Watchmen is a movie based on a DC Comics comic book series from the 1980s written by Alan Moore and directed by Zack Snyder. Moore is a self-identified “anarchist” (read weirdo) and the fictional world of this story reflects his hatred of anything conservative (read normal).
The story takes place in an alternate reality of 1985 where Richard Nixon is in his fifth term and a band of “superheroes” called the Watchmen have been disbanded after they were used for such actions as winning the Vietnam War for the Americans. Apparently, people became afraid of their impact on society. The movie starts with one of these retired heroes; the Comedian being murdered by another extremely powerful masked individual. He is thrown through the window of a Manhattan skyscraper.
(Spoiler Alert – Skip down to last paragraph to avoid spoilers and read recommendation)
We are introduced to the former heroes. By the way I recognized none of the actors. I’m sure some of them would be familiar to anyone who has gone to the movies much in the last fifteen years.
Except for Doctor Manhattan who is some kind of god-like being with psychic abilities and atomic power that can destroy cities, the rest of the heroes are just humans who are strong and trained as fighters. Doctor Manhattan got these powers while he was working in the American nuclear weapons industry. He is able to become enormously large, teleport to Mars at will and able to invent whole new power sources for Earth’s future.
When the Comedian is murdered the other Watchmen suspect that someone is trying to kill all of them. When an assassin tries to kill another one; Adrian Veidt (AKA: Ozymandias) they get the gang back together and look for the killer. There’s all kinds of action and adventure. But in the final act we find out that Ozymandias is responsible. He stages an atomic attack on New York City, London and a couple of other cities and the leaders of the world assume it was Doctor Manhattan that did it as a warning against nuclear states (like the US and the USSR) threatening nuclear war. This brings the countries of the world together out of a sense of common defense against Doctor Manhattan. And Doctor Manhattan approves of the peaceful result of the hoax so the secret is maintained. But one Watchman; Rorschach objects and has to be killed by Doctor Manhattan to keep the secret. Rorschach’s friends are angry but agree to keep the secret for the sake of world peace. At the end of the movie, it appears that Rorschach was able to leak the secret before he was killed.
Okay, so what did I think of this movie? To start off we have Richard Nixon in his fifth term pretty much as evil incarnate. So, there’s that. The movie has a dose of sex and violence so this isn’t a kid’s superhero movie. So, there’s that. The story itself and the characters have interesting moments. The question comes down to, is it worth the time to watch it? I’ll have to qualify this. If you like comic book stories there is a decent chance you’ll like this movie. The effects and the acting aren’t bad. The plot isn’t reasonable but it is clever. If you don’t like comic book stories, you won’t like this movie.
I love comic book movies (Or I used to until Marvel got woke.)
I hated this movie. It was difficult to follow, extremely dark and, honestly, made no sense.
I think it made no sense to you because the point of view of most of the characters was ideologically repugnant. Ozymandias and Doctor Manhattan thought it was justified to nuke American cities to force Richard Nixon and the Russians to play nice. Also all the characters that were at all right-leaning (i.e., the Comedian and Rorschach) were portrayed as sociopaths and in fact terminated. It is a Leftist’s ideal for superheroes; controlling and omnipotent.
But I think most superhero movie fans today just want to see things blown up and there is a lot of that.
So the original story is by Alan Moore. He was fairly famous in the comic book industry in the 1980’s when this was originally published. Take a moment and find a picture of Alan Moore on the internet, I’ll wait… Are you back? Given that image you will likely be unsurprised to find out he is a notorious and unrepentant anarchist and rather unhinged (even for an anarchist). Other efforts by him include V is for Vendetta and Batman: The Killing Joke. The Watchmen Series was a 12 issue mini-series from DC published in 1986-1987 set in an alternate history… Read more »