Watchmen

Watchmen was on at the gym one day, and in hindsight it seems clearer why it might not have done so well.

There’s plenty to enjoy in it - the opening montage, with its pan across Dealy Plaza, showing the Comedian and his role in JFK’s death; the back story of Dr. Manhattan; Rorschach’s prison, uh, survival tactics. On the other hand, the blue guy is such a whiner, Nite Owl II and Silk Spectre II have little in common besides being bundles of neuroses, and everything flows together into a depressing, hopeless, soulless mess.

Not that there's anything wrong with that, necessarily. And the movie is a faithful enough adaptation of the comic series, using the same character and story. Why are the comics considered a classic of literature, the film ... not so much?

If you haven't been here before, please take a look at the Introduction to Generations, the Generational Attributes and the Four Stories in order to get up to speed on how all this works, and the terms being used.

One might imagine an alternate world where the film would have done better. In 1972, it might have given The Godfather a run for its money: Of COURSE the world is corrupt, the politicians on the take, everything we knew about history subsumed under a veneer - no, a heavy coat - of Keep The People Down By Any Means Necessary. These heroes, previously held up as Guardians of The American Way, turn out to be venal, imperfect, often vicious, occasionally corrupt, sometimes flat evil. And while there might be the hope of redemption - for our heroes, for the world, for anything - it is ultimately dashed.

Even going back to The Godfather, at least Michael Corleone’s success - bloody and evil though it is - is still a success. He protects his family, saves the family business, keeps his father's legacy alive. Perhaps that's the problem with Watchmen: It's not that it's morally ambiguous, but narratively so. At the end, is the audience sure where they are, where they are going? Or is it all SO unsettled and uncertain that we can’t accept the New World that has been drawn for us?

It definitely fits in the Four Stories framework, but not as a movie that people would want to see in 2009, a few months after the financial meltdown made a movie about corruption redundant.  It’s so completely an Artist movie, with the final choices really a matter of being Doomed (like Rorshach) or Damned (like, well, everyone else). Redemption is out, and there isn’t anything that equates to a victory in the end state. Maybe the tiniest bit of hope, sure, that Truth Will Come Out. And Ozymandias’ success - victory not being an appropriate term -at least suggests the possibility of change, that the current state of the world isn’t how it will always be, that things might just get better. (Using a sufficiently broad definition of "better," anyway.) That’s all you get, though, for a nearly three-hour movie, which isn’t going to be an experience people clamor for in these years after 9/11. Once we are through this Crisis, perhaps towards the end of the High, after a decade or so of being told that We Are The Best, people might want to see some reminders that, No, We Aren’t, Always. Until then, though, it’s going to be of rare interest - and it still has to be good enough for someone to want to watch.

Worth noting, also, that the thought of Nixon in charge in 1980 is intended to be an indication that this is The Darkest Timeline, the Worst Of All Possible Worlds. Which seems like the authors’ hearts being out on their sleeves: Thirty years later, Nixon isn’t seen in the same light as he was when the comic came out -  a few years after Watergate and a decade after Vietnam. Relentless history can mess with your story structures if you put too much political capital in a load-bearing role.

Is there a fix for this? Consider some other movies, particularly Doomed/Damned ones like this. Rosemary is Doomed but by the end of the movie we know the situation she is in. Michael Corleone is Damned but he will survive and thrive for the foreseeable future. Leaving people with a world that hasn’t definitely changed, though, leaves the audience similarly in an uncertain state. We can solve that by giving one of the characters a very certain situation - but it would have to be a character the audience can identify with. Not dead, that is, or excessively rich and smart, nor a mystical being of pure force. Make the lovers break up and you have a more personal and more real tragedy that contrasts yet points up the much larger tragedy of death and destruction. Push them together and Love Conquers All. Either way, though, we have a better window into the effects the film's events have on everyone.

Perhaps all it really needs is confirmation that someone -- even Ozymandias -- really is definitely Right. Dr. Manhattan is a smart guy, and the rest of the heroes are convinced: The audience should be as well. That's what happens with Michael Corleone, after all.  He is in a better world than if he had failed, even if his success is tragic in its own way.