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manifestomindset · 7 years

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Who watched the Watchmen? I did. And it sucked.

So I finally got around to viewing Zack Snyder’s 2009 film adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ 1986 graphic novel Watchmen. His, his proudest achievement. The movie who’s title is uttered in confidence to anyone who dares question or critique the artistic merit, intelligence or worth of film auteur Zachary Edward “No, Batman [Begins]’s cool. He gets to go to a Tibetan monastery and be trained by ninjas. Okay? I want to do that. But he doesn’t, like, get raped in prison. That could happen in my movie. If you want to talk about dark, that’s how that would go.” Snyder. The much lauded adaptation of the so-called “Unfilmable comic”. How does it fare you ask?

It’s a fucking embarrassment.

Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, is like....having an edgy teenager attempt a shitty recreation of the Mona Lisa in MS Paint and then calling that a proper adaptation. It’s like having the Chainsmokers do a cover of a Beatles song. Watchmen is nothing more than a self-congratulatory hollow shell of it’s source material with a severe lack of self awareness and understanding of Moore and Gibbons’ work.

From the opening fight scene between Ozymandias (a poorly casted Matthew Goode, who’s poor American accent turns Ozzie’s already forced monologues into distracting rants) and The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), to the modified ending, it is abundantly clear that not only does Snyder completely miss the point of the original graphic novel, but yes, Alan Moore was right, Watchmen was not meant to be adapted into a film (more on that later).

Unlike the comic, which portrays violence in brief yet brutal moments of time suspended within comic panels that are drawn to highlight the mortality and limitations of the character’s within, Snyder almost fetishizes it, slowly panning the camera over the broken bones and gore, filling up every action scene with redundant slo-motion and speed up edits, ridiculous “whooshes” and deafening “thuds” (it’s important to note that the original comic omitted all sound effects that you would normally see in a standard cape-comic at the time), and exaggerating physical feats to the point of it being laughably cartoony, which is literally the exact opposite of what Moore and Gibbons were going for! Snyder and co. even go as far as using said cartoony sfx in Silk Spectre I’s rape scene which completely deflated any dramatic weight the scene would’ve had on the narrative ( “Just make it sound awesome,” Jenkins recalls of Snyder’s reply to his Day 1 question: How do you want the film to sound?). If the scene was executed without those sfx and filmed tastefully it might’ve you know, actually meant something but I guess that’s asking too much of Snyder. Keep in mind that Snyder thinks that scenes panning over a blood and skeleton-encrusted ceiling is him “restraining” himself, Jesus Christ.

It’s also important to note the awful soundtrack of this film. Literally every song used is so on the nose with what tone and reaction they’re trying to elicit from the audience I wouldn’t be surprised if Snyder came out and said that when he was a kid a classmate named “Subtlety” used to bully him. It’s the only explanation I can think of for the music choices, and really his entire directorial style. It almost feels like every track was used as a place-holder, like when planning the scenes out Snyder wrote “I want a song similar in tone to All Along the Watchtower when they’re walking up to Ozzie’s base”, but instead of finding a more subtle song to enhance the scene they just....went with the most obvious choice. And in many cases said song choices are incredibly distracting. Take for instance, the use of Hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and Jennifer Warnes during the NiteOwl, Silk Spectre sex scene, a scene that was supposed to show how much of NiteOwl’s masculinity and personal complications are tied to his superhero persona (and if you’re invested in his character, elicit a feeling of satisfaction when he finally gets that p u s s), but instead I just ended up laughing at how fucking stupid the juxtaposition was. A song like Hallelujah should only be used in a sex scene if it’s centered around a horny teenage nerd losing his virginity in a raunchy comedy, not a deconstruction of how masculinity ties in with a man’s alter ego. It’s the same with the use of Ride of the Valkyries when Dr. Manhattan is fighting in Vietnam, that shit’s been parodied so much overtime that using that in a sequence meant to show how powerful he is comes off as comedic.

A perfect example of a film using music to highlight tones and themes within a specific scene would be Goodfellas. That film has three album’s worth of music spread evenly throughout and it worked beautifully. Martin Scorsese used snippets of music (all of which were period specific too, none of the songs were released after whatever time period a scene is taking place in) to effectively highlight and enhance the mood of whatever’s going on in the scene, beautifully punctuating them, unlike Watchmen’s soundtrack, which does nothing beyond distracting the audience from what’s going on in a poor attempt at trying to manipulate an emotional response. Fuck like, I don’t even like the Guardians of the Galaxy movies but even I can admit that James Gunn was able to organically integrate the soundtrack into the plot of the movie and make it poignant.

