May 3, Houston: The big one -- the Inprint reading -- occurs at the Alley Theatre on Monday, May 3. Do not miss it or you'll be sorry. I'm not kidding -- I'm going to say the craziest, most intellectual yet hilarious stuff I can think of, and I'll be sharing the stage with the ultra sexy Oscar Casares, too.
June 24, Houston: I'm one of the peeps scheduled to read at Poison Pen, at Houston's famous Poison Girl bar. Besides me, everyone there will be ultra, *super* sexy. Come see me and drink!
June 26, Washington, DC: I'll be reading at the American Library Association conference. Come on down.
My other blog: Go read my the Houston Chronicle parenting blog (or my ChronMomBlog, as I like to call it) and make sure my kids won't resent me more than other kids resent their own parents.
Buy my new novel, Lone Star Legend. Already did? Well, buy a few more for your friends, then. :)
Monday, March 09, 2009
Watchmen was Twilight for men.Warning: this contains spoilers about the movie Watchmen. Don't read it if you want to be surprised by all the comic book cliches.
Twilight is for 13-year-old straight girls and emotionally-13-year-old women because it's about a nonremarkable girl having a romance with a hot, all-powerful person who protects the girl and does everything for her so that she doesn't have to do anything but watch her classmates be jealous of her. Or whatever.
Watchmen is for 13-year-old straight boys and emotionally-13-year-old men because it's about how all the problems in the world are caused by hot chicks sleeping with people other than you. What's a slut? A women who's sleeping with someone other than you. Right? Or maybe, in this movie's case, a slut is just a woman. Any woman.
My boyfriend wanted to see Watchmen, and I told him to go without me. People I know and trust have told me that the Watchmen graphic novel was awesome, and I believed them and had it on my to-read list, but I suspected I wouldn't like the movie. But then a couple of our other friends wanted to go, including my friend Ashley, who generally has excellent taste but can be guided off course by pretty girls. So I went along for the ride, lowering my expectations so as to be able to enjoy myself.
The theater was very crowded and we had to split up. Ashley and I sat together, and my boyfriend Dat sat with our friend Richard, several rows behind us.
The opening credits were interesting. Especially when the one hot chick kissed the nurse hot chick -- Ashley and I whispered "Awesome!" while the woman seated next to us whispered, "Oh, no. No they did not. They are wrong for doing that!"
Then the Rorschach guy started voicing over in what, at first, I thought was a parody of right-wing extremism. But it wasn't a parody -- it was serious as hell. After that, the movie started sucking full force. I was surprised how badly and how suddenly it sucked.
"It's just the characters who suck," Ashley whispered to me. "The plot's good." She repeated that for a couple of minutes, then whispered, "Oh, God, this movie does suck."
At the end, we waited for the guys to join us and Ashley asked if I thought Richard and Dat liked it. I said, "Richard might have, but Dat probably realized it sucked." Of course, they both pronounced it awesome. (I don't mind admitting that in public -- that my boyfriend might be 13 years old, emotionally. That's why I avoid all things Twilight -- because I'm afraid I'll end up succumbing to its temptations and being marked as a 13-year-old, myself.)
Please don't write to me and tell me why the movie wasn't really bad, or why I misinterpreted it as bad. Or, if you do write to me in that vein, don't expect me to listen. I'll tell you now that I never read Watchmen, but I don't think that should matter. Yes, reading it ahead of time may have filled in the missing plot points and characters' various motivations, but I doubt that would have kept the movie from sucking. As Ashley put it, every character in the movie was an asshole, or boring, or a boring asshole. I couldn't tell who we were supposed to root for. I didn't care what happened to any of them. If they'd all died in a nuclear holocaust, I would've been relieved that the way-too-long movie was over. (I wanted to leave the theater, but Ashley wouldn't let me.)
I don't aspire to be a film critic, so I won't try to get into what was wrong with the film. Instead, I'll tell you what was wrong with the story, as told by the film, by telling you what I was able to take away from it.
The beginning: In the '40s, there was a group of superheroes who called themselves the Minutemen. They retired and were replaced by other superheroes (presumably called the Watchmen?) whose super powers consisted of wearing costumes. None of the Watchmen liked each other or had anything in common. Then, they disbanded because Richard Nixon made them. Because they existed in a dystopian alternate future where the Viet Cong surrendered to us and Nixon stayed president until the '80s.
The Comedian was a major asshole who hated humanity and enjoyed killing people, and had a habit of raping and killing women in particular, because they deserved it for turning him on. The other Watchmen hated him but none of them had the guts to keep him from killing or raping innocent women (sluts). Neither did the Minutemen -- he beat and tried to rape "Silk Spectre," one of the female Minutemen, yet somehow remained part of the group. All that gets told in flashback, because someone kills the Comedian at the beginning of the movie, but we don't know who, and that person strangely never gets a medal for it. His superpower is misanthropic rage.
