I've got a ton of stuff to hit on today. I feel like writing a lot. So, here goes.
First, Watchmen. I'm going to see it tonight in 13 hours, 37 mintues. My blood is pumping, and I am completely ready to see this movie. Adrenaline, excitement... I haven't been this pumped for a movie release since The Dark Knight, perhaps not even quite this much then. The single most important comic book in history, one of the most important pieces of fiction in history, is in movie form, and having read a few reviews, it's supposed to be AMAZING. Too long to wait.
Moving on.
I was exploring the wide world of Facebook this morning when I happened upon a quote on somebody's profile. This person was recommended to me as a person I may know. Reading over his profile, it became clear to me that I definitely did not know this person, and that he is very pro-soldier. That's a good thing mind you. I have all the respect in the world for the men and women who are out defending our freedom. Do I necessarily agree with the foreign policy stances that our government takes or the lies that get us into our wars? No, not particularly, but that's another matter entirely. What I do support, however, are the brave folks who are over there doing something that I would never have the guts to do. Standing ovation for that.
... 3 hours later...
Anyway, as I was reading this fella's page, he has a story posted under his Quotes section. It reads as follows:
A United States soldier was attending some college courses between assignments. He had completed missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. One of the courses had a professor who was an avowed atheist and a member of the ACLU.
One day the professor shocked the class when he came in. He looked to the ceiling and flatly stated, "God, if you are real, then I want you to knock me off this platform. I'll give you exactly 15 minutes." The lecture room fell silent. You could hear a pin drop. Ten minutes went by and the professor proclaimed, "Here I am God. I'm still waiting." It got down to the last couple of minutes when the soldier got out of his chair, went up to the professor, and cold-cocked him knocking him off the platform. The professor was out cold. The soldier went back to his seat and sat there, silently. The other students were shocked and stunned and sat there looking on in silence. The professor eventually came to, noticeably shaken, looked at the soldier and asked, "What the hell is the matter with you? Why did you do that?"
The soldier calmly replied, "God was too busy today protecting America's soldiers who are protecting your right to say stupid shit and act like an asshole. So, He sent me."
Interesting story. It raises an interesting point while being completely laughable at the same time. First, it points out what I talked about a few posts ago in that the soldiers are over there fighting for our freedom to express our opinions and such. But, secondly, it goes against those same principles. Decking somebody because you don't believe the same thing as that person is exactly what the soldiers are not overseas to protect. One of these days, perhaps, people will learn to tolerate those with opinions that differ from their own. No offense to you, but Christians are among the worst of the lot when it comes to spiting people who disagree with them. This story is a perfect example.
There is nothing so powerful a divider as religion. Religion carries the air of exclusivity. Religion preys on those that need to feel superior to others. And before you argue with me, think for just a moment on the principles of heaven and hell. Most organized religions have the idea of heaven, a place you go to in your afterlife for believing as you are told to believe. To site Christianity one more time, Jesus says (in the Bible) that the only way to heaven is through him. Meaning that you have to believe what you are being told to believe to make it. Heck, even differing sects of the same religion say you must believe our specific version of things in order to make it to heaven. And for those who don't believe the exact same thing, well, you're all going to hell. Sometimes listening to religious debates reminds me of schoolyard teasing. "I'm going to heaven and you're not... neener neener." It's ridiculous.
I've written before about how religion serves an excuse, as a scapegoat, and this doesn't change any of that. Religion is just many things to many people. Or, put better, religion is whatever a believer needs it to be.
Moving on to more important things... 7 hours, 10 minutes and counting!
I read an article on IGN today proposing that Final Fantasy VII might be overrated. Rubbish. At one point today, I wanted to comment at length about this, but now I have lost my motivation. FFVII is awesome, not overrated. Those who say it's overrated are merely looking of something to bitch about or looking for a way to stand out from the crowd of people who know its awesomeness.
5 hours, 43 minutes.
I've been reading the rotten tomatoes reviews of Watchmen and I find myself seeing many holes in the logic (or lack thereof) used by the people who are spouting them. The cool thing with Watchmen is that it is very dense, very deep, very intellectual. This is not a light movie, this movie doesn't give any hope. It's dark and gritty and intelligent. You might have to think about it for a while before you get it. Yet these reviews are akin to those that frustrated me with The Dark Knight. "It's too dark" or "it's too liberal". For anybody calling this movie too liberal, I'd advise you to go watch it again. It is most certainly not liberal. In fact, the story's villain is quite liberal in his motives.
