Watchmen (2009)

Warning: Spoilers Ahead (I recommend watching the movie first before reading)



Richard Nixon: "The United States does not start fights. Let it be clear we maintain our strength in order to maintain peace, so any adversary should ask themselves: Do the consequences of attacking America outweigh the potential benefits?"


Rorschach's journal, October 13th 1985

From the trailer you already know that the movie is about superheroes.  When I saw the trailer on television in 2009 it didn't look interesting.  I assumed the plot and characters were going to be dull.  Exactly two years later I pick it up as a free movie from a kiosk and I recommend it.  The summary of the movie already describes it as an investigation into a murder of a fellow superhero.  The movie sets in the 1980s, when Nixon was President.  It's the cold war and America have tensions with Russia.  There are superheroes.  The plot is that they are no longer active.  Most of the superheroes are either retired or dead.  Rorschach is the narrator.  He is the investigator.

Rorschach:
(In a deep voice as one who sounds like acid reflux along with moonshine and cigarettes had burnt a bit of his lungs.)

"Edward Blake. The Comedian.
Born 1918.
Buried in the rain.
Murdered.
Is that what happens to us?
No time for friends?
Only our enemies leave roses?
Violent lives ending violently.
Blake understood . Humans are savage in nature. No matter how much you try to dress it up to disguise it. Blake saw society's true face, chose to be a parody of it. A joke. I heard a joke once.
Man goes to doctor, says he's depressed. Life seems harsh and cruel.  Says he feels all alone in a threatening world. Doctor says treatment is simple. "The great Pagliacci is in town. Go see him. That should pick you up."
Man burst into tears.
"But doctor," he says "I am Pagliacci"
Good joke.
Everybody laugh.
Roll on snare drum.
Curtains."

Edward Blake is a character that is more like an antihero rather than an actual hero.  He is a women manipulator, a rapist, a murderer, drinks, smokes, he has no moral and what you would describe as a shoot 'em and ask questions later type of "hero".  He goes against conformity and team spirit.  He's a pessimist.  He's a Black Op. for the government doing dirty work.  I see him as a part of the portrayal of the American red neck or cowboy sort of character.  Edward Blake represents part of the American culture.

Eddie Blake's would be woman Sally Jupiter, is the original Silk Spectre.  I say "would be" because Eddie Blake's indecent behavior and the fact that he tried to rape her, caused Sally Jupiter to detest him instead of love him.  In which she did.

Sally Jupiter: "Eddie Blake's funeral is today. Finally got his punchline, I guess.
Poor Eddie."

Laurie Jupiter: "Poor Eddie? After what he did to you?"

Sally Jupiter: "Oh, Laurie, you're still young. You don't know. Things change. What happened happened 40 years ago. I'm 67 years old. Everyday, the future looks a little darker. But the past... even the grimy parts of it... keep on getting brighter."

(Rape Scene)

Sally Jupiter: "Things are tough all over, cupcake. It rains on the just and the unjust alike. The Comedian was a little bit of both. And he always thought he'd get the last laugh."

(Funeral Scene)

In the end, Laurie Jupiter goes home.

Laurie Jupiter: "People's lives take them strange places.
They do strange things... and, well,
Sometimes they can't talk about them."

Sally Jupiter explains:

"You asked me why I wasn't mad at him.
Because he gave me you."

Laurie Jupiter:

"Thanks, Mom.
I love you."


Jon Osterman aka Dr. Manhattan, is a glowing blue physicist.  He can control matter and see the past and future of himself and those around him.  I guess his name comes from the Manhattan Project.  It would seem he is another superhero.  He holds the key to keeping nuclear war from destroying the human race.

During a television interview with Dr. Manhattan, the host of the show goes:

"Ms. Black, you have the first question."

Ms Black: "Dr. Manhattan, as you know the Doomsday Clock is a symbolic clock face analogizing humankind's proximity to extinction... midnight representing the threat of nuclear war.  As of now, it stands at four minutes to midnight.  Would you agree that we're that close to annihilation?"

Dr. Manhattan: "My father was a watchmaker.  He abandoned it when Einstein discovered that time is relative.  I would only agree that a symbolic clock is as nourishing to the intellect as a photograph of oxygen to a drowning man."

Ms Black: "So you're saying there is no danger."

