{"id":166,"date":"2008-03-07T10:53:33","date_gmt":"2008-03-06T23:53:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=166"},"modified":"2008-03-27T17:08:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-27T06:08:00","slug":"who-weeps-for-the-watchmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=166","title":{"rendered":"Who Weeps for the Watchmen?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/03\/comedianfull-thumb.jpg\" alt=\"comedianfull-thumb.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p>While I generally leave most superhero movie news to <a href=\"http:\/\/superheroesbase.com\/\">The Superheroes Base<\/a>, I felt that <em>Watchmen<\/em> deserves a special note here. The movie adaptation to be directed by Zach Snyder, who also directed the movie version of Frank Miller&#8217;s <em>300<\/em>, is still at least a year away but the <a href=\"http:\/\/rss.warnerbros.com\/watchmen\/2008\/03\/one_year_to_go_1.html\">release<\/a> of the photographs of the main characters has me psyched like few movies have. Pictured above is the Comedian, who is sort of a melange of DC&#8217;s Joker and Marvel&#8217;s The Punisher. Note his crazed grin and the yellow happy face badge on his shoulder. It&#8217;s details like this that make me hope Snyder that will do his best to be as faithful to the original graphic novel as possible.<\/p>\n<p>The other photographs on the site are from top to bottom: the Nite-Owl, who is a sort of Batman with high-tech gadgets and vehicles; Ozymandias,  who represents the peak of humanly possible perfection in both physical and mental abilities; Rorscharch, who is inspired by Steve Ditko&#8217;s Objectivist superhero The Question and is every bit as psychotic as the criminals he hunts and the Silk Spectre. I&#8217;m not sure which Spectre the photo represents though, since in the comics the title is held by a mother and then passed down to her daughter. The most glaring omission here is the god-like Doctor Manhattan, the only one among them who actually has superpowers.<\/p>\n<p><em>Watchmen<\/em> is worthy of special attention here because it is one of the very few comic books that have transcended its superhero genre to be recognized as a genuine piece of art. It is the only comic to have won a Hugo Award and the only comic to have been included in Time Magazine&#8217;s list of the 100 best English-language novels. It tells a dark story that bring superheroes down to the messy, grimy and morally ambiguous real world. My only worry is that the short length of a movie adaptation wouldn&#8217;t do the story justice. Please get and read the comic if you can. It will be worth your time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While I generally leave most superhero movie news to The Superheroes Base, I felt that Watchmen deserves a special note here. The movie adaptation to be directed by Zach Snyder, who also directed the movie version of Frank Miller&#8217;s 300, is still at least a year away but the release of the photographs of the &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/?p=166\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Who Weeps for the Watchmen?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[46],"class_list":["post-166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","tag-comics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/calltoreason.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}