Who else likes secret villains? Ones you never expected, or ones you honestly thought were gunning for the good side? They’re probably my most favorite versus the all-out evil dudes because they really punch the audience and the heroes in the gut. A couple nights back I was really stressing over…really everything, as this is what neurotic college students do when they start thinking of their futures. So in an attempt to think of something, anything else, I was left channel surfing and this is what I settled on.
I love the story behind Watchmen. When reading the comic, you have the ability to skip over the bits you don’t want to read, or rather skip over the images you don’t want to see. Watchmen both the book and movie, are horrifically graphic. At least the book allows you some methods of escape, you can skip the page, skip the image, or put the book down and walk away, taking your mind off of whatever atrocity. The movie, any movie for that matter, does not allow the same escape. Most violence does not bother me, although the film Watchmen had me squirming a bit.
Story. Right. (There will be some spoilers if you’ve not seen/read it, beware.)
Humanity as a collective force that’s being shoved towards something beyond their control and almost inevitable. “Superheroes” turning their backs on us: ‘They will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll whisper "no.”’ The fate of many being determined by a few. Huge moral consequences to face left and right in this story. Is what they’re doing right? Is he truly evil? Whose side are we really supposed to stand on?
Watchmen is in a lot of ways a medium meant to tear the superheroes from the pedestals we’ve put them on. The main focus is almost always on the six hero characters, and if not the book is showing us blips of humanity before some ultimate destruction falls on them. Humanity is always at the disadvantage, not really knowing what’s going on or what to do, just aware that times aren’t good and don’t seem to show promise of looking up. Since the readers know the book is set in an alternate world of the 1940’s-1985, as one goes through the story and sees the helplessness of humanity and the heroes struggling to straighten out their demons, the reader knows that something awful is brewing, something inevitable and irreparable, leaving us with a sour feeling in the gut and just a general feeling of “this is wrong.”
This is a common theme in many stories, humanity being left helpless or what have you, as in many alien movies, Terminator, Jurassic Park, and many others I can’t think of. I appreciate that in Watchmen it’s not about some alien race or dinosaurs taking over. The “villain” of the story is purely human. Even the superheroes in this book all started as human beings. It is humanity fighting itself, which is a delightfully tragic concept in fiction. (Just tragic and frightening in real life.) But really, Watchmen takes it a step further—one of the former heroes has taken it upon himself to actually save humanity by doing damage so horrific that in the end it will surely unite mankind to stand together against a misdirected force of evil. Hence the ‘secret villain.’ This likely would have never happened if these heroes hadn’t been worshiped by mankind. The guy wouldn’t have a hero complex if humanity hadn’t been so willing to take the Minutemen/Watchmen in to solve all of the problems humans were too lazy to face.
And Watchmen just has this moral ambiguity that leaves its audience on edge. Anyone with any sense of a moral compass would say that Ozymandias’ actions were wrong. He sets off multiple nuclear explosions that the world believes are Dr. Manhattan’s doing. Instead of going to war with Russia, all of mankind is united against the superhero that they believe did them wrong. WWIII is avoided, but at the cost of millions of lives, as Ozymandias puts it, “A world united in peace, there had to be sacrifice.” The man who betrayed his own teammates and then put the blame on another essentially gets away with it all, because exposing the truth behind the explosions would mean all was for naught and WWIII would still be upon them. Is this right? The death of so many people at the hands of one man, a former hero at that, is not. It’s not. Murder is wrong according to our laws. But think about it—15 million lives versus the whole world at war again, 15 million would be a fraction of the costs of a third world war. But we still say that this is wrong. We want to hang on to that glimmer of hope that says ‘but what if the world came to its senses and didn’t go to war at all?’
Oy, this is heavy stuff. It gives me chills when I think on it. Just thinking about someone with so much power bestowed upon him, so loved and worshipped whom then turns around and decides that this is best for the world.
“I did the right thing, didn’t I? It all worked out in the end.”
“’In the end?’ Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.”
Another thing I find very interesting in the world of comics is the idea of humanity abandoning their superheroes or making efforts to stop their escapades. Since it has been ingrained in our minds for years that “superheroes” are forces of good (Superman’s been in print since 1938) that always fight for the right thing and that they are supposed to stand as role models for all ages, the concept of finding fault with superheroes seems just…inherently wrong. I love these stories though. When mankind rages against their former heroes in these stories, it is we, the readers, who really know the truth. Our heroes are still our heroes, it’s just usually that they were forced into a bad situation, tricked, or lied to. Marvel’s Civil War arc I think does a good job of this when heroes are pitted against each other over the morality of whether or not to make “superhero registration” mandatory, and consequently the losers are sneered at and are kicked down to the same level as criminals. Similar stuff goes down in the animated movie Superman/Batman: Public Enemies, in which they are accused of crimes they did not commit. How easily humanity can be swayed…although the fictional humans are right to question superheroes, for once suspicion is thrown out there, it would be hard to look at someone with arms the size of tree trunks and laser vision in the same way. Now let’s tie this back to Watchmen…if I could take you back to the beginning…Rorschach believes that the Comedian is offed by some government-backed program to eliminate all costumed heroes. Once again, the minds behind Watchmen are trying to irk us. It’s not as if these government officials would know how these people carry themselves on a day to day basis (the Comedian was a pretty awful guy and that makes it seem like he deserved his death)…or would they? Regardless, Watchmen opens with this theme of ‘don’t trust these people, despite all the good they’ve done for us while wearing masks,’ which just completely contrasts with everything we’ve come to expect out of comic books.
It’s all about making the heroes more human… They’ve got problems just like us, between holding down a job, dealing with what may very well be mental illness, infidelity, backstabbing former coworkers, what have you. I love this about Watchmen, the fact that it’s main focus really is on the lives of the heroes, versus their actual…heroics. I love it when comics do an about face and show their heroes at their high points, where the characters think they’re gods, and then let them fall—its usually only when the heroes crash and burn that we see they are just human after all. That, dear goodness, is one of my favorite things because it proves that these people have feeeelings and you feel for them too.
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