Moore wrote a detailed and historically aware graphic novel detailing fascism. It was called V for Vendetta. While Watchmen was about the dangers of unchecked power, in government as well as elsewhere, it was hardly about fascism. Try reading the book sometime (or a book for that matter).

After those 5,000 years of "glorious human history" it turns out the last one-hundred years was the most violent on record with the largest number of genocides and deaths. If that doesn't at least make you stop and question your concept of progress then you are a lost ideologue.

Moore never defends Communism. Both sides can be wrong, but just because the other side is also wrong does not justify toppling democratically elected governments in South America. Also, what helped us get through the cold war without nuclear holocaust is that there were some presidents on both sides who were capable of finding middle ground with the enemy. You should see the documentary "Fog of War" where McNamara explains that during the cold war, despite encouragement from the hardliners to escalate military involvement in Cuba, JFK listened to a cabinet member who had dined with Krushchev and knew him well enough to suggest that JFK could negotiate his way out of the problem. That is the kind of smarts that got us through the cold war.

So, in short VQ should probably go to college or something, because if that individual came out of college with that same shallow unrealized worldview then I weep for the future of this country.

Sure, maybe a few more shots of the destruction, maybe there are some dead bodies *near* the crater. But you can't do the same thing as those splash pages when the method of destruction has been changed.

It's all well and good having a voice here, but what is the point if you are alone in the wilderness?

The other group is just loony.

EVERY troop that dies is a hero, in that they preserve liberty and freedom by fighting those that want to kill us for having it, and in turn they keep you free enough to spout your nonsenese without having to look over your shoulder.

Both my grandpa's who served in WWII would back hand your sorry arse if still alive.

Also, Greengrass's version would have sucked total ass- You think people are complaining about Snyder's slo-mo? Imagine if we had to sit through three hours of shaky-cam, terrorist fighting Watchmen. No thanks.

Sounds like another reviewer predisposed to disliking this film...

Now that you went out of your way to start a dialogue, when I wasn't even fucking talking to your ignorant ass-- go ahead. Proceed to tell me why my views are wrong. I merely said I don't everyone that dies in the military should automatically be labeled a hero. Ohhhhhhhh noooo.....so controversial, I know.

But saying good for LHO is just asinine. Any citizen of this country should be angered at anyone hurting a hair on a President's fucking head, no matter what your party of choice is. Though I fantasized about urinating in W's mouth while its being pried about with surgical tools.....but come on. I wish no harm on any President.

Someone like Bono....who think he's the President of the fucking world.....yeah, someone needs to take that motherfucker out-- like yesterday.

Furthermore, to say that Moore's fears, because they didn't come true, all of a sudden have no relevance is about the dumbest thing I've ever read. "Fears of nuclear proliferation? Who cares? The world hasn't gone up in smoke yet!" Yeah, but it could have then and it could still in the future. We can still learn lessons from the past, from warnings from the past even if the events didn't come true. And throwing Kennedy in with Truman and Reagan isn't exactly the best idea. Kennedy might not have liked communism, but he called for peaceful coexistence in the last months of his life; these calls were obviously ignored after his death.

And the only pretentious piece of commentary I see is what VQ had to say. And thanks for providing your thoughts on the FILM. Ass.

I mean-- she's sorta got a mustache, but thats no problem when she's blowing me. Not like I can feel a little fuzz on the lip through my dick hair anyway, you know what I'm sayin?

Pass the celery sticks.....beeeyatch.

why does he even come here anyway? Just ban his stupid ass!

If you update it to today, you can't ask that question. Because we're not at the brink. If you reset the timeframe of Watchmen, "today" would be the day that Ozymandias tried to form a super-group and Comedian burned the map. That's the point that we're (hypothetically) at now. So if you want to "modernize" it, you actually have to push it 20-30 years down the road. That might be a harder sell than keeping it in the 80s (especially since you'd have to fabricate both a new opponent to the US and a hypothetical future with a war like Vietnam -- and no, you could not do it with Iraq because despite what the Internet says, the two do not compare. In short, you run the risk of fictionalizing it so much that you lose the relevancy angle.

