The Watchmen-Coming Soon To A Theater Just A Little Too Close For Comfort

Back sometime during the 1980’s, DC Comics purchased from Charlton Comics the rights to a string of superhero characters formerly featured in the Mighty Comics/Radio Comics line, after yet another failed attempt to make a success of publications featuring the characters in the Archie Adventure Series division.

Alan Moore, a successful and innovative writer, submitted a story idea that utilized these characters for a proposed limited edition series. The editorial department approved the project, but then convinced Moore to develop his own original characters for the series. After all, they had paid a high price for the rights to the Charlton characters, and didn’t want to waste what potential they might have. This was back in the day when most publishers followed the formula “once a character is dead, he stays dead”. Of course, if a way could be devised that made it possible to explain a character’s seeming return from the dead, they would relax this policy, but in this particular case, there was no possibility of any such explanation which would be acceptable-even, or maybe especially, in the DC universe of comics characters.

Using the old Chalton characters as guidelines and inspiration, he developed the characters of The Comedian, Doctor Manhattan, Silk Specter, Night Owl, Ozymandias, and Rorschach. These, however, were more than just knock-off cheap imitations of what others might say were, for the most part, cheap knock-off imitations. The concept behind these characters, and the story of The Watchmen, set the comic book world on fire and established a whole new genre of dark, brooding, angst-ridden, misogynistic, and even nihilistic characters guided not by the principles of fairness, justice, and the American way, but by might makes right and the ends justifies the means.

Now, after two decades of failed attempts and projects stalled for a variety of reasons, including an ultimately successful lawsuit filed by Fox Studios against Warner Brothers, The Watchmen is due for cinematic release in March of this year. The hype behind this project though has befuddled the mass of theatergoers who see the trailers for the film. The hype of course is perhaps understandable, but the marketing has ventured into the realm of the inexplicable and the bizarre. In addition to the action figures, there is Night Owl Coffee, already hailed as a potential future collector’s item. There are Rorschach ski masks. And that's not all.

Not only does Doctor Manhattan have his own lunch box, but since the blue-skinned character appears in the movie fully nude he also has, of all things, his own blue condom

Though these blue Watchmen Condoms will doubtless prove to be collectors items also, please be advised-condoms for your average geek comic book fan, of course, will by necessity come in three sizes-

Small, extra small, and “What the fuck do you need me for?”

There are those who are not enthralled with the project, precisely to a great extent because of this crass commercialization. Among these you can include Alan Moore himself the writer of the original series, a long haired and bearded writer who claims to worship an ancient Roman snake god, and who in fact cursed the project. He refuses to work for DC comics any longer, or for Marvel, over what he feels is the over-commercialized aspects of the comics business of today. He claims that they exist now solely to provide storyboards for Hollywood, which he feels has ruined the comics industry.

There are also those who feel the series is suited more for development as a television mini-series than as a feature film. Frankly, I disagree with this. The movie is basically somewhere in the neighborhood of two and a half hours long, which should be somewhere around the time it would take to read all twelve comics which comprise the original limited series that was first published during the period of 1986-1987.

Others claim the story has a hidden leftist agenda, but I tend to think that is a lot of bunk, or at least is greatly exaggerated. Had DC published the series during the Carter, Johnson, Clinton-or Obama-years, it would doubtless have played up to and against the political, economic, and social situations relevant to the time in question. The point, at least the major point, to the series was an aim toward what the author felt was relevance and, perhaps more importantly, realism. It was about the reality that he saw as the underbelly and even the sewer of humanity. In this world, man’s higher aspirations were not so much denied, as rendered irrelevant to the overall scheme of things, a pretentious facade that held out a false hope of salvation and worth.

What could possibly motivate a hero to fight for the likes of this? There had to be a motivation that went beyond the long-held standard clichés. Otherwise, it amounted to nothing but regurgitated fairy tales and myths told for purposes of restraint of mankind’s darkest, deepest urges. It would be one thing to tell such stories for such purposes. In the universe of the superhero, however, it would be something else again to live that story. The motivation could not be satisfactorily explained as an aspiration to nobility. After so long, the idealism would wear thin, and ultimately wear off, and the hero could only continue if powered by other darker, more sinister inner drives. This then is the world of The Watchmen.

It was a world of an alternate universe, in which the presence of costumed superheroes had changed the landscape of history in significant ways. Yet, it is a dark world, and these are dark heroes, if you can even call them heroes. Their strength is that of brutal force and courage, but they are plagued with weakness and, to a degree, contempt for the humanity that they do not serve and defend for altruistic reasons so much as aid for their own self-interest, the exercise of power and ego fulfillment. They are in fact disliked, even hated, by the average person. They are free moral agents with few admirable personal qualities, and many flaws and weaknesses. The Comedian was a rapist and murderer who in this parallel universe was actually the true assassin of President Kennedy. Doctor Manhattan, though he does not act in a criminal or even an unethical manner, is nevertheless more of a soulless monster and misanthrope with no emotional attachment to anything living. Yet, his drive to learn and understand the humanity that he left behind emotionally, long before he ever temporarily does so physically, is reflected in his relationship with the Silk Specter, who, in his absence, begins a new relationship with Night Owl, a middle-aged, overweight, impotent tech wizard. The Silk Specter learns that she is actually the daughter of The Comedian, who at one time attempted to rape her mother, the original Silk Specter.

Rorschach, though a hero who fights ostensibly on the side of good, is a psychopathic brute and cold-blooded killer to whom no limitations applies in his quest to find the answers he seeks. It will be this same unrelenting determination that will ultimately prove his undoing.

Ozymandias, a high-powered business executive in real life, is a megalomaniac to whom human life is dispensable in his drive to achieve the ultimate goal of victory over, ironically, an even greater evil, a force whose existence makes even the sacrifice of millions of innocent lives inconsequential. It is easy for him to make that choice, for as he sees it, that force is humanity itself.

The story itself was so compelling, so gripping, that it changed the face of the comics business forever. It is unlikely to have that effect on the movie business, aside possibly from future superhero films. It might be a sleeper hit, possibly in time considered a cult classic. It will undoubtedly recoup its investment. It might even be a major hit. Undoubtedly, many of the myriads of comics fans will be pleased, though maybe a great many of them will not be. Judging from the reactions of many who attended the latest ComicCon, and who viewed the first seventeen minutes of the film along with other selected highlights, it seems promising.

The question becomes, will it move the bar and expand the superhero movie franchise beyond the current niche market. Only time will tell. My feeling is that it might well be a victim of its own hype as much as the Watchmen become the victims of their own all too human weaknesses. Changing the comics publishing industry is one thing. Changing the superhero movie franchise is a different matter, as there are certain forces at work there which are not so easily transformed. Even under the best of circumstances, it is still, after all, a niche market. This role of the dice might well expand that market. It’s a worthwhile gamble, and if it succeeds, it would encourage other similar projects and experimentation. Of course, there would be consequences in the form of considerable controversy far above and beyond what might be experienced by the comics industry.

There are those of us who like our heroes to be something we ourselves can never hope to be-role models for our children, not so much perfect as aiming towards the perfection most of us have long ago realized was far beyond human capacity. Many of us will decide that The Watchmen is a movie we should not take our children to see. Beyond the fantasy elements, it is far too much like the real world. It is a little too much like ourselves.

That may be too much reality to cram into a two-and-a-half hour film.