I went and saw Watchmen yesterday. It was a pretty good film, if you like iron age comics (which I’m not a huge fan of). I haven’t read the comic books, but the gentleman I went with has and he claimed it was a mostly faithful representation of the comic book.
Technically, the film was very strong. There were scenes that were very comic-book-esque, without actually being comic shots like in 300 or Sin City, and to boot, they were some awesome shots. The casting was about perfect for the characters, although I think the characters weren’t terribly well-rounded (though that might be intentional). My only real quibble was the music; pick any over-done cliche war song from the 60′s that they like to stick in Vietnam movies and it was there. That, in and of itself wasn’t so terrible bad (again, it might have been intentional) but the fact that they engineered it so it was the loudest fucking thing ever was really annoying to me (particularily since I think that the movie theatres have the sound too loud in the first place).
Spoilers below the fold (and trigger warning for a rape scene)
The movie starts out highlighting some “Golden Age” comics, mostly through shots of them in the opening credit, and what ends up happening to most of them. We are then introduced to some old guy watching television, who is killed by an unknown assailant. A character named “Rorschach”, thus named becuase he has a mask that is always shifting into blobs of ink, investigates and finds out the person who was killed was really the Comedian; a retired superhero. Rorschach seems to think that someone is killing “masks”.
The plot just gets more twisted as one goes along, and most of it is flashbacks so I’ll try in hit the highlights; a new group of superheros formed a new Watchmen league in the 60′s and 70′s, formed of Silk Spectre II (daughter of Silk Spectre), Night Owl (think more original Batman rip-off), Dr. Manhattan (Atom rip-off), Rorschach (I think Punisher) the Comedian, and Ozymandias. This is after Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian win the Vietnam war (mainly by killing A LOT of people), and Richard Nixon is in his 3rd term. They fight crime, but anti-mask sentiment gets so high that Nixon passes the Keen act, banning crime fighting. In 1985 (the present of this movie), the Comedian is a spook for Nixon (before his untimely demise), Silk Spectre II is banging Dr. Manhattan, who is working with Ozymandias to create free energy. Ozymandias has publically come out, and now runs the largest business in the world, in part by trading his superhero past into money. The Night Owl is retired, and lives a life a quiet solitude (my friend told me that the description of the Night Owl was “a middle-aged Clark Kent” and in that I think they succeeded). Only Rorschach is still doing the vigilante thing, and this makes him the police’s number one most wanted.
The movie has a lot of stuff to chew on. For one, with the exception of Silk Spectre II and Night Owl, the characters are all assholes. The comedian is the biggest asshole of all, being fond of raping, killing (including a pregnant Vietnamese woman whom it was implied that he was responsible for) and murder. Rorschach has such a dim view of humanity, I don’t know why he bothers to be a “hero” at all. Dr. Manhattan gets less and less connected to the human race, and therefore gets less concerned about it.
The movie seems to be pretty harsh on “liberals” as well, though I don’t necessarily know what that says about the politics of the creator. At best, they are seen as ineffective and weak, derided as “Intellectual eggheads” and at worst they are seen as a force to destroy society (we see a hippy mob protesting the masks, for one, which the Comedian gleefully starts shooting with tear gas.) Nixon doesn’t come off looking good, but he doesn’t really come off looking bad either.
One scene, however, really stuck in my head. The origininal Silk Spectre, has just finished taking the superhero picture, and is going to change. The Comedian comes in, and starts to try to have sex with SS, who most definitely does not want to have sex with him
Comedian: Come on, dressed like that, I know you want it.
SS: NO.
Comedian: No spelled Y-E-S
SS: No, no spelled NO *punches him pretty hard across the face
(me, yay! Maybe one scene will actually show a female holding her own! Wouldn’t that be awesome?)
Comedian: punches her in the face, she crumbles, then he kicks out her legs and she ends up sprawled over a pool table and he slams her face into the table for good measure. He starts to unbuckle his belt and unlace her corset, and another superhero comes in to save her
(me: nope, apparently not).
This is also juxposed by a later scene, where the aging SS is having a fight with her (I’m guessing) husband about later having consensual sex with the Comedian, and that’s how she got pregnant with SSII.
There is a lot of sexism in this movie. The Comedian is a way over the top example, but Rorschack seems pretty fond of calling all sexual women whores, and Dr. Manhattan breaks up with his long-time girlfriend because she aged.
I don’t know if the movie condemns or condones their sexism, and conservatism. It just is; no one is really a hero, but you end up feeling somewhat sympathetic to the assholes nonetheless.
There are also a lot of themes of aging and dying, decadence and rot, and the value of life, but that would require a lot more detail into the plot that I feel like going into in a blog-post.
Who’s seen the movie? What does everyone think?
Re Mandos: Following the discussion, it seems that the film did not make its topics clear to viewers without meta-knowledge. Which is a failure of craft.
Yup, and that was pretty much my point.
“Moore really does like exploring human nature”
It was too bold to state what human nature really is. Everything that is observed as natural is centuries of social nurturing. There’s nothing social about women wearing make-up femininity and masculinity are social constructs and a majority of the violence in the world is the result of social construction.
When Dr. Manhattan suggested what human nature was, any intellectual respect I had for this piece went out the window. From someone with a background in science and sociology, that line was almost as frustrating as intelligent design.