Watching the Watchmen

The Heroes of Watchmen: Comedian, Silk Specter, Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, Nite Owl, Rorschach. 

In keeping with my love of Watchmen, it's only natural to talk about Zack Snyder's 2009 film adaptation (spoilers will abound).  For years this holy grail of Graphic Novel's was considered to be un-filmable.  Apparently, a few directors tried to bring it to the big screen and failed for one reason or another.  One thing I've learned about Zack Snyder's films is that they're very polarizing.  I've seen 300, Watchmen and most recently, Man of Steel and thoroughly enjoyed them all, particularly the last two.  I think the guy's a good director and pretty great at adapting comic book material and giving it dimensionality.  As far as polarizing fans, Watchmen is no exception; some fans undoubtedly hated it while others, like myself, love it for what it is.  Then there are others who still don't know what it is.  Some people have to accept that comic books and film are two distinct mediums and there are some things that just don't translate well from one to the other.  As I mentioned in my last post, I think the book's main theme is whether or not people should trust self-appointed heroes who in reality are just as suspectible to the same issues and flaws, if not more so, than the rest of us.  What's to stop these people from imposing their own brand of "order" on the world or taking drastic steps to do what they deem right?  Are they ultimately as insane and single-minded as the villains they battle again and again and do their efforts really help or hurt the world around them?  These are a few of the simple questions lacking simple answers that abound in the world of Watchmen.        
I think the film effectively conveys this theme and does a great job of grounding the characters and situations in a larger historical context that people can both recognize and be surprised by, given that it's an alternate history in which America and Russia are inching ever closer to nuclear war.  You can tell that Snyder and company did their homework, precisely and lovingly plucking scenes right from the book and bringing them to life.  The film's opening, in which Edward Blake, formerly The Comedian, is attacked in his apartment by a masked assailant and thrown through a plate glass window to his death on the street below, so closely resembles those panels in the book, complete with the famous yellow smiley face button streaked with Blake's blood.  Soon we meet Rorschach who, just as in the comic, finds the blood stained button and discovers that the victim was The Comedian.  Rorschach has a gravely, monotone voice reminiscent of Bale's Batman, which makes sense given that he has the personality of Batman.  I can't read his dialogue in the book without hearing his voice from the film.  Just like in the book, we hear snippets of dialogue ripped right from Rorschach's journal as he prowls the dark city streets.   We soon meet other former heroes, namely the first and second Nite Owl as they reminisce about old times and later Dr. Manhattan and his girlfriend Laurie a.k.a Silk Specter as Rorschach comes to tell them of Blake's death and warn them that they may be next.  The scene in which Rorschach warns Dan Drieberg/Nite Owl by breaking into his place and helping himself to some beans is verbatim.  Considering the multitude of flashbacks and subplots in the book, the film does a good job of balancing all this while highlighting the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate events over several decades.  During Blake's funeral, Dr. Manhattan, Dan Drieberg and Adrian Veidt a.k.a Ozymandias separately flashback to not so fond memories of Blake during their Watchmen days.  We see the Dr. and Blake fighting together in Vietnam and celebrating the victory in a bar where Blake guns down a Vietnamese woman pregnant with his child.  Dan and Adrian both see Blake being the hard ass he was during their last days as costumed crime fighters. 
Perhaps my favorite part is Dr. Manhattan's exile to Mars after Laurie leaves him and he comes to believe he has given cancer to people he loved.  On Mars he contemplates the role of fate in his life as he jumps back and forth between moments in his past.  Manhattan is a being who experiences time simultaneously and sees his life (and all lives) as having already happened, in which case we're all just going through the motions.  We get to see him at various point before his accident: as a child learning how to reassemble the components of a watch, meeting his girlfriend Janie Slater, working as a physicist before getting caught in the Intrinsic Field chamber that de-materialized him, and reappearing after learning how to reassemble himself as a glowing blue demi-god, whom the military names Dr. Manhattan to inspire fear in America's enemies.  Many of his memories overlap with famous moments in history and flashbacks earlier in the film and all of this helps add depth to the shared history of the Watchmen.  All this is covered in the book in greater detail, but in the film, with the addition of music and Dr. M's uninflected voice over narration, it becomes a powerful and moving sequence of events.  Dr. M brings his troubled girlfriend Laurie to Mars to show her how Mars gets along perfectly without life, which he considers to be a highly overrated phenomenon.  It's on Mars that Laurie, with the help of Manhattan, discovers that Blake, a man she always hated because he tried to rape her mother years before, is in fact her father.  This scene is faithfully captured in the film with the same emotional impact when Manhattan tells her he was wrong to say life's overrated and that miracles, which he claimed don't exist, occur constantly, as in someone like Laurie being born against all odds from the contradiction of her parents union.  Manhattan shares this revelation with Laurie that life is full of miracles just as it is, yet we overlook them in our desire to make the world conform to our ideal of perfection.  If we realize that paradise already exists beneath our feet and that all we're doing is destroying it and ourselves, it may not be too late to be worthy of it again.  Like Dr. Manhattan says, perhaps the world as it is, unencumbered by us, is already a perfect machine; a clock without a craftsman.                  
The story of Rorschach's early days that he relates to a prison shrink during his brief incarceration before Nite Owl and Silk Specter break him out is also in the film .  There may be some minor changes, such as his using a butcher's knife to brutally kill a child murderer rather than burning him alive, but the essence is still there: the story represents Rorschach's transformation into the uncompromising, remorseless defender of all he considers absolutely "good."  Some may argue the film's unnecessarily gory at times, chiefly those including Rorschach, and although this isn't untrue, given the gritty nature of the story, it sort of comes with the territory.  Kick Ass is a pretty gory film as well even though it's supposed to be lighter and more comedic, but since it's also grounded in the real world, blood and dismemberment is often part of the deal these days.      
If Snyder included every single aspect which gives Watchmen its fully formed verisimilitude, the film would probably be over four hours long (not to say that'd be a bad thing).  Instead, he focused on faithfully translating the book's most crucial aspects in order to convey the full range of themes.  The film's ending, in which we discover Adrian Veidt murdered Blake, orchestrated Manhattan's exile and framed Rorschach for murder in order to go forward with a plot to unite the world by replicating Manhattan's power and killing millions of people, retains the same devastating effect even though it differs slightly.  In the book, Adrian's plot is much more elaborate but the basics are as follows: For over a decade, Veidt works to replicate Dr. M's teleportation ability as well as study genetic engineering to create a giant squid-like creature with a brain cloned from a dead psychic that's full of strange, nightmarish imagery.  The imagery is supplied by a group of writers and artists that Veidt recruited and brought to a secret island years earlier to conceptualize the creature.   Ultimately, Veidt teleports the being to New York where, due to imprecise teleportation, it explodes upon arrival, unleashing a blast of psychic energy that kills everyone in the immediate area and gives survivors nightmares for years.  Veidt's intent is to trick the world into peace and unity by making them think it's an alien invasion.  Another element missing from the film is the comic book story within the comic called "Tales of the Black Freighter", written by one of the writers recruited for Veidt's plan, chapters of which are sprinkled throughout Watchmen as the comic's being read by a kid at a corner newsstand.  This is one of the ways Watchmen is self-referential; telling a comic book story within a comic book story that parallels the themes of the larger story.   


