Watchmen (Page 2 of 2)

Right, but it's still a miserable idea for me to kill their grandmas. I should obviously kill Teague and Brian themselves. (And Kissinger! Don't forget Kissinger!) Or better still take their weapons away. Human nature or not, George Washington and George III did not start a nuclear war.

But it's also actually NOT human nature. In the twenty or so years since Watchmen was published, we've stood well down from nuclear war and probably will never use nuclear weapons (we've done a pretty good job avoiding nerve gas and such). It really was Nixon (a few like him) that was the problem.

Last edited by Zarban (2010-05-18 04:31:54)

...John Constantine.

By that logic, the protagonist of any monster movie is the monster, the protagonist of a murder mystery is the murderer, and the protagonist of 2012 is explosions.

The protagonist is our proxy in the story, the one we follow and experience the story with, and the one who experiences the change that we are supposed to vicariously experience with them. Which means the protagonist is almost always the main character.

One exception I can think of is V for Vendetta -- we have dual protagonists in Evey and the police inspector, but the "main character" is clearly V.

Where there's some nuance in the definition is that the protagonist is not necessarily the hero of the piece -- s/he can sometimes be the villain.

Yeah, I don't know. Though I think the definition is more (only?) valid in the context of a crime or mystery story. They, by their very nature, are neatly setup as opposing forces. One party is committing a crime/hatching an evil plot while the other is trying to solve the crime/foil the evil plot. Thus, your view of protagonist/antagonist could go either way, depending only on which point of view you use to tell your story. Go from the criminal's point of view and you get Ocean's 11. Go from the detective's and you get Chinatown.

I try to read it once a year, but I never got around to it last year, so that means I need to read it twice this year.

After reading about how the government is reluctant / unable to prosecute anyone responsible for the GFC, I could see a new type of 21st superhero that takes down Wall Street bankers, etc.

Rather than worrying about knife-crime in dark alleyways, a smart billionaire vigilante like Niteowl / Batman should be tackling the ultimate cause of crime e.g. poverty, inequality, etc - rather than the symptoms.

Is there such thing as a superhero that tackles white-collar crime e.g. hedge fund managers who bet against their clients, Madoff type of Ponzi scheme charlatans, those who award themselves massive bonuses after running their companies into the ground and receiving government assistance, auditors who assess risky portfolios of investments as safe, crooks who receive Presidential pardons at the end of term, negligent drone operators, generals who push for illegal invasions with no post-war planning that kills/displaces hundreds of thousands?

In the commentary, you guys spoke about how Rorschach was the ultimate far right-wing vigilante. Is there a left-wing equivalent in comic books?

Last edited by avatar (2013-12-20 16:06:12)

It probably depends on your definition, and the time period. Left-wing often means anti-status quo, and a superhero in that vein would be fighting the police and government more often than not. Catwoman, maybe?

Green Arrow's whole thing is that he's a super liberal.

That's why he dresses like Robin Hood and goes after corporations.

Last edited by Kyle (2013-12-23 10:00:15)

I went for Ultimate, just because as the collector's item I like to get the most complete/closest to the original source material version. I don't know that I'd call it the quintessential version because it is really, really long but unlike some other special editions (like Aliens) I didn't think that any of the added content on its own detracted from the movie.