I met a traveler from an ancient country
He said:
Has two huge stone legs
half hidden in the desert
In the nearby sand, there is a broken stone face
pursed lips, frowned, face still majestic
If you think of the sculptor, you must have a deep understanding of his emotions
That look is still on the stone
And the people are gone, turned into dust
Look at the inscription on the pedestal:
"I am the King of Kings, Ozymansdias
Achievements cover objects, the strong are convinced"
Besides, nothing
Surrounding the ruins, there is only a vast expanse of yellow sand.
Lonely and desolate, stretched out in all directions.
- "Ozymans Dias"
In 1986, the "Watchmen" series of comics came out, with a total of twelve volumes. This comic is different from the general American comics. Its plot is complicated and confusing, the pictures are gorgeous and beautiful, and the theme is grand and profound. It deeply discusses the value of justice and deeply criticizes the traditional hero concept.
In 1988, the "Watchmen" comic won the Hugo Award, the highest honor in the sci-fi art world, which has never been won by a comic before.
In 1989, director Terry Gilliam (representative of "12 Monkeys", "The Brothers Grimm") planned to make "Watchmen" into a movie, but finally stopped shooting because he was not satisfied with the script, and believed that this comic book movie should at least It takes 5 hours to express the original idea clearly.
In 2005, "Watchmen" was selected as one of the "100 Best English Novels from 1923 to the Present" selected by the American "Time", and the judges gave a very high comment "a work of cold psychological realism, which is the first in the history of graphic novels." A monument."
On March 6, 2009, the theatrical version of "Watchmen" (162 minutes) with an investment of 130 million US dollars was released in North America, with a box office of 32.43 million US dollars in the first week, and won the weekly champion of the North American box office list. However, after the fans of the original novel contributed their modest efforts, the box office of "Watchmen" fell rapidly in the second week, and finally the North American box office was a fiasco, with only 107 million US dollars in revenue. In terms of ratings, "Watchmen" has also suffered bad reviews from many film critics. The MTC score is only 56 points, which cannot even reach the passing line.
It can be said that "Watchmen" ten years ago was in an embarrassing position of ice and fire, with a bleak box office on the one hand, and the affirmation and praise of the fans of the original book on the other, and the evaluation polarization was very serious. Since Zack Snyder basically copied the content of the comics, except for minor changes to the ending, the plot, characters, and storyboards are basically consistent with the comics. Fans of the original book regard it as the bible of the comics; The general audience scoffed at it, thinking it was long, dull, and unintelligible, and the whole movie was filled with a lot of flashbacks, which made people feel like a cloud. But it is worth mentioning that Zack Snyder is not completely serving the fans of the original book. As a commercial film director, he also knows that ordinary audiences are the main force of watching movies. Only by letting more audiences who have not seen comics sit down Watching this R-rated movie for more than 160 minutes is guaranteed at the box office. So Zack Snyder went out of his way to create the two introductory clips that open the film. The first introductory clip told the audience through a TV program that the tension between the United States and the Soviet Union at this time, the hands of the "Doomsday Clock" were set to five minutes to midnight, and a global nuclear war was imminent.
The second introductory clip tells viewers the origins of the Overwatch League, major historical events, and changing attitudes toward superheroes through simple flashbacks. This introductory clip is extremely fluid and has a lot of attention to detail, like this shot:
This is the American people celebrating the surrender of Japan. The superhero silhouette kisses his girlfriend, paying tribute to the famous war kiss in history.
At the same time, this also laid a foreshadowing for the death of the silhouette. Pay attention to the facial expression of the woman in red in the back right of the silhouette in the animation. She was smiling and talking to the female partner beside her, but after seeing the silhouette kissing the nurse, the smile disappeared. , replaced by a look of contempt and disgust.
At this time, the United States had a very conservative attitude towards homosexuality and was full of discrimination against homosexuality. The kiss in the silhouette revealed his sexual orientation, and he was shot and killed by the public not long afterward.