PWNED!

Wow. Not a shot was fired, unless you count Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Cuba, Hungary, etc.

The real clusterfuck would be what does Watchmen do to a world where crony capitalism has brought us to the precipice of utter devestation. What could Manhattan do about subprimes and credit default swaps?

Said on March 6th, 2009, when capitalism is about to implode and wiping out countless value that has been created in its name.

True. I've seen him...

"...putting the blame on an American citizen turned into a weapon by an American laboratory accident -- superhero gone mad or no -- ultimately puts the blame for everything on America, period." So when five major American cities got bombed back to the Stone Age, that didn't put them in the clear, or at least absolve them from any blame?

As for VQ's comments: ""But as it turns out, that entire worldview was vitiated by events...Moore was wrong. His fears were wrong. His warnings were wrong. His fundamental view of the world was wrong." WRONG! And right, sort of.

VEIDT was wrong. Veidt was proven wrong by world events. Veidt was wrong in his distrust of humanity's ability to make peace. That's what makes him such a notable villain; he acted on his "world's smartest man" impulses, bereft of any hope or faith in his own kind.

Moore just presented what would have been. Even when he decided to kill Rorschach, it's just what would have happened. He wasn't taking a moral stance. He wasn't putting the characters or the world of Watchmen in any moral light, but instead allowing the reader to choose his or her own stance.

One of the triumphs of the movie is that for better or worse, it does the same thing. Viewers can come to their own conclusions, not just about how it was executed, but what it said and meant.

Still, the make-up was pretty bad. I mean, it looked like something out of Dick Tracy. Perhaps that was the point, but tonally, it was off. They might have not had Benjamin Button money, but subtle aging would have been more appropriate.

Oh, well. Hindsight is always 20/20, huh?

I have no idea what that has to do with Watchmen, but it felt good to say it :P

All the fanboys would be bleating about the crappy miniatures, the completely wooden leading man being too young, the princess being a totally unsympathetic bitch, the shonky cardboard cut-out bad guy, the unnecessary furry sidekick, the blatant toy-marketing opportunity droids and their Abbot & Costello overtones, and on, and on.

Sometimes I long for the old days of having to wait until a film came out before you formed an opinion, know what I mean? Still, you've gotta laugh, haven't you?

"Gorbachev said the global economic crisis showed capitalism should be tempered with elements of the socialist system he played such a critical role in sweeping away. He seemed to view the global meltdown as partly the result of years of Western hubris and excess: 'The American media trumpeted ... about the victory in the Cold War, that socialism is down. This disease of extreme self-confidence led to it — the (belief) that things would always go on this way. And it did last long ... I think that now everyone is learning a hard lesson. It is necessary to overcome these mistakes of super-consumerism, of super-profits. We have to think about finding — through the G20 or other institutions — new models of development (and) cooperation.'

The world should look for a composite system, he said, which incorporates 'the past experience of all that the capitalist system brings, like competitiveness, and what socialism gives — especially a social safety net.'

Z here again. Bear in mind that I am not trying to demonize or glorify either system - but it is clearly time for a new paradigm that voids the horrifying pitfalls of both. Maybe one cannot expect the majority of a highly insular US population that lacks a broader global perspective to view their own system objectively, but at least there is a growing awareness that something is seriously amiss.

However, to shift gears a little and return to an issue at the heart of Watchmen, Dr. Turing is totally wrong about nuclear obliteration being a thing of the past. Not only was the post-Cold War's multipolar world more dangerous, it was aggravated over the past 8 years by George W. Bush. I'm not trying to gratuitously bash Bush, but this is a fact.

