SPOILERS for Watchmen
Mar. 8th, 2009 11:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flamingswordThe Watchmen movie was spectacularly well done, the few updates were brilliantly handled, and whether or not you have read the comic (which you should), you should see the movie. It's got me thinky.
* Making Manhattan the fall guy was genius. It cut down side issues that would have slowed the film down, and added another dimension to the story for the post-cold-war generation. I am just barely old enough to remember the Afghanistan invasion and how angry, tense, and frightened everyone was. But mixed in with that, in retrospect was also some guilt. We made the enemies, made them afraid enough to make the bombs, we taunted them into making a military display out of Afghanistan. Arrogant in our assumed superiority, we chose to be the target for the nuclear age we lead the world into. Framing Dr. Manhattan for that was a clever metaphor for how the world felt: our cold war had come to bite us in the ass.
* It never occurred to me when this was a comic, but this story is "Batman vs. Superman: Deconstructed Antiheroes for the Millennium". Moore split Batman and Superman into pieces and made all the pieces fight it out for control of the fate of the world. Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian are the halves of Superman: the untouchable powerhouse and the obnoxious propagandist of all things American. Rorshach and Nite Owl are Batman, but so is Ozymandias. The detective-inventor with his geekery and the traumatized boy with his rage are both familiar Batmans to us, but the calculating playboy-businessman is another face we know less well. It still has power to be used though, and the Batman does not waste power.
Alan Moore took the disconnection that any real superman would have from his fellow human beings and magnified it to make it more visible. He took the bright, primary colors and made the classless champion of right-wing values a parody of himself, comedic in the intensity to which we did not know we could dislike our hero. Moore took apart the aspects of our idols and used them to show us the extremes to which dogmatism could lead us, that if you follow any ideal too far it will break down. (But Batman still wins, biznatch! \o/)
* Zack Snyder GETS IT. The tone, the set-ups, the visual and verbal puns, the metaphors and the realism of Moore's dystopia. Everything that touched me in that story, took me outside of myself and changed me, showed me a different screwed-up world THAT STILL HAD PEOPLE LIKE ME IN IT: it was all still there. He didn't fuck it up, and I am so goddamned grateful for that I can not even articulate.
* I want a Bubastis-kitty. (I am allowed to be pointless, okay? I can't say intelligent things ALL the time, it gets boring.)
* Making Manhattan the fall guy was genius. It cut down side issues that would have slowed the film down, and added another dimension to the story for the post-cold-war generation. I am just barely old enough to remember the Afghanistan invasion and how angry, tense, and frightened everyone was. But mixed in with that, in retrospect was also some guilt. We made the enemies, made them afraid enough to make the bombs, we taunted them into making a military display out of Afghanistan. Arrogant in our assumed superiority, we chose to be the target for the nuclear age we lead the world into. Framing Dr. Manhattan for that was a clever metaphor for how the world felt: our cold war had come to bite us in the ass.
* It never occurred to me when this was a comic, but this story is "Batman vs. Superman: Deconstructed Antiheroes for the Millennium". Moore split Batman and Superman into pieces and made all the pieces fight it out for control of the fate of the world. Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian are the halves of Superman: the untouchable powerhouse and the obnoxious propagandist of all things American. Rorshach and Nite Owl are Batman, but so is Ozymandias. The detective-inventor with his geekery and the traumatized boy with his rage are both familiar Batmans to us, but the calculating playboy-businessman is another face we know less well. It still has power to be used though, and the Batman does not waste power.
Alan Moore took the disconnection that any real superman would have from his fellow human beings and magnified it to make it more visible. He took the bright, primary colors and made the classless champion of right-wing values a parody of himself, comedic in the intensity to which we did not know we could dislike our hero. Moore took apart the aspects of our idols and used them to show us the extremes to which dogmatism could lead us, that if you follow any ideal too far it will break down. (But Batman still wins, biznatch! \o/)
* Zack Snyder GETS IT. The tone, the set-ups, the visual and verbal puns, the metaphors and the realism of Moore's dystopia. Everything that touched me in that story, took me outside of myself and changed me, showed me a different screwed-up world THAT STILL HAD PEOPLE LIKE ME IN IT: it was all still there. He didn't fuck it up, and I am so goddamned grateful for that I can not even articulate.
* I want a Bubastis-kitty. (I am allowed to be pointless, okay? I can't say intelligent things ALL the time, it gets boring.)
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 05:45 am (UTC)How to Stop Worrying and Love the CGIDong
Date: 2009-03-09 06:59 am (UTC)I was disappointed by the casting in the Second Silk Spectre & to a lesser extent Ozymandias. I did really appreciate how the sex scenes were done, and the fetishing of the costumes by Nite Owl & S^3.
Did you see my facebook link where Reason has an Objectivist trying to claim Rorschach as an Objectivist hero? It was hilarious.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 09:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-09 04:16 pm (UTC)