I haven’t seen “The Watchmen”, but I’ve read it, so if you haven’t done either, spoilers.
I didn’t get to see “The Watchmen” when it opened, because I was traveling, so I have tickets to see it late tonight so you can have a proper review tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it, since it got such mixed reviews, which means that you really do have a chance to decide for yourself who’s crazy and who isn’t. But I have to say, there’s one indication that “Watchmen’s” bid for world domination might have run into a huge obstacle, which is that it’s being marketed as a straightforward superhero movie, and many people who watch it are bewildered and upset by it. For instance, Antigone at Punkassblog finds the movie incredibly upsetting, because she didn’t realize going in that it’s a send-up of superhero movies. And thus she makes the mistake of assuming we’re supposed to identify with the protagonists, which isn’t the worst assumption to make, since that’s true of 100% of superhero movies before this one, I’m sure. And if you watch the movie assuming that you’re supposed to be siding with Rorschach and the Comedian or even Dr. Manhattan, I suspect you will wonder what kind of topsy-turvy fucked up world the writers and producers of this story live in. That’s her reaction:
The movie seems to be pretty harsh on “liberals” as well, though I don’t necessarily know what that says about the politics of the creator. At best, they are seen as ineffective and weak, derided as “Intellectual eggheads” and at worst they are seen as a force to destroy society (we see a hippy mob protesting the masks, for one, which the Comedian gleefully starts shooting with tear gas.) Nixon doesn’t come off looking good, but he doesn’t really come off looking bad either…...
There is a lot of sexism in this movie. The Comedian is a way over the top example, but Rorschack seems pretty fond of calling all sexual women whores, and Dr. Manhattan breaks up with his long-time girlfriend because she aged.