We Could Be Heroes

Walking out of Watchmen two weeks ago, I felt awestruck, overwhelmed, moved and filled with a sort of bleary-eyed, swoony amazement. This isn't your typical graphic novel adaptation; it's a movie that skillfully approaches the level of high art, a movie filled with ideas: political, cultural, emotional, and even a bit sentimental as we watch our history wash over us in a hard-core yet frequently beautiful dreamscape populated by flawed superheroes we grow to care about. And we do care about them, even the scumbags -- sometimes the scumbags more so (I always love the scumbags).

The picture creates this rare amalgamation of graphic novel adaptation, paranoid '70s thriller, and uncompromising film noir. This is a picture Alan J. Pakula, Sam Peckinpah and Edgar G. Ulmer would get behind. And a picture that Watchmen creator Alan Moore (who refuses to see the movie or any of his adaptations) should get behind. Here, as any Watchmen fan knows, the concept of superhero is not a simple one.

But the movie goes beyond Christopher Nolan's flawed, socially maladjusted Batman. Batman isn't raping Carla Gugino or killing women pregnant with his children (like the gleefully insane, macho degenerate, newest crush, Comedian), or falling in love with his rapist, or staring down a deranged dwarf in prison and breaking a thug's fingers (like my new neo-noir hero, Rorschach), or running off to Mars for contemplation. Not that Batman should be doing such things; he's an entirely different kind of superhero. But I felt challenged by the spandexed, masked, and fedora-wearing saints and sinners of Watchmen, just as I felt challenged by the infectiously inspiring chaos of the Joker of The Dark Knight. Life is dark, life is a mess -- how can one make any sense of it all? With existential dread and a strange sort of glee, the Watchmen understand this.

The idea that director Zack Snyder could get all of these ideas across and present such subversive misdeeds in nearly two hours and 40 minutes seems amazing in itself (not to mention his playlist: Hendrix, Dylan, and two -- count them, two -- Leonard Cohen songs, all music he chose himself -- and a brilliant, funny and weirdly poignant opening credit sequence). But based on the popularity of 300 (a movie I fervently defend as a work of blood-splattered art -- watch my violent exaltation here), the now third-time director was allowed his vision. And thank God, or the devil, or whichever idol you choose to worship. All of you who hated 300 and now love Watchmen should appreciate those Spartans a little more. We'd probably never have seen such a rebellious vision had it not been for that group of half-clothed, hollering warriors.

And somehow Snyder knows that we need to watch and feel such things; we need to yell, we need to feel angry, we need to live vicariously through warriors, flawed or otherwise. In our current state of the world, many of us are like Howard Beale on Network: as mad as hell and not gonna take it anymore. If we can't scream it from the rooftops, or, in my case, tell all those assholes that I don't shine no fucking shoes no more (with "Atlantis" swelling behind me), we can live it through the grim musings of Rorschach. Snyder is tapping into both personal frustration and our country's collective consciousness of helplessness and anger with entertainment and innovation, and there's something revolutionary yet strangely lovely about that. As Bowie sang, and we all sometimes wish, "We could be heroes, just for one day." Defective, messed up, degenerate heroes, but heroes nonetheless.

Read more of my Watchmen mania at Hollywood Hitlist.

And please take a look at my picture and video page, Pretty Poison.

And...play it again. For you Mr. Snyder:

Comments

[Shubhajit Lahiri]

Hi, I came across your blog while browsing the net, and have developed an instant liking for your ruminated musings on cinema. I especially liked reading your various features like top 10 trilogies - not many people would have included Evil Dead trilogy in that list, and that's what makes your posts really unique. And hence you're already on my blog list.

I too maintain a movie blog, though in the capacity of an amateur. I would be very happy if you visit my blog from time to time. After all not everyday does one get to visit a blog owned by someone who contributes for MSN Movies and Rotten Tomatoes!

