Watchmen - film review

There comes a time in many people’s lives when a sense of confusion about the nature of things overwhelms them. This might strike during childhood, teenage years, early adulthood, middle ages or beyond. It derives from that fundamental fear that in a vast, seemingly limitless universe what is the meaning and point to our lives, and why should we carry on through struggle and strife?

One point of view could be that in relation to the cosmos our lives are a pure accident. We are alive because our planet is this size, is this close to the sun and has gases around it that make it habitable. What we do with our lives, good or bad, has no real meaning. All plants and creatures are on this planet purely to serve their own regeneration, everything is about surviving to reproduce…. be it tree, flower, weed, ant, cat, dog or human, we simply are here to exist. There is no grand scheme or design to it all which will be revealed after we are gone.

The character of Dr Manhattan in Watchmen is grappling with this very point himself and, now gifted with superhuman ability, has become emotionally, morally and physically detached from humanity and Earth by the coldly logical answer. He sees misery and suffering and the prospect of more to come but cannot understand why either state really matters. On a long enough timeline everything becomes dust, why is it so important how it got there?

Watchmen has three main functions. The first is as a domestic drama involving masked heroes, vigilantes if you will, who’s glory days have come and gone. The second is as a fairly standard good versus evil popcorn pot-boiler, replete with cool gadgets and an impressive villain’s lair in which to stage a grand finale and showdown. The third is to pose that key philosophical question about he meaning of existence.

It’s worth watching on all three counts and is brave indeed for daring to provide food for thought for it’s viewers and risk a drop in ticket sales.

Unfortunately however, and I wish I didn’t have to say this, but the level of horrific violence displayed throughout does well to stop the viewer from truly empathising with it’s main protagonists... good or bad. This point may very well keep it from becoming a true classic. Then again, maybe the level of violence is, in itself, part of the philosophising that is at the heart of Watchmen.