The Watchmen: A Total Piece of Garbage

I had little else to do yesterday than wander around like a Yankee hobo in the orient. I ended up at a theater and to my disappointment there were only two English movies playing. Benjamin Button and The Watchmen. One of which I had not seen. I paid for my ticket and sat down in the enormous theater by myself. A few couples sat here and there around me.

I am not a comic book kind of guy. I find it hard to relate to people in tights fighting crime. It is something that was interesting to me when I was 6 but not so much anymore. But one thing that is highly disturbing to me are the dark comics that are being adapted for screen.

The only super hero I think is worth a damn really is Superman. An extraterrestrial living among us, a god, come to earth, who looks after humanity with humility. But The Watchmen are different, the movie was different. It was filled with anger, violence and sex. Superheros with broken psyches and emotional baggage, who live in a world of relative morality--mercenaries. Who has time for such garbage. When we make our superheros as fragile and weak as men, what is super about them anymore? Lose the costumes and just make a Life Time channel drama.

There is geek and then there is demented, live-in-your-mother's-basement-watching-porn-and-playing-dungeons-and-dragons-all-day geek.

I've had this experience many times in the last couple years: watching American movies and TV in a foreign country. I always feel shame watching these things with Koreans. I want to tell them that not everyone in America is that dark, is that violent. And would you feel anything but shame, when the people in the audience gasp and turn their heads, as characters are sawing each others arms off?

Does anybody have the guts to create something beautiful, something new, something to rally around, a piece of art that lifts people up in troubling times. Are there people like that out there? Are there people who are willing to dream, that see people not as animals in dungeons but as children playing in green fields? Is everyone scared of being gay? What's the deal?

The Watchmen: a total piece of garbage and truly small.