Movie Review: Watchmen - Page 4

The translation of young ideas from humorless paranoia to a cynical but strangely astute optimism is fully expressed in the revision of Watchmen’s ending, which I will introduce with the very millennial term SPOILER ALERT. In Moore’s comic, written before the Cold War ended, it seemed the only way to end the cultural bickering of people who fundamentally and irrevocably hated one another was either the annihilation of the human species or a happy accident that tricked humans into realizing their common bond of humanity. In Snyder’s version, the fear of Dr. Manhattan, who, among other character traits, is seen as the human personification of a soulless, nuclear military-industrial complex, was enough to do the trick. Ozymandias doesn’t resort to an otherworldly creation to scare humans into getting along as best as humans can, but instead uses the very entity that had been at the center of political and military strategy for decades.

In real life, what ended the Cold War was the realizing that no one wanted the world to end, and after a decade and a half of subsequent bickering, people are beginning to realize that Cold War mentalities have little place in the modern world. The world still has enormous problems; the economy is worse now than it was even in Watchmen’s '80s, and though no nuclear bombs have struck, New York and Moscow have both been victims to horrible attacks that have killed hundreds needlessly between 1986 and now. But, as corny as it sounds, the persistence of the human spirit proved to be larger than any nuclear weapon, and what those who only see Cold War paranoia in hindsight see as the most important tool in getting through today’s problems.

In Moore’s world, as in Snyder’s, even the Nietzchean übermenschen of Rorschach, of the Comedian, have moments where they break down and realize the redeeming qualities of humanity. Rorsarch and The Comedian represent the adolescent vision of Nietzche, the one that fills the seats in the movieplex, but the same kind that is so crude that it only appeals to bad followers of Nietzsche of all ages and levels of education. The most significant legacy of Nietzsche is not his nihilism, but his breakdown of a world of absolute truth, where perfect objectivity was impossible, and where the word of no God, philosopher, or political leader could be universally upheld.

That’s the legacy that became most apparent in the culture wars, and that’s the kind of good Nietzchean understanding that Moore works with in Watchmen. Just about all of the central characters in Watchmen have strongly-held viewpoints — the nihilism of Rorsach and The Comedian is no less fiercely maintained than Dr. Manhattan’s lifeless astronomical philosophy or Ozymandias’s Alexanderian vision of lateral thinking and a New World Order. Yet, while all of these viewpoints are hopelessly impossible to understand by their peers who disagree, they are all mostly internally consistent, with the inevitable contradictions of an all-encompassing worldview. But yet they all live together, and, even at some point in their lives, can be considered friends.

Article Author: Ethan Stanislawski

Ethan Stanislawski is a freelance journalist/critic and new media specialist. He is a regular reviewer and staff writer at Prefix Magazine, and also contributes regularly to Blogcritics Magazine. His interests include theater, film, and pop music …

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