Watchmen

Superheroes emerged in the early twentieth century, when the modern world was becoming a foreboding place, unrecognizable to traditional ways of life. The superhero’s existence rose as a reaction to forces gaining more and more power on daily life. The common citizen, cowered by the perceived evil of threats they couldn’t comprehend, needed saviors processing unfathomable strengths working for the common good. Director Zack Snyder’s Watchmen, based on the graphic novel of the same name, understands this fear and reaction. It also understands the modern world is comprised of these forces and fears because it is human made. The world if full of humanity’s good intentions, inherently flawed and even evil, as are the superheroes that make up the Watchmen.

To populate this world at the end of the twentieth century, the film becomes a visual feast into the different foreboding era’s that defined the century. Though Watchmen spans decades, this visual homage to bygone years are seamlessly integrated into a singular present, albeit 1985, where the bulk of the story takes place. Time bends to allow Snyder to bathe industrialists in Art Deco inspired skyscrapers while the United States government contemplates nuclear war in a Dr. Strangelove war room as the anti-hero Rorschach keeps a running diary in his head that would make Travis Bickle proud. The deadliest century in history sentimentalized into moments that pushed humanity to the breaking point, where the Watchmen can be found.

The superheroes of Watchmen are saviors no longer capable of summoning the strength needed to protect the common good. The foreboding world has left them ravaged by time, holier than thou, and jaded by evil that knows no end. The few who continue to protect find their efforts make nary a dent in the barrage of forces leaving the world unsalvageable. Unable to stop the inevitable, they are reduced to watching their own flawed good intentions unleashing an evil start to the end of life as we know it.

Watchmen is a bleak film about humanity’s inability to get out of its own way. There are brief moments of hope, where the simple joys of life are able to shine. Those moments of joy underscore how little has changed in the last century. They are moments that would be recognizable to people living during any age, moments that are dwarfed by the world’s inhabitant’s relentless pursuit to destroy themselves. Superheroes rose to cope with the destruction, but like the rest of humanity’s intentions, they too have been twisted to aid the end of civilization.