Watchmen: a commentary

Disclaimer: Because of the graphic violence and the profusion of nekkidness in this movie, I can not in good conscience recommend it to anyone. So please don't take my critique as an endorsement. It's rated "R" for good cause. But, the violence and nudity weren't pointless. Just gratuitous.

"Who's Watching the Watchmen?" This question is graffitied on the wall in a city that has rebelled against the idea of vigilantes/costumed superheroes. The movie follows the lives of a small band of washed-up vigilantes, some trying to live normal lives, some clinging to their crime-fighting ways. After the murder of one of their own, the movie then proceeds to flash back and forth from the characters' past back to the movie's present day. The main character is a masked man named Rorschach. He hates the filth that the people of the city live in. He's one of the few that still clings to the past, even though their way of fighting crime has been outlawed. He is convinced that someone is coming after the old masked heroes and he is going to get to the bottom of it. Along the way, we find out his disturbing past. He was abused as a child, his mother was a whore, and now his sole purpose in life is to punish evildoers. He hates fornicators, thieves, and murderers. He is the most ethically consistent character in that he acts, always, according to his own moral code. One of the most disturbing scenes in the movie is when we see his character on the night he, in his own words, loses his human identity and solely becomes Rorschach, the crime fighter. He tracks down a child molester/kidnapper/killer, kills the man's dogs, and then brutally kills the man. This scene, though I had to look away, was really thought provoking. How many of us have thought at some point that jail time or a quick painless execution is too good for those evil people that hurt children? It's just a worse kind of evil to hurt the most vulnerable, and that is what disgusts Rorschach. The man begs Rorschach to take him to jail, but Rorschach then bludgeons him to death, and even after death, continues to beat him brutally. This raised a lot of questions to me. Yes, the man got what he deserved, but who gets to decide what justice looks like? Is Rorschach any better than that man now? Do people still have to submit to a flawed system of justice? Was it right for Rorschach to do that? Usually in movies we cheer when the bad guy gets theirs. In this movie I couldn't even look at the screen.
Later on, one of the female characters, Silk Spectre, has left her superhero boyfriend that she was living with and shacks up with another old superhero. After this new couple goes out on a vigilante spree for old times' sake, they get it on in their aircraft. I think this scene could have been shorter and definitely didn't need all the nudity to get the point across, but there was still a point. They are literally hovering above the city, separated from the people below that they have set themselves above figuratively. Yet, they are acting just as debauched as the people they quickly and gleefully punish. What makes them better? What gives them the right to take the law into their own hands? Who's watching the Watchmen?
In another twisty plot point, another character has averted nuclear war and mass world destruction by obliterating a city of millions and making it look like one of the Watchmen did it. The world puts aside their conflicts to unite against this new threat. More questions: was world peace worth the cost? What gave this character the right to make that decision? Even if it was the only way to avoid nuclear war, was it worth murdering all those people and framing someone else for it? Do the ends ever justify the means? Would it have been ok if the government had done it?
This movie wasn't the stereotypical comic book movie, with clear-cut good guys and bad guys, and instead shows a realistic, gritty, depressing, and graphic idea of what would happen if people really decided to live like this. Hardly any of the Watchmen have what we think of as superpowers. They're just strong, fast, and brave/arrogant. This movie had me marveling at how restrained our society is, considering how evil we all really are. The movie shows the need for morality, for social norms, for authority, but it all begs the question, what gives ANYONE, government, vigilante, cop... the right to exact justice? What is justice? God gives the job of punishing society's evildoers to the government. But what happens when most people don't believe in God, and that there's really no reason the government should get to make those decisions? I haven't read the graphic novel and I don't know much about the author, but the movie, at least, was prophetic. Without God, there is no real justice. When men try on their own to govern themselves, they become just as bad as the people they set themselves over. In that sense, this is the most realistic comic book movie I've ever seen, and that is scary.