Regimes the world over who step up their nuclear programs are harshly criticized in US rhetoric. But under Bush Jr, the US unilaterally withdrew from the ABM Treaty, setting the stage for others to do the same. It’s the exact same thing in other areas, such as breaching the Biological Weapons Convention, or torpedoing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. What is the message to countries like Iran when we up the ante and back them into a corner? Should they not feel threatened? At best, it’s a mixed message; at worst, it’s shaping a bleak future. In the words of the famed Immanuel Wallerstein a few years ago,

“U.S. administrations have been valiantly trying to stop nuclear proliferation for fifty years. The Bush administration has managed in two short years to get North Korea, and now Iran, to speed up their programs, and not to be afraid to indicate this publicly. They have goaded North Korea into displaying its teeth of steel, offended South Korea by not taking its concerns seriously, made China more suspicious than before, and led Japan to think about becoming a nuclear power”.

So yes, VQ needs to be schooled. It could be argued that nuclear weapons were a decisive stabilizer during the Cold War, but nuclear deterrence was part of a more straightforward equation then. The rules of the game have changed, and as the hegemon, the US needs to lead by example, not accelerate a multipolar nuclear crisis by creating a ripple effect that encourages others to follow suit.

We may often speak of nuclear weapons in the abstract, but mustn’t forget they represent something so inconceivable that even Oppenheimer recoiled from the consequences, along with other haunted Manhattan Project scientists. The shadow of the mushroom cloud still looms large. I don’t know what’s more chilling: the prospect of nuclear war in itself, or the fact that because the Cold War is now over, we find some vague solace in the belief that a country, or a non-state actor for that matter, would never use them again.

let's not forget that soviet sub captain who turned down an erroroeous request to launch his nukes which would've started wwiii. one person's conscience and refusal to obey orders may have saved us all from the end.

Mikey Bay has dibs on the sequel.

(You won't deny that Herc- who is rumoured to be of the feminine persuasion- introducing most of your reviews is pretty damn fishy, though? Heh heh.)

Also, you didn't do a good job of comprehending my analogy of today vis a vis Watchmen. The meeting where the Comedian burned the map was after the tipping point had been reached. It's why Adrian's plan had even happened; the Comedian understood and opened Veidt's eyes. The movie doesn't take place then, though. It takes place right before the tanks go into Afghanistan, triggering the crisis. There is no analogue in today's environment. If capitalism crumbles, it'll be decades before it happens, not days. If there's another 9/11 attack, the world would not be destroyed. Even if a nuclear bomb goes off somewhere, humanity isn't doomed (like it was in the 80s when escalation was unavoidable). Another way to put it: AICN will be out of operation long before the 'tanks move into Afghanistan' in our current world. That was my point in saying you'd have to place it in the future, not today.

"Ok, so when I was 10 years old, me and my friend Tommy used to..."

Nobody cares, Harry. Now stop posting, just be the behind-the-scenes manager and image of the site, and start paying people like DuPont so you can get a consistent level of high quality here. It will give your site the credibility it lacks.

Seems like the last act could have been improved by throwing in a few dozen GIANT ROBOTS!1one!!

And what does it tell you that a pathetic, sycophantic, up-Harry's-ass child like you defends such bullshít with lame retorts? You're way out of your league, son, so piss off...and try some substance next time.

Cannom got the Oscar? I bet even HE was surprised when he got up to that podium, considering the work he did for Watchmen was still fresh in his mind.

All the Squid shit was just a ploy to get you overlook the fact that the makeup was ass. Combined with oatmeal, and Silly Putty.

Closing note: Dickblood, if you're reading this, screw you! Spend the ten dollars, you know you wanna. What? You believe everything you read on the Internet? It's all just a series of interconnected tubes full of lies and bullshit.

They are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. So, go see the movie!!

