Watchmen (spoilers!)
Posted: Sat Dec 14, 2019 3:28 pm
Anybody else watching this show? It's mostly very entertaining although it's maybe falling into the camp of "initially promising premise/setup, disappointing payoff" already honestly. I absolutely love the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It may be the best part of the show. The acting is generally very good and the direction and visuals are great. I don't love all the dialog but I think that is because of how it's being used in service of some lame characterizations.
Spoiler complaints below.
Anyway like so many sci-fi stories it's pretty entertaining, but don't think about it too much or it crumbles to dust.
Spoiler complaints below.
Spoiler
The premise seemed good until last week's penultimate season of the episode which disclosed how some of the preceding mysterious events were set into motion. For the love of all that's decent in the world, please lazy terrible TV/movie writers stop using causal loops. It's NOT clever or innovative, it's dissatisfying and annoying. Beyond that, the premise also rests on a nearly literal deus ex. So far as they have disclosed Dr. Manhattan appears literally out of the blue (no pun intended) already in love with the main character for no disclosed reason other than causal loop stuff. There are also IMO pretty majorly out of character reversals of Ozymandias's behavior from the comic. How or why would he go to the lengths he did to make it so that no one knew that he was behind the New York attack, then record a video spilling the beans? I think they try to chalk it up to his hubris and that he would be so frustrated and disappointed that his action hadn't actually created instant utopia but I don't personally buy that character arc. He'd already expressed doubt at the end of the comic story. I think the writers have him doubling down on his convictions in response to the doubt but by just holing himself up and not doing much which seems really hard to believe. As for lame characterizations, the fact that the FBI agent is Silk Spectre has so far been totally superfluous, and her characterization seems like a big leap from the comics character too in strange ways. Soth she and Angela Abar are given stupidly curse laden dialogue which is supposed to show how tough they are which IMHO is such a lazy writing technique.