Church of the Everlasting Watchmen

By Sylvia Bond
Movie Review: Watchmen

Here’s my two cents, for what it’s worth. For all of everything going on in this movie, that might or might not have made you feel like you’d been betrayed by your own kind, especially if you were a Watchmen fan since the beginning, the movie made the comic book accessible to the millions it might not otherwise have reached. Okay. That’s a little more than two cents, but we’re in a recession here, and we must allow for fluctuations in the market.

I don’t know whether or not this feeling was helped by the fact that my friend Amy and I only paid four bucks to get in, but it sure did make us giddy. Only four bucks! Heck, the popcorn cost more than that. We paid four bucks because we went to the 10 am showing to avoid the crowds, should there be any. It was, after all, opening weekend. Much to our surprise, the theater was mostly full, the center section especially, packed with insignia t-shirt wearing, popcorn toting fans. They had to be fans, we figured, to drag themselves out of bed so early on a Sunday, missing church, one might think. But then again, this was their church, the Church of the Watchmen.

Especially the guy who shared the front row with us, I must tell you about him. He butted ahead of us in the line to buy tickets, bullying us out of the way with his dirty orange parka that was thick enough to be suitable for 30 below, even though it was a bright and sunny morning that was going to get up to 50 degrees way before noon. Anyway, he beat us to the middle of the middle in the front, where the railing is that you can put your feet up on, spreading his parka and his backpack over three seats like he owned the place. Then he left.

We sat right next to him just to be, you know, friendly and all. But I swear to you when he came back from buying popcorn and saw us there? He huffed. Honest to Pete, he huffed like a schoolmarm who sees that her charges are being unruly. And then he up and moved his coat and his popcorn and his backpack and his pup tent two seats away. There was more huffing as he settled back down. I’m sure he felt we were out of line, just as I’m sure my movie seating attitude was passive-aggressive. Besides which, I’m perfectly certain that he’d already seen the movie three times the day before. He had that air about him. That Watching the Watchmen air.

Then, as more fans came in, we got previews. And when I say previews, I don’t mean five or six of them. I mean a full 20 minutes of previews. This cornucopia was made even more potent by the responsiveness of our fellows, who actually moaned in a rather pre-orgasmic way for a lot of the trailers, most particularly for the new Star Trek and Terminator movies coming out. Oh my GOD. The Star Trek preview was totally cool and NEW. It showed that Kirk had gotten into a fight and someone was double-dog daring him to apply for Star Fleet Academy. I mean, he totally gets in, everyone knows that, but it was the idea of it, that this red-necky, motorcycle riding, James Deanish wanna be might not have gone to the Academy. And then he never would have met Spock! Oh my loves, my own true loves. I am SO ditching work on the 8th of May.

Now for the movie itself. Like I said, a bargain at four bucks, it was long. Very long. Butt-numbing long. Two-thirds of the way through (after all the stuff about the Comedian seemed to be dying down), my butt was going numb. And not in a good way. I was out of popcorn, too, and besides, we’d not gotten to the part about the giant squid yet!

And another thing. What’s up with Nite Owl II and his flying Archie? Have you seen the things this thing can do? It can go underwater like a submarine, it can fly through the air like a rocket, hell, it can hover like a helicopter, and, from the looks of its control panel, is easier to drive than Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. So riddle me this, Batman. If this guy can make a machine that can do all that in pre-1985 America, why in the hell is the country still using 3.5 floppy discs? Never mind that these were anachronistic in and of themselves; this movie is an alternate universe, so I can go with that. But if Nite Owl II can design and build a craft like that and wants to save the world, why the hell isn’t he sharing the technology?

In spite of my issues with that, seeing as how the movie was about the mid-80s, I thought they did a fair job attempting to capture that time, especially the commercials and programs up at Ozymandias’ place. I was looking for Xanadu and Olivia Newton John and didn’t see either. Sadly. In addition, Silk Spectre II’s hair was not a Farrah Fawcett do, and the “Share the Fantasy” commercial was a knock off of the original Chanel #5, not the real thing. But did you notice? The guy who played Edgar Jacobi/Moloch the Mystic (the guy the Comedian went sobbing to) is the same actor who played the iconic Max Headroom character in the early to mid-80s, none other than Matt Frewer. How’s that for ironic.

