Watchmen and the Absurdity of Salvation

Watchmen subverts the superhero mythology, depriving the world of selfless heroes striving to live lives of virtue. Its costumed crime fighters don’t struggle with wielding power responsibly or grapple with their own weaknesses in the hope of overcoming them. The Watchmen include a brutal sociopath hell-bent on punishing criminals, a national hero who revels in the absurdity of his and everyone’s crime-busting, a sanctimonious and self-worshiping genius who’s profited on selling action figures of himself, and a physicist turned godlike blue being indifferent to the distinction between life and death.

Zack Snyder’s film version opened the weekend. I saw it yesterday. The movie proved a well-cast and faithful adaptation. The director cut scenes from the graphic novel that I would have were I in his shoes. My main complaint was the loss of dramatic punch due to the compression of detailed scenes, in particular the origin stories of Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan. The middle of the film didn’t play nearly as well as the end and the beginning. I also found the love story between Laurie and Dan and the graphic violence rather dull and ineffective.

The film has been called nihilistic and described as having a very poor morality, but I don’t see those charges as being entirely accurate. Some of the characters qualify as nihilists, and just about every “hero” is morally perverse, but the philosophies and moralities in Watchmen vary with each character. This is not to say that story has no overarching themes. It clearly depicts the absurdity of trying to save the world.

An important point: in Watchmen, the efforts to save the world rely on killing, not on loving self-sacrifice or divine intervention. Dr. Manhattan’s “saving” act didn’t involve using his superhuman powers to prevent nuclear war; he murdered a watchman to prevent him from undoing the good accomplished by the antagonist’s evil. Killing, of course, never fully saves. Destroying lots of human lives doesn't change human nature. Governments and individuals kill their enemies only to discover new enemies the next day. The Comedian understood this reality, but fought anyway, seeing it all as a big joke. Dr. Manhattan also saw the unending cycle of violence, although he seemed to think the temporary hiatus brought about by murder to be better than nothing.

Even the villain in Watchmen sincerely wants to save the world. His desire may be stronger than that of his fellow costumed warriors. His mistake, aside from the millions of people he kills to bring peace, is his believing that he can save the world. The unintended consequence of an unforeseen act undermined his master plan to usher in an age of world peace.

Had the story denied salvation itself, I might agree with the the charge of nihilism, but neither the novel nor the film asks what can save if deathly violence cannot. That question resides outside the focus of the Watchmen. They are not very good watchers.

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Here are my initial thoughts after first reading the graphic novel.