Nivenus at the Desk X: Doctor Who (Season 1), Gears of War 2, and Watchmen

[nivenus]

All right, well, again I am here to review. Initially, I was only going do two reviews as usual, but after seeing Watchmen last night I feel obliged to write a review for it as well. So for the tenth installment of my At the Desk reviews I’ll be looking at Gears of War 2, (new) Doctor Who Season 1, and Watchmen for a total of three

Comments

[prisoner__24601]

As I've said before, I really, really hate The Watchmen and I also happen to think that Alan Moore is the most overrated comic book writer of all time. From what I've read, the movie is slavishly faithful to the comic book, so I'm guessing that watching the film wouldn't change my opinion. I do however know a lot of people who really love this comic book, so I realize that I'm in the minority on this one. I will admit that it's influence on comic books was undeniable (and incidentally, I enjoy a lot of the stuff that followed), but every time I sit down to read anything by Alan Moore, I'm left cold.

With the exception of Rorschach (who is the sole interesting character in the comic book), all of the main characters are whiny little emo narcissistic bitches with zero redeeming qualities, which makes them extremely difficult to relate to, identify with or even care about. Which in turn, makes the emotional impact of their choices in the story about zero. I simply do not care about them, or what happens to them, or what they do. And sure, humanity in general gets screwed, but other than a vague "Dude, that sucks for them" I don't know any of those people well enough to care either. I think it says something when the most interesting and relateable character is a raging psychopath.

Also, while I really like the core idea of The Watchmen, I find the execution rather boring and pretentious. Alan Moore seems to be far more interested in being Deep and Meaningful and Teaching Us A Lesson, than in being entertaining and engaging. It's like he gets so caught up in his cleverness and psuedo-intellectualism that he forgets that this should also be entertaining too.

Anyway, I hate it, but I do get why people like it. I just think that there are far better comic book writers that were either contemporaries or followed The Watchmen that take the cool ideas here and execute them far, far better.

Actually...

[nivenus]

I don't disagree with you as much as you might think. I find, for instance, that the movie can be a little bit too preachy at time, but I think they must have toned it down for its cinematic release since it doesn't seem any more pretentious or self-righteous than is somewhat normal for films these days. However, it certainly isn't as open to interpretation as, say, The Dark Knight, which was neither wholly toward condemning humanity as a race of monsters nor towards depicting them as flawed angels. Watchmen certainly leans towards the former, which is definitely not how I view humanity.

But I was able to look past this. And yeah, the characters are, overall, pretty wimpy with the exception of Rorschach. I kind of think that was the point, though and, though they're spineless, I feel for them to some extent. However, the most interesting characters are definitely the ones we're not supposed to like - Rorschach, the Comedian, and Doctor Manhattan. So you've got a point.

But yes, the preachiness was the one thing that really bothered me (and which I neglected to bring up in the review). I don't like overtly teaching in my fiction, thank you very much. But other than that, I really, really liked it. But I can understand why you wouldn't :).