Visually its a mess too. Part of what made Watchmen a touchstone of American comics is how well Dave Gibbons stitched it together and how it flows visually. The original graphic novel is brimming with numerous visual motifs and cues, alongside a beautifully realized world that effectively and subtly feeds the audience information about the setting and story without needing to verbally beat us over the head with it. The panel-to-panel flow that Gibbons used (in this case a 9-panel-per-page format inspired by Steve Ditko) could easily be translated to film but somehow Hack Snyder, Larry Fong and William Hoy couldn’t even get that right.

Let me reiterate: the director, cinematographer and editor of Watchmen collectively could not even take the visual flow of the comic---the element of the comic that is the easiest to adapt from one visual medium to another, and adapt it properly.

People who say that Snyder’s films are like “comics come to life” either have a poor understanding of comics, don’t know that Speed Racer fucking exists, or just think that empty, meaningless homages to comics that lack the context and meaning that made said comics work count as “coming to life”. Probably all fucking three.

It’s also interesting to note how poorly the film is designed overall. It’s almost as if the set designers, costume designers, cinematographer and director were all on different pages when making this film, which again, kinda proves Moore’s claim that the comic is “unfilmable”, given that Watchmen was largely the collaborative effort between three guys (five including the editors Len Wein and later Barbara Randall, whom Gibbons claims didn’t really effect the production of the comic beyond “traffic control”) whereas a feature film involves hundreds of people throughout it’s production cycle. The set designs were either uninspired or blatantly obvious (The Comedian’s apartment is so blatantly on the nose, filled to the brim with Silk Spectre iconography that really adds nothing to his character given that the film doesn’t comment or do anything with it), and it’s worth pointing out that the sets and costumes originally had the same bold color palette as the comic (another staple of Moore’s work is the retention of some of the more “traditional” aspects of whatever genre he’s riffing to add more dramatic weight when the character drama begins to unfold, in Watchmen’s case it was the goofy costume designs and bold colors of traditional cape-comics), but was later desaturated in post. Why the fuck have all of these designers go through all of this fucking trouble to stay accurate to John Higgins’ original coloring if you’re just gonna make everything fucking monochromatic.

I thought it was really neat that a bunch of veteran comic artists (Adam Hughes, David Finch and John Cassaday to name a few) contributed some of their own modern takes on Gibbons’ original designs, but Ryan Meinerding was the final concept artist and you know what that means: Needlessly complicated superhero costumes!!!!

Look, I love Meinerding’s artwork but ever since the end of Marvel’s Phase One all of his costume designs have been getting increasingly monochromatic and convoluted. Just look at his designs for Cap alone between The First Avenger and Iron Man 4: Age of Ultron and you’ll see what I mean. Here, his designs aren’t bad but in the cases of Silk Spectre, NiteOwl and Ozzie they’re so disconnected from the characters and the story.

The entire point of Dan Dreiburg’s character is that he’s an everyman schlub who’s heroism from within transcends his own self-loathing and fears and helps him move past his limitations. Dressing him up in a really cool, slick Batman costume and having him execute these powerful, cartooney action scenes robs him of the everymaness that his character is based upon.

Silk Spectre is, for some reason, covered in latex, (which doesn’t make any sense given that her costume was created in the 60′s and thus looks like something an aspiring legacy hero would adopt while staying truthful to the themes of sex appeal in her predecessor’s costume) and rather than use this clear difference to push her character forward (the primary conflict of Laurie Jupiter’s character is that she’s tired of living in a confusing world created by her mother and her contemporaries and is sick of just being an object her mother can vicariously live through) by having her name herself, I dunno, “The Latex Lady” or something in an attempt to distance herself from her mother its just there for....sex appeal I guess.

