Film of the Moment: Watchmen: The Music Was Emblematic in the Wrong Ways

I liked Watchmen. It was good, but perhaps a hairpin shy of what I would consider great. It was certainly wonderful mimicry of the source material, but I don't think it ever rose to the challenge and attempted to transcend its originating source. It hit upon most of the major themes of the comic, and yet was simultaneously entirely too subtle about it and not subtle enough. Most of the major commentary about the necessity of violence was constrained to knowing glances. I'm not sure how many popcorn stadium visitors might come away with the realization that in a dark world filled with shades of insanity the most sane people in the film are the people that we (rightfully) in our own world see as relatively insane: Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger [1].

I had to remind my brother, who read the comic, that when the Comedian refers to his atrocities during the Vietnam war as "That was war...", as if that excused things, that it was the Vietnam war, in our own timeline, where much of America regained its conscientiousness about war and realized that war does not and should not excuse atrocities. I don't see much hope for much of mainstream audiences putting that together, at least, not while watching Watchmen. Hopefully at least a few people might see fit to discuss it afterwards...

In the row behind my brother and I, a mother had taken her two young children to see the film. I'm not sure what the woman expected to see at an R-Rated superhero film. She pulled her children out with her about half-way through. The Dark Knight was PG-13 and some of its brutality may not have been fit for her young children (from the ages that they appeared; about ...