'Watchmen' triumphs on silver screen
Samantha House
Issue date: 3/13/09 Section: Features
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In the midst of an arms race and the Cold War, is the world inevitably doomed?
If you happen to be a masked hero, it's not.
The Watchmen, directed by Zach Snyder, tells the story of several powerless masked heroes, and a single one with powers, who stare down an advancing human expiration date and decide to push it into the future.
If the above sounds like a photocopy of every generic superhero movie Hollywood proclaims original, breathe easy. The Watchmen deviates from the usual hero formula.
The movie is heavily based on Alan Moore's 1987 cult-favorite graphic novel, The Watchmen, illustrated and lettered by Dave Gibbons.
In short, The Watchmen concerns the lives of heroes who, more or less, reflect an average human's life. It breaks away from the usual standard of a vigilante with all the power and luck of Superman, showing their problems, struggles and, sometimes, their destruction.
The opening credits punch the senses. Snyder gives a brief history lesson of the birth of the society of The Minutemen, the first group of masked vigilantes.
The muscled, usually nude, blue Dr. Manhattan, previously named Jon Osterman, is shown shaking hands with former President John F. Kennedy. Later, the Comedian, also known as Edward Blake, quietly assassinates JFK without detection. Silk Spectre, alias Sally Jupiter, is the pin-up girl painted on fighter planes.
As time yawns on, most of the original Minutemen either retire or get murdered. However, young citizens, inspired by the original vigilantes, decide to follow in their footsteps by donning a mask and fighting crime.
After a public outcry demeans the heroes, "Tricky Dick" Nixon, in the midst of his third presidential term, convinces Congress to pass the Keene Act, rendering the Watchmen's masked existence illegal.
The Watchmen's history mirrors the Minutemens', forcing the new heroes into retirement or serious concealment. That is, until the Comedian is thrown around his apartment like a rag doll and through his glass window to a blood-splattered death.
Rorschach, a hero who feels his mask is his true face, catches on to what he assumes to be a plot to kill the remaining Watchmen and destroy the world, leaving him and the rest of the characters to discover the masked murderer and attempt to pull the earth away from nuclear destruction.
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