While my full review of Watchmen is up here, it seems to me there is an underlying truth to it. But expressing it might be a spoiler, so I'm letting you know up front. Somehow, this aspect of the film wasn't particularly surprising to me, it was more of a "sigh"-and-a-"it figures". But others may have been, so here's your warning.
I'm not going to reveal any action that occurs, but if you think backwards from what I'm saying, you'll probably be able to figure out where the movie is going.
Enough warning?
Last chance!
OK, the underlying truth to Watchmen is this:
If you give a leftist super-powers, he'll act like a super-villain and still consider himself a hero.
Think about it, won't you?
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It's only because he knows better than you.
ReplyDeleteBut he was the super smartest super person in the world, so of course he knew better, and he was really, really upset about having to kill all those people to bring about a greater good.
ReplyDeleteAl Gore is pretty super smart, too, and really the only way to save the planet is to destroy the economy (first task, done), and if that's not enough, get lots of Chinese to kill lots of Indians, and vice versa (I guess Obama is working on that for the Goracle as we speak).
I do suppose that that action is the logical extreme of super-heroism: hero is special and is therefore allowed to act outside the rules for normal people for the benefit of those normal people ; once you've placed hero outside the rule of law for the greater good, this kind of utilitarianism would be the end result, yes?
ReplyDeleteIf the other watchmen are the ones who watch the watchmen, I would definitely call the end of the movie a checks-and-balances fail.
This is all pointing to a much more conservative reading of the movie than I had first thought.
Thoughts?
I kept thinking that the guy who played the Comedian was Javier Bardem (I found out later that it's actually Jeffrey Dean Morgan), but the two actors definitely look alike
ReplyDeletehmmm...Is Superman a liberal?
ReplyDeleteThough what's probably happening is that I'm projecting my own biases onto a nihilistic work.
ReplyDeleteWell, for what it's worth, Joe, I wrote on this, and came to the conclusion that the superhero paradigm itself is libertarian/classically liberal.
ReplyDeleteWatchmen is particularly statist, however.