Jump to content

Watchmen


Tank
 Share

Recommended Posts

Anyone watch the new show?

In case you missed the news, the show is a sequel to the original comic series and presents a 2019 that exists years after a giant squid phased into times square.

Dr. Manhattan is still on mars, no giant blue crank is seen.
Silk Spectre 2 will show up as an veteran FBI agent. Veidt is supposedly dead, but is actually maybe hiding out in England.

The basic plot is we now live in a world where vigilantism has been deputized, and civil unrest is real enough that even beat cops wear masks... at least in Tulsa where the story takes place.

A white supremacist terrorist group is up to no good, and have said a new doomsday clock is ticking, and Night Sister, top vigilante cop, is on the case.

Pros:
Well-written and acted
Awesome world building Details (like police having an Owl ship)
Night Mask rules
Score by Nine Inch Nails

Cons:
The racists idolize Rorschach and wear his mask. Rorschach was nuts, but not racist. Seems like Hooded Justice would make more sense.
Overly-woke. In trying to say something about race, it has a few mixed messages... like that most of the cops are black.
It's Damon Lindelof, so odds of it going to crap are super high.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I wasn't expecting the racial element, but liked the episode overall. Regina King has been my girl since 227. She's great in this. I didn't get the Rorshach masked racists. Since there are no other

Watchmen, other than Dr. Manhattan building hotels in Mars, it's tough to know where this fits. Is it suppose to fit? Probably not since the United States has become a country where white people are the minority.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I thought it was great.

 

Rorshach not being a racist doesn't matter, in fact it makes the whole thing better. A fringe, crazy, terror, racist group twisting something to fit their own ideas? Sounds about right. See every religious extremist in the world.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thinking about it though, Rorschach sent his journal to the super right wing rag before he left for Antarctica, right?

 

I guess you could extrapolate that if they ran it, and edited it, you'd end up with hicksville terrorists seeing him as their martyr.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thinking about it though, Rorschach sent his journal to the super right wing rag before he left for Antarctica, right?

 

I guess you could extrapolate that if they ran it, and edited it, you'd end up with hicksville terrorists seeing him as their martyr.

I think the story is that Rorshach's journal got out there but isn't widely accepted as true. Those who do believe it think the whole thing is a government coverup, which is basically true. Which makes them hate the government, which plays into ultra conservative views which most hard core racists have.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I still think Hooded Justice would have made perfect sense for a bunch of lynchers.

 

I'd even buy them worshipping The Comedian if they think they're true Americans.

 

Just odd to give the bad guys an icon that was a hero.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just odd to give the bad guys an icon that was a hero.

From a fictional narrative standpoint I understand what you're saying, but it happens in real life. Horrible people use good people as an excuse to be horrible. Look at a lot of Christians.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I loved it.

These are exactly how I wish more adaptations would go. Just take the ethos and world of the source material and go in a totally new direction that dovetails with what already exists. This and the upcoming Amazon Middle Earth series are the only ones I can come up with off of the top of my head, I hope this is a success and more writers and producers run with the idea.

It's way too soon to say at this point, but my only concern is that the mix of Moore and Lindelof sensibility could make for some frustrating storytelling ambiguity. I can see how things like Doctor Manhattan's Martian replica of Ozymandias' mansion or the baby squid rains are never explained. I hope it doesn't put themes and ideas so far ahead of storytelling that it never bothers to give cohesive answers to the questions it proposes.

 

What it is doing so far is great though. It totally gets the kind of grey area and social commentary that made the comic so great and flew over Snyder's head. The cool thing to me is that it's completely ripping apart what the idea of a superhero is. They probably haven't existed since the squid attack in the 80's, but now the police state has adopted the specific elements of it that suits them. I can't wait to see where else this heads.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thoughts on Episode 2:

  • American Hero Story basically being this show's version of Black Freighter is awesome. The over the top way it did the viewer discretion warning and the way it almost parodied the Snyder version was so cool. I'd love it if each episode we got a quick sequence of one of the original Minutemen or Watchmen doing their thing.
  • Regina King is so ridiculously good and I'm so glad she's the lead of this. This episode had a ton of motivations pulling her apart and she played it so well. Tim Blake Nelson is awesome too, him being the subdued and deadpan guy that's secretly amused by everything happening around him was such a good choice for that character.
  • I was really frustrated with how much exposition was needed this time around. A big problem for me was the scene inside the museum when the Treasury Secretary went through a longwinded explanation of what we already knew for the most part. I don't know why we needed so many explanations of Doctor Manhattan either, it just seemed like way too much. The first episode did such a good job of showing and not telling, so that was super annoying.
  • The whole Ozymandias thing is walking such a tightrope. It's doing an awesome job of building a mystery box with its short scenes and allusions elsewhere, but I'm really concerned that it's going to be another Lindelof example of mystery for the sake of mystery without really going anywhere.

I've got some minor gripes this week, but I'm still so on board for this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

This show is just brilliant so far. I mean a show that is so hard, correctly so, against white supremacy and conservative politics gone too far isn't afraid to have police be attacked to the point of needing to wear masks and having the poorer white people be the marginalized ones in society living in Nixonville some of them even seemingly living in tents. I mean it's not hard to see how a resident of Nixonville could be pushed towards the 7th Kavalry. You are living in a tent where black people are getting Redfordations from the government. Then every time something goes bad the cops show up in masks and attack where you live? That's certainly not to justify the 7K's actions, they are clearly awful, terrible people. It just kinda mirrors maybe black neighborhoods being possibly over policed or even our policy in the middle east creating new terrorists. Also I liked how the black man selling the newspapers hated Redford. Its just not as simple as he gave blacks reperations so they all love him. It;s great.

 

Also anyone else think Will Reeves is "Hooded Justice"?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Share

×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

By using this site, you agree to our Terms of Use.