Reviews of Watchmen (1986) and related work

Around the time that superhero comics began to appear in reality, some gangs were using masks to prevent identification. In response, a couple of young New York cops meted out vigilante “justice” with masks of their own. One of them created a masked alter ego, and this was imitated, starting a minor media craze. Not being terribly normal or stable people to begin with, a lot of those costumed heroes of the 1940s, and their handful of villains, ended up dead or put away.

Another generation of American “superheroes” was spawned when a scientist accidentally obtained actual superhuman power through the loss of his “intrinsic field” in a 1950s experiment. That man, dubbed “Doctor Manhattan” to allude to the Manhattan Project and scare the commies, increased human insight into physics to a point where things like anti-gravity flight, miniaturized computing, smart fabrics and genetically engineered exotic pets were all possible three decades later. Manhattan, working for the US government, also won the war in Vietnam, enabling Richard Nixon to repeal the Twenty-second Amendment and stay on as president. Another 1960s superhero, the Comedian, also worked for the government, so John F. Kennedy, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were mysteriously killed. “Marxist” regimes in South America never last.

With servants such as Manhattan and the Comedian, the arteries of the US government have been hardening for decades. Both men are briefly part of a crime-fighting team called the Watchmen, but they aren’t effective against the root causes of crime, and they dissolve when the Comedian points out they can’t prevent the bigger threat of war either. In 1977, a police strike leads to the outlawing of superheroes, restoring the rule of law. However, Doctor Manhattan’s continued existence heightens the risk for war because he is capable of stopping a high percentage of Soviet warheads. Stockpiles have been growing to counteract that.

In 1985, it becomes uncertain whether the sole superhuman would want to try to save humankind. Immortal and capable of viewing time and matter more accurately than humans, he teleports and colocates freely. Gradually internalizing the fact that he now shares almost nothing with his species, he is losing his sense of community and respect for the “overrated phenomenon” of life. He is still devastated to hear that many of his old acquaintances are dead or dying of a cancer his mere presence may have caused. In that same year, a hated madman who refused to retire from killing criminals investigates the murder of the Comedian on the brink of nuclear war.

Based quite closely on the comic, but whereas in the comic there are two entities with definite superhuman powers, in the film there is only one. Instead of faking an extraterrestrial arrival, Veidt fakes an attack by Dr. Manhattan on several major cities, killing approximately 15 million.

“More – blood! More – blood!”