And then there’s Ozymandias’ costume, a much more Hellenistic take on the character that sports both molded body armour and an obvious parody of Joel Schumacher’s infamous “bat-nipples”. This misguided design undercuts the most important aspect of Ozzie’s character: the fact that yes, he’s the real deal. The entire comic (primarily through Rorshach’s personal thoughts towards him) builds Ozzie up to be somewhat of a charlatan. Something’s a bit suspicious about him but overall he seems to be nothing more than an incredibly successful business mogul with an amazing physique. Moore and Gibbons essentially constructed him to be the personification of what was the ideal form of masculinity in the 80′s, which in the cynical world that Watchmen builds meant that all of the nonsense about him being “the smartest man on the planet” who could “catch a bullet with his bare hands” was just hyperbole. The moment Ozzie actually fucking catches the bullet shot by Silk Spectre is the moment Moore and Gibbons solidify him as an antagonist bigger than anything the characters have faced before, and essentially one-ups Dr. Manhattan as this world’s only “real” superhero. When he’s clad in kevlar it removes the dramatic tension in being shot, thus undercutting his big character moment, and pasting nipples on his costume in an attempt to parody a movie that was already a decade too old (and that fans had essentially moved past with the release of Batman Begins and The Dark Knight) ended up being nothing beyond a stale joke.

And then there’s the modified ending. I have no problem when an adaptation of a source material changes details from said materiel to create a new story or allow said adaptation to stand on its own, so long as that change is at least well thought out and justified within the logic of the adaptation. Changing the ending so that instead of a really interesting, horrifying Lovecraftian/Cronenbergian squid destroying NYC to tricking Dr. Manhattan doing the same thing seems smart and ideal for a film at first.......until you realize that, in both the comic and the film, Manhattan agrees completely with what Ozzie has done, which begs the question as to why Ozzie had to go through so much trouble when he could’ve just asked Manhattan to destroy NYC for him. In the comic, Moore and Gibbons justify this by setting it up so that Manhattan would be both benign enough to just go along with American interests while at the same time be vulnerable enough to be controlled through a romantic interest. And from Ozzie’s perspective, it made sense to just create a threat from the ground up that’s sole purpose (down to the brainwaves it fucking emits) was to elicit fear and horror amongst the planet’s superpowers to unite and prevent any possibility of nuclear conflict, rather than use someone like Manhattan, who can actually be reasoned with. We, as a species, fear the unknown, and as powerful as Manhattan is, everyone in the world of Watchmen know everything about his life and his creation (which would subsequently lead to the eventual discovery of how to actually defeat him as Ozzie was able to do, briefly.)

(art by Nick Perks)

It also removes the most metatextual aspect of the original work. When it comes down to it, Watchmen is about a bunch of superheros attempting to stop a giant monster from destroying NYC. At it’s bare bones the story within Watchmen isn’t all that different from your average Silver Age Marvel or DC team book. Part of what made that story brilliant is that Moore and Gibbons gave that story weight and consequences. What if superheros actually existed in real life? How would that effect WWII and the Cold War? What would the world look like? What would motivate these superheros? How would the US government react? What kinds of villains would exist in this world? etc etc etc. Moore and Gibbons answered all of these questions and framed them around really well constructed parodies of Charleton Comics characters. That’s what makes Watchmen good, not it’s violence, or its sexual content, or how “gritty” and “serious” it is.

Speaking of Dr. Manhattan, I do not like Billy Cudrup’s performance of him at all. This isn’t Cudrup’s fault, Cudrup’s a great performer, its just that Snyder doesn’t know how to direct actors. We’re talking about a director who somehow made Henry Cavill, a man who oozes charisma, into a plank of fucking wood in both MoS and BvS. (Not so friendly reminder that Snyder honestly thinks that Superman, on a whim, can become as disconnected as Manhattan. If that doesn’t explain why Superman is such an inconsistent plank of wood in the DCEU or tell you how fucking ignorant he is towards both characters, I don’t know what will).

I understand that Manhattan is supposed to be subdued and disconnected from everyone and everything around him but would it’ve killed them to add some reverb to his voice or something? Cudrup, left aimless by an inept Snyder, has nothing to do but read out his lines like a fucking text-to-speech program. If I was blind I’d assume Dr. Manhattan is just a stuffy philosophy professor. Every scene with him is like the “Bueller.....Bueller.......Bueller....” scene from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, but instead of being funny it’s meant to be meaningful and deep, maaaaan.

This bland performance undermines Manhattan's “big scene” so to speak, when Manhattan is confronted with the possibility that he’s been giving everyone round him fucking cancer an is so distraught that he leaves the fucking planet. At this point in the comic the portrayal of Manhattan alongside the driving forces of the plot have us invested towards what’s going on, but since the movie chooses to make Manhattan boring as possible and truncates the plot significantly, we don’t fucking care. Instead of the scene coming off as a dramatic turn for the character that leaves you breathless in awe and anticipation, it just comes off as weird and sudden, especially with that hard cut to Manhattan on Mars.

