"Avengers: Endgame" is over, and the "Decade of the Marvel Universe" has come to an end. In the real world, starting in the third decade of the 21st century, in the parallel universe, a new chapter in the comic book movie has also begun.
The fire of heroes will never go out, and the superhero movie with the brainwashing effect will be turned over again with the end of a snap of Iron Man's fingers. And opening a new page are two works from DC, the movie version of "Joker" and the drama version of "Watchmen".
- After Joker, is the era of superheroes over?
Since "Joker" swept the major movie awards like a stream of consciousness and sparked a discussion about content mapping, many people agreed with the comment: " With the popularity of "Joker", the era of superheroes is over. "Some people agree, and many people don't understand it. As a superhero comic adaptation, why does "Joker" symbolize the decline of superheroes while bringing great honor to comics? In fact, it's best to explain it from DC's own perspective.
The last time DC's own comic book movie with both word of mouth and box office was Nolan's "Batman Prequel" trilogy, which was said to be a comic book, but in terms of content, this trilogy is actually Nolan's use of bats. The characters in Xia construct a new story of origin and rise . Although similar in style to DC's usual gloom and darkness, a fundamental change has taken place: in the second installment, Batman took the blame in the confrontation with the Joker, gradually moving away from the individual heroism of traditional superheroes; Batman When it began to return the violent justice carried by the double-sided vigilante image in the comics to the law enforcers who were really represented by the police, the movie story had already distanced itself from the comics, and in the third part, Batman was transformed into a hopeful one. symbol.
Throughout the article, Nolan's Batman is still a superhero with an idealized image on top of society. Like the golden comic characters in the United States from the 1940s to the 1960s, he is people's reflection on life after the war and their pursuit of beauty.
Therefore, Nolan broke the inherent superhero customization routine before - the real superhero should be entertaining and idealized. The emergence of "Joker" and "Watchmen" reinforces this .
The plot of "Joker" reflects the reality quite deeply. It can even be said that the role of "Joker" really exists in society. He is the embodiment of the current racial conflicts, social problems, and class crises in the United States. Greatness is a paradoxical reflection of a tragedy that is perfectly reproducible in reality through this character who is literally laughable . He is not only full of darkness on the surface, but there is no hope in the core. Therefore, a "Joker" can achieve such achievements in the siege of entertainment superheroes that have formed a culture like Marvel. Although it cannot be absolutely said that the era of superheroes has ended, it is also the beginning of the reality of comic-reformed movies. a milestone of .
However, the "clown" is a villain after all. If you really want to open this page from the perspective of a superhero, you still have to focus on the contradictions themselves. Heroes are needed to prove that the world is actually an anti-hero. In DC, there just happens to be one comic book that fits exactly this category, and it's Watchmen.
- The film version of "Watchmen": not only loyal to the original comics, but also endowed with humanistic depth
When we mention the masterpieces of comic book movies, in addition to Nolan's "Batman Prequel", the only thing that cannot be avoided is Zack Snyder's "Watchmen".
Different from "Batman Prequel", Zha Dao has basically been completely loyal to the original comic book, and cleverly used the interlude of the comic story of "The Legend of the Black Cargo Ship" to show the heroes' self-doubt in the process of the pursuit of faith: salvation Is the world really sticking to justice, or is it for the maniacal pursuit of self-worth in human nature?
At the end of the movie version, the Pharaoh sacrificed millions of people to make people who are always in the shadow of the US-Soviet nuclear war to target Dr. Manhattan, and the only one who abides by the faith of justice and fights for those millions of people Xia was killed by Dr. Manhattan. Rorschach, who is unwilling to keep secrets, is a real hero, but he cannot change the world and save mankind. The Pharaoh and Dr. Manhattan, who can save mankind, chose to ignore life and build an ideal balance. So, the movie asks the audience a question: How do superheroes have real meaning?
This question seems to be able to find some answers in the drama version of "Watchmen" produced by HBO. The "Watchmen" theatrical version is a brand new story different from the comics. Its background is 30 years after the events of the original book. During these 30 years, Rorschach's diary was known, the Pharaoh disappeared, and the problems faced by the United States also The foreign enemy, the Soviet Union, which is coveting, has become an irreconcilable contradiction between domestic races due to historical and cultural reasons. The police wear masks for fear of retaliation by law enforcement. At the same time, because of the publicity of Rorschach’s records, a group of people have radicalized Rorschach’s right-wing ideology. , became a knights who wore Rorschach masks to confront the existing legal means.
Because of the influence of Dr. Manhattan on the Vietnam War, Vietnam became a state of the United States, and because Rorschach killed the reporter who was about to cover the Watergate incident, the US President Nixon was re-elected for five terms, and then the President Redford cancelled At the end of his presidency, he has been the president of the United States for 30 years from the timeline in the play.
Therefore, this is a follow-up to the story of the comics and the movie version of "Watchmen". If the comic and film versions of "Watchmen" are the projections of mankind's serious problem of nuclear war under the US-Soviet hegemony in the fictional world, then the drama The version of "Watchmen" is a new story that artistically exaggerates and reflects the current social problems in the United States . Watching this "Watchmen" filmed by Damon Lindelof, director of the original author Alan Moore's loyal fanboy, with such an understanding, is for non-comic fans and audiences who do not know comics characters. It will be a lot easier.