In this way, with the accompaniment of Bob Dylan's famous song "The times they are a-changin'", the director spoke to the audience, explaining the background and main characters of the story, from the militia organization to the watchmen, from the The United States dropped the atomic bomb in Hiroshima and the United States successfully landed on the moon. The whole picture is extremely smooth. While narrating, it also pays tribute and jokes. Not a single shot is wasted. Schneider hopes to make it easier for ordinary viewers to understand the story of "Watchmen" in this way. But it turned out to be a poor solution to Schneider's concerns: how to grab the audience's attention and get them to take on a ton of superhero appearances over the next 20 minutes without major events driving the storyline.
You must know that the names of these superheroes are not comparable to Superman, Batman, Iron Man, and many people don't know them at all. Except for Dr. Manhattan, the luminous blue man with a bit of superhero temperament, Ye Xiao, Silk Ghosts, comedians, and Rorschach all look like ordinary people in disguise, and the audience doesn't understand their stories, which makes these superheroes tend to be "facialized". As a result, many viewers are "out of focus" and they don't know who to focus their attention on. They will be confused who is the protagonist? Is it the man whose mask pattern changes, or is it Dr. Manhattan in blue?
And Schneider's narrative style makes the loss of focus even worse. After the two introductory clips are over, the movie enters the feature film. From this point on, Zack Snyder almost shoots according to the comics, which greatly restores the "Watchmen" comics. Such a narrative method is of course deeply loved by the fans of the original book, as if seeing their own favorites being reproduced and then pushed to the world. But for the average audience, such a narrative can exacerbate their loss of focus. In the 3-hour movie, there are a lot of flashbacks that shape the characters. For example, the birth of Dr. Manhattan, Dr. Manhattan helping Nixon to end the Vietnam War, The Comedian and the Second Generation of Night Owl's suppression of the "Anti-Vigilante" parade, these plots are all necessary and serve the film itself, but when such a complex information is used in flashbacks When the incoherent and incoherent form is presented to the audience, the audience does not have enough time to digest it, and it is easy to feel confused and unable to understand the intention of these plots. Later, there will even be such a question: "What story does the movie tell?" As "USA Today" commented: "As the story unfolds, the film becomes more and more dull, complex and forgettable."
In addition, "Watchmen" is not a mainstream superhero movie. Its main purpose is not to promote heroism, but to reflect on heroism, which makes its tone serious, depressing, and even dark. When fans talk about "Watchmen", they will only use Nolan's "Dark Knight" as the benchmark.
In The Dark Knight, Nolan redefines the superhero, elevating Batman to a height that no previous superhero has ever reached. Watchmen, on the other hand, does not create a myth, but rather attempts to deconstruct the myth of the superhero. The superheroes here are full of sadness. They are not always loved by the masses. The silhouette was killed because of homosexuality. The mothman was arrested in a mental hospital because of alcoholism. As the Joker said to Batman: "To them, you're a freak like me. They just need you now. Once they don't want it. They'll sweep you away like a leper."
The whole movie is like a brainstorm, it constantly challenges your existing concepts, trying to explore deeper content with you. This is unacceptable for audiences who want to watch superheroes fight and save the world. Of course, there are audiences who try to understand it, but the plot is too complicated and they surrender. It's not all the director's problem. It's very difficult for the audience to remember so many superheroes without the support of independent films. One of the reasons for the success of Marvel's "Avengers" is the early layout. Launched an independent film of a single hero, first familiarizing the audience with these superheroes, and then staged a group of heroes. In addition, the theatrical version is a version that has been cut by the theater, which affects the smoothness and look and feel of the movie. Many plots make people feel inexplicable. In general, the box office fiasco of "Watchmen" is the result of many aspects.