Silk Spectre is a self-hating attention whore. She wore a sexy costume and capitalized on her looks. A few years after the Comedian tries to rape her and beats the crap out of her, she has sex with him and gets pregnant. She does this because she retroactively realizes that his rape attempt was flattering, as she explains to her daughter, Silk Spectre II. Because now she's old and men don't want to rape her anymore, and that makes her sad. Her superpower is sluttiness.
Silk Spectre II is a self-centered attention whore. She's dating fellow Watchman John, but is petulant because he's always busy saving the world with his unique godlike supernatural powers and therefore doesn't spend enough time with her. So she turns to fellow Watchman the Owl Dude for comfort, because God forbid someone as hot as her should go without male attention for more than half a day. Her superpower is hair-flipping.
Rorschach is another misanthrope who's hell-bent on doling out justice ever since he met a psycho who murdered a little girl. But, guess what? Rorscach's mother was a whore. A literal whore -- she slept with men for money, thereby making his childhood hell. So Rorschach thinks all women are whores. Also, he idolized the Comedian, which is weird and confusing since the Comedian is just as psycho as the psycho who killed the little girl who haunts Rorschach's dreams. So... whatever. His superpower is misanthropic rage combined with a cool mask that's made of shifting Rorschach patterns.
John was a scientist who, through a mishap involving radiation, obtained godlike powers and glowing blue skin, complete with glowing blue penis. Mind the size of a planet, but he chooses to date someone as shallow and histrionic as Silk Spectre II. Oh, well. That's the breaks, right? Smart super dudes get the hot chicks, and therefore they have to put up with annoying behavior. That's just life, right? Besides, he'll eventually have to leave Silk Spectre II for a younger, hotter chick, just like he left his aging first girlfriend for Silk Spectre II.
The Owl Dude is just some Clark-Kent looking guy who lives alone and has owl-shaped stuff in his basement. His father's an investment banker or something. I don't know. His superpower is being the Everyman who's standing in the right place at the right time when the hot chick needs sexual attention. Oh, and he has an owl suit and an owl copter.
Adrian is the gay Watchman who has Greek and Egyptian costume and decorating fetishes. When the Watchmen are disbanded, he becomes a corporate gazillionaire and secret master villain. He has an accent that I can't place -- is it made up, like Madonna's? His superpower is being the Smartest Man in the World. At least, that's what they kept telling us.
The Hot Lesbian One, who was the best superhero in the movie and whose superpower was insane macking skillz, died without a speaking part, right at the beginning of the movie.
The middle: People got killed. Sluts got killed or else had blood splattered all over their pretty, slutty faces. Silk Spectre II got kicked in the boobies and in the cunt. Hee hee. Boobies! Cunt! Rorschach referred to himself in the third person and shared long strings of psuedo-poetic cliches about how effed up the world has become. John tried to save the world but his current slut girlfriend and his former slut girlfriend got in his way and messed everything up. Silk Spectre II slept with Owl Dude in long, lingering sex scenes that were almost as good as the ones on Cinemax's Witches of Breastwick 2. Each of the main characters tells their sob story, and most of their traumas are caused by women, who are all bitches and deserve to be punished. There's a random burning building rescue and a random subplot about a prison break that makes no sense, at all, on earth, ever. And Lee Iacocca gets shot in the head. And gore, and sluts, and depressed rambling about human nature.
The end: There's some long, drawn-out virgin teen boy fantasy in which the selfish hot chick begs the godlike Everyman to save her world. Then, Adrian comes out (heh) as the best character in the movie when he inexplicably renames himself Ozymandias, starts wearing costumes full time, makes a saber-toothed tiger pet appear out of nowhere, and locks himself in a tower so he can watch TV all day. It was like his character stood up and said, "Hey, this movie makes no sense. Therefore, I can do anything I want." Kind of like you do in a lucid dream. But then the other fools showed up and everyone started punching each other (extra points for hitting Silk Spectre II's chest or crotch), and then you realize that they don't actually have super powers, even though earlier in the film their heads were going through granite countertops and stuff. And then God -- I mean -- John shows up and acts like God, and then one of the oldest sci-fi plot devices in the world is revealed, leaving you saying "WTF? WTF??" over and over again, and then, thank godfully, the movie ends.
Scariest part: The people in the audience who laughed at the rape and violence. I literally had nightmares, later, that I was trapped in a parking lot at night, surrounded by people like that. Why didn't I dream that the Watchmen came to save me? Well, why would they?
Basically, it was Sin City all over again, but more confusing and way, way longer.
The end.
Oh, P.S., if you liked the movie and want to comment and tell me how misguided I am, know now that I'll probably delete your comment. Know why? Because I'm either: 1) a dumb bitch, 2) a dyke, 3) an old bitch who's just jealous that no one wants to rape me anymore. So, too bad for you! Toodles!
Labels: pop culture
5:43 PM #Comments:
I'm actually glad you wrote this review. I was wondering if I wanted to see this movie and now I think I won't.You also touched on a lot of things that other reviews didn't mention, like the rape stuff (which I can't watch because it gives me nightmares) so thank you for that.
I think that I would probably pay for someone to watch movies for me and tell me if there are parts of it that I shouldn't watch.