We all know Moore was an a long anti-Reagan, anti-Thatcher kick at that point in his career. But whatever else is true about the flaws of the Western World then (or now), Moore was...well, my God, just dead wrong about most of it. Dead wrong about the nature of the Cold war, dead wrong about who the real fascists were - the ones with real honest-to-God goosestepping soldiers, wall to wall labor camps and a completely militarized society. This doesn't mean that everything America did, at home or in (say) Central America can be defended; but it surely says something that Moore could get away with publishing things like WATCHMEN and V FOR VENDETTA in Reagan's America and Thatcher's Britain anyway, but would have ended up like Solzhenitsyn or worse had he tried it behind the Iron Curtain.

Bogeymen sometimes are real. The Soviet Union was real. Its burgeoning nuclear force was real. And for an imperial power supposedly desperate to find its replacement to scare its benighted citizenry into submission, it somehow took over a decade, and a massive terrorits attack reducing downtown Manhattan to rubble to finally conjure it up. Which hardly speaks to this conspiracy's efficiency.

This is an ending that just screams "Meh." :\

Guy Fawkes, who is obviously the huge inspiration for V, wanted to blow on parliament. He wasn't targeting civilians, and I find it hard to celebrate V, who isn't a hero. He is a confused terrorist.

Between V and Watchmen, Moore seems to send a message that perhaps anarchy is so good, it should be the law.

However, in the absence of power, another power rises. And those in power usually will do whatever it takes to stay in power. Do you trade one fascist for another?

Ozymandias wants to wrestle control of the world secretly because he doesn't trust those in power because they might kill others. So he does kill others because he is so trustworthy? And for all the sacrifice, Rorshack's journal still gets out, so the world is far from safe.

The Cold War was created by fear, and not even Dr. Manhattan can alter human nature. Murdering millions of human lives doesn't alter that.

It is a bold move to blur the lines between protagonist and antagonist, but the lines aren't blurred. VC or whomever got it right. Moore seems to hate everyone, and declare them all to be fascists. His story has no protagonists whatsoever. And the supposed justification that carries the arch is flawed, as history has vindicated.

Moore is a talented writer, but he is also a prick, and perhaps a little insane. It is insanely arrogant to assume his tale can not be told in another way. So to those who insist he is some deity, and that is source material is sancrosanct, know that the film did not need a fucking squid. The themes are on display here in full force.

Just as this was a landmark comic, in many ways this will be a landmark film. I may be in a very small minority here, but I am more impressed with the adaptation than perhaps the original story.

And it is precisely this kind of equivalence that I think Moore, for all of his considerable gifts, tends to fall into as well. Solzhenitsyn spared no lack of criticisms for the failings of the U.S.., but there was never the slightest doubt in his mind which side needed to lose the Cold War; which side was, at root, utterly illegitimate.

There are numerous well-documented cases of US sponsored terrorism rivaling any of our current or former enemies. For every murderous Stalin or extremist cell that has detonated a bomb in a Tel Aviv shopping mall, we can see an equal or greater danger on the opposite end, be it a highly influential Edward Teller or a gung-ho General MacArthur pushing for the president to drop 50 nuclear warheads over civilian populations in mainland China. Any of our remaining notions on the nobility of US foreign policy should be disabused by looking at its history of aiding or propping up some of the most ruthless dictators in history: Pinochet, Duvalier, Stroessner, Somoza, and so on…fine gents all.

We don’t even have to venture into the murky Reagan years and talk about cases of US sponsored terrorism in Lebanon, El Salvador or Tunisia. To cite just one recent example, in the late 1990s, Clinton knowingly provided 80% of the arms for Turkey’s counter-insurgency campaign against the Kurds, killing tens of thousands, driving 2 to 3 million out of their homes, leaving 3,500 villages destroyed. We’re talking about outright slaughter and atrocities on a grand scale. It comes as no shock that the arms flow from the United States declined in 1999 when Turkey achieved its goal. Or we can talk about the enormous toll on the Sudanese population after the US destroyed the Al Shifa facility, which manufactured medicines for civilians. Or how in Nicaragua, US policy was to attack so-called “soft targets”, civilian targets like health clinics and agricultural collectives. These people were funded, trained, and directed by the US, which controlled Nicaraguan air space.

