Watching The Watchmen

Currently Reading: Red Square by Martin Cruz Smith

As I mentioned in the previous (and long and rambling) post, we watched Watchmen last week. I've been thinking about it for a while and while I enjoyed the movie and I think it's a good film, I have found a few flaws that didn't come to mind immediately upon viewing. I guess it's the sort of thing you'd file under "something's not quite right about that."

The first incident that I hit upon (there may be others, I've only seen the movie once and it's very visually overpowering at times) comes during one of the prison scenes. Rorschach is in prison, in the lunch line. You can see him right there on the left. Now, the guy in line behind him starts talking about how he's famous and how Rorschach is famous and that's all really just an excuse to get the other prisoners stoked up while he pulls a shiv. So, he tries to stab Rorschach who does a quick turn, flips his tray and uses it as a shield to deflect the knife. Ok so far. Yes, he moves awfully quick but hey, he's Rorschach and he's a psycho so no big leap there. Next, Rorschach punches through that sneeze guard thing there to reach behind the counter. Again, Rorschach is a psycho so we really don't have any problem with that. Behind the counter, there's a french fry cooker. Ok, bad placement, stupid place to put a cooker, but ok, we'll let that one go. Rorschach reaches for the handle, pulls it out and dumps it on the guy who tried to knife him. Ouch, that's gotta hurt. They next cut to a shot of the guy who is down on his knees, screaming in pain, covered in oil that is oozing down over his head and so forth. VERY ouch!

My problem is this: you cook french fries in a basket container. That's what Rorschach grabbed from the cooker. That's what he dumped on the guy. But keep in mind, it's a BASKET! Yes, it would be fully loaded with fries and yes, the guy would get splashed with oil causing him to scream and so forth cause OUCH big time but there wouldn't be SO much oil that he ended up covered in it. Remember, BASKET!

The other problem is a minor matter of a HUGE plot hole opened up by the change in the ending. In the book, a giant, alien squid-like thing teleports into Manhattan and blows up, killing a HUGE portion of the population with some sort of psychic blast. Great. Messy, but great. The idea behind this is that all the countries that were on the verge of war would now turn their concern first to disaster relief and then to dealing with the concept that aliens from another dimension want to attack the earth. Yeah, gotta give up trying to kill each other and focus on trying to kill them giant squid. Gotcha. Makes perfect sense, especially in the world of comic super heroes.

Now, with the movie, the changed that a little bit. Instead of an alien squid, it's Dr. Manhattan who supposedly goes nuts and blows up cities all over the world thus turning everyone's focus on disaster relief and trying to figure out how to deal with a rampaging Dr. Manhattan. So far so good. It's a doable idea, especially given the build-up.

Here's the problem though: Oz uses the heroes' knowledge of his plan to sort of blackmail them into silence. He tells them that if they go off and tell the truth, assuming anyone actually believes them, they'll end up breaking this peace that he's created from the disaster. Now, no one wants to do THAT because we're talking about the whole world being on the brink of nuclear war. So they agree to stay silent . . . everyone except Rorschach. His whole motto is not to surrender, even in the face of armegeddon. He storms out of Oz's hideout, Dr. Manhattan meets him outside and Rorschach pretty much tells the doc that there's no choice. The only way to stop Rorschach from telling the truth is to kill him. Rorschach even says outright to go ahead and do it.

Now, in the squid version, that works. You have to kill off Rorschach to keep him from blowing the cover on the whole squid story that brought peace. But in the Dr. Manhattan version, that doesn't really cut it. Say Rorschach does make it back to New York and he sits down with reporters and tells them everything that happened and they all believe him. Does that really break the peace? No. That shifts blame from Dr. Manhattan to Ozymandias. Instead of having to focus on how to stop the rampaging blue man group escapee, you've only got to deal with the worlds' smartest gay businessman. Well, plus disaster relief.

Thus, Rorschach's death is pretty much unnecessary.


I'm sure at some point I'll see the movie again. I really did enjoy it. But, like I said, it's not perfect.