Word: watchmen
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...heart, Watchmen is a detective story, with Eddie (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) as the victim and Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley), he of the shifting-inkblot mask, as the questing sleuth. Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) is not much help in the search, preoccupied as he is with helping another superhero, Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), in a secret experiment that may save the world or put a big hole in it. Dr. M. has also paid scant heed to his girlfriend Laurie (Malin Akerman), a.k.a. Silk Spectre II, who's ready to fall into the open arms of nerdy Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson), a.k.a...
...Moore conceived the story when Reagan and the Russkies were still spitting threats across the Berlin Wall, and few imagined the Soviet Union could collapse under its own dead weight. In that sense, Watchmen is another replay of the Nixon years to which Hollywood filmmakers are addicted - Frost/Nixon, Milk, etc. - and a period piece that may not resonate with audiences who weren't alive when Tricky Dick was in power. (Snyder says he was asked if Nixon could be replaced by George W. Bush; he wisely declined.) Set in the recent past, it features characters who cannot escape their...
...detective stories move from the present to the past; they're essays in social archaeology, the metaphorical digging up of the corpse to discover what made him tick and who stopped his clock. It's an apt structure for the Watchmen, since most of them are past their prime - Eddie's 67 when he dies; the first Silk Spectre (Carla Gugino), who had a carnal run-in or two with Eddie, is in her 60s; and Dr. Manhattan is 56, though he looks great for his age - and facing serious midlife introspection. International celebrities for decades, they have...
...President Nixon sends Manhattan and The Comedian to Vietnam; the war is over within a week, with the locals lining up to surrender personally to the big blue guy. 1976: Nixon is elected to a third term. 1977: Nixon pushes the Keene Act through Congress, outlawing the Watchmen. 1985: America is an open sewer of drugs and porn, and The Comedian is defeated, defenestrated, dead...
...walls in her bed (which is different, by the way, from her fate in the novel, where she's killed by a minor adversary). Watching in awe, I'm prodded to wonder why all movies can't be this bold, smart and elliptical. (Watch an interview with Watchmen artist Dave Gibbons...