Why "Watchmen" rocks.

On Saturday, I went watching the Watchmen. What was I supposed to expect of a movie-adaptation which wasn’t only based on a rather unpopular and seemingly pretty trashy comic but has already two failed attempts in the last ten years? Obviously, nothing more than some good laughs of mockery with the help of a few cans of beer. So let’s rather say that I went drinking in the cinema.
However, out of this my initial attitude I was surprised about the movie all the more. In fact, I was delighted. Now, don’t get me wrong! I wasn’t delighted by the characters. There were way too many of them in order to make a decent picture of them. Anyway, the director didn’t really seem to care about a profound characterization of all those “super-heros” anyway. The bad actors did the rest. Neither was I delighted by the camera and sound. The shots were too much “inspired” by movies like “Sin City” and the music, well … I think it says everything when I reveal that Nena’s “99 Luftballons” is played in one action scene. Not even the story did any good: It took ages to realize that the movie plays in alternative historical dimension of the 1980’s where Nixon was just elected for president for the third time and the “doom’s day clock” for nuclear war was set four minutes before midnight.
No, I was delighted by the way the director managed to lure comic-fans into the cinemas to confront them with a basic introduction into socio-philosophical concepts of the 20th century! And how much this movie ended up being philosophical! Basically, the characters all represented different views on society and subsequent concepts for social organization: There’s Ozymandias, allegedly the most intelligent man on earth, who doesn’t care about individual destinies but just “the greater good” – the perfect image of utilitarianism. There’s Rorschach, the Irish-looking small guy with a horrible childhood who is only concerned about justice and therefore would never want to compromise for any “greater good”. There’s Dr. Manhattan whose condition made him transcend humanity to such an extent that he sees how insignificant human existence, life in general, is anyway: What’s the big deal if mankind would vanish anyway? There’s no big difference between the constantly reproducing cycle of life that in the end, stands still and doesn’t change anything and dead space. And there’s the Comedian who’s turned completely cynical and just laughs at humanity’s dilemma. (There’s also Nite Owl and Silk Spectre which either should contribute some emotional view on the whole question or just add in some erotic.)
It’s interesting to observe how those different views of members of a former team clash together in the last third of the movie – after the first half-time was mostly spent on drawing up the Comedian’s life-history and view on the world and in the beginning of the second half, the nerdy audience was put off with some action: How a “miracle”, a phenomenon that couldn’t be explained logically by Dr. Manhattan made him abandon his indifferent view on life, how Ozymandias’ success in uniting the world made most “super-heros” give up their principles of justice and how they became even ready to kill their former comrades for the sake of peace.
Just as much as all those “super-heros” don’t have any real “super powers” (unfortunately with Dr. Manhattan as the big exception), they don’t really stick to any principles in the prospect of success and are even ready to kill each other and deny themselves.
Of course, just as much as the characters and story are superficial, those philosophical discussions remain rather basic. That doesn’t make it any less valuable, though, as it may inspire people with less interest in philosophy to sort out those ideas and get a comprehensive picture of them themselves. Let’s just hope that the movie manages to succeed in this plan and not to fail like his predecessors in movies, namely “The Matrix: Reloaded” and the two final episodes of the series “Neon Genesis Evangelion”, as well as games, “Deus Ex: Invisible War” and the killing of Andrew Ryan in “Bioshock” in particular.