On March 6, the movie Watchmen will hit the theatres. This will mean different things to different people; those who haven’t read the graphic novel on which it is based, and those who have.
For the uninitiated, Watchmen looks to be the latest in a string of comic book-to-film conversions or, “the one with the glowing naked blue guy and Smashing Pumpkins remix in the trailer.”
But to those who have read the graphic novel, Watchmen is a sign that we live in a darker, more cynical time.
When Watchmen hit comic book stands 23 years ago, its morose tone and chillingly sublime art style changed people’s opinions of just what a comic book was. Set in the mid-1980s, Watchmen depicts a world driven to the brink of nuclear annihilation, as tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States threatened to ignite their longstanding Cold War.
Without revealing too much of the plot, the story’s “villain” defuses the situation by staging an alien invasion in the middle of Manhattan, an act that claims 3,000,000 lives. He succeeds in quelling the nuclear apocalypse, but it remains to be seen whether his hastily prompted peace will hold.
The sociopolitical shockwaves that follow Watchmen’s gruesome climax foreshadow the impact of September 11, 2001 almost two decades later.
In the wake of 9/11, people were suddenly re-sensitized to things like airplane hijackings and civilian casualties.
Watchmen’s alien invasion rallied the world together through tragedy, just as 9/11 directed global attention towards a specific terrorist threat. Films like Con Air or Air Force One became obsolete. The era of the stock cinema terrorist was over. Terrorism now had a name and an agenda, and it wasn’t afraid to act, Harrison Ford be damned.
But like any muscle that’s been torn grows back stronger with time, so too did the sinews of our collective sensibilities. In 2001 we had 24, then United 93 and World Trade Center in 2006.
Which brings us back to Watchmen, a film that Terry Gilliam once remarked was impossible to make and is now heading to the silver screen.
True, it’s just another superhero movie, but this isn’t Spider-Man. Gone is the rose-coloured tint of good guys beating up bad guys; the world of Watchmen is slate grey.
Here, the bad guy saves the world by killing millions of people. The good guys sit idly by, capes between their legs, swallowing their consciences in order to preserve the greater good.
The parallels between the dystopian reality Watchmen envisioned 20 years ago and the world in which we live in are troubling.
We face an economic recession, the US and Canada are both embroiled in questionable military campaigns overseas, and a tense ceasefire has briefly paused the interminable battle between Israel and Hamas.
That is what makes Watchmen so chillingly poignant: naked blue guy notwithstanding, we’re just a few ticks away from striking 12 on the doomsday clock.