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4/7/2009
Burri: A superhero flick with a point
Spoiler alert! This column contains spoilers about the movie The Watchmen.
The Watchmen, in theaters now, is the movie adaptation of a graphic novel (comic book) published in the mid-1980s. I was a big fan of the comic, so naturally, I was excited (and nervous) about the movie.
I saw it a couple weeks ago. I wasn't disappointed.
Visually stunning; exciting; fun. Dark, too, and frequently disturbing. As true to the comic as one could ask, and – despite the occasional clunky line of dialogue – extremely well done.
But: more than just another big-budget avenue for selling action figures, this was a superhero flick with a point. Fellow comic book nerds will be well versed in its central question: how far into the wrong can a hero go in order to do right?
The movie is rife with examples. Even the goody-two-shoes of the movie stood by and watched as his partner tortured a man for information. Another hero punched out a cop. Two were borderline-psychotics. And these were the good guys.
That brings me to one of the movie’s most celebrated superheroes of all: Ozymandias, “The World’s Smartest Man,” who by the end of the movie had murdered millions of people, in order to prevent billions of deaths.
And it worked: the U.S. and U.S.S.R. started the day inches from nuclear Armageddon, and ended it as friends and allies against a greater mutual threat – or, at least, what they believed to be a greater mutual threat.
It was all a hoax, see. A hoax perpetrated by Ozymandias, uncovered and witnessed by other heroes.
And: Most of those heroes decided to let it pass. They saw it happen – knew that Ozymandias had murdered millions – and did nothing. To do so would have returned the world to the nuclear brink. In this case, they decided, the right thing was worse than the wrong thing.
Most of them, anyway.
Was that right? Good? If the alternative was nuclear annihilation?
If yes, then was torturing the guy earlier in the movie also right? Smaller crime, smaller payoff, same principle.
Fast forward to the end: The editor of a small, rabidly anti-Communist newspaper is in despair. With all this “world peace” and “brotherhood,” he’s got nothing to write about!
And yet, he’s got a deadline to meet. To the junk file, then, for some filler. And there, right on the top, is Rorschach’s journal. Rorschach – the one hero who hadn’t “gone along” with Ozymandias. Who’d insisted on exposing the scheme, and died for it. He left his diary, detailing everything, to the newspaper.
If published, if believed, it will undo everything, and probably worse. Every factor leading to war will return. Every factor preventing war is already gone.
As John Hawkins puts it, Ozymandias should have known better:
It defies the imagination that Ozymandias, who's shown to be a student of history and is called, seemingly with good reason, "the smartest man in the world," could believe that a single attack could permanently unite the planet, thereby putting an end to war.
…Surely, someone as intelligent as Ozymandias would understand something that any student of history should already grasp. Indeed, you’d think so. You’d think that intelligent, educated people should be able to look at the past and realize: we can’t control everything.
And yet, a significant portion of our political landscape thinks it knows exactly how to make the world better. In grand sweeps and broad strokes, they'll change the world!
We’ll all be happier, can’t you see? The world will be friendlier. The poor will have more. People will be safe from hunger, safe from the cold, safe from illnesses that should have been wiped out decades ago (except malaria).
If only they could do things their way; if everyone would just fall into place and give them what they need…this time it’ll work.
History says otherwise. Human nature says otherwise. Yet people – intelligent, educated people – continue to believe it.
That’s the lesson Watchmen leaves us with: nobody – not the World’s Smartest Man, not the world’s most powerful man, not any group of men and women, can protect us from ourselves. We have limits, and the best thing we can do is learn that.
Lance Burri is a contributor to the Badger Blog Alliance and The TrogloPundit.
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