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Watchmen Review

Watchmen is a superhero drama limited series that premiered on HBO in 2019. It’s one of the most overrated and miscalculated series in recent memory.

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“We’re all puppets, Laurie“

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When masked vigilantes are treated as criminals by government agencies, some band together to start a mutiny while others aim to stop it before it yields chaos. The original graphic novel is a classic of the medium while the Zack Snyder movie adaptation was surprisingly strong and quite underrated. This show captured the attention of mainstream media, critics and awards, but it was maligned by fans and rightfully so as it’s the type of show that only the media could like.

I am of course talking about its toxic politics that is also as subtle as an earthquake. The source material was much more sophisticated and nuanced in its depiction of American politics and the moral ambiguities of what doing the right thing means in wars and conflicts. This show, however, is anything but that. In fact, words like “white supremacist” are thrown around so often that the movie ended up being both unsubtle and only meant to appeal to the politically motivated, biased critics.

Regina King is fantastic as Angela while Yahya Abdul-Mateen as Dr. Manhattan was also strong. The penultimate episode was my favorite as the relationship that was established between the two was actually quite moving and the story examined themes ranging from mortality to how people experience romance and how the passage of time may affect it. But of course the episode had to include all that talk about race that was downright tiresome, thus ruining any potential that the finale would be great and it surely wasn’t. It was rushed and disappointing.

The first half of the show was itself too slow, uninvolving and totally unsophisticated in its handling of race as a subject. They went above and beyond in trying to teach us that white supremacy is a huge issue in America today when we all know that the time has passed when this issue was prevalent. It was dangerously misleading and pointless to portray it as such.

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Ozymandias was solid. Jeremy Irons was terrific in the role and his character felt true to the original vision, certainly more truthful than the other characters with Rorschach being a symbol for white supremacists being the most egregious attack on his character’s integrity. It is easy to see why Alan Moore thought this was a bastardization of his graphic novel as they went above and beyond to tarnish everything that was good about the source material.

Watchmen is visually appealing. It is very well edited, shot and scored. The acting and directing are also very good. Some of the dialogue was solid too, but most of it was overly on-the-nose and ridiculously preachy. Only a child could write dialogue as aggressively simplistic as this one while still managing to fail to say anything of substance or meaning in the process. There is a distinct lack of ideas here that bothered me and the dramatic storytelling with almost no superhero/fantastical elements was another big issue for me.