Back to the subject of changing aspects of an adaptation from it’s source material, Watchmen also fails at fixing the problems of the original graphic novel. The best adaptations of a piece of work should be able to stand on their own from the respective source material and also learn and improve from said material’s mistakes. The Godfather is an often used example of an adaptation that transcends it’s source material not only by remaining largely faithful to it but at the same time greatly improving on the original novel’s faults. That’s not to say that Watchmen is as deeply flawed or as boring as Mario Puzo’s original Godfather, quite the opposite in fact, but my point is that every adaptation has a responsibility to improve on the mistakes of it’s predecessor. In Watchmen’s case, it’s the sexual assault of the first Silk Spectre by The Comedian.

Some of you may be asking “Wait, how is that a ‘mistake’?” The entire point of the assault in the novel was to help exemplify the paradoxes of human behavior (specifically Silk Spectre I forgiving and even going so far as loving The Comedian despite him sexually assaulting her) while also celebrating the miracle of human life (in this case Silk Spectre II, Laurie, being the result of their seemingly impossible relationship) which, in turn, restores Dr. Manhattan’s faith in humanity in the third act of the book when him and Laurie discover that she is in fact, the biological daughter of The Comedian, a man she learned to hate.

However, the question should be raised: Did Silk Spectre I need to be sexually assaulted for this specific plot point to work? I ask this because one of the many consistent problems with Alan Moore’s writing, from his run on Marvelman, to Lost Girls, is his very callous and flippant use of rape and violence against women as a plot point in his stories (“We know Alan Moore isn’t a misogynist but fuck, he’s obsessed with rape”-Grant Morrison). In Watchmen specifically, the whole Spectre-Comedian dynamic could’ve still worked without n explicit sexual assault, provided that another sufficient event occur between the two characters supplant the rape scene, and be polarizing enough to make the birth of a child between the two character’s nearly impossible. Again, the entire point of that sequence was to paint very complex portraits of The Comedian and Silk Spectre I, while also setting up Silk Spectre II’s birth to be seen as a miracle in Dr. Manhattan’s eyes enough for him to actually give a fuck about humanity.

I just find it appalling that a guy who fancies himself a proponent of “female empowerment” would look at this scene and instead of trying to come up with a better solution to Moore’s morbid fascination with rape in his stories, film it in the same fetishistic way the rest of the fucking action sequences in the film are shot. Who the fuck adds slo mo and cartoony whooshes to a rape scene.

Oh, Watchmen’s violence isn’t exclusively towards women either. Every queer person and POC within the novel is violently killed. The Silhouette, Hira Manish, Joey, little Bernie, and Dr. Malcolm Long all dead by the end of the novel, which is incredibly (ahem) problematic. What do Snyder and co. do to remedy this problem? Fucking nothing. Wait actually, they did do something; greatly mitigate or completely erase said characters’ significance within the narrative of the film.

Again, part of this stems from the narrative of Watchmen being greatly condensed to a feature-length film, as many of these characters are secondary and tertiary within the plot and where thus cut out to provide more focus to the main characters and their conflicts and backstories. That being the case, would it’ve killed WB and the casting department to maybe cast more people of color for the main cast? Literally none of the main characters absolutely needed to be White, all of their conflicts and characteristics aren’t exclusive to White People. Ozymandias is probably the only character out of the bunch who’s Whiteness ties in with the construction of his character (given that, again, he is constructed to be a parody of what the 80′s thought was the “ideal man”, it makes sense that said man would be an incredibly fit, business savvy White guy). Hell, even the subplot of Silk Spectre I being embarrassed by her Polish heritage (and Laurie’s subsequent reclamation of said heritage) can be applied to any ethnic group within the United States.

Back to the modified ending, I think the worst part about the ending is how it doesn’t challenge you. Rorschach is constructed from the very beginning to be this unlikable, creepy weirdo. He’s a far right libertarian, the realization of what a vigilante like Batman would actually be like with the personality and thinking process of guys like Alex Jones, Peter Molyneux and Paul Joseph Watson, the exact opposite of a decent human being. It would’ve been much easier to have NiteOwl be the central character, but Moore and Gibbons chose Rorschach because at the end of the day Watchmen looks you in the eyes and asks “Hey, if Alex Jones/Peter Molyneux/Paul Joseph Watson were all actually right about the world, would you follow them?”. Ending the movie with a fucking Desolation Row by MCR acts like some sort of definitive victory by Rorschach and not an ominous question that hangs in the air and that’s supposed to make you sick.