It may often work on a less publicized scale, but the hegemon coldly considered these things optimal for the global picture of its interests. This nation simply does what it must to maintain its hegemony tooth and nail (often on target, sometimes grossly miscalculating, as in the case of the current Iraq war). I'm not trying to demonize the US, but why must we believe in all this freedom bullshít and not just accept what we are? That we're just as blasé about being horrible as anyone else, and nothing like the bastion of enlightenment we pretend to be? The fact that we do these things while most of our population is grossly uninformed about it because they're too busy sipping the Kool Aid makes us worse, if anything. This isn't conspiracy theory here, folks, it's well-documented evidence from the annals of history that any college professor worth his salt will teach you. It's just that most Americans either don't care to know, can't be bothered, or don't have the access to such facts.

The concept of inherent American goodness is collectively ingrained from an early age and thus understandably lapped up by the masses. But even examples of benevolence primarily serve national self-interest: for instance, the Marshall Plan was because we could not allow a weakened Germany to sit next to the Iron Curtain, and much of foreign aid is because creating free-ridership and other benefits is necessary for our own hegemonic stability, even though there is a cost to be paid. When the cost of providing free-ridership, aid, security, etc to other nations outweighs the benefits, the US won’t do it anymore. Which is why you just shake your head when you hear tripe like, "you complainers, we're always bailing the world out and you criticize us" from the insular-minded.

But we have our own PR spin, just like the Soviets did. Why would anyone be surprised that we had a hand in slaughtering Kurds and directly empowered others to rape and pillage like crazy with our clear aid & strategies & arms & personnel, only for us to turn and point the finger at Saddam who, "gassed those poor, poor Kurds." I remember often hearing that as a pro-war argument from ignorant American laymen on the street, "But that terrible Saddam...he gassed his own people!".

The US is just as full of shít and nonchalant about bloodshed as any other empire in history, we just have shiny, pretty things that mask our true nature and misguided notions of our own nobility. So are we any better? Of course not, but hey, at least we've got some pretty cool shopping malls, In N Out burger, access to masturbatory internet material, and 24 on the telly!

When we hire assassins, we're a horrible terrorist state. If we get in a more traditional ground war, we're also wrong. But oddly enough, when you talk to people over in Iraq, it seems almost unanimous that people feel it was a good idea to go there in the first place and depose Saddam.

And while the US also armed some real fuckheads in the day (like Saddam), we did so with the orders that he would fend off Iran. We armed the Taliban to fight off Afghanistan. We never armed groups and ordered them to commit terrorist acts.

It isn't that we're amoral because of going to war, or because of hiring assassins or not. Or because we had good intentions in providing arms but got unwittingly screwed over by bad guys. We've intentionally murdered millions of civilians and knowingly aided bloodthristy dictators who did the same. There should be no cheap, post-hoc rationalizations for that. "We never armed groups and ordered them to commit terrorist acts"? Are you sure? Or do you maybe need to get out there and read a little and do some serious research and talk to great academics? Read my previous post again if you didn't get it.

Again, well-documented fact. I gave you specific logic, arguments and examples....you gave me, "wacko hippie parents". Far from it, my life benefited enormously through corporate capitalism and such, but I got an undergraduate degree and master's in international affairs. This is based on what I've learned, not on some biased, twisted upbringing. Many of the warped notions of nobility, on the other hand, are based on rhetoric, patriotic sentiment, and self-serving cultural leanings, not fact, not history, not education.

my second one came as an afterthought - I didn't really dig those first 30-odd minutes - in fact I found them to be a birrova yawn-fest... I thought Snyder took an AWFULLY long time making VERY LITTLE of a point and sure I get that he was painstakingly re-creating possibly his favourite bits from the comic, cinematically this is a REAL no-no...