Later Zack Snyder made the director's cut of Watchmen (186 minutes) and the final version of Watchmen (215 minutes). Compared with the theatrical version, the director's cut version is indeed a good movie. Schneider has added some details on the basis of the theatrical version to make the movie smoother and better reflect the ideas expressed in the original work. Death of the Night Owl Generation: A group of thugs were very dissatisfied with Rorschach's escape from prison. In order to vent their anger, they found the Night Owl Generation who had worked with Rorschach to vent their anger, so the former superhero played the poignant soundtrack of "Country Knight" In the middle, he was brutally killed by a gangster holding a trophy.
The final version added an animation called "The Legend of the Black Cargo Ship" on the basis of the director's cut version. This animation once appeared in the comics of "Watchmen" for 26 minutes. It is full of madness, decay and despair. The stumps and hands can be seen everywhere, and the bloody scenes that appear from time to time are more impressive than the movie itself. Dark and depressing. This cartoon is a metaphor and most likely expresses Beard's attitude towards Werther's project.
This metaphor has two layers. The first layer is a black cargo ship, alluding to nuclear war.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, the black cargo ship of the nuclear war left terrified people, disappeared into the bloody sunset, no one knew where it was going, the only thing people could do was pray that it would never land, once it did , bringing only endless killings, and the global nuclear war is like the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of human beings.
And the second metaphor is the captain in the animation, alluding to Werther:
Witte was distracted by the anger of justice, and as a result, fearing the outbreak of a global nuclear war, he did not hesitate to kill 15 million innocent people to prompt the United States and the Soviet Union to end the Cold War and build peace on lies.
But is it really necessary to join The Legend of the Black Cargo? Indeed, in our world, where the Soviet Union would disintegrate in 1991, the so-called global nuclear war, like the killing the captain feared, never happened, and the sacrifice of 15 million people was unnecessary. But the world of Watchmen is different from ours. It is a fictional world, or our parallel world. Many clues in the movie remind the audience that although the world of "Watchmen" also has the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as President Nixon and the Vietnam War, it is different from our world:
1. The U.S. won the Vietnam War
In the real world, this 20-year war ended in the defeat of the United States, and the 25-year economic prosperity of the United States after the war ended, and the economic situation took a sharp turn for the worse. The situation in which the United States was strong and the Soviet Union was weak in the Cold War was changed, and the "Nixon Doctrine" came into being. The United States stopped the excessive expansion since the end of World War II and implemented a moderate contraction policy in the 1970s. At the same time, the Vietnam War caused huge mental trauma to the American people, and many citizens began to reflect on the impact of the war.
2. Rorschach beat up the Watergate reporter
In the real world, the Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Karl Bernstein were not assassinated, they pursued a persevering investigation to find evidence of Nixon's cover-up that forced Nixon to step down in 1974 due to a political scandal , became the first president in U.S. history to resign while in office.
3. Nixon was re-elected for five terms as U.S. president
In the real world, Nixon served from 1969 to 1974, and finally stepped down due to the Watergate scandal.
Therefore, in the world of "Watchmen", the United States has not experienced defeat, has not reflected on war, and the incumbent president has the most powerful weapon, Dr. Manhattan, and firmly believes that in the event of a nuclear war, the goddess of victory will definitely stand by himself. here. In 1985, when the United States and the Soviet Union faced off again, will you recall the fear of being dominated by the Cuban Missile Crisis?
On October 24, 1962, the ninth day of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the entire world was in a delicate balance, with a beautiful world on one side and a burning purgatory on the other. Kennedy boldly used the fringe strategy in game theory, raised the national defense level to the red level, made the decision to block Cuba, and tilted the whole world a little in the direction of purgatory
: 1. 1,436 US bombers and 145 ICBMs are on alert.
2. 250,000 US troops (the largest landing force after World War II) assembled in Florida, ready to fight at any time
3. Launch 68 air force squadrons and 8 aircraft carriers to escort 90 warships. These 90 warships formed an arc from Florida to Puerto Rico, blocking the Cuban waters like iron barrels
After doing all this, Kennedy later threw the nuclear button to Khrushchev and let him decide whether to destroy or to make peace.
