Watchmen Review and a meme

[an0ther_dreamer]

Good Points:

• Liked that, as he is the smartest man in the world, Ozymandias tells the heroes why he’s destroying all these cities, after it’s already irreversible. At first I thought he was just being stupidly arrogant (as the heroes were coming to Save the Day), but no; he’d already pushed the button.
• Was it just me or was there something slashy between Adrian (Ozymandias) and Dan (Nite Owl II)? Also, when Ozy takes off his mask he’s in front of Studio 54 with the Village People and David Bowie isn’t he?
• Adrian Veidt and his “sacrifice the few for the many” philosophy reminded me a lot of Smallville’s Lex Luthor. He also wears a lot of purple and runs a multinational company. That might be why I liked him a little more than the other characters (genocide notwithstanding). His alter ego is also named after both Alexander the Great (of whom Lex is a fan) and my favourite poem.
• Jeffery Dean Morgan was fantastically skeevy as the Comedian. He always does evil so well.
• Loved the opening credits. The rise and fall of the “heroes” was done very well and I loved the choice of song. Unfortunately, I found the old Watchmen more interesting then the new generation.

Bad points:

• Didn’t connect with the characters. None of them seemed to have much personality to me which made keeping the characters and their alter egos straight very difficult. Not to mention there are two generations of watchmen to deal with.
• Sally Jupiter= woman in the refrigerator. And Laurie was defined mostly by the men in her life, first by being Dr Manhattan’s girlfriend, then Night Owl’s squeeze and the Comedian’s daughter. They’re superheroes people: give them a bit more than that. Not to mention that Laurie was the only one of the Watchmen who didn’t seem to age at all from the meeting flashbacks, because women aren’t allowed to age, you know.
• Silk Spectre II’s costume. I understand more after watching the film and comparing I & II’s costumes, how it’s an updated version of her mother’s, what with the stockings now being made of latex. That said; there’s a lot of exposed thigh going on there. How badass can you be when you’re worried about pulling shrapnel out of your ladyparts?

Silk Spectres I & II

• I twigged that Laurie was the Comedian’s daughter pretty early, so the reveal was a long time coming.
• All in all it was very without hope. No one had any hope that they would be able to save the world and it was really depressing. The characters didn’t seem to be very worried about it. The world didn’t seem very real to me either. A few more scenes showing the main characters interacting more with the city and the daily lives of other people in it would have resonated more I think, but as it was when all those cities blew up I knew I should feel horrified, but they didn’t seem real.
• Why did the Comedian shoot Kennedy? Was this ever explained?
• The love triangle and sex scene. Sigh. I’m not a fan of love triangles at the best of times, I didn’t really like the characters involved and it was pretty obvious how it was going to turn out. To me it was just another distraction from the central mystery.
• As for the sex scene, I found myself pondering whether it was gratuitous and then whether all sex scenes were gratuitous, really. The thing was I was thinking about this while the scene was playing; so it didn’t even succeed on the point most sex scenes have: to be engaging. And having Leonard Cohen on in the background was just weird.
• The violence just squicked me out.
• The glowing cock. It wasn’t shocking, just distracting. I don’t know, after a while it just really annoyed me.

General Points:

• It was more like Sin City than I was expecting.

I'm giving it a C+.

Ironically, this brings me to one of my favourite poems:

Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelly
I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear --
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.'

Closely followed by:

Abort, Retry, Ignore?
by Anonymous

Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary,
System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor,
Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets.
Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer,
I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store,
Only this and nothing more.

Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,
Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.
"Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"
One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,
Just, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Was this some occult illusion, some maniacal intrusion?
These were choices undesired, ones I'd never faced before.
Carefully I weighed the choices as the disk made impish noises.
The cursor flashed, insistent, waiting, baiting me to type some more.
Clearly I must press a key, choosing one and nothing more,
From "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

With fingers pale and trembling, slowly toward the keyboard bending,
Longing for a happy ending, hoping all would be restored,
Praying for some guarantee, timidly, I pressed a key.
But on the screen there still persisted words appearing as before.
Ghastly grim they blinked and taunted, haunted, as my patience wore,
Saying "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

I tried to catch the chips off guard, and pressed again, but twice as hard.
I pleaded with the cursed machine: I begged and cried and then I swore.
Now in mighty desperation, trying random combinations,
Still there came the incantation, just as senseless as before.
Cursor blinking, angrily winking, blinking nonsense as before.
Reading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

There I sat, distraught, exhausted, by my own machine accosted.
Getting up I turned away and paced across the office floor.
And then I saw a dreadful sight: a lightning bolt cut through the night.
A gasp of horror overtook me, shook me to my very core.
The lightning zapped my previous data, lost and gone forevermore.
Not even, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

To this day I do not know the place to which lost data go.
What demonic nether world us wrought where lost data will be stored,
Beyond the reach of mortal souls, beyond the ether, into black holes?
But sure as there's C, Pascal, Lotus, Ashton-Tate and more,
You will be one day be left to wander, lost on some Plutonian shore,
Pleading, "Abort, Retry, Ignore?"

Just to end it on a random note.

Comments

[qapint.livejournal.com]

You're so brilliant! (espec. shrapnel in ladyparts bit). I agree with both your quibbles and positive points, but would add I found that genetically engineered lynx thing lamo, even if it was in the original comic. And I found Dr Manhattan's man-thong just as distracting as the full frontal.

[an0ther-dreamer.livejournal.com]

You're so brilliant!
*Blushes*. Thank you m’dear. I’m just glad I finally got it up.

(espec. shrapnel in ladyparts bit)
It was all I could think about during the house fire and subsequent explosion. I don’t know; heaps of other superheroines have similar costumes. I guess because it was making a point of how edgyand real the world was it just seemed more absurd.

I agree with both your quibbles and positive points, but would add I found that genetically engineered lynx thing lamo, even if it was in the original comic.
ITAWTC, maybe if they introduced it earlier it would have been less WTH inducing, “And now listen to my genius plan, while I stroke my giant cat-thing.” Okay that sounds wrong written down, but you get the idea.

And I found Dr Manhattan's man-thong just as distracting as the full frontal.
The man-thong was a relief to me. After a while I was just thinking, “Yes honey. It’s very impressive. Now put it away.”