the Watchmen

Watchmen.

A short review.

I love superheroes. ALways have. When I was a little girl I wore my Wonder woman undershirt and underwear every day. Mom had to take the shirt off me when I was asleep and wash it during the night.

I religiously watched 'Lois & Clark', even when it got really bad and cheesy. I watched Batman: The Animated Series cartoons and always went to see the summer blockbuster movies.

Apparently I am a DC kinda girl, since I started out with Wonder Woman, moved onto Superman in my teens, and have been a Batman fan since my early twenties. Now I'm becoming more interested in Nightwing (a.k.a. Dick Grayson, the first Robin) and I'm actually planning to start reading comic books.

Randy informs me this would officially make me the coolest wife on the planet. Apparently playing video games and reading comic books, among other things, rank pretty high on the cool list.

But, in any case, what prompted this post was seeing 'Watchmen' last night. I'd heard great things about the graphic novel and, as stated, love superhero movies. Plus, despite my initial fears I LOVED 300 and this is done by the same director, so I figured we should see it.

And it was ok. Story wise it's definitely dense and I understand the term 'unfilmable' that was given it. There were several times during the film I felt as things were flying over my head. But, the other thing, (and this is staying true to the original story), is that the Watchmen were not good people. Well, not all of them.

But in stark contrast to Superman/Clark Kent, who is goodness embodied and even Batman, who has his no guns/no kill rule, the Watchmen are gritty almost anti-heroes. True vigilantes who have taken the law into their own hands. Now, obviously, Rorschach and the Comedian take it too far and and certainly more the anti-hero than Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias and certainly more than Silk Spectre and Nite Owl, but the only character I really liked was Nite Owl. The rest had such character flaws that, to a certain extent, I agreed with Nixon (ah!) that they should be stopped.

BTW - the names and costumes for the watchmen were lame. Nite Owl? Seriously? Silk Spectre? the Comedian? and some of the original Minutemen names were goofy as well. Now, I know that 'Batman', Green Lantern, Red Hood, Nightwing, etc. aren't exactly the coolest names, but they were just kinda of lame ideas for heroes. Which, from the limited research I've done since seeing the movie last night, sort of is backed up.

These people became heroes because the criminals started wearing masks, so they figured they might as well, too, to even the playing field. It's an interesting take, since, other than Dr. Manhattan, none of them are metas (have special powers). However, the reason Batman continues to be my favorite superhero is that he doesn't have any powers.

I mean, the man is invited to joint he Justice League without powers. With Superman and Wonder Woman he basically runs it. How awesome is that? Seriously.

So, besides that, the movie was, at times, a little too graphic for my tastes. Although I do still consider '300' war porn, the violence was strictly historical and fantasy. This film is much more gritty and uses modern-weapons, like guns, knives, etc. And it has violence against women and children, which I never do well with.

All in all, I'm glad I saw it, but I'll stick with the caped crusader and the rest of the Bat family, occasionally straying back to original superhero...Superman.

I dig blue tights.