Watchmen was Twilight for men.

Warning: this contains spoilers about the movie Watchmen. Don’t read it if you want to be surprised by all the comic book cliches.

Twilight is for 13-year-old straight girls and emotionally-13-year-old women because it’s about a nonremarkable girl having a romance with a hot, all-powerful person who protects the girl and does everything for her so that she doesn’t have to do anything but watch her classmates be jealous of her. Or whatever.

Watchmen is for 13-year-old straight boys and emotionally-13-year-old men because it’s about how all the problems in the world are caused by hot chicks sleeping with people other than you. What’s a slut? A women who’s sleeping with someone other than you. Right? Or maybe, in this movie’s case, a slut is just a woman. Any woman.

My boyfriend wanted to see Watchmen, and I told him to go without me. People I know and trust have told me that the Watchmen graphic novel was awesome, and I believed them and had it on my to-read list, but I suspected I wouldn’t like the movie. But then a couple of our other friends wanted to go, including my friend Ashley, who generally has excellent taste but can be guided off course by pretty girls. So I went along for the ride, lowering my expectations so as to be able to enjoy myself.

The theater was very crowded and we had to split up. Ashley and I sat together, and my boyfriend Dat sat with our friend Richard, several rows behind us.

The opening credits were interesting. Especially when the one hot chick kissed the nurse hot chick — Ashley and I whispered “Awesome!” while the woman seated next to us whispered, “Oh, no. No they did not. They are wrong for doing that!”

Then the Rorschach guy started voicing over in what, at first, I thought was a parody of right-wing extremism. But it wasn’t a parody — it was serious as hell. After that, the movie started sucking full force. I was surprised how badly and how suddenly it sucked.

“It’s just the characters who suck,” Ashley whispered to me. “The plot’s good.” She repeated that for a couple of minutes, then whispered, “Oh, God, this movie does suck.”

At the end, we waited for the guys to join us and Ashley asked if I thought Richard and Dat liked it. I said, “Richard might have, but Dat probably realized it sucked.” Of course, they both pronounced it awesome. (I don’t mind admitting that in public — that my boyfriend might be 13 years old, emotionally. That’s why I avoid all things Twilight — because I’m afraid I’ll end up succumbing to its temptations and being marked as a 13-year-old, myself.)

Please don’t write to me and tell me why the movie wasn’t really bad, or why I misinterpreted it as bad. Or, if you do write to me in that vein, don’t expect me to listen. I’ll tell you now that I never read Watchmen, but I don’t think that should matter. Yes, reading it ahead of time may have filled in the missing plot points and characters’ various motivations, but I doubt that would have kept the movie from sucking. As Ashley put it, every character in the movie was an asshole, or boring, or a boring asshole. I couldn’t tell who we were supposed to root for. I didn’t care what happened to any of them. If they’d all died in a nuclear holocaust, I would’ve been relieved that the way-too-long movie was over. (I wanted to leave the theater, but Ashley wouldn’t let me.)

I don’t aspire to be a film critic, so I won’t try to get into what was wrong with the film. Instead, I’ll tell you what was wrong with the story, as told by the film, by telling you what I was able to take away from it.

The beginning: In the ’40s, there was a group of superheroes who called themselves the Minutemen. They retired and were replaced by other superheroes (presumably called the Watchmen?) whose super powers consisted of wearing costumes. None of the Watchmen liked each other or had anything in common. Then, they disbanded because Richard Nixon made them. Because they existed in a dystopian alternate future where the Viet Cong surrendered to us and Nixon stayed president until the ’80s.

The Comedian was a major asshole who hated humanity and enjoyed killing people, and had a habit of raping and killing women in particular, because they deserved it for turning him on. The other Watchmen hated him but none of them had the guts to keep him from killing or raping innocent women (sluts). Neither did the Minutemen — he beat and tried to rape “Silk Spectre,” one of the female Minutemen, yet somehow remained part of the group. All that gets told in flashback, because someone kills the Comedian at the beginning of the movie, but we don’t know who, and that person strangely never gets a medal for it. His superpower is misanthropic rage.

Silk Spectre is a self-hating attention whore. She wore a sexy costume and capitalized on her looks. A few years after the Comedian tries to rape her and beats the crap out of her, she has sex with him and gets pregnant. She does this because she retroactively realizes that his rape attempt was flattering, as she explains to her daughter, Silk Spectre II. Because now she’s old and men don’t want to rape her anymore, and that makes her sad. Her superpower is sluttiness.