Still, I liked the movie better than the comic book, because instead of a billionty storylines told 92 different ways, we get two very strong storylines, and dynamic action mixed with convincing dialog. I couldn’t say whether it would be to the credit of the producer, the director, or the writers, and I suspect a combination of everyone; the whole team must have worked together like crazy to get it done, but not at the expense of the essential message. Which is not, as you might think, that Alan More was absolutely the most miserable and pessimistic person who ever survived the era of New Coke when he wrote this comic book, but instead two other ideas. One of which was the marvelously ambiguous question as to whether the ends justify the means. The second of which was how our relationships with other people not only connect us and keep us connected, but define us. And how without those relationships we might as well be a glowing blue man with our meat and two veg hanging out.

Let’s get him out of the way, shall we? In this day and age of CGI brilliance, I thought it odd that the Blue Man’s mouth moved funny and wasn’t in sync with what his tongue was doing. You’d think that in an industry that could convince you that Forest Gump actually met JFK could synchronize Blue Man’s tongue with the sounds he was making. But then, maybe that was the point, to make us all ill at ease watching him, never letting us forget that he was no longer human. His going into a transmogrifying machine at 30 seconds to lockdown still has to be the stupidest thing I have ever seen any human being ever do. Not the mention the dearth of “Warning, Warning, Danger, Danger, Will Robinson” safety measures anywhere. But maybe that was a point being made, too, a warning message about Foolish Humans who dare to mess around with the full potential of the universe. Or whatever. This is one heavy movie. And let us not forget the other heavy element here: Blue Man’s schlong, which was giant and glowing and simply so there that you couldn’t help but look at it. Like, all the time. It was very distracting, can I just say that?

The other characters did not glow, neither were they blue and naked. Instead, they seemed real, like normal, everyday people caught up in living their lives and making mistakes, having good days and bad. Except these guys and gals like to dress up and play at saving the world. Walter Kovacs/Rorschach was among the most interesting to me, even though I despair of every psycho in every movie and TV show I have seen being given a background of abuse as he was. Still, he stood up for what he believed, came across as convincingly disturbed without going over the top, and was played brilliantly by Jackie Earle Haley, who, as you may or may not know, played the volatile Moocher in 1979’s classic Breaking Away.

I also enjoyed Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II, who was, oddly, in spite of his sweet, harmless mien, the one person who could stand up to Rorschach, tell him he was an idiot, and NOT get some vital body part messily taken off. The two of them formed a very odd couple indeed, but in a realistic way; even a psycho needs a friend a time or two. As for Nite Owl II, he had a very George Reeves air about him, and honest Boy Scout good looks. He was totally unassuming, until he put on that suit of his, and then he could kick anyone’s ass. (Which begs the question, where on earth did all the heroes in this movie learn to fight so well? And why do they never get tired, even after fighting off 20 or 30 bad guys? Oh, never mind.)

All the characters in this movie seemed to have a disguise of some sort, an obvious two-sided coin of street persona and vigilante hero or villain. The Comedian, however, had a mask behind the mask: he’s Edward Blake, he’s the laughing, sardonic Comedian, and then he’s the man inside, sobbing his heart out. I think the story of Pagliachi is not accidentally placed there in conjunction with scenes of the Comedian dying; he was dead long before he got tossed out the window, and the rescue he’d hoped for never came. He’s got no one to share the joke with, the joke being that there is no joke and everything is futile and pointless and either you can laugh or you can cry. When he discovers Ozymandias’ plot to avert nuclear war, he cries. He’s a complex character all the way around.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan had spoken in several interviews I saw about how difficult some of his scenes were. I had always thought he’d been talking about the almost rape aspect, which plays a pivotal role in the Comedian’s relationship with Silk Spectre. However, after seeing the movie, it was the beating that the Comedian delivered to her which turned out to be one of the hardest scenes in the movie to watch. He didn’t just smack her around, he kicked and pummeled and punched. If it was hard for me to watch, then I can only imagine how hard it would have been to reconcile those parts of yourself to come up with such an animalistic reaction to a woman saying “No.”