GET THE BACKSTORY OUT AND MOVE ON! This 2hr 40min movie felt like it had about 2hrs or more of setup - and that's just way too much! That first 30-odd minutes could have achieved EXACTLY the same purpose - in about 5 minutes, maybe 10...

btw I don't expect anyone on here hasn't already seen it, but in case you haven't and you were considering doing the IMAX thing - DON'T!!! You DO NOT need to see a GIGANTIC blue schlong on a screen filling your entire field of vision! Snyder really is gay, isn't he?

Terrible performances across the board, except for Rorschach. Maybe Billy Crudup gave a decent performance; who can tell? The look of the movie was silly and CGI'd-- look how the Vietnam in 'Watchmen' resembles Max Fischer's Vietnam stage play in 'Rushmore.' Slow, scattershot, and without a consistent tone or mood, with silly, overblown action-scenes and a real lack of anything adult that made the comic so good; such as its philosophical and metaphysical discussion of the nature of man and the universe. Here, the filmmaker seems to think that showing a tit and a bunch of blood equals 'adult.'

Really, really bad, but clearly made by someone whose heart was in the right place. Their head was just in fourth grade.

I don't intend to see it again, that second half drags out badly, and I didn't find that I cared about these characters all that much save for the Owl and Horschach there(I'm nutty! Ooo ooo ooo Mr Kotter!) ya know?

It makes you wonder how say Greengrass or Mikey Bay (who was offered this in '03 no joke) or Aronofsky woulda done. Personally you KNOW which version I'd have liked to see--anyways. It is what it is.

Nixon was just-AWFUL. What the hell?

Watchmen is a thought-provoking film, and one of my favorite aspects of film is seeing how other people respond to it. Not only is your review well written, I really loved that you included outside opinions in it.

Most critics are so arrogant, they assume their opinion is the only one that matters. Anyone else is inherently wrong, because they don't know enough about film to dissect it the way that they do.

Unfortunately I found this out the hard way. DAMN you PfeifferGirl2800 for toying with my emotions like that! Horny geek brothers, if you must seek out company online, the uglier and shallower they sound, the more likely they're not some predatory cross between Kathy Bates and Bette Davis circa Baby Jane.

She designed RPGs for a living. She LARPed with us in The Camarilla. She was brilliant, a great writer, a great roleplayer, handy with a sword, geeky and exceedingly hot.

Honestly, I can understand why she tried to keep her private life private. I was shocked that she wasn't constantly barraged by geek fan-boys. When my girlfriend and I split, I left California and I lost touch with her. But I believe she went on to run Guild Wars. When I talked to her boyfriend, who was an exceedingly nice guy (I've stayed in contact with him) he said he was known as the "asshole who dated her" because the entire world was constantly so jealous. I understand why, but amazingly enough (and I say this without hyperbole) my girlfriend at the time was equally as awesome. Rich, unfairly attractive, brilliant, geeky, really into porn, computers, roleplaying, sci-fi, and sports. And she was absolutely crazy about me. And yes I am an idiot for leaving that all behind. But I digress.

There's plenty of other flaws in your review, but I'm not going to detail them. This is a movie review site, not a review review site after all.

Just saying... don't give up your day job.

Just being constructive, mind. :) :) :)

Freedom isn't free!

Kill em all, let God sort em out!

Just Do It.

Can't we all get along?

Where's the beef?

I'm lovin' it!

Where a kid can be a kid!

An Army of One.

Just like Mom used to make!

Whatever is it I think I see, becomes a Tootsie-roll to me.

Mister Owl, how many licks does it take to get to the center of a tootsie-roll pop?

LET'S FIND OUT! [slurp] ONE! [slurp} TWO!! [slurp KA-RUNCH!!!] THREE! Three licks to get to the center of a tootsie-roll pop!

Now go tell that prick Anthony Lane to clear his desk at The New Yorker and take his job already.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to insult you by comparing you to that pretentious tool.