As this month’s list naturally demands:
****Spoiler Alert****
****Spoiler Alert****
Watchmen is many things, a deconstruction of the superhero genre, a creepy psychological character drama, an ethical conversation-starter, and, structurally, a whodunit mystery.
It does start with a dead body, after all, and a scramble to identify the culprit before more former superheroes can fall victim. It’s the sort of story that’s expected to have a surprise ending, or it hasn’t done its job.
The inevitable villain reveal part of the twist is a perfectly satisfying one. It turns out that one of the ex heroes, Ozymandias (a.k.a Adrian Veidt), has a massive god complex and is trying to prevent the other heroes from interfering with his plan to unite the world and avert a nuclear apocalypse by staging an alien invasion (and killing millions of people in order to sell the act).
It does start with a dead body, after all, and a scramble to identify the culprit before more former superheroes can fall victim. It’s the sort of story that’s expected to have a surprise ending, or it hasn’t done its job.
The inevitable villain reveal part of the twist is a perfectly satisfying one. It turns out that one of the ex heroes, Ozymandias (a.k.a Adrian Veidt), has a massive god complex and is trying to prevent the other heroes from interfering with his plan to unite the world and avert a nuclear apocalypse by staging an alien invasion (and killing millions of people in order to sell the act).
Of course, with a hero name like “Ozymandias,” a stunt like this probably should have been anticipated, but to the other heroes’ credit, the guy is a genius philanthropist who’s really, really good at secretly executing a plan, and he believes hard enough in his own good intentions that he comes off as a perfectly decent person if you don’t know the details of his designs.
That much makes the twist satisfying, but not exceptional. The extra push that puts it on this list happens here:
That much makes the twist satisfying, but not exceptional. The extra push that puts it on this list happens here:
Unlike just about every other fictional mad “genius” ever, Adrian actually bothers to make his plan truly unfoilable before explaining it to the heroes. Well, not entirely unfoilable. They could still expose him to the world and ruin the positive, world-saving part of the plan, but because the killing-millions-of-people part is beyond preventing, they don’t do that, just as he knew they wouldn’t.
Homer: Marge, I’m confused. Is this a happy ending or a sad ending?
Marge: It’s an ending. That’s enough.
Marge: It’s an ending. That’s enough.
No matter how you feel about it, no matter if you see Ozymandias as a hero who saved the world, or if you’re on team Rorschach, opposed to accepting moral grey areas whatever the cost, or if you’re in the middle with Dan and Laurie, ready to make the practical best of a bad situation, the ending of Watchmen is another of those great gut-punches that lands as hard as it does by artfully and successfully breaking the unwritten rules.
