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Damaged Watchmen Keep on Ticking
| The new “Watchmen” movie has a cool premise. The superheroes take a different career road than Superman, Batman, and Spider-Man in that their story openly exists in another timeline, a parallel universe where “superhero” is more of a chosen profession than mentally disturbed vigilantism. Not that these superheroes aren’t as messed up as the other costumed characters of DC Comics (and rival Marvel Comics), but the writers of “Watchmen” liken these superheroes more to, say, firefighters and policemen. They work long, strange hours, wear special outfits, have a higher mortality rate as a group, and suffer disastrous personal lives.
In this alternate universe, the Watchmen are actually a group of superheroes from the 1930s called the Minutemen who have since become the Crimebusters, fighting for the government against the enemies of America. No lone wolves, no misunderstood motives. In fact, freelancers are illegal. As the movie opens, we find that the Watchmen are collecting government pensions, retired due to lack of war (although the ice-cold Soviet threat looms large!). But someone seems to have something against the retirees and is assassinating their characters, both physically and historically. Enter Crimebuster-turned-vigilante Rorschach (played by Jackie Earle Haley, supposedly to play Freddy Krueger in the next string of “Nightmare on Elm Street” movies), who gathers his old buddies together to get to the bottom of things. This guy is seriously whacked, which makes him my man in this story! While Clark Kent’s Superman has the powers to end wars globally, he wimps out with some trumped-up ethical reason why he should limit his fight to local criminals and local disasters. Screw the humans; let them settle their own wars. But Dr. Manhattan, the only true super-man among the Watchmen, is a true war machine. Show him a tank and he’ll show you a balled-up piece of metal. No ethical butterflies there. Nite Owl II is a self-made sequel, acquiring the rights (and tutelage) of an earlier superhero named Nite Owl. Nite Owl II represents the Batman of the group. Patterned after a winged creature of the night, Nite Owl II uses the kind of gadgets that would make Jack Nicholson’s Joker drool. |
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And if drooling is your thing, “Watchmen” has a couple of obligatory babes in its collection. Silk Spectre and Silk Spectre II, is a family business hand-me-down act, representing the over-drawn superheroines that set up every comics-reading boy to be disappointed in real-life women. In the literary context of “Watchmen,” they represent more soap opera elements than six years of “Days of Our Lives.”
Ozymandias (pronounced “Ozzie Man Dias”) is like having Lex Luthor on your team. He’s a super-genius, and therefore a condescending snob. He thinks he knows what’s best for humanity, whether they like it or not. I found The Comedian to be the saddest character among them, which is definitely by design. The better comic books love irony. This swaggering G.I. Joe on steroids would be a minor character but that he is used as the key element in plot development and personal histories. |
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If you like dark irony, psychologically messed-up heroes, plenty of action, more plot points than you can follow, and dubiously happy endings, this movie is for you.
Six-Eye Jackson |
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