Alan Moore's major work are one of the few things I'm a fan of in my life. Some of the ideas I got inspired by him altered the course of my life. All the Moore adaptations before this butchered original work in such a way that it wasn't identifiable at all. I knew this will be the last adaptation from Moore's best and I was keen on not watching it. While watching it I thought a lot about other major sci-fi in cinema (since I had a lot of time in the music videolike portions of the film) .
2001 is the most applauded in the genre and it's director is the most applauded in the field. Nearly a month ago I reread 2001's novel by Arthur C. Clarke. It was grand even 10 years after my physics undergrad, scientist wanna-be days. But it was -Oh so simple- anyway.Kubrick and an equally egoed Clarke sat together to make a movie that has a high sense of wonder. So high that it aims to capture imagination of every watcher and get them enthusiastic about space and time(therefore NASA backs it up). Clarke's main idea is making an advanced species that changes human history right after dawn of intelligence.
--SPOILER ON 2001---
Earth is just a potential development area so with the monolith stimulating virgin humankind, they lend us a hand. They don't even bother to check what man on earth makes of themselves. Our next checkpoint is learning abstract thinking, developing space travel, next monolith is there as a signal device. What Dr. Dave faces in the end is the alien species itself. While we were developing they found a way to turn into -energy beings- and travel between galaxies freely as self proclaimed gods.
---End of it---
Kubrick sees the danger of obviousness in scenario, so directs a more symbolic and eye candy movie. He succeeds doing so since there are endless different readings on the movie, but the essantial core stays same. Whole HAL thing is a distraction to main alien human first contact story. Most of the movie revolves around setting establishment shots and we gladly watch incredible set designs.
Back to Watchmen I wasn't expecting even the slice of ambition I found in the movie. Snyder cuts off his head and serves you on a plate. Yeah this is not a passable movie structure and he knows it! In the book Moore's perspective is from an overpower state, he goes in and out of different perspectives without getting emotional about any of them, he's cruel. To ease the ice Snyder goes 2 ways, one is underlining humanness of characters with some everyday drama. Second is his music videos inside the movie. Both sets his main theme as "Nostalgia" which is his biggest mistake. The thing is already very hard to dissect, the overbearing feeling of nostalgy is a turn off for audience. That is his trap, since more than 20 years has passed from the original Watchmen and it's themes may not seem relevant to watchers. So let's look at those days with reminiscence.
I remember reading Watchmen, at the first page I saw the zoom out starting from the cover I knew this guy was doing something with comics that totally changes the experience. It was packed so tight with multiple plot weave I was having pauses to think and go back, getting shocked how mathematical it was working. A young Moore comes to America with V for Vendetta under his belly (his dissertation of why he can't go on living England), gets an agreement to write his own title free of DC's universe boundaries. He decides he would go for the idea "how and why should some people want to act as heroic personas and what would that world become.
Three things was interesting for me more among others. Pirate comic that the random kid near newstand reads in shift with books world. Depicts slowly how a man turns into savagery to survive on his own. He is the killer amongst other killer species.
The other two are characters, Ozymandias is a very second hand one, we already well know how smartest man on earth behaves when he becomes a ruler. But he is necessary for the major scale operation that's bound to happen. Most of the other characters are there to establish layers of living of/with superheroes.
Rorschach is an exception, he is out of a Sartre novel with the grimest look on society, he's all cynical, paranoid conservative ideas crystalized on one person. There is blank spots on his mind, extreme inability to come in terms with how the things are. So why not change it, if need be violently. After all his idea of self is a reflecting mirror; "Look at my face, what do you see on the ink blot?". Pardon me but he's not suitable for any identification, I disagree with people who thinks he should have been the -Main- character of the movie. He is the -impossible- factor of the story. That's why Dr. Manhattan simply helps him -have it his way- in the end.
