Trashback: Graphic Crap

Hey Gasmi, it’s February, and you know what that means. The weather stinks, and you’re broke from trying to buy your loved ones’ affections over the holidays, all of which means it’s time to start spending some serious time with the glass teat. Now we all have our favorite poisons when it comes to rotting our brains out, but for this particular waffleboy, you can never go wrong with a good solid crap movie that some programmer is playing over and over on le tube de boob. Today’s movie has everything you need when looking for craptastic goodness, plenty of explosions, plenty of fisticuffs, HBO’s been running it on a 20 minute loop lately, and just to make everyone feel way uncomfortable, Billy Crudup’s amazing colossal blue CGI schlong. Yep, I’m talking about the 2009 release, Watchmen. So come on, times a wasting, make the jump and lets get to the good stuff.(Spoiler alert, this movie isn’t one of the 20+ year old action movies I normally fixate on, so if you haven’t seen this one yet, and don’t want to have all the big plot twists ruined, please stop reading.)

Okay, before we go any farther there are a couple of things to go over up front so this will make more sense. The first thing to remember is that this is a comic book movie. Well actually it’s based on a graphic novel, and to be double actually about it, Watchmen sort of invented the concept of a graphic novel. To its fans, Watchmen like War and Peace, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and A Tale of Two Cities all rolled into one. Of course most of these people live in their parents’ basement and their virginity can still be described as “in mint condition, still in the box.” Still we should respect their opinion, because the IT department is an important part of any organization.

Aside from that, the important thing to remember about the world we are about to visit is that comic book heroes are real, and Nixon is still president in 1985. Yes,it’s the world Glen Beck dreams about every night. Anyway, everybody all up to speed? Great, on with the show.

Our movie starts in a pretty nice apartment. A guy in an old scruffy robe makes himself something hot to drink and settles down on the couch to do a little glass teat suckling of his own. Too bad for him, that’s right when somebody litterly kicks his door in clean off the hinges. The guy in the old scruffy robe makes some crack about not being surprised because it was only a matter of time, and then he and the guy standing in the shadows at his door start making with the serious fisticuffs.

Well okay, the guy in the shadows is making with the fisticuffs; the guy in the scruffy robe is pretty much getting his butt driven so high up between his shoulder blades that he is starting to look like the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Still it’s not for the lack of trying on the part of the guy in the scruffy robe, judging by the punch he throws that goes clean through the wall, he’s pretty badassed too. His main problem is that the guy in the shadows is like way super faster, and after getting thrown into every piece of breakable furniture in the room, the guy in the scruffy robe gets launched out of his plate glass window. Oh and it’s a double bummer for scruffy robe guy, because he just happens to live on what looks like the 50th floor of his apartment building and proceeds to start seriously plummeting to his death.

The camera comes down and pans over scruffy guy’s now very lifeless corpse and then zooms in on the little smiley face button he was wearing at the start of his epic butt kicking. As the button stops bouncing and rolling around, it comes to a halt in the expanding pool of scruffy robe guy’s blood, and then the music comes up and the credits start.

The credit sequence for this movie is actually pretty cool, because the opening credits roll over scenes that establish the movie’s back story. We see well the guy in the scruffy robe catching some bad guy way back in what must be the 1930′s. You can tell scruffy guy wasn’t a cop because he’s wearing tights and a mask, and seeing as the guy he’s captured was holding a tommy gun, it doesn’t look like it was a vice sweep. We see a lot of pictures of other comic book type heroes. There is one group in the 40′s called the Minutemen, and another group called the Watchmen in the 70′s. The one thing both groups seem to have in common in the guy in the scruffy robe is in both groups. Oh and it becomes pretty obvious the guy in the scruffy robe wasn’t 100% on the up and up, because we see him in Dallas in 1963 on the grassy knoll with a rifle. Anyway, once the credits stop rolling, and Bob Dylan quits wailing like a cat being beaten in a sack with a big stick, we get on with the rest of the movie.

We cut back to some cops investigating Scruffy Robe Guy. It’s the 80′s so man they both have a lot of hair for cops. Everyone loved them some Magnum PI back in the day, huh? God bless you Higgie Baby, wherever you are. Anyway the cops know Scruffy Guy’s name, and they think it’s pretty strange a big guy like him got beaten to a pulp, but once they see a picture of him with President, they start getting worried that maybe this was some sort of black ops hit, and the scene slowly fades out, and we never see them for the rest of the movie, so it looks like we’ll have to mark this case down as unsolveded.

Or maybe not. The beauty of a comic book world is that it’s full of comic book heroes. In this case we meet Rorschach, a guy who wears a natty little suit, oh and a mask with contantly swirling black blotches, hence the name. Oh and while Rorschach is using a pretty cool grappling hook gun to get into scruffy robe guy’s apartment we also get a clue that he’s wrapped a little tight on the whole subject of law and order. I mean that would explain a pretty long monologue about how the city is full of whores and criminals. The best way to think of this guy, is Travis Bickle with a bus pass.