# posted by
: 6:41 PM
Yay! Thanks for posting this.
"I'm afraid I'll end up succumbing to its temptations and being marked as a 13-year-old, myself." This makes a lot of sense. I love Twilight, myself, but in the same way that I like watching E! or the Food Network. 'Cause I get tired of thinking deep thoughts all the time.
"Watchmen is for 13-year-old straight boys and emotionally-13-year-old men because it's about how all the problems in the world are caused by hot chicks sleeping with people other than you."
Heh. Your whole review of the movie made me laugh. I've been waffling about going to see it and I think you've pushed me over the "don't see it" edge. I get that we aren't supposed to be rooting for any of the characters, really, but I can do that at home for free.
# posted by
CarlyRM : 8:26 PM
I'm pretty sure I love you for this entry. And now that I've fulfilled my Random Internet Stranger Creepiness of the day, I'll go to bed. Nite!
# posted by
: 8:30 PM
I read an interview earlier with Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who is the Comedian or whatever, and one of the questions was about the rape scene and then later he was describing how he was a sympathetic character or finding his humanity or something and I was totally turned off of him and of the movie. It seems to me like it's part of what I see on tv, where women who have sex and like it always deserve to get a disease (House) or die a violent death (CSI) or something like that. And then there was that rape video game that was all over the internet, so the world really is super screwed up. Anyway, I'm so glad you posted this!
# posted by
kate : 10:36 PM
You gypped Rorschach here, man. He has Self-Righteousness Superpowers, too.
A
(I'm still glad, two days later, that it's over.)
# posted by
a : 12:14 AM
Does this movies rating should prevent 13 year old boys from seeing it? Not that that matters, cause they will see it anyway.
It is very disturbing that these movies are out there warping susceptible minds. I don't believe in censorship, so I just have to hope that some day this will not be financially beneficial to movie makers.
I see a lot less movies these days.
M.R.
# posted by
: 7:45 AM
Basically, it was Sin City all over again
And since I spent my time in the Sin City theatre despairing that people thought the graphic violence and misogyny was entertaining, I think I'll skip this one.
# posted by
Rachel : 9:48 AM
I love the comic book, and I thought that the movie was just OK, but your review of it is terrific.
# posted by
Mrs. John Murphy : 1:43 PM
The really unnerving thing about this review (which is the perfect balance of infuriated and entertaining) is that I remember almost all this tacit misogyny from the comic. I couldn't understand why I could remember admiring the comic, given this. It's not like I wasn't a feminist when I read it back in the early 90s--I was also reading Wolf's "The Beauty Myth" and Faludi's "Backlash" during this same period. I'll try to explain:
Without being an apologist for the plot, it's a dystopian setting. Alan Moore was taking the worst of Reagan-era American conservatism and blowing it out to its conclusion, just as he did with Thatcherism in "V for Vendetta." (Moore has disowned the film versions of all his books, by the way.) You're not supposed to like the way the "Watchmen" world works. It's supposed to be Orwellian and miserably repressed, so it follows that female sexuality is reviled. (Ah hell, I do sound like an apologist. Screw this.)
As an aside, in the comic Rorschach's hatred for mankind is in part inspired by the rape and murder of Kitty Genovese. Over the years I've had to point out to a few male comic fans that Genovese was a real person. Her story is so horrifying readers tend to assume Moore made it up. It's non-delightful having to explain to guys, "Yes, rape is real, abhorrent, and should never go unpunished... no, I'm not sighing heavily AT you, I'm sighing heavily WITH you. Wait, you're not sighing heavily?"
# posted by
: 4:06 PM
Hey, I must be a dumb old d*ke b*tch too. I read the hype about it, read the reviews, watched my young friends shake with anticipation, and wisely stayed home. Now I wish I'd gone. The sociologist in me wants to count and categorize the people that walk out.
# posted by
Karen : 2:17 PM
Awesome. And that, right there, is why I never had any interest in seeing it, or, frankly, in reading the comic/graphic novel/whatever. To cirocco's comment -- if everyone that saw it and liked it appreciated and recognized the Orwellian, dystopian extrapolation that might be one thing. It's the people who *don't* get that or don't *bother* to get that and who just like the big violent, misogynist Hollywood blockbuster with the shallow, pretty girls getting what they "deserve"(although very artistically!) -- those are the people that scare me.
(Also: "Mind the size of a planet..." -- aw, poor Marvin. :) )
# posted by
jam : 5:17 PM
Well I think either you were so prejudiced against the plot that you made it a point to not understand it completely or you can't handle complex branching dystopic storyline.whatever the case I think you were not giving any attention to the story or you should have known that adrian killed comedian.And your comment about the black leather chic being awesome just because she can make out with a hot chick makes me question your mental age.If you have any problems with the plot I request you to kindly keep in touch with me as I would like to discuss it with someone with diffrent viewpoints.I might be only 16 but I am glad I did not rate the heroes on their ability to make out with another chick.
Utkarsh122@yahoo.com
# posted by
Darkangel#sumthings don't change# : 3:07 AM
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