WatchmenComicMovie.com Forum

There were as we all know six major characters with a life of superheroism that the narration have pounded time into, to count: Rorschach, the Comedian, Nightowl 2, Silk Spectre 2, Dr. Manhattan and Ozymandias. Each of them have their traits, each one based her/his actions upon a particular system of value. My interpretation of superhero as a genre is an icon of idealized power, occasionally absolute power, yet this power has no difference from political power or brute power of the underground when executed. Therefore, Richard Nixon, is the seventh superhero that we have omitted all along. He is somewhat the symbol of an individual state(US that is) and enforcer of the social mechanism, he wields great power, his vision reflects, though distorted, the very definition of national interest in the collective mind of the society. Though we can make a distant kinship between him and Ozzy, I feel that he deserves his own page, his own interpretation; and the value system that he carries needs to justify itself in the vortex of social interaction and the fierce clash of morality in the extensive debate Watchmen has raised.

The movie certainly emphasized his existence, which is good and bad to me.

The bad part is that his portrait is too unrealistic comparing to those superheroes even if he does exist and others don't. And there is no exploration on the grounds of his decision making, it looks as if he is just mad.

Moore ruminates on Nixon's place amongst it all in an interview from back in the day of 1988:

Amongst the many other things I was trying to say in Watchmen was just that in this world we live in, with all its disparate characters and ambitions there are probably no two people who want the same thing. The world doesn’t work like that anyway. If there’s a central line in Watchmen it’s “Who makes the world?” Then again, that’s just my opinion. I’m sure other readers can find lines that are more meaningful to them, to me that’s the core of it: you’ve got all these vast powers—and Rorschach is a vast power in his own way just as Veidt is a vast financial power and Osterman’s a vast physical power. You’ve got ordinary people just muddling along, you’ve got people who don’t know what the fuck’s happening which is, like, most of humanity. You’ve got the Nixons and all this sort of stuff but… Who makes the world? Is the world really under the control of its most powerful people or are they just part of the design, the same as the rest?

Wait... it isn't Captain Metropolis?

_________________

On one hand, Nixon gets by perfectly without a flashy costume or a stage name, which is generally a huge part of being a superhero. On the other hand, the Nixon of Watchmen pretty much did whatever he wanted without any accountability or limits to his power, which is another aspect of superheroes that Moore and Gibbons explore in depth.

For the tiebreaker, I defer to Dr. Manhattan:

_________________
This is truly a madhouse. And I'm the lunatic running it. I've spent three years wondering if I should be proud or ashamed.

Know that this is the "movie" section, the second generation of superhero doesn't even called "watchmen" in the original book.

Yeah, I need to read Watchmen again.

_________________

Same here

There are some very good points in these replies that takes time to swallow. So don't be mad for my lagging response, this isn't some conversation occured on facebook and thinking about watchmen easily took you to a speechless situation.