Then I remember where Dr. Manhattan comes into my life. In my adolesence I was used to think with studying physics I could change the very ideas we think the universe works. Two years in university I crash into what science currently really became (and the fact that I am not a genius
). The practical joke of the science has already developed in the past millenia. What is left for fundemental science afficionados is becoming factory workers, analyzing data without any touch to theories if you are a laborant and doing hand calculations with advanced math if you are a theorist, you become specialized and there is only a vague image of the big picture. This crashed my will to live academic life. So I went on just to learn major theories and find an application from what I learned elsewhere. From simple observation since my childhood Newton mechanics was the most obvious theory. But it gives you no hint what happens to matter in nanoscale. Infact what is the matter, why it acts like it does? Ok with the small things, how does the huge mass lumb called universe behaves? Electromagnetic Theory, Introductory Quantum and Quantum Mechanics (which is only Newtonian physics rewritten to include quantum effects), Special Relativity (it's superbly simple than General Relativity, nothing special) and some by choice Astronomy courses came to my help. Oh FUCK so matter is not continuous but is quantized. Dammit time is not linear, but compressable and expandable due to your speed(when you are speed of light scale)? I was mindblown.
But the most influential study was Astronomy. Scales working on it was so different than my daily thoughts. I tried to figure out how big I am, solar system, the galaxy it is in, the clusters of clusters of galaxies which is indeed an exploding ball. On to the timescapes, the length of my life, life of my species, all the life we know of, this system and above. It was all chaos out there, enough mass accumulating to put so much pressure that it burns on the atomic level and becomes self sufficient stars. A star becoming unable to produce anymore energy turning into heavier elements. A star dying with a burst if it's big enough or going cold turkey with just a whimper. Binary stars that comes so close that they start to exchange matter like two lovers copulating. Infact one of them is the predator that feeds sucks the other. Two galaxies each containing billions of star systems crashing into eachother over millions of years. This is no car crash, fast forward it, same as any two things crashing and exploding....
Ok this thoughts go on and on, the bottom line is I realized everything I learn about existence has no direct effect on my existence, my life. So it hanged there just as a reminder human life works in a different way. I'm gonna live my life in a country or flying around a few thousand miles. Sun is getting old and gonna die... not in my lifetime. Nothing is gonna pass the speed of light so I won't be having a tourist tour to a quasar. Nor is my hand going into a wall with all the atoms. If I get 10 years older, my fiance will get the same, no fiances on orbit coming back young. I am all but a wave that sometimes look like particle, still my nose hurts when I crash to a glass door. Modern physics have no direct application to human scale life.
As a novel possibility Dr. Manhattan comes. He is nothing near godly, operating physics man, a kid playing around with fabric of matter. He is obligated to time just like we are, he can only imagine matter/energy transformations to predict something happening. Not a good candidate if you want a character with humanistic motivations, even sociopathic. Snyder does a good job extra emphasizing his relationship with Spectre. There is Shakespearian drama to build and it's refreshing. Blue penis jokes aren't smart when there is more to being blue than shiny dicks.
Finally the relevancy issue. It's in your best choice if you are interested in a long thesis about world order with superheroes. There are no superheroes, thinking in depth about possibilities have no direct derivations. Nam is long past, there is no cold war and nuclear heads flying between America and Russia possibility (Kubrick done that, right?). But now we have war in Iraq and scheme on middle east(where I live), global warming (arggh all the disaster movies), internet where we all co-live, world center shifting with growing economies such as China, singular technology/life style extremity as Japan, microbiology taking the lead in science and applications, art becoming derivative. Is Watchmen outdated? Are those totally different than past 60 to 20 years? Hard to argue but Watchmen still makes sense to me, that I'm sure.
I found that there is no end to this. You can blame me for not getting to a point just like the movie is blamed not to have a proper ending. If you read this far, thank you for bearing with me. Please consider this as an opportunity to comdemn, discuss, joke about, geek the hell out of Watchmen novel and film.