In addition to which, I enjoyed Mr. Morgan’s portrayal of a man coming apart from the inside out, where no one could see. Especially that part where the Comedian sits on the edge of Jacobi’s bed and cries his heart out. I’ll admit that was the part of the comic book being brought to life that I was looking forward to the most, wanting to see this tough, lumberjack type of character coming apart at the seams. There’s no dignity in crying with snot coming out all over the place, but only the best actors know that that’s what makes a scene like this more effective, so thank you for that, JDM.

Visually, the movie was rather stunning, mixing the artful angles, poses, and silhouettes of comic book panels seamlessly with tried and true movie shots, close-ups, and editing. There are many examples of this ilk, but if I talked about all of them, I’d be here all day. So here goes just one. At the Comedian’s funeral, artfully done in the artful rain, Nite Owl II, dressed in his mild-mannered Mr. Dreiberg outfit, stands at the graveside.

The rain rains down and gets everyone wet, putting Mr. Dreiberg into drowned rat status rather than falling in a circle, leaving the obvious dry spot for the actor to stand in, so as not to mess up their face or their hair. (Hey, guys? We can always tell you know, and they do have waterproof makeup for this sort of thing.) The rain is coming down hard, most notably hitting Mr. Dreiberg’s pilot-large, 80s style glasses at just the right angle so as to fall off the lower rim like thick tears. I’m into rain, which is why I noticed this particular bit, which made me sigh with satisfaction. In this movie, the devil is most definitely in the details.

Then there’s the story in which Ozymandias plays such an important role. His idea is that to avert an all-out nuclear war, he must show the world how devastating it would be. So he gives the world a mini-version, setting off explosions around the world in all the major cities. That’ll show ‘em, right? Many millions of people die to save many more billions, and as the Russians and the Americans learn their lesson, they come together, and all out nuclear war is averted. But for all Ozymandias announces that he is not a comic book villain, he does seem to realize that he is the villain of this piece. Rather like Judas kissing Christ so that Christ could save a bunch of souls, Ozymandias knows that he will be reviled forever by those who know the secret. But should he be? Or, rather, is he a thinly disguised hero?

When I asked my friend Amy afterwards whether she felt there was a moral ambiguity there, she went off on me. And I don’t mean a little, I mean a LOT. It was like watching Kermit the Frog explode with frustration at not being understood, complete with his little green stick arms waving and that Muppety Jim Henson voice going, “There’s NO moral ambiguity! It’s quite clear to me that Rorschach was the more principled one and that Ozymandias was playing at being God.” She practically sputtered at me, she was so worked up! So I rephrased the question to be did she feel that the movie was trying to present (or push) a question that could be morally ambiguous, about whether the ends justify the means. Then in a small voice, she said, “Well, yes. But Ozymandias was still wrong.”

What was most interesting to me was not her effrontery at the question, but the movie’s insistence on not answering it. Which is quite an endeavor in this day and age when, in this practically-a-depression emotional fog we all seem to be swimming in, we like our good guys to wear White Hats and our bad guys to die pitifully, Hi, Ho, Silver, Away!

Overall, the movie, as I mentioned before, made the dense and clunky comic book very accessible to the masses, especially to those who’d not read the thing. No doubt there are a handful of members of the Church of the Watchmen who felt rather gypped at the lack of giant squid in the final reel. Who felt that their extra-special secret decoder ring world was reduced to pabulum for idiots who don’t know what they’re being given. Who, at the end, when the yellow-against black credits started to roll, stood up and shouted, “That SUCKED!” But that’s only because they’re pissed off that the once convoluted secret that they’ve treasured and prized and tucked hidden to their collective bosom like Gollum’s ring for so many years has been revealed and that the doors to the sanctum sanctorum have been opened to all.

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Sylvia Bond is a ten-year technical writing veteran with too many degrees under her belt to count. She lives in Colorado, but does not ski, preferring instead to spend her money and time at the annual Great American Beer Festival, taking road trips across the United States, and reading historical fiction from the comfort of her fluffy green arm chair. She has been involved in fandom since 1993 and been writing fanfic since approximately 1993. What she finds most amazing about fandom (besides the open heartedness of fans and the sheer amount of creativity) is how visible fandom has become. “In my day,” she says, “we had to hide behind P.O. boxes to get fanfic. But nowadays, people wear t-shirts that shout their affiliation and share their shiny toys on the internet.” It’s a wonderful world.

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