Tick-Tock Talk: A Quick-Talk Watchmen Update

It just keeps getting better every episode. If you're not watching, start. And check in later this year for my thoughts on the complete series. 

Who's Watching Watchmen?

Well, Sylvia and I are watching Watchmen, and we both found the new HBO series suspenseful, compelling, and even, as Sylvia put it, "dangerous." Dangerous because the show, at least based on the first episode, is about a long-simmering race war that's ready to boil over. In an alternate Oklahoma where black people seem to be finally getting ahead, a white supremacist backlash looms. Masked vigilantes work alongside the police, who are majority black and also masked to protect their identities from racist retaliation. But that protection seems to be ending, as violence suddenly and brutally strikes a police force that has seen peace for several years...

If this sounds nothing like Watchmen--the comic book--it's because the show is using the Moore/Gibbons story as backdrop rather than having it drive the narrative. Watchmen (the TV show) is set in the same alternate history as the original work, but the foci--geographic, character, and thematic--are all new and different. Veidt, Rorschach, the Silk Spectre, Nite Owl, Dr. Manhattan and other characters from the comic are barely hinted at, seen in newspaper headlines or on televisions in the background. This storytelling choice delivers a fascinating look into a world that could have been, and how the people of that world are trying to come to grips with the challenges of racism, violence, and, judging by previews, human extinction--that last the plot driver of the comic. 

I was skeptical that Damon Lindelhof and his team could craft an adaptation that respects the original while seeming anything other than exploitative. So far, they've succeeded brilliantly. 

I Watched the Watchmen

Thanks to Michael and his studio connections, I was fortunate enough to attend a sneak preview of Watchmen tonight. I went in with low expectations, but I was pleasantly surprised - this is a reasonably faithful adaptation that does little violence to the source material, even though the






SPOILER SPACE







ending has been updated to suit the times. Haunting, beautiful imagery, good performances from little-known actors - there's a lot to like here. It's even a little sexy in parts, never a bad thing. There is some brutality, however, so if you're squeamish, you may want to close your eyes during the fight scenes and one very disturbing rape scene midway through the film.

Rorsach definitely steals the show, but my favourite character remains Night Owl, who does his best to hang on to a sense of decency even in the face of armageddon.

Four bloody smiley faces out of five.