Watchmen

Watchmen (2009). Director: Zack Snyder

Despite being millenniums old, stories from Greek mythology still intrigue many of us today. What makes those stories so fascinating is perhaps not what the Gods of Olympus are capable of, but the fact that those Gods, just like us, are troubled by the same emotions and desires as ours. Millenniums after the birth of Greek mythology, we now have created stories of characters, which we call superheroes. Our superheroes in most cases are simply humans with uncanny powers or physical prowess. With their identities not being God, creators of superhero stories perhaps have more freedom in taking advantage of human weaknesses for the sake of character development, more so than those who write stories of Gods. Much like what makes Greek mythology so fascinating, the best superheroes or superhero stories in my opinion are those that not only bring satisfaction for our wishes of having super powers but also ground their superheroes with the multitude of humanity.

And that is exactly what makes Watchmen my favorite superhero movie: the inner struggle of superheroes. The Watchmen is a group of vigilantes that take care of sorts of nasty problems work under the employment of the US government. When the story begins, there are six of them. Except for one member, Watchmen are just ordinary people with superb physical prowess; none of them really possesses any kind of superpower. After being forced to retire and return to their civilian lives, some of them have drawn the meaning of life so heavily drawn from being vigilantes that life after retirement has become an issue. One Watchman, Nite Owl, visits the previous Nite Owl every week and listens to the same old stories that his predecessor repeats. This perhaps can be seen as a manifestation of the Nite Owl camaraderie, but I think that also represents the only way that Nite Owl can anchor his bland civilian life to his former vigilante one. However, in one occasion Nite Owl finds himself unable to perform sexually if not in his vigilante outfit, which I think is a brilliant revelation of Nite Owl’s identity crisis. Another Watchman, Rorschach, deals with the same issue by refusing to accept his new civilian identity. After so many years of being Rorschach, he has regarded this vigilante role as his true identity; he sees his civilian form the disguise, his civilian outfit the costume. A different, more extreme way of dealing with the same identity issue, but equally brilliant.

And there’s Silk Spectre, who succeeds the identity from her mother. Although the struggle of Silk Spectre is not as thoroughly depicted in the movie as Nite Owl and Rorschach, we can still clearly see that the young Silk Spectre has lived under the shadow of her own mother as the predecessor. In fact, it is out of utter selfishness that Silk Spectre’s mother wants her to be the successor. A very interesting issue. I only hope that there’s more to it in the original comic. The most interesting character, in my opinion, is Doctor Manhattan, a government-hired scientist who is transformed into a supernatural being after an accident. Doctor Manhattan is the only true superhero among all Watchmen, as he transcends time and space and all limits of physical law. Doctor Manhattan is probably as close to a true God as any superhero can be. Interestingly, this character is intriguing because of his lack of human emotions. The immense power and immortality makes everything in the human world transient and therefore insignificant to Doctor Manhattan. Although he has no hostility toward the earth, he gradually stops caring about everything in his former world and removes himself from it. The indifference that grows in Doctor Manhattan is a great psychological twist that I admire the creators of Watchmen for. To put it in Spiderman terms, it is greater aloofness that comes with greater power, the exact opposite of greater responsibility. 

In addition to the non-cliche characters, the plot itself has a political bearing that is dark and thought inspiring. It describes the change of the public idea about the existence of government-employed vigilante, from reliance when the society is in chaos to mistrust, even resentment and fear when the world has become more peaceful. The mistrust and fear toward superheroes is something that’s unique in this movie. We’ve seen similar plots in many other superhero movies, such as the X-Men series. Watchmen sets itself apart from movies that have such plot lines in that it handles it with a kind of dark realism when we see former Watchmen being eliminated, either by the public they used to protect or by the government they used to work for. Unlike most movies of this genre, where superheroes fight villains, Watchmen fight under a looming sense of insecurity, while at the same time battling with their own issues as persons. There may have never been more fragile superheroes, but there may also have never been superheroes with such depth of characters that originates from the creators’ wonderful grasp of humanity.