Last summer I was blown away by the teaser trailer for Watchmen. It was like the great appetizer to go with The Dark Knight. A week after I decided to seek out the text and found it in my local library. Surprisingly, no one had taken it out. I read it in about 3 weeks. I took my time with it. I fell in love with the world created by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. This was like everyone had said, the superhero story completely deconstructed and built from the ground up. It stuck with me long after reading it. So much so that I was reminded just recently of a past incident in the late 80s where I was told to buy the original 12 issue mini series comics because one day they'd be worth something. I passed but I remember them telling me the story.
Cut to Thursday March 5, 2009. A few friends of mine called and said they were going to a midnight screening in a local theater. I passed because I was just beginning to feel better from a week long cold. They had never read the whole comic book series. I can't really call it a graphic novel because it was turned into one to gain a bigger credibility than that of a comic book. So anyways one of my friends said he got really tired during the last hour or so and still loved it as did my other friend. Another friend of mine who I never knew read the comic and loved it, also thought the movie was amazing. Yet another friend of mine who just read the comic loved it, hated the movie. He was beyond upset. Finally, another friend of mine who is both a movie and book junkie gave it a 6.5. How could a movie be so polarizing? Should I even have spoken to these people and just gone in clean?
Saturday March 7, 2009. I woke up with the best feeling in a long time. We had beautiful weather and you know that feeling when you wake up on the 1st nice day of the season? It's almost like there's no more chill in the air and you wake up comfortable. 3 friends of mine decided to do a 10:35p.m. showing. I had slept from 4a.m. until 10a.m and felt great all day. Energized. Out of my winter depression. Spring had arrived for a day!
I sat down and somewhat enjoyed the trailers before the movie. I'll discuss the Summer Movie season at some point before May 1st. Anyways, the moment had arrived Watchmen was beginning. In an opening somewhat reminiscent of A Clockwork Orange we were treated to a yellow WB logo and than we were dropped into it. The Comedian is watching The McLaughlin Group on tv and they are discussing the threat of a nuclear disaster. After a few minutes a man breaks into his apartment and a big fight ensues. It is brutal. You feel every punch and drop. And than this man lifts up The Comedian and throws him out of the apartment. What a beginning! It took the opening scene that gave me an unsettled feeling that carried throughout the whole movie.
Is this a good or a bad thing? Well, I have never felt so uneasy in a film before. I remember reading about this film called Irreversible where the director had a sound in the background to make people feel squeamish. Here was a film that I personally felt was scarier than the Friday the 13th remake or the My Bloody Valentine remake, to name a few. This world was fully realized. It was surreal. It was scary. It was dreamlike. It was hopeless.
In the comics, you had the room to breathe and you could put the book down and pick it back up again. What director Zack Snyder kept was the meat of the story and it is brutal because it keeps building up on its previous brutality. There is nowhere to escape. Scenes where you can breathe in are few and far between. You are on the edge of your seat in a white knuckled fear of impending doom. Why? Well, the irony here is that these heroes can do nothing to stop the threat of nuclear war. Not even God-like Dr. Manhattan, who has now found the time to reflect and leave Earth to go to Mars. That leaves humanities hopes alive with a sociopath with a tortured childhood Rorschach, a schlub of a man who is afraid to put his mask and suit back on Nite Owl II, and a young woman with mommy issues and soon to her knowledge daddy issues Silk Spectre II. The murdered hero was The Comedian who raped a woman and shoots in cold blood at point blank range a pregnant woman with what could be possibly his child.
These are our heroes folks! This is both where the film ascends all other superhero films and comics and at the same time detaches itself from being entertainment and becomes a cautionary tale and just one of the blackest, bleakest, and coldest stories in the genre. This is in no means a comic book movie for children. Keep them the hell away! There really is no real sense of fear in Spiderman when the Green Goblin holds 2 cable cars on the Washington Bridge. You know somehow Spiderman is going to save both cable cars. The genre is made that way because the whole concept of the superhero is really conquering our fears of overcoming the bad evils in our world. So when you watch Spiderman there really is no fear or surprise at what is going to happen. It's pretty kid friendly I guess you can say. Even in The Dark Knight you know that Batman is going to stop the Joker somehow, someway. Well, the Joker is only one deranged madman. He can only do so much damage to Gotham City. Nuclear War is a different puppy altogether. Growing up in the 80s I vaguely remember that fear and have heard now about how close we came...multiple times.
I don't know if my fear level was up high because I started to get tired and I had all these dark themes and images stuffed into my brain and ears with no escape in sight. I did admittedly leave twice to take a break from it. It is that gruesome and tiring. I think when you get sleepy your brain releases melotonin and this can cause a state of heightened reality and a misperception of it. This is what some people think people with Schizophrenia suffer from to create illusions. Anyways, I applaud a film that took my spring fever and completely crushed it. You know a film is great when it can completely engross you in its world and make you feel that this is real tension. It is that palpable.
Going back to what I stated about feeling helpless and hopeless is what makes this stand out. I had similar feelings watching Apocalypse Now and even Silent Hill. Let me further elaborate. I know how this was going to end. This is something I will discuss next paragraph. But getting there you just feel that these heroes can really do nothing to stop the threat of a nuclear war. I know I'm sounding repetitive but really no one with a mature sense of emotions can find a horror movie that scary. Unless if the horror is derived out of something tangible horror. Not a Jason or Freddy or Giant Ants. The fact that what we've been going through since the 1st Gulf War and 9/11 and our current history lends itself a certain relatability to audiences not familiar with the comic. Technically what happens in Watchmen could happen in real life. I'll leave you with the thought that what happened on September 11th was an extremely tragic event but it lead to a certain sense of peace and utopia for a couple of months. It brought people together in unseen ways.
The End Is Near: What Ozymandias does is this: he uses Dr. Manhattan's machine that gave him his unwanted powers and unleashes it on the major cities of the world. He destroys these cities and kills millions of innocent civilians to save the lives of billions. How does this happen? Well, the public and the politicos think that Dr. Manhattan acted as an angry God and destroyed these cities to show them what would happen if Nixon pushed the button. This makes the politicos fall back and thus peace ensues...for the time being at least. I fall in the middle of condoning or condemning what Ozymandias did. If he didn't do this, the world could have blown itself into hell. Or at least an even worst hell than the one they were living in.
So the ultimate question is this: Is Ozymandias the villain or is he the hero? And how can this line become so blurred and see through, but so complex? He knew that his fellow heroes could truly never bring about a state of peace. He figured out how to do that. He acted on it on his own free will. And he has them by the balls! They all have to agree on this lie to prevent anarchy. Rorschach won't stand for this and he gets obliterated by Dr. Manhattan.
Everyone here really does a great job. One such scene involving the raping of Sally Jupiter played by Carla Gugino lends a new light not inferred in the comic. The one line that she says when The Comedian walks in and she is taking off her clothes goes something like "oh what are you doing here?" In the comic it is read as having a condemning tone. In the film Gugino says it as sort of an innocent come on. Yes, you find out that her daughter Silk Spectre II is actually fathered by The Comedian. So somehow after this brutal scene they had something going on.
I'd highly recommend reading the comic.
Lastly, keep in mind this film deals with child abuse, rape, annihilation, fear, brutality, killing, impotency, fetishes and other such issues. Most films take one of the above and can make a film on it. It really is, I can't state enough, a lot to ask of an audience to handle in one sitting. But above all else, be proud that there is actually a film like this that has been made and put out into this world for audiences to discuss.