Dr. Manhattan: "Even in a world without nuclear weapons, there would still be danger."

The character of Eddie Blake represents one side of the male American.  Eddie Blake is the hedonistic carnage image of America, the side of America that has given up on right and value instead acting on share gratification.  The reason I wanted to write about Dr. Manhattan is because he is a little more interestingly created by DC Comics.  He was human, but not so any more, in the movie it is depicted he has evolved beyond basic human traits, not just in the form of matter but in mind as well.  I once took a class in speaking.  The way Dr. Manhattan speaks is as if in equally rhythmic sequence in between words, meaning he does not speak too fast or too slow.  His speech is clear but a slant on the robot side.  His expression as if based on logic and not answering by emotion.  In the movie, it's questioned does he still have emotion, a bit of the human side left in him.  To me Dr. Manhattan represents science and technology, not just American.  The side of the world that has become saturated with it and has lost a little of it's human side.  The smartest man has fount he still does.

This scene is from after the television interview.  After Dr. Manhattan goes to Mars to seek a little escape from human agenda or complication.  He brings Laurie with him.

Dr. Manhattan: "The streets are filled with death...

And the universe will not even notice. In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon. Just look around you. Mars gets along perfectly well without so much as a microorganism.  Here, it's constant changing topographical map... flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples 10,000 years wide.  So tell me... how would all of this be greatly improved by an oil pipeline? By a shopping mall?"

Laurie Jupiter: "So, it's too much to ask for a miracle?"

Dr. Manhattan: "Miracles, by their definition, are meaningless."

Laurie Jupiter: "Oh, God, Jon!"

Dr. Manhattan: "Only what can happen does happen."

Laurie Jupiter: "Just stop your bullshit."

(Dr. Manhattan does a mind trick and flashes Laurie with an image of her life. At this point she finds that The Comedian, Eddie Blake is her father.  Laurie breaks down in tears and falls to the floor.)

Laurie Jupiter: "My life is just one big joke."

Dr. Manhattan: "I don't think your life is a joke"

Laurie Jupiter: "Yeah, well... I'm sorry if I don't trust your sense of humor."

Dr. Manhattan: "Will you smile if I admit I was wrong?"

Laurie Jupiter: "About What?"

Dr. Manhattan: "Miracles.

Events with astronomical odds of occurring... like oxygen turning into gold. I've longed to witness such an event, and yet I neglect that in human coupling millions upon millions of cells compete to create life for generation after generation until finally, your mother loves a man... Edward Blake, The Comedian, a man she has every reason to hate and out of that contradiction against unfathomable odds... it's you. Only you that emerged. To distill so specific a form from all that chaos is like turning air into gold. A miracle.

And so... I was wrong. Now dry your eyes, and let's go home."

They go home to find New York City has been the center of a nuclear attack, but it's not by the Russians, it's the power that the smartest man in the world, Ozymandias, has harnessed from Dr. Manhattan.

And the plot not only comes to it's climax but is fount by our investigators that it's Ozymandias who is the villain, or is he?  They travel to the arctic where Ozymandias (heroes name taken from the Egyptian sonnet) is hiding.  They confront him and battle.  In the battle they find that Ozymandias is the one who planned all of these events to occur.  In order to prevent nuclear war, Ozymandias plan is in order to have "A world united and at peace. There had to be a sacrifice" -Ozymandias.  The millions that died in New York City and the heroes that died with them had to "sacrifice" their lives so that America and Russia would come to terms of peace.  The plan worked, knowing Russia didn't send the nuclear attack, Dr. Manhattan is blamed and leaves earth.

Rorschach: "Out of my way. People have to be told."

Dr. Manhattan: "You know I can't let you do that." (It would seem that Ozymandias already had in his plan that Dr. Manhattan would in logic take the blame, for the better of preventing nuclear war.)

Rorschach: "Suddenly you discover humanity? Convenient."

Dr. Manhattan: "I can change almost anything... but I can't change human nature."

As Dan Dreiberg (Nite Owl the second) attacks Ozymandias, Ozymandias doesn't fight back because his job is done, he has prevented nuclear war but at a cost...

Dan Dreiberg: "No! You haven't idealized mankind, you're deformed it. You've mutilated it. That's your legacy. That's the real practical joke."