When HBO announced that Damon Lindelof would helm over a new adaptation of the late Alan Moore’s landmark “Watchmen” graphic novel, I was all for that idea. After all, the “Watchmen” was created as a sort of antidote to conventional superhero stories. What Moore created back in 1987 with artist Dave Gibbons was damn-near revolutionary: superheroes with realist-infused consciousness, a band of alternative caped crusaders that felt ingrained in socio and political resistance.
And so, what went wrong in this 2019 HBO adaptation? Well, just about everything.
It is quite odd that creator Lindelhof and his team of writers forgot the most important rule when it came to adapting beloved material: don’t make radical changes. It seems pretty simple. If you want to tackle this sort of story then go ahead, but don’t call it “Watchmen”.
The story goes that Moore wrote “Watchmen” because he was so horrified seeing what was going on during the Thatcher administration that he dreamt up the novel. And yet, after all these years, the irony is that Rorschach -- a morally unambiguous right-wing anti-hero -- remains the most popular character he created.
Don’t look for Rorschach to be anywhere near how we remembered him. No, Lindelhof has decided to take Rorschach, one of the most complex and nuanced characters in literary history, who is simultaneously damaged, conflicted and yet principled with integrity. A character whom even the author argued was the only character in the entire work to come close to being a hero and what does Lindelof do with him? He reduces him to a symbol of white supremacy. A politically convenient stereotype for simpletons that don't want to see the other side as anything but evil.
The first episode starts off with the 1921 Tulsa massacre. I knew about the racially-motivated massacre but apparently current day Tulsa is so racist that black police officers have to wear masks to protect their identity from the KKK. The Watchmen are fighting the (I assume highly connected) KKK from Nixonville. It’s all very, dare I say it, woke? It doesn’t help that Lindelhof’s adaptation is based in an alternate reality where Nixon was president until 1992 only to be succeeded when fucking Robert Redford took over and is still President in 2019.
When the new series was announced more than a year ago, I wondered why, a decade after Zack Snyder’s faithful movie adaptation, they thought this property needed a TV show. Now I know. These times of “resistance,” and “wokeness” have inspired Lindelof, who wasn’t shy in admitting he had Donald Trump’s presidency in mind when he created this new take on Miller’s novel. The result is a series filled with obvious on-the-nose messaging and barely any connection to the source material. It’s artless, but, more importantly, feels detached from reality.