Anyway, Rorschach zips his way into scruffy guy’s apartment, and within 10 seconds he’s figured out scruffy robe was actually a super hero called The Comedian. Not only that, but he decides that whoever killed the Comedian must be out to kill all the super heroes in the movie. Okay, this is a little batshit, because Rorschach is pretty much going from A to Q if you’re using logic, but trust me if you’ve got a movie where 80% of the male cast have a pair of tights (on set), logic is not your friend. Besides we’re close to 15 minutes into the movie at this point, and this is the first sign of a plot we’ve seen, and I for one am going to cradle it to my breast and love it like a sweet adorable kitten. At least until the first time it claws the couch and pees in the corner out of spite, then it will be a chorus of Born Free and somebody will become a big grown up outdoor cat. Wait, I’m not talking about the movie again, huh? My bad.

Now that we finally have a plot, we promptly cut away to another scene so we can get some more exposition. An older guy, who was a super hero back in the olden days is having a talk with a younger guy, relatively speaking, who was also a super hero. To make it even more confusing, both guys were called The Night Owl. Okay it’s not that confusing, when the older guy retired the younger guy, relatively speaking, took his place.

The younger guy, relatively speaking, is called Dan, and he is politely listening as the older guy explains how this whole super hero thing got started back in the olden days. Long story short, when crooks started wearing masks, some cops and other people started wearing masks, and when the media got a hold of it, everything took off. It’s pretty much the same thing that happened with calculus, only completely different.

Dan does an amazing job of not letting his eyes roll into the back of his head, but after Old Night Owl stops to take his breath, Dan makes with the “oh, look at the time,” and exits stage left.

Dan makes it all the way home without doing or saying anything that would warrant being in a movie, but when he gets home, he notices that the lock has been forced on his front door. Dan marches right in, and balls his fists when he hears someone in his kitchen; this is where we get a hint that Dan might have a bit of the badass in him, even though Dan wears glasses, and doesn’t seem to have a problem with bowties accessorizing an outfit in a non-ironic way.

It turns out Dan didn’t have to worry because it’s just Rorschach in his kitchen eating beans. Of course this kind of drives up Dan’s badass stock because how many people would be relieved when they got home to find a masked lunatic vigilante rummaging through their kitchen like a raccoon? And no fair bringing up Martha Stewart. She was in the joint; she could shiv Charlie Manson if things went sideways.

Well it turns out the reason for Dan’s sense of calmness is that he and Rorschach were partners back in the crime fighting day. After Rorsrach wolfs down his second can of beans, and just before he starts farting uncontrollably, he shows Dan his evidence that The Comedian was murdered, a smiley face button with some blood on it. He also lets Dan in on his conspiracy theory about masked heroes getting killed off. Dan’s a little perturbed by this information, but he does what friends are supposed to do in this situation, and tells Rorschach he may be jumping to conclusions.

What’s that? You say you don’t have a friend who is a masked vigilante? Well cheer up, most people don’t, but if you are over the age of 25 you probably have at least one friend who’s asked your opinion about getting engaged to a stripper, letting their boyfriend/girlfriend move in with them, even thought your friend has already filed at least one report with the police over their sweet baboo stealing their car, and/or your friend wanting to get their masters in sociology. Now these friends are I’m sure nice, intelligent, and caring, but let’s face it, they all have a blind spot and it’s your job as their friend to not let them plunge off a cliff.

Well Dan does his job but Rorsrach is bound and determined to marry an exotic dancer, or in this case investigate this murder. He thanks Dan for the beans, calls him a pussy, and exits stage left.

We cut from this scene some super fancy penthouse office in some giant skyscraper, where Adrian Veidt, big time billionaire is giving a magazine interview that also fills us in on some more of that sweet, sweet, expostition. It turns out, Veidt was a superhero too, called Ozymandias back in the day. Only Veidt retired, announced his true identity to the world, and promptly started working on making those billions and billions of dollars he has in the bank account.

Not to worry thought, because Veidt isn’t all about the Benjamins, he’s using a big chunk of his money to work on giving the world an unlimited supply of free clean renewable energy. This is an exciting idea, because Veidt says this will keep America and the Ruskies from getting in a nuclear war, even though there is a big crisis going on, and this big doomsday clock keeps getting pushed closer and closer to midnight.

With all that new info for our noodles out of the way, Veidt ends his interview so he can hang out with his good buddy Dan and catch up on things. Even though Dan told Rorschach his theory was mainly balloon juice, he gives Veidt a heads up that somebody could be out to get him, just to be on the safe side.