The biggest irony about Watchmen is that rather than revolutionize the superhero subgenre of films the same way it’s source material did (said honor instead goes to The Dark Knight which set the tone of what cape-movies would be like until The Avengers came in and ushered the next “Age” so to speak of superhero films), it falls disastrously short and instead almost acts like a morbid blueprint of all of the shitty decisions that would plague the upcoming DCEU

Obvious music choices that are so on the nose with what emotions they’re trying to elicit from the audience that it’s almost to the point of parody? Check (Suicide Squad)

Tone deaf fetishization of violence? Check (Man of Steel, Batman v Superman and Suicide Squad)

Talented but occasionally misplaced cast that has no idea what to do because the directors and writers don’t fucking know how human beings work? Check (all of the above)

Awful costume designs that sits between “bland” and “overcomplicated” and occasionally fail to further the characterizations or themes within the film? Check (this also applies to most of the MCU given that Ryan Meinerding is the head of Marvel Studios’ Visual Development Department)

Really fucking pretentious, over written, lofty dialogue that attempts to elevate the events of the film and the one dimensionality of the characters? Check (all of the above)

A complete lack of understanding and respect for the specific books they’re adapting? Check (all of the above)

Really stupid “Hhhuur durrr, wat iff sooper heeros weer GODZ?!?!?” (a detail that, coincidentally, is barely touched upon in Watchmen and is shoved in by Snyder) shit that again, is used by Snyder and co. to “elevate” the source material and genre they’re so embarrassed to be in? Check (MoS and BvS)

Needlessly convoluted, dumb “”””””””plot”””””””””? Check (all of the above)

Attempts at sociopolitical commentary that falls so hard on their face it’s almost impossible to believe that the films were made by 30+ year old adults and not a bunch of 14 year old boys? Check (all of the above)

A one-dimensional antagonist that spews out empty platitudes? Check (all of the above)

Very obvious, terrible attempts at world building and feeding the audience information through visual language? Check (all of the above)

Awful fucking editing that harms the already broken narrative even further? Check (BvS and SS)

Uninspired, bland and obvious cinematography that looks like something a first year film student would make? Check (MoS and BvS)

Tone-deaf narratives that don’t make sense a post-9/11 world? Check (all of the above)

Need I say more? Ironically enough Watchmen suffers from all of the problems that it’s source material was making fun of and indulges in all of the stupid “grim-dark” tropes that largely defined superhero comics in the 90′s.

It’s not entirely Snyder and co’s fault that Watchmen is shit, we also have to acknowledge the fact that making a Watchmen movie in 2009 would’ve been a bad idea no matter who was helming it. The primary reason that Watchmen was so electrifying and engaging in 1986 was because it pushed the boundaries of what established superhero comics even further than their contemporaries could and took well established tropes and ideas within the genre and again, gave them weight, consequences and turned them on their head. Given that Watchmen is a movie and not a comic book, it lacks the framework that it needed in order to be a valid and relevant deconstruction. The contemporary superhero genre in film at the time was only 9 years old and had barely began to coalesce into the superhero genre that dominates tv and movies that we know today. Back then there were very few established franchises that were relevant at the time, a majority of which were just mediocre, pale adaptations of their comic book counterparts, so there wasn’t much that a Watchmen movie built from the ground up could work with. In 2009 Watchmen was too late to ride the wave of relevancy the original graphic novel had created but also too early to plant itself as a deconstruction of a genre that had barely reached its adolescence in the film industry. Not only that, a narrative as dense as Watchmen would’ve never worked as a feature film, and the movie we got is clear evidence of that, forced to truncate its plot to fit within a reasonable running time.

This is partially why superhero tv shows are and have been so successful, and why the upcoming HBO adaption of Watchmen does have some promise. Superhero stories are, by nature, episodic, which is part of the reason why The Adventures of Superman, Batman ‘66, Wonder Woman ‘77, The Flash, Supergirl, Luke Cage, The Flash, Legion, Jessica Jones, Powers, Daredevil, The Tick, The uh, The Tick, etc are such great adaptations. Adapting Watchmen to TV is a massive step forward.....the only problem is they hired Damon Lindelof, who, may I remind you, was the mastermind behind such quality products such as Cowboys and Aliens, Lost, Prometheus, Tomorrow Land, World War Z, and Star Trek: Into Darkness. Yeah. Doesn’t inspire much confidence, hiring a man who’s infamous for making already complex narratives more confusing and pretentious. Let it also be known that this man is also partially responsible for Tomorrow Land being shit and because of that Disney cancelling Tron 3 and all of their future live-action movies that aren’t a Star Wars film, a needless remake of one of their own animated properties, a Pirates of the Caribbean film or a Marvel Movie. Let that fucking sink in.