- The TV series "Watchmen": Are the "superheroes" the savior or the manipulator?
Director Damon Lindelof is one of the few directors who dares to try to remake "Watchmen", because it is difficult for this comic to express 100% with cinematic lenses, both from a social point of view and its own far-reaching meaning. The director of the film version, Zach Snyder, cleverly borrowed the way of interspersing comics and Rorschach to better explain the core. For the drama version, it is more about the interaction with the current society. For example, the protagonist chooses black people, and even Dr. Manhattan is also played by a black man. At the beginning of the first episode, it reflected the Tulsa genocide in American history. In the story, forces from all sides are also influencing the world in conspiracy theories. How the world should have love and peace The sacrificial theory and the insensitivity of human life in the divinity of Dr. Manhattan to explore the meaning of superheroes.
The characteristics of superheroes are magnified in "Watchmen", in the story there are a generation of watchmen like militia vigilantes and the last "all-knowing and omnipotent" god like Dr. Manhattan. But the thinking possessed by heroes with superpowers in the true sense has not been changed because of superpowers, but has lost the ability to understand the feelings of ordinary humans. Just as Manhattan's love for humanity stems from his own needs, not from an ability to empathize with ordinary human feelings, as expected by ordinary people. The Pharaoh, as "the smartest man in the world", has the disposition of contempt for ordinary people. His vanity leads him to want to help everyone solve the "trolley problem" through his own plan. For all this, Should ordinary people expect the emergence of superheroes in a life full of crises, or should they keep hope silently under the premise that vigilantes use lynching to break the rules?
When watching this episode, you need some patience. The whole story is actually not friendly to non-comic fans, because the first five episodes have been paving the way for the story, and you also need to understand the values of "Watchmen" described above. To put it bluntly, the story of the drama version of "Watchmen" is still about the impact that superheroes can have on society when they really exist in the world, which is more like a social experiment .
From the first three episodes, we learned the story is that the police were forced to wear masks to enforce the law because of the "River Law" (a law that protects victims of racism) to protect their families, and misinterpreted the Rorschach beliefs to create a racist group" The Seventh Knights" (called the "7K Party" in the following plot) has been carrying out a violent movement. Before this, nationalists launched a "White Night Action" against ethnic minorities and the police. Many police officers were killed in their homes. After the attack, the protagonist "Sister" was also one of them. After this operation, she adopted the surviving police officer's child and chose to resign to secretly serve as a masked vigilante.
At the same time, the second-generation "Silk Soul" abandoned his "Silk Soul" identity to join the ranks of the detectives against the vigilantes because of the betrayal of his ex-boyfriend, Dr. Manhattan. The intersection between the two was due to the inexplicable death of the local police chief. The "nun" found the 7K party's clothes in the chief's wardrobe, proving that he was a racist. In order to investigate secretly, the nun concealed this. Silk Soul was entrusted by the congressman to investigate the murder of the director, and in the process found evidence that the vigilantes were still active. At first glance, the first three episodes are a story involving racial issues, and the flavor of utopia is very strong. But that alone would underestimate the show. Many clues, such as: "Rain of Squid", the scene where the Pharaoh lives alone, and Will, the old man who survived the genocide at the scene of the sheriff's death, are slowly unraveled in the last six episodes. .
It turned out that in 1988 in the comics, in order to quell the US-Soviet hegemony, the pharaoh deliberately put a genetically modified octopus in New York, and used this octopus to kill 3 million people. In order to create an illusion of alien invasion, for many years Pharaoh has been using teleporters to "rain octopuses" all over the world.
The entire "Watchmen" story is more like telling everyone: behind the appearance of this world, there are signs of human manipulation. And the manipulator is likely to be the "superheroes" of the past . Thinking this way, the height of the drama is not just as simple as the racial conflict between Europe and the United States, but about a destiny "controlled by superheroes" that all human beings can feel.
What "Watchmen" tells us has always been: a kind of warning to human beings born out of fiction . For truly thoughtful people, the world they saw in the first half of their lives may be dark, and they shouted about the injustice of the world when they were young, but they will eventually sublimate to an absolute desire for light. The most tragic thing for ignorant people is that they are accustomed to being in the dark, but believe that everything in front of them is light. But when they were able to distinguish black and white, they spent the rest of their lives denounced the darkness, and finally wasted their last time seeking the light, and could only perish in the darkness forever.
In the era of "Watchmen" and "Joker", the era of superheroes seems to be over: what the audience and the era need are those who can lead people to think deeply about the era and the real situation. Superpowers, not popcorn-style superheroes who dedicate themselves to saving others. This is a good thing for American comics and superhero movies, because the superheroes who are as beautiful as fairy tales will eventually come to reality one day, and they have accepted the baptism of superheroes for many years, and the audience will eventually have to face reality. This has played a very positive role in increasing the ideological and humanistic connotation of the comics.
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