#20. Watchmen (2009)
(director: Zach Snyder; Starring Malin Akerman, Billy Crudup, Matthew Goode, Jackie Earle Haley, Jeffery Dean Morgan and Patrick Wilson)
I was intrigued by Watchmen. I suspect more of that comes from the source material by Alan Moore than by Zach Snyder’s process of adapting that work to celluloid, but at very least the director cannot be faulted for being unfaithful to the graphic novel. Each of the characters offered me much food for thought in how they reexamined traditional superhero conventions from a modernist perspective, such as Rorschach’s Batman-esque, fire-and-brimstone spewing, psychotic (but not completely unjustified) vigilantism; Silk Spectre II’s Wonder Woman persona, struggling to balance her feminine identity with an inherently masculine profession; or perhaps most ponderous of all, Dr. Manhattan’s God-like Superman figure, whose metaphysical, cosmic perspective on existence leads him to realize that causes such as Truth, Justice and the American Way are all trivial, if not completely meaningless human conceptions that have no impact on the harmonic workings of the universe. Besides, what these heroes are up against is more challenging of an opponent than anything Clark Kent’s Superman ever had to oppose: an entire world’s population that has lost faith in humanity and hope for the future.
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