This also bring up another important question: Did Watchmen even need to be made? For one, its important to address one of the more prevailing criticisms of this film. One of the many notable things Alan Moore is infamous for is his complete disdain and subsequent renunciation of any film adaption of his work. While some might argue that this is a bit hypocritical (especially towards the use of Moore’s concepts and characters by other writers such as Grant Morrison and Geoff Johns, which is pretty fucking stupid from Moore to hate on them for creating stories using his ideas considering so much of his fucking work is derived from other peoples work but I digress), it still stands that the primary creative mind behind Watchmen didn’t want this film to be made. This is an issue considering how much blind support this film receives by so many supposed fans (Snyder included), which in my eyes is quite disrespectful towards the original work’s author. If you truly loved a property and the people behind it, why would you support an adaptation one of the creators openly disavowed, and a shitty adaptation at that?

Now is it surprising that Snyder doesn’t really care or understand why Moore didn’t want this film to be made? No. This is the same guy who later, blindly praised Bob Kane for his creation of Batman, which was a pretty tone-deaf move considering that most of Batman’s mythos was created by the much underappreciated and abused writer Bill Finger (fuck, most of the art credited to Kane was allegedly done by “shadow artists” or stand-ins while Kane was down in Florida chasing pussy), and most of the industry and fandom largely resents Kane for the slimey opportunist he is. Whatever, Snyder doesn’t understand half the shit he’s adapting anyway, why should we expect him to respect or fully understand the creative elements behind them? Anyway, this film really only exists to make money, not because there was a strong demand for it or a cultural need for it to exist.

This leads to my secondary point: Even if there was a more earnest, sincere creative motivation for this film to be made, there’s almost no point considering that there were other superhero properties that have already adapted many of the subject matters and themes of Watchmen and did it exceedingly better than this shit film.

The Incredibles gets the most credit for beating Watchmen to the punch (Justice League Unlimited also heavily dabbled with Watchmen’s themes and naturally understood it better than this shit film. Friendly reminder that both of these properties were aimed at kids and in JLU’s case explicitly exist to sell fucking toys. Remember that next time a DCEU stan jerks off Snyder’s shitty work for being “dark” and “mature”) when it came to deconstructing superheros.

It’s almost astounding how much The Incredibles has in common with Watchmen. Both are deconstructions on superheroes based round parodies of popular characters dealing with heavy themes of masculinity, legacy, domesticity, heroism, and nostalgia (while it is important to note that there are much heavier themes of objectivism in The Incredibles compared to Watchmen, who’s objectivist themes are mainly focused on Rorschach alone), framed around a high-stakes mystery thriller set in a world where superheros are forced to retire and are largely regarded with disdain, fighting an antagonist that used to align themselves with the superheros. For all intents and purposes, The Incredibles is a much more effective adaptation of Watchmen, which further negates the need for this film to even be here.

I dunno man. Watchmen sucked. I’m tired and annoyed with it being held as some paragon of superhero films because it’s fucking juvenile and can barely stand to most superhero movies today. I’m tired of the original novel being constantly referenced, poorly imitated, regurgitated, misunderstood and dragged through the mud. I honestly don’t really care for Geoff Johns’ upcoming Doomsday Clock, because it’s end goal is to just reconstruct the superhero genre but Watchmen’s central deconstructions and statements towards the genre were already addressed and rebutted by Mark Waid and Alex Ross’ excellent Kingdom Come, a book that fucking came out 21 years ago, further negating any sort of cultural need for Watchmen to exist. There’s a reason why Waid and Ross started the main conflict of Kingdom Come off by killing almost all of the Charleton characters that Watchmen parodied.

The industry and general community had collectively learned from and moved beyond Watchmen, its DNA can be found in almost every modern superhero comic. Constantly going back to it and revering it as the epitome of cape comics is regressive. It’s like if people kept holding the Subaru 1000 as the absolute best standard for cars when we have 50+ years worth of automobiles that have learned from it and actually perform much better. My final thoughts on the whole thing can best be described by Alan Moore himself:

Get over Watchmen, get over the 1980s. It doesn’t have to be depressing miserable grimness from now until the end of time. It was only a bloody comic. It wasn’t a jail sentence.

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