[Lazy Garfield]

Hey Kim, read the comments on that YouTube video. Apparently, people are not so crazy about that review as they are bowled over by your hotness. Congratulations.

[George Schmidt]

Kim
Nice job as always, kiddo!
I thought Haley was channeling Cagney ala Cody Jarrett in WHITE HEAT when he was in the prison sequence; best anti-hero in awhile and a kissing cousin to Ledger's Joker.
All the best
:)
G

[Christopher E. Ellington]

WATCHMEN. The impossible task. The beauty (or ugliness) of comic art as film. A movie that should have never been made (and thank God, for 2 decades, was not). Not enough space in cyberdom--we'll just hit the big 6:
The Comedian (Edward Blake): Utter Masculine, the comfort and Power of Yesterday being phased out. Alan Moore saying even in 1986, "Rambo has to go", e.g. "the perfect fighting man shown an end to war". Amorality as legitimate choice declared illegitimate (then it is *not* a viable choice, is it?) . Of course he has to die, indeed already *be* dead, in reality as well as our desires. Of course he does. Laudable. But, not realistic. "It's fantasy, dope!"...nope. It's allegory, idiot.
Doctor Manhattan (Jon Osterman): We as Zarathustra, thoughtful become Pure Thought. Detachment as Divine yet unable, at The Moment, to turn His head away. The godman as postmodern would have Him. No more a possibility than the ethereality of cyberchip beingness in "Wild Palms" (ABC-TV), same era. The insensate belief that if thou wert Him, thou wouldst not act as Jim Carrey. Uh-huh.
Rorshcach (Walter Joseph Kovacs): The Destroyed become destroyer. The "howl of the unappreciated". Everything ugly in You and Me, turned outward to seek Justice (or at least give vent to our own pain) as personally defined. Man as the sole arbiter of his own conscience. Denial of otherness in human form. Yes, of course I like him the best, for he is me...and you, if you're at all honest....
Nite Owl II (Dan Dreiberg): Feminist stereotype. The once-vital revitalized through selfrealization. Epiphany that wamth and goodness can meld seamlessly with inspiration and strength. A weak "man" (notice placement of quotation marks). Someone who does not even want himself, attracting the attentions of an idealized Other. We'll draw the curtain of Charity. Like "having it all" back in the 90's, ladies, this model ain't in the catalogue.
Silk Spectre II (Laurie Juspezyck): Moore goofing as interpreter of the feminine. Supposedly, Conflicted Everywoman. The established having compromised (yes, on target), having all the basic tenets for happiness (not if you've compromised!) but unable to get it together. Weak in the comic series, actually watching this Watchwoman kick fundament does not help. Payoff? Weakness chooses Weakness over Dispassion and Distance, in the end weak all over again. Laurie, from beginning to end, is defined by her mother and men. No redemption.
Ozymandias (Adrian Veidt): Androgyny as dynamism. Blake's strength (as murderer), Osterman's thought (as plotter and deceiver), Dreiberg's sensitivity (as the Ultimate Insensitivity). The having of everything in order to establish (or redirect) the Order of Everything. Evil as justifiably and non-judgeable (?). The usual postmodernist word games). We as Fixit Man, telling ourselves "this can still work", when everyday chaos demonstrates exactly otherwise. Another Rorschach, but impersonal, therefore, in Moore's mind (and I daresay The Reader's) justified.
WATCHMEN as a comic series had myriad points to make. Many were lost on most fans. Some didn't receive them at all. Some of us reinterpreted them in our own image. That's the nature of any literature. WATCHMEN as film? Disaster. Oh, the same effect rendered, I'm sure...but, four-color fans, for all their geekiness, possess a depth (by and large). Moviegoers, due to diversity of populace, cannot be painted with so broad a brush. In the end, the tutorial of the movie will fail...except for on whom it doesn't. Due to its very nature, WATCHMEN, my ultimate love in the world of the "comix", is toxic. Highly. Kudos to Moore for distancing himself. He has, by doing so, finally sent the right message.