Silk Spectre II is a self-centered attention whore. She’s dating fellow Watchman John, but is petulant because he’s always busy saving the world with his unique godlike supernatural powers and therefore doesn’t spend enough time with her. So she turns to fellow Watchman the Owl Dude for comfort, because God forbid someone as hot as her should go without male attention for more than half a day. Her superpower is hair-flipping.

Rorschach is another misanthrope who’s hell-bent on doling out justice ever since he met a psycho who murdered a little girl. But, guess what? Rorscach’s mother was a whore. A literal whore — she slept with men for money, thereby making his childhood hell. So Rorschach thinks all women are whores. Also, he idolized the Comedian, which is weird and confusing since the Comedian is just as psycho as the psycho who killed the little girl who haunts Rorschach’s dreams. So… whatever. His superpower is misanthropic rage combined with a cool mask that’s made of shifting Rorschach patterns.

John was a scientist who, through a mishap involving radiation, obtained godlike powers and glowing blue skin, complete with glowing blue penis. Mind the size of a planet, but he chooses to date someone as shallow and histrionic as Silk Spectre II. Oh, well. That’s the breaks, right? Smart super dudes get the hot chicks, and therefore they have to put up with annoying behavior. That’s just life, right? Besides, he’ll eventually have to leave Silk Spectre II for a younger, hotter chick, just like he left his aging first girlfriend for Silk Spectre II.

The Owl Dude is just some Clark-Kent looking guy who lives alone and has owl-shaped stuff in his basement. His father’s an investment banker or something. I don’t know. His superpower is being the Everyman who’s standing in the right place at the right time when the hot chick needs sexual attention. Oh, and he has an owl suit and an owl copter.

Adrian is the gay Watchman who has Greek and Egyptian costume and decorating fetishes. When the Watchmen are disbanded, he becomes a corporate gazillionaire and secret master villain. He has an accent that I can’t place — is it made up, like Madonna’s? His superpower is being the Smartest Man in the World. At least, that’s what they kept telling us.

The Hot Lesbian One, who was the best superhero in the movie and whose superpower was insane macking skillz, died without a speaking part, right at the beginning of the movie.

The middle: People got killed. Sluts got killed or else had blood splattered all over their pretty, slutty faces. Silk Spectre II got kicked in the boobies and in the cunt. Hee hee. Boobies! Cunt! Rorschach referred to himself in the third person and shared long strings of psuedo-poetic cliches about how effed up the world has become. John tried to save the world but his current slut girlfriend and his former slut girlfriend got in his way and messed everything up. Silk Spectre II slept with Owl Dude in long, lingering sex scenes that were almost as good as the ones on Cinemax’s Witches of Breastwick 2. Each of the main characters tells their sob story, and most of their traumas are caused by women, who are all bitches and deserve to be punished. There’s a random burning building rescue and a random subplot about a prison break that makes no sense, at all, on earth, ever. And Lee Iacocca gets shot in the head. And gore, and sluts, and depressed rambling about human nature.

The end: There’s some long, drawn-out virgin teen boy fantasy in which the selfish hot chick begs the godlike Everyman to save her world. Then, Adrian comes out (heh) as the best character in the movie when he inexplicably renames himself Ozymandias, starts wearing costumes full time, makes a saber-toothed tiger pet appear out of nowhere, and locks himself in a tower so he can watch TV all day. It was like his character stood up and said, “Hey, this movie makes no sense. Therefore, I can do anything I want.” Kind of like you do in a lucid dream. But then the other fools showed up and everyone started punching each other (extra points for hitting Silk Spectre II’s chest or crotch), and then you realize that they don’t actually have super powers, even though earlier in the film their heads were going through granite countertops and stuff. And then God — I mean — John shows up and acts like God, and then one of the oldest sci-fi plot devices in the world is revealed, leaving you saying “WTF? WTF??” over and over again, and then, thank godfully, the movie ends.

Scariest part: The people in the audience who laughed at the rape and violence. I literally had nightmares, later, that I was trapped in a parking lot at night, surrounded by people like that. Why didn’t I dream that the Watchmen came to save me? Well, why would they?

Basically, it was Sin City all over again, but more confusing and way, way longer.

The end.

Oh, P.S., if you liked the movie and want to comment and tell me how misguided I am, know now that I’ll probably delete your comment. Know why? Because I’m either: 1) a dumb bitch, 2) a dyke, 3) an old bitch who’s just jealous that no one wants to rape me anymore. So, too bad for you! Toodles!

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