My personal favorite: "excrement on celluloid." Please tell me how this is useful to anybody. It's not. There's simply no reason why critics need to devolve to this level of immaturity, nor is there a reason this person should be paid to write about his/her opinion on things, because they obviously don't go much past the kindergarten level.
Zack Snyder's adaptation of theWatchmen graphic novel takes place in the mid-1980s, after America won the Vietnam war and just before Richard Nixon's fourth term. The U.S. won that war by enlisting the help of Jon Osterman, a former scientist who was involved in a nuclear accident that, naturally, turned him into a god-like blue man who lives simultaneously in the past and the future. As near deity, Jon is able to do almost anything he wants, like asking people to call him Dr. Manhattan or zapping Vietcong with a wave of his hand. New York is also populated by a second generation of costumed heroes, normal people who fight crime like their parents did in a prior post-war era. But the world is on the brink of nuclear war with the Soviets, so many of these crusaders have retired or gone underground. Modern threats have rendered masked heroes quaint.
Snyder’s previous film, 300, was about a big, strong Spartan who pummeled the effeminate Persians against the wishes of a corrupt security council. The political slant of Watchmen is only slightly less transparent. Both films lavish attention on violent individuals who deliver justice as they see fit, on men who are principled brutes, and on women who are sexy, strong and secondary. Each film’s overarching view is that war is productive and weakness is not. The interest in sheer power is as strong as the interest in human bodies, and where the two intersect, Watchmen seems to vibrate with delight. We see the flesh of a female calf ripped by a bullet, the intestines of a splattered victim dangling from a ceiling, a prisoner’s skin melted by a basketful of frying oil (can baskets be filled with oil?), and two arms sawn off because they block access to someone who needs an ass-whoopin'.
The film’s obsession with bodies in conflict has a counterpoint in Dr. Manhattan. Gently voiced (and partially faced) by Billy Crudup, he stands naked, ripped, glowing and dispassionate through most of the film. Neither the attentions of his beautiful girlfriend-heroine nor his research into unlimited energy can raise his flaccid member. He has lost interest in the whole of the earth.
The film's id is an inky-masked character named Rorschach who metes justice with his fists and talks with a throat full of gravel, like Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino, who might very well be the inky one’s uncle. Rorschach, not the disengaged blue god, is clearly the film's ideal. But Dan, a character who shifts between those two poles, is the audience surrogate, a geeky but muscled guy who can’t get it up until he re-dons his Nite Owl costume and, along with a female partner, saves a bunch of kids from an apartment fire. The two of them cap their evening with a mutual orgasm of flame.
Unlike the typical superhero movie, Watchmen is a film of big ideas, and one of them is that mass carnage can usher in an era of peace. The major characters disagree only in the particulars. Dr. Manhattan makes a point of neither condemning nor condoning the film's most controversial, world-altering event, because his head is in the clouds. (He looks as if he’d rather be clearing brush.) Nixon and Kissinger, huddled in a war room, are only slightly more grounded; in their worst-case nuclear scenario they'll write off New England as collateral damage and even see the loss of Harvard liberals as a silver lining. The folks behind Watchmen may have taken the wrong lesson from Dr. Strangelove.
Furthermore, this gang doesn’t seem to realize how brief a violence-born peace may be. Remember when we were all New Yorkers? The assumption of the film is that a moment similar to the post-9/11 pause, if inflicted deeply enough, could blanket the globe with peace indefinitely, and if it happens during Nixon's reign it might preempt and best even Ronald Reagan who, as we know, single-handedly defeated the USSR in our real world.
Snyder never seems to consider the problems of macho justice. My advice to the entire naive lot—to the blue god, Rorschach, the geeky-sexy couple, the effeminate liberal (there's always an effeminate liberal) and Snyder himself—is this: Do not overestimate the longevity of global unity or the productiveness of violence, on any scale.
Keeping in mind that I have not yet seen the movie, this review strikes me as simply ludicrous. It takes the entire work out of perspective. First off, he blames Zack Snyder for the content and themes of Watchmen, even though those weren't Snyder's doing. Remember that this is based on a graphic novel. Second, he seems to think that the movie/book condone the use of one monstrously violent act to unite the world. Again, this is just wrong. Remember that the character responsible for this is the bad guy. Also, there is no one central character in the movie. They all have their stories, and the novel goes out of it's way not to choose sides. Yes, the end is written with a "this is wrong" slant, but come on, it is. But for the rest of the actions that are taken, the judgement is left up to the reader. And it's reviews like these that really make me think that the people who aren't liking this movie are the ones incapable of seeing past the facade to see the true story that lies underneath.
So much for intelligent criticisms.
Anyway, 5 hours, 18 minutes. I'll see you after the movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment