FORWARD (2026):
Once in a blue moon I am stricken with the literary bug and do a deep dive into a failed I absolutely LOVE. It all started in college when my sadistic English teacher (who turned out wasn’t sadistic but actually a GREAT TEACHER) had us write a 10-page FINAL on any subject/poem of our choosing, and lemme tell you….It.Was.GRUELING! ….but the silver lining she always mentioned while preparing it was that “Yeah this sucks, but I guarantee anytime you need to write a 5-6 page paper it will be a BREEZE”.
And you know what…..SHE WAS RIGHT (big shocker there). So every so often when inspiration strikes I do an essay on a favorite of mine. The very first one I ever did weas for HOTFUZZ by Edgar Wright (and if I ever find it I’ll make sure to post it on a throwback thursday). Needless to say there have been a few others over the years, but not too too many.
I think I’ve done a total or 4 or 5 for the sake of passion of topic but uh…..yeah…. BELOW you will find my ESSAY on the ZACK SNYDER film ‘WATCHMEN’ which I think is one of his best works. This article is from *checks notes* 2014, so my writing isn’t as….uh….how can I say this nicely….REFINED. But i’m leaving it unaltered
THE ESSAY (2014):
The whole movie hits the ground running with a murder Mystery–the sudden-death of former watchmen, ‘The Comedian’. Years after masks (the name given to heroes, villains and the like) were outlawed by a 3rd term President Nixon (Watchmen exists in an alternate timeline from our own. One where we won the Vietnam war, because of Dr. Manhattan!) somebody from his past (shown as a shadowy figure) shows up and after a brief struggle puts Eddie Blake (his real name) through his glass window of his high rise New York apartment. Rorschach, who never retired despite being on the F.B.I’s most wanted list shows up to investigate the crime and inadvertently discovers who Eddie Blake was.
From there he proceeds to warm every member of his former team as a vast and insidious concpiracy is uncovered investigating The comedian’s death. The fillm does a great job jumping back and forth between past and present tense, As we see the comedian’s funeral progression and his final resting place we begin to get the back stories of the other ‘Watchmen’ and from there we see their glory days unfold and come to an end. Ultimately the band gets back together to bust-out a framed and imprisoned (so as to remove him from the ever-unraveling puzzle) Rorschach.
The übermensch is born!
Here’s a rough backstory of the only actual ‘Super-hero’ in Watchmen (taken from the Watchmen wikia ):
Doctor Jonathan Osterman (born August 14, 1929), a.k.a. Doctor Manhattan is a main character in Watchmen.Due to an accident involving a nuclear physics experiment, Dr. Osterman was taken outside the physical realm and returned with god-like powers, including superhuman strength, telekinesis, the ability to teleport himself or others over planetary, and interplanetary distances, control over matter at a subatomic level, near total clairvoyance.
Furthermore, he perceives the past, present and future as happening simultaneously, but at least believes that he cannot act on that knowledge since his own actions and reactions to chronological events are apparently predetermined.While his military backers market him as a superhero, he grows increasingly disinterested in human affairs, despite his importance in the Cold War, and is unable to connect with others (especially his love interest Laurie, the second Silk Spectre). Like most characters in Watchmen, Manhattan appears to have a personality disorder, in his case, Schizoid personality disorder which is characterized by reclusiveness and voluntary withdrawal from socializing to the detriment of personal relationships.
It was alluded to, in the movie at least (it’s been a while since I’ve read the graphic novel so it could’ve been mentioned in there but I’m not sure off-hand. Likely not though because the endings are DRASTICALLY different) it is implied that the creation of ‘Doctor Manhattan’ was the reason why the Soviet Union began to stockpile nuclear warheads and inadvertently start the Cold War. He is a walking nuclear deterrent but he is also a valuable tool/ally/weapon for whomever his allies were and a nice totem of fear to his enemies. I mean c’mon…… the man ended the Vietnam War in a day….A freakin’ DAY…
His role in the movie signifies, to me, the overall reality of obtaining more human than human status…..you literally detach from what ‘it means’ (in whatever capacity or philosopical explanation that means) to be human…… ultimately defeating the point. Humanity is fragile and godhood is absolute. The tragedy of this contradiction is the more human than human you become, ultimately the less human you are overall. A sad and sick joke on par with the cosmic indifference of the WATCHMEN universe But I digress…..
BRIEF HISTORY LESSON: The MINUTEMEN
2026 EDIT: One thing I find super refreshing about the WATCHMEN HBO series was the fact we got A LOT of new canon Fleshed out for the Minutemen and specifially ‘Hooded Justice’ whihc was super hype. The TV show also decided to go with the GIANT SQUID ending in the comics instead of the cold war overtones of the Movie, which was a risky and ballsy choice considering how cheezy it translates from the written medium to the film. Overall I LOVE LOVE LOVE it though (not many did I guess). ANYWAYS………. BACK TO IT, this was just an insert
In the Watchmen universe ‘masks’ started popping up in response to bank robbers and rising crime rates that normal police works couldn’t wouldn’t or flat-out didn’t pursue. So normal citizens stepped up, and suited up to combat crime, foil petty thefts, and work to protect the general populous. The coalition known as the ‘Minute Men’ were formed. Consisting of These were your typical Captain America era superheroes, the do-gooders.
They didn’t go looking for trouble but they stopped it if they encountered it. They weren’t a policing force per-se but the were a defensive arm to the general public. They weren’t in it for the fame or the fortune, they were in it for the ideals and altruism on anonymous justice.
Then the next generation of heroes came in, the ‘rock star’ generation of super heroes.
I call them rockstars because they are a different breed of hero, if you’d like to call them that. Don’t get me wrong, I love these guys (they’re great, and dynamic and their archs are all compelling) but they aren’t heroes by definition. I would classify this crew as a more police force. They had tech and gadgets and weapons and no accountability or responsibility.
I mean they were there to protect and they did so with good intention but they all had way too much power at their disposal with little oversight (with the exception of Dr. Manhattan and the Comedian. They were agents working with the U.S. government. So their involvement may have had an ulterior motive). Their intentions were to protect and punish but it was at their whim and will. Rorschach is the most convicted ‘hero’ in terms of ideals but he is a glorified sociopath. Silk Spector is doing it to impress her mom, Comedian is a very Nietzschean hero in terms of morality and justice. But their function was simple, protect society, that is until society outlawed them.
I find it to the contrary of how we view authority. They had masks and wanted police while we have police and some people hold true to a notion of vigilante justice. Could it be that no matter the outcome society will never ‘like’ the finger that points? In a similar manner outlaws are sometimes forged out of necessity because of an abuse of power. People tend to forget that the bad guys (the outlaw cowboy/bandits) in the movie Tombstone were formed because of police corruption and a lack to clean up the system from within.
Much in the same way that masks rose up in this universe to fill a need that established law and order couldn’t fill only to have that very same law and order come to reclaim balance when the power of public opinion shifted paradigms. Are humans always going to be beget by a savage nature despite our tailored and escalated efforts to evolve to purge that savage nature? Are we doomed to repeat a vicious cycle? Yes and No..
THEN ALONG COMES A SPIDER:
Ozymandias.. The supposed ‘smartest man’ in the world. He is also strongly convicted by his ideals and blinded by his quest for peace so much so that he adapts the philosophy “The end justifies the means” and embodies it. His answer to stop the cold war is to trick humanity into united to save itself from itself. In the novel he creates a giant monster that the world has to unite in order to stop.
In the movie he frames Dr. Manhattan and detonates bombs in a few key cities across the globe to trick the world into uniting against a common foe. He is revealed to be the films antagonist although in some way it could be argued he isn’t a villain at all. He used the A-bomb theory of “killing millions to save billions” and if confronted with the same problem with the same knowledge and the same resources I couldn’t honestly say I’d make a different call.
He saves humanity and ensures peace with the biggest mass murder and cover-up of all time (according to that universe) so essentially he is Hitler and Truman both at once. Remember Hitler wanted to created a one world peace too…..albeit a Nazi/Aryan one. So did all the great conquerors. The saying goes “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”
Rorschach’s thirst for justice and his tenacious quest for the truth become his undoing. Once he discovers the puppeteer perpetuation this progressive and political agenda he has no choice but to expose it. Here we have a moral dilemma, a Batman and Joker impasse. You have the clashing of ideals and no oversight to decide the outcome, only a democratic committee (which ultimately weighs the options and decides the lesser of the two evils would be to let the world think Manhattan committed mass genocide so as to usher in a manipulated world peace) acting in the best interest but not in the interests of truth, freedom and justice.
It is a choice that ultimately costs Rorschach his life because as he constantly mentions he will not compromise, “Not even in the face of Armageddon.” Again, in a dual nature you have a character who is arguably the most psychotic also be the most noble and altruistic. His stem for justice and righteousness comes from his extremely broken and troubled childhood, something people of today can relate too.
I just want to do the Right thing: Nite Owl II
The story of Nite Owl I’d like to compare to Hank Pym. He is a tech-guy who has a lot of money with the desire to do good. He often is the voice of reason and uses his smarts to dominate. The original Nite Owl passed the mantle onto this guy: Daniel Dreiberg. He is almost a Batman kind of hero who employs theatrics combined with martial arts and everything is around his Owl theme obviously. He, at least to me, signifies the everyman-hero.
He is a legitimate do-gooder and come to think of it I can’t recall any of his short-comings. Other than having his wide-eyed idealisms shattered throughout the narrative. The Riot scene where the Comedian is assaulting protestors visually troulbles him and comedian simply replies to this with the ever so truthful “We’re societies only protection….from itself” a dangerous ideal for a figure of authority. Does wearing a mask make you good because you’re on the ‘right team’?
The only thing that strikes me as I write this is that he is kind of a pussy when it comes to social situations and his romantic feelings for the Silk Spectre (well her daughter, Aka Silk Spectre II). He retired after the Keene act past and acted as a leader for the group. In the film, in my opinion, he is the central focus of the story and by that I mean that you’re suppose to learn as his character learns things. When the final moral question is asked he is meant to be a stand in for you.
What would you do in his position? He decided for peace but was uneasy about it and definitely against Rorschach murder (I say murder, because it was indeed in cold blood).
Reasons why I love This story:
-The moral and ethical dilemas
-The seemingly realistic approach and character study of the modern ‘hero’. It critiques the mythos of the hero with poignance
-It shows societie’s champions behind the mask. It is more a movie about heroes than a superhero movie.
-The Noir aspect of the whole narrative
-The fact that it acts as a cautionary tale and an example of the imperfections of society. We like to build paradise then populate it with horrors, and maybe we are the problem and solution all at once
REVIEW CONCLUSIONS:
Story…… 10/10
Dialogue….. 10/10
Content/Themes/Under and overtones….. 45/10
(In the film’s case) Cinematography…… 45/10 (They did an immaculate job translating the mediums)
Re-WATCHability (no-pun intended)…… 10/10
Overall rating………. 10/10
