of the story, but his presence was felt throughout the story because it was in finding out why he was murdered that the other Watchmen figured out what was going on. The Comedian is not my ideal of a hero. He was shown doing horrible things throughout his life, but he he also protected society as a costumed vigilante and government agent. He stumbled on a plan that would kill millions of people.

The truly interesting thing to me about the film is how we see each character deal with the Comedian's murder and what they remember about him. His real name, Edward Blake, was not known to the general public therefore it was interesting to see how small his funeral was and how it seemed that the other Watchmen, who came, only went out of obligation. The one character that seemed to respect the Comedian was Rorschach. Rorschach went looking for the murderer and it led to him being set up for a murder. It turned out that all of the events were meant to divert attention to horrendous plan. Another character I found interesting was Doctor Manhattan. The only character who had genuine superpowers. I mean he can bend time and space and wield energy. His powers made him disconnected from humanity and during the film we watch his origin, his gradual disconnection from people, and then realizing that he must save people. He also sees no reason to wear clothes and is glowing blue. I think he may be a reason why people didn't think the movie could be made, but today through the magic of CGI, we have no problem. The actor was perfect. I think he pulled of the emotional disconnection wonderfully in a monotone expressionless voice. Manhattan is like Superman gone horribly wrong. I also like Nite Owl. Of all the characters, I think he was the most sane. The most grounded. He kind of reminded me a lot of Batman - a highly skilled fighter with lots of great gadgets. Between Nite Owl's powers and Rorschach's paranoia and detective skills (yes, I know put together you get Batman), the movie-goer understands the big picture.

The movie does remind me of the recent The Day The Earth Stood Still remake in that while it presupposes that if you give people the chance to avoid total destruction, they will change on their own, Watchmen assumes that if you give people a large enough threat that they can see outside and apart from themselves they will put aside difference and unite against the threat - effectively ending war. I don't think in real life the idea works...unless of course you can keep the threat ongoing and stoke it perhaps? What if we give it a name like "War on Terror" - faceless, nameless enemy (who is terror anyway?) bent on taking everything away? In fear people would limit their own civil liberties in exchange for feeling more secure. Fear can be used to keep the populace in mind while oil companies and bankers make more money than ever before....Oh, wait, that's what we have now! Okay, so maybe it will work.

The movie has a lot of awesome fight scenes! However, they are violent. I think it shows how things have changed since the early 1980's. Remember GI Joe, thousands of bullets, missiles, and lasers flying around and no one was killed. Everyone was able to jump out of the exploding vehicles unharmed. We have seen action being more and more graphically violent. I'd argue that characters like Spider-man, Captain America, and Superman are better heroes because they do not hurt even their enemies beyond what they have to. In fact they save lives even of those who would have killed them. Unfortunately, "dark" heroism of the Watchmen or the Punisher where the hero kills all his opponents has become trendy. The reason why characters like Spider-man are still popular is because deep down we all know that it is more of a heroic archetype because we are all created in the image of God.

One point in the film, Doctor Manhattan's girlfriend is shown telling him that she can't relate to him because he is like a god. Manhattan said

I'm not a god, and if there was, I'm nothing like him.

The quote interested me because I think we can glean a lot about the worldview of the story: agnostic. Manhattan was said to be able to see his own past, present, and future simultaneously. He has near omnipotent control over time and space. Someone with power like that can stop criminals without splattering them everywhere...yet he did. Manhattan was very human in many ways. The premise of the movie is that because we don't know if there is a God or not we need to solve our own problems and the needs of the many outweigh the lives of the few. If you see the movie you'll see what I mean. I don't want to give away too much.