I had a thing here about not having hot water for four days but no one cares.

Let's talk about Watchmen because that's way more fun.

I read a review from the New York Times and was rendered irate because the movie reviewer hated both Watchmen and V for Vendetta. When I read the review I hadn't seen Watchmen yet, but I knew I liked V and that his comments about V for Vendetta were a gross misinterpretation. After seeing Watchmen I understood the review and how it was the reviewer came to hate it so fervently. This latest movie in Hollywood's mood swing of superheroes is the deepest genre study produced so far. If you don't like superhero movies and/or if you don't know anything about superheroes than you might very well not like this movie. The final line of the review mentioned above (and I'm paraphrasing here) was, "where did the comedy go in the comic-strip?"

This comment encapsulates why some people, perhaps a great many, won't like this movie. Comic books haven't been funny as a genre for a very, very long time--think fifty years or more. Watchmen is an ironic (dare I say satiric?) study of superhero myths and what the reality of our imaginings would look like. It is also a delving (sometimes juvenal delving it's true) into philosophic ideas often commented on by superhero myths: think nihilism, existentialism, and Platonic moral absolutism. But the movie does all of these things reasonably well with very little error; I would argue it possesses no unforgivable mistakes, provided--and this is an important provided--that you judge it based on the conventions of the genre and the overall intention of the piece.

It has some truly enjoyable action, but it isn't an action movie. It has some truly enjoyable dialogue expounding on the human condition, but it isn't a philosophical exploration. It has some romance, but it isn't a love story. It's a superhero movie for a world that doesn't tolerate superheroes or heroics for any serious stretch of time. It deals with issues of humanity extinguishing itself--something we're still in danger of today. It deals with issues of renewable power sources--certainly something we're dealing with currently. And, for every annoying nineteen year old boy that enjoys wading through the philosophical muck produced by Alan Moore and Zack Snyder, it puts into popular conversation ideas about what it means to be a hero or a villain. Most young people, or old people, aren't going to pick up Nietzsche or Foucault. Most people never question what happens to their moral and ethical codes when they sacrifice those very codes to the greater good. Watchmen presents those questions and challenges readers and viewers alike to deal with them. At times it is heavy handed. At times it is outright immature. But it still puts the subject into popular discourse in a way no Literature (notice the capital L) is currently managing. Stories, be they movies or books or comic books, are one of the chief ways we learn what it means to be human. They certainly play a defining role in teaching us the difference between good and evil. A story like this that questions our own basic assumptions that good is simply good, that we don't have to know it or define it because we just know, is certainly worth telling over and over again.

If one understands all of this, and not in some highbrow academic way that thinks There Will Be Blood is all the world needs for artistic contribution to societal investigation, and still doesn't like this movie than I can respect that. Aesthetically it won't be to everyone's taste. I didn't find it flawless. But aesthetics aside you cannot judge Watchmen by the same standard you judge an Oscar winner. You must know what a thing is before you can love it or hate it, and asking where the comedy is in a comic-strip demonstrates, more powerfully than any argument I could make, that one doesn't have any idea what this thing is. Too often, I feel, people love or hate a thing and assume the fault lies with the thing itself and not their own ignorance.

The moral of the story is that no one watches the Watchmen and we all need to watch ourselves--in every sense of the phrase.