But Kennedy apparently did not realize that in such a special period, the fate of mankind is not entirely in the hands of Khrushchev. Any small accident may lead to the outbreak of a global nuclear war.
On October 27, 1962, Captain Charles, an American pilot, was ordered to fly a U-2 strategic reconnaissance plane to the North Pole to perform the task of collecting air samples. As a result, the navigation system failed under the interference of the strong polar magnetic field, coupled with the influence of the aurora, the pilot could not rely on the constellation. Judging the orientation, Charles drove the U-2 strategic reconnaissance plane into the airspace of the former Soviet Union by mistake when the world war was about to break out.
On the same day, the USS Randolph aircraft carrier led the fleet to track the former Soviet submarine B-59, and the USS Kony dropped five training depth charges to force the submarine to surface. At the same time, the B-59 had not been in contact with Moscow for two days. Under the shock of the explosion of depth charges and shock waves, the captain, Lieutenant Colonel Valentin Savitsky, misunderstood that the third world war had begun, and was angry. He refused to surface and ordered the preparation of nuclear torpedoes.
On this day, a few little people almost pressed the button to destroy the world.
Now, in 1985, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, and also pushed into Pakistan (the real Cold War Soviet Union only invaded Afghanistan). Through the thick fog on the sea, you see the familiar shadow again, the black cargo ship appears again, and you can feel it slowly approaching you. The fear that has been buried for more than 20 years fills your heart again. What is even more terrifying is that you find that this time the United States is not afraid at all, and even hopes to destroy the Soviet Union in one fell swoop, even at the cost of the entire East Coast. The official sitting in front of the doomsday clock suddenly became Dr. Strangelove, smiling and discussing the losses after the outbreak of the nuclear war, and it was a good deal.
And Werther, the smartest man in the world, a superhero fast enough to catch a bullet, plans to sacrifice 15 million people to end the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union in exchange for global peace.
Knowing the truth, what would you say about Werther?
justice? evil? Savior? Butcher? great? cruel? reason? crazy?
Know that the history of the collapse of the Soviet Union six years later does not necessarily happen. To know that the sword of Damocles above the human head will fall at any time. Be aware that the midnight clock for a global nuclear war may be set to zero.
Someone has to make a choice.
So, in the end, the Werther-Rorschach conflict brought to the audience an age-old proposition: Can the result prove "procedural justice"? Or which is more important, "procedural justice" and "consequential justice"? This is a dilemma, perhaps even one with no answer.
It is undeniable that Werther's choice is full of utilitarianism, and his standard for justice is the maximization of social welfare, so in his opinion, sacrificing 15 million people to save the world is definitely a good deal, and it is definitely worth a risky attempt. Maybe you don't agree with Werther's approach, but at least you won't think that Werther is the captain in "The Legend of the Black Cargo", who was dazzled by justice and made unnecessary sacrifices, and you wouldn't be naive to think that peace is a matter of course.
Once you understand Werther, you also know how dazzling Rorschach's uncompromising performance is.
If Alan Moore is really using "The Legend of the Black Cargo" to evaluate Werther's plan, as I said, then I personally think this view is not absolutely correct, maybe in the bearded view, this kind of utilitarianism is not desirable , is immoral and unjust, but it is undeniable that in the event of a nuclear war with a high probability, compared with the death of all mankind, the ending pointed to by Werther's plan is a tragic victory.
Therefore, I personally prefer the director's cut version rather than the ultimate version, which was blown up by Zack Snyder's fans. This version is smoother than the theatrical version. If this version was released at the time, maybe the box office and ratings will be better. improved.
In addition, in fact, no matter which version it is, most of the content of the movie is based on comics, so when you are lamenting that the movie is underrated and Zack Snyder is amazing, don't forget that there is a bearded Alan Moore standing behind the movie. , painter David Gibbs and colorist John Higgins, three silent masters.
Public number: light and shadow gashapon machine
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