Watchmen (2009)

And so the movie marathon continues and this time I picked out Watchmen. It is based on the DC comics by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Since I am not much of a DC fan than a Marvel fan when I was young (although reaching HS I dumped American pop culture in favor of East Asian so my knowledge is not updated haha), I never heard of this before until my archaeo days when my buddy shared to me some of his movies and comics. As I have said in my previous posts, my extra long vacation is like a retirement kind of thing, with me enjoying the things I have accumulated over the past years.

Watchmen is mind-boggling to say the least. The film started with the murder of a person named Eddie Blake who was thrown off a building. A masked man picked up a smiley pin  from the murder site and went off in search of other superheroes who used to form a vigilante team fighting against evil elements in the society. (This had been a dream for me, to have something like this to purge the society of evil but let's start with the evil politicians who abuse their power. Sad to say, the vigilantes only target ordinary people, especially the poor.) The movie becomes a bit confusing with the many flashbacks depicting the background of each superhero, but the main narrative in the present storyline is that Ozymandias is ready to sacrifice millions of innocent lives to prevent a nuclear war and save billions of lives. That is of course, what our main protagonist Rorschach is against since the plan also involves using and disposing of other superheroes (and even ex-villains like Moloch) most of whom are trying to live ordinary lives in the present storyline.

This scene where Dr. Manhattan helps the US to kill Vietnamese and win the Vietnam War makes me angry. Coz of course the Viets won in the war.

 Scholars of East Asian media often say that protagonists in Chinese or Japanese films are not 100% good, that they are somewhat controversial characters because of their many flaws. Western-made characters on the other hand are clearly either good or bad. Now I think Watchmen presents us with the same controversial characters, although they are grimmer and darker, and even with psychological disorders. One such character is of course the main villain in the film Ozymandias who uses other people as pawns and sacrifices in order to push nations (read: US and USSR) to sign peace deals in the face of alien threats and avert a nuclear war. Throughout the film, images of rorschach inkblots are prevalent and this seems to suggest that we need a rethinking and reassessment of the things that we are raised to label as good and bad. 

Silk Spectre II's long hair is so beautiful that her fight scenes seem like shampoo commercials

 For instance, I would also add Silk Spectre and her daughter Silk Spectre II as controversial characters coming from a conservative Asian culture. Silk Spectre was almost raped by The Comedian but she eventually had consensual sex with him and gave birth to their daughter Silk Spectre II. The daughter Laurie is a sexually liberated woman. No problem with that except I am disturbed by the fact that she seduces Nite Owl II while still in a relationship with Dr. Manhattan. And when she decided to leave Dr. Manhattan, she had sex with Nite Owl II and lived with him  from thereon and then at the end of the movie, she and Dr. Manhattan kissed again. I was like, whoaaaa, what the hell??!

Narcissistic Ozymandias confronted by Nite Owl II and Rorschach in his palatial Antarctic base.

Rorschach's remains after Dr. Manhattan killed him: a rorschach inkblot pattern which makes one debate on whether he is good or evil

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I don't believe much in psychological tests but took THIS for fun. My result below which is pretty accurate.