Who watches the Watchmen? Me!
Mar. 23rd, 2009 10:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
annathepiperSaturday afternoon, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
solarbird, spazzkat, and I went out for an afternoon matinee of Watchmen... and now I know, decades after the actual graphic novel came out, what it's actually all about.
I remember when the graphic novel came out, of course; I remember that my and Dara's housemate in Kentucky,amethyst_dancer, had a copy. But I never read it that I recall. And though Paul does have a copy in the house now, I specifically avoided reading i just because I wanted to go into the movie without any preconceptions of what to expect.
So I got a fairly clean impression, over all. It is therefore a bit of a shame that my first gut reaction to the whole story was "geez, I don't like any of these people." More rationally, I suppose that that's part of the whole point of the story--i.e., to show us some superheroes with very real human frailties and flaws. But in some respects the story takes this goal too far for my own enjoyment. I really loathed the Comedian, and in particular the part of his backstory involving what happened between him and Silk Specter I. That was a big kick in the gut of my ability to really get into the story.
On the other hand, Doctor Manhattan as the only genuinely superpowered being in the cast was pretty awesome, and I did like how the world in general reacted to him, and how he was asked to intervene in Vietnam in this timeline. His increasing emotional detachment from humanity played pretty true for me. Also: Rorschach? Pure looney tunes. But his signature line in the prison was perfect. And I got quite a bit of amusement out of finding out that Rorschach was modeled quite a bit on the Question--who I'd always liked in the animated Justice League cartoon. For bonus fun, I read further that the specific version of the Question in said cartoon took quite a bit of inspiration from Rorschach in the Watchmen graphic novel, too.
And, I gotta say, I really liked how the big climax dealt with the twist on the traditional Villain Soliloquy. Ozymandias really was the smartest guy on the planet. ;)
All in all not a bad watch. I still don't particularly like any of these characters, but I do rather get now what role the Watchmen played in the superhero genre when they first appeared. Picking up on that, even this late to the game, was a win.
solarbird, spazzkat, and I went out for an afternoon matinee of Watchmen... and now I know, decades after the actual graphic novel came out, what it's actually all about.I remember when the graphic novel came out, of course; I remember that my and Dara's housemate in Kentucky,
amethyst_dancer, had a copy. But I never read it that I recall. And though Paul does have a copy in the house now, I specifically avoided reading i just because I wanted to go into the movie without any preconceptions of what to expect.So I got a fairly clean impression, over all. It is therefore a bit of a shame that my first gut reaction to the whole story was "geez, I don't like any of these people." More rationally, I suppose that that's part of the whole point of the story--i.e., to show us some superheroes with very real human frailties and flaws. But in some respects the story takes this goal too far for my own enjoyment. I really loathed the Comedian, and in particular the part of his backstory involving what happened between him and Silk Specter I. That was a big kick in the gut of my ability to really get into the story.
On the other hand, Doctor Manhattan as the only genuinely superpowered being in the cast was pretty awesome, and I did like how the world in general reacted to him, and how he was asked to intervene in Vietnam in this timeline. His increasing emotional detachment from humanity played pretty true for me. Also: Rorschach? Pure looney tunes. But his signature line in the prison was perfect. And I got quite a bit of amusement out of finding out that Rorschach was modeled quite a bit on the Question--who I'd always liked in the animated Justice League cartoon. For bonus fun, I read further that the specific version of the Question in said cartoon took quite a bit of inspiration from Rorschach in the Watchmen graphic novel, too.
And, I gotta say, I really liked how the big climax dealt with the twist on the traditional Villain Soliloquy. Ozymandias really was the smartest guy on the planet. ;)
All in all not a bad watch. I still don't particularly like any of these characters, but I do rather get now what role the Watchmen played in the superhero genre when they first appeared. Picking up on that, even this late to the game, was a win.