Adrian Veidt L&R: Killing for Peace?

Although these elements work to engross the reader in the world of the book, I for one don't think the squid plot fits into the grittier world of the film and, along with the "Black Freighter" story, would've made the film feel cluttered.  Veidt's plot in the book has so many aspects, you'd almost need another film to explain them all thoroughly.  It also would've seemed random and confusing to the average viewer.  I think Veidt mimicking Manhattan's power and framing him for it to unite a world on the brink of war makes more sense and is ultimately as effective.   In the film, Veidt replicates Manhattan's own energy to attack cities worldwide, including New York and Moscow, whereas in the book, only New York is attacked.  By making it look as though Manhattan attacked the world, including his own country, it creates a stronger sense of solidarity between the afflicted countries.  Both endings demonstrate a major theme of Watchmen:  that perhaps the only way to save us from our own savage nature is to trick us into thinking we have a common enemy, one that we'll never have to fight.  That's what I love about the ending, it's tremendously ambiguous and there's no clear cut hero or villain.  Veidt is not a comic book villain intent on conquering the world;  he does what he thinks is the only way to avoid nuclear war and unite the world in peace, even though it's based on a lie; he deliberately kills millions but claims it's to save billions.  As easy as it is to judge what Veidt did as wrong, you also have to judge the situation that led him down that path and the sheer insanity of two governments risking the lives of every citizens by trying to one up each other out of paranoia and insecurity.  Veidt's actions are somewhat comparable with Truman's decision to drop not one but two A-bombs on Japan to end WWII.  Truman did what he felt was needed to swiftly end the war, but like Veidt's attack, it was regular citizens who died.  In the book, Rorschach ironically praises Truman's decision to drop the bomb(s) while swiftly condemning Veidt's actions, which although horrible, did avert coming nuclear holocaust.  This is why Manhattan, in both versions, understands why Veidt did what he did, without condoning or condemning him.  The circumstances of the situation are too complex to be judged according to narrow conceptions of right and wrong.  As much as Rorschach likes to see the world in black and white, the truth is that in the Watchmen world, which resembles our world more than ever, things are almost never that cut and dry and often the motives of so called heroes and villains are hard to distinguish.  In both versions, Veidt has no illusions about what he's done and understands the horror it, but still asserts that it was a necessary crime.  In order to not undo the sudden peace that so many died for, Veidt convinces the other heroes to keep quiet, all except for Rorschach who, in keeping with his uncompromising character, sets out to reveal the truth to the world.  Manhattan tries to convince him to stop, but Rorschach, unwilling to budge, tells Manhattan that he'll have to kill him, which he does.  The death of Rorschach is also the symbolic death of his simplistic, morally absolute viewpoint.  In Veidt's new world, things are no longer black and white, assuming they ever really were.  The question becomes, will the sudden peace last?  As Dr. Manhattan says, "Nothing ends...nothing ever ends."  Both versions imply that the truth may be revealed by Rorschach's journal which he dropped in the mailbox of the New Frontiersman paper before going to confront Veidt.  The possibility of Veidt's deception being exposed and the world returning to the brink of war proves that indeed nothing truly ends; instead humanity goes around and around in circles, never truly learning essential lessons until it's too late.  Watchmen demonstrates that there is no easy, one size fits all solution for humanity's problems and that no one has all the answers regardless of how powerful they seem to be.  If we want to avoid having to be tricked into getting along with one another, we better start listening and trying to work together for a stronger, more loving world without needing a giant exploding psychic squid to force us there.