2009, Director’s Cut, 186 minutes
I was unable to read the comic [this having some relationship to my dyslexia I think], and since this was such an influential piece in that genre I punted and watched the movie. I’m not a comic book guy, so might be off the mark here. But my sense is that this is the only case I know of when the movie was better than the literature upon which it was based. Let me be clear that I have also never been a fan of superheroes. While many boys have grown up in America since the 1930s adoring comic heroes, and to this day have an attachment to these quasi literary Olympian pulp angst repositories of hope, I always thought they were a bunch of faɡɡots in tights, sketched by little twerps and narrated by half-assed writers incapable of building a story without the crutch of illustration. The only superhero I could ever stomach was the Incredible Hulk. So, regard my review in that dim light.
The section titles below are drawn directly from dialogue. More than any other work in comic media or comic inspired movies, Watchmen has some fantastic lines. In a sense it is a jumble of action and murky atmosphere punctuated by painfully insightful quips.
‘I’ll Whisper No’
The hero of this movie, which is populated by non-heroic superheroes, is Rorschach, a psychopath who was abused as a child and runs around dressed as Humphrey Bogart with a stained white sock stretched over his face. He’s a little man of vengeance and has all of the best scenes and lines. The story is ostensibly based on his journal. Rorschach’s action scenes are the only ones that are not blatantly video game inspired. The actor, Jackie Earle Haley, also gives the only memorable acting performance. Basically without Rorschach, this is just a grungy video game.
‘The Past, Even the Grime, Keeps on Getting Brighter’
It is obvious that the current pathological need for comic readers to read comics with apocalyptic levels of back story comes from this work. The first hour is almost nothing but back story! The retrospectives continue throughout. The one character, the Comic, who is killed in the first scene, generates the plot that Rorschach plunges into. So, this narrative artifice requires extensive back story mining.
I do like the fact that there are a couple of retired alcoholic superheroes. Also, the author disposes of the sick fantasy that super-powered humans would want to serve regular people. The really corrupting aspect of superhero comics is that they promote the idea to the young that power over others may easily be used to benefit the common good. Superman—the ultimate American homosexual-murder machine—is basically just a metaphor for the goodness of industrial war. Only in the form of the rare—and always overcome—super villain, does the comic genre give the nod to Tolkien’s concept of power as a purely corrupting force. In this very violent movie the superwhores [I’m sorry, but I’m not correcting that Freudian typo] are serial killers with martial arts skills. The Comic personifies everything that is wrong with American masculinity as he attacks female associates, murders, executes POWs, and even shoots pregnant women.
‘Is That Dark Enough’
It is October 12th 1985, in an alternate reality where Richard Nixon and the even more evil Henry Kissinger are still in power! Dude, get off of that planet! This timeline branched in January 1971 when Nixon used superheroes to win in Vietnam. To make matters even darker, Nixon has employed superheroes to do all of the scummy stuff to small nations that the actual U.S. did, only more definitively. Now, it is 1985, and instead of Regan, we have Nixon, playing ICBM nuclear roulette with the Soviets. The guilt ridden scientists of the day have just turned the minute hand on the Doomsday Clock to four minutes to midnight and the most evil man in the world is consulting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff as to how many Americans will have to be sacrificed in a nuclear exchange.
The back story element of comics comes into its own here. I realize the heavy back story appeals to geeks because it makes the reader feel more in the know than any of the characters, and thus justifies their sense that they are more in the know about the world than the horde of completely illiterate people with whom they share their daily lives. In many ways a comic fleetingly places the reader into a more dynamic apart than he actually occupies in the alienated here and now; making comics, in a sense, a type of non-chemical interactive drug.
‘The Puppet Who Can See the Strings’
While Rorschach essentially narrates the story through his journal and actions, he is not at its core, but stubbornly periphery. The central character in the story is Doctor Manhattan, a nuclear physicist who was eradiated and became a bald purple god. There is nothing that Zeus or Odin could do that this guy can’t do. He is held as a kind of brain trust by the U.S. Military. His relationship with and importance to mankind is the central issue of the story. In this sense Watchmen, with all of the stupid action-movie tropes and ossified superhero archetypes, really does bring us to an understanding of what comics are to us.
Modern religions, such as they are, have only ethics and strictures, and are largely barren of the type of narrative that permitted our pagan ancestors to suspend their disbelief long enough to belief in their all-too-human hero-gods. In the end, to me, Watchmen is a metaphor for man’s relationship to the metaphysical: the Watchmen are the old pagan gods consigned to hell or human status, and Doctor Manhattan is the personification of the monotheistic notion of divine masculine punishment and abandonment; of Daddy turning away, and of us wondering if he will comeback, or if he was ever even real.
