A Statement About Watchmen

Ah, the comic-book hero.  So noble.  So resilient.  So indefatigably honorable.  

Ha.

There is much to be said about Watchmen, and as previously promised, we will discuss it today based on its merits as a film, trying as hard as we can not to delve into what we know about the graphic novel.

To start, it's a very long film.  Obviously that's something to be aware of as you go in, but two hours and forty minutes with a good fifteen minutes of previews at the front (Star Trek!  Transformers! Terminator!) means you're sitting in your seat for close to three hours, and that can be difficult when one accounts for things like large sodas.  

Logically it makes sense for the film to be that long-- a comic arriving in 12 installments over the course of a year would require a lot of time to tell the whole story in one sitting, especially if the story has as much depth and scope as Watchmen does.

OK, fine.  So we accept the length. We accept, even, the idea that because we have not read the graphic novel the finer nuances of the film (an admittedly obsessive adaptation) might be lost on us.  Fine fine fine.  Let's watch the damn thing, already.

Watchmen is a striking film.  Visually it is stunning, and I imagine those lucky enough to live near an IMAX had an even better experience with this.  It is most striking, though, is the message relayed, a message The Dark Knight hit upon, but that Watchmen spells out explicitly: sometimes doing a bad thing is necessary to save people.  As the line in the film goes "Sometimes you need to kill millions to save billions."  Or something like that.

In this political climate, that message gave me a vaguely sinking feeling.  Like, is George W. Bush sitting at home in Crawford going, "See!  Even the dudes in the comic book understand that I will be vindicated by history!"

From what I have read, Watchmen is a seminal work of literature, beloved for its subversion and controversial matter, for spitting in the face of traditional comic story-telling.  As a film, it is a fairly average representation of comic (film) story-telling with a story that is bigger than could possibly be told on a traditional cinematic setting.  And in this era of Hope and Yes We Can and movement away from the past eight years, I'm not sure the film has found it's appropriate moment for cultural impact.