2019 was a rocky year for superheroes — until 'Watchmen' raised the bar for the genre
An amazing series.
The year 2019 has been a complicated year for superhero stories, but Damon Lindelof's outstanding adaptation of "Watchmen" for HBO is proving what can be done in the genre, and laying down a marker for all who dare to follow. Judging by the second-buzziest bit of comic-book pop culture to be released this year, the comparison isn't likely to be flattering. Todd Phillips's "Joker," with its portrait of the DC Comics supervillain as a troubled social outcast, may have grossed $1 billion worldwide and sparked praise for its "grittiness," a term frequently used to signal moral and sociological seriousness in art, but viewed side by side, "Watchmen" and "Joker" illustrate the difference between art that actually challenges its audience and art that simply plays at provocation while reciting well-worn ideas.
The bar for an interesting "Watchmen" adaptation is stratospheric: The source material by Dave Gibbons and Alan Moore is one of the most venerated comic books of all time, renowned for its portrait of dysfunctional, morally compromised heroes. And while some superhero stories share the "Watchmen" comics' grim tone, few dare to dismantle heroic fantasies in the same way. In a 2016 interview, Moore condemned most superhero stories — now quite literally the most popular genre on Earth — as "still very much white supremacist dreams of the master race."
An amazing series.