Veidt thanks Dan for the heads up, but he’s a lot more worried about the world getting nuked, and the paper with the giant headline on it backs him up. Dan asks about a mutual superhero buddy of theirs, called Doctor Manhattan, who is about as close to being a god as anyone is going to get, and whether he can stop the Russian nukes. Veidt points out the Ivans have like a squdillion warheads, so even if one percent get through it’s the hooie kablooie for the whole world, and on that cheery note this scene comes to an end.

We cut from that scene to Rorschach breaking into a top secret military base, but don’t worry, it’s not like the little guy has turned on his country; he just stopping by to get more people in the plot, say hi to some old friends.

The old friends in question turn out to be the aforementioned Doctor Manhattan, and his main squeeze, Silk Specter. Although these days Silk Specter likes to be called by her regular name, Laurie January.

Oh and when whatever you want to call her sees Rorschach has popped in for a visit she makes a face like somebody just smeared poo on her upper lip. Yeah, it turns out she’s not a fan of the little guy, and doesn’t like him coming around. It’s a lot like in Van Halen in about 1983 when word got out that Valerie Bertinelli didn’t want David Lee Roth coming around hers and Eddie’s house. Only in this case, it’s not wanting a little psycho in a high tech mask showing up on her doorstep, as opposed to Valerie having a raving ego manic show up at 3 AM every night in uncomfortable looking spandex with four strippers and a midget in tow. Isn’t it interesting how two very different scenarios can support the concept of boundries? No? Then let’s get back to our comic book movie.

Anyway, Silk Specter and Doctor Manhattan completely blow off Rorschach’s somebody is killing off the main characters of this movie theory. Silk Specter points out that if somebody were trying to kill them, Doctor Manhattan would know all about it because he can see the future, so there.

This is right when Doctor Manhattan mentions he hasn’t been able to see the future lately, and think it might be because there is going to be a nuclear war soon which would block his ability to see the future. This is fine by Rorschach because it just gives him more suspects, but Silk Specter starts to freak out, because, well you’re supposed to freak out when somebody casually mentions that all of humanity is about to be exterminated. Anyway, Doctor Manhattan decides he’s had enough of Rorschach, and teleports him outside the base, so he and the little woman can do what all couple do after their friends leave, have a fight.

Well so Silk Specter can have a fight. Doctor Manhattan is about as excited about all of this as I am about the census. He tries to settle her down by saying if he can just get his super duper energy machine done in time, maybe the world won’t blow up. This leads to one of those circular conversations you always get in movies and books, when people try to make time travel make sense, but it does lead to Doc M telling Silk Specter she needs to see time the way he does which leads to a mini-flashback.

We see a scene from Silk Specter’s childhood, where her mom, who was the original Silk Specter, is having an argument with her husband, but we don’t see it get resolved, because the reveal is a key plot point in the movie, and we are still in the first act.

We come back from the flashback, and Doctor Manhattan tells Silk Specter to go out to dinner with their old friend Dan, because he has to work on his energy machine, oh and seeing as he’s butt naked that no shirt, no shoes, and if your penis hanging out, no service policy is going to be a deal breaker for him.

This sounds like a good idea to Silk Specter as opposed to watching her blue naked boyfriend play with his soldering gun while she chokes down soup for one, so we cut over to her and Dan having a little din-din and catching up on old times. At least they do for a little while, until Silk Specter plays the Debbie Downer card and starts pitching her tale of woe about how the world is going to end, and also more importantly that relationship with her god like boyfriend seems to be seriously in the crapper. She starts mopping about how she doesn’t know if Doctor Manhattan really cares for her any more, or is just pretending.

Dan tells Silk Specter, if Doctor Manhattan is pretending, it means he cares. Aw, that’s sweet and just what she needs to hear, and proof somebody really needs to sit down with Dan and explain the definition of pretending to him.

Anyway, once this little pity fest breaks up, we cut to the next day and the funeral for The Comedian. Dan, Doctor Manhattan, and Veidt show up. Silk Specter gets teleported to her mom’s house at a retirement community in California. Silk Specter spends some time with her mom who was the original Silk Specter, and is now the kind of older woman who’s on her second margarita at two o’clock in the afternoon. In many families women like this are referred to as “the fun grandma.” At least while they are in the room, otherwise they usually go by the title “grandma who is not allowed to use the stove when your parents aren’t there.”

Anyway, we cut back in forth between shots of Silk Specter II talking with Silk Specter I and the funeral to weave in about four flashbacks about The Comedian, and just what kind of guy he was. Hmm, let’s see, he tried to rape the original Silk Specter, after he and Doctor Manhattan won the Viet Nam War (Don’t ask), he kills the local woman who was pregnant with his child, and during some riots in the 70′s he shoots a bunch of people wearing bad polyester outfits. Fun fact, this last one is a long time fantasy of Tim Gunn. Anyway, if you’re wondering just how this guy got classified as a super hero, you obviously haven’t read the script of this movie.

Okay, after getting about 10 minutes of back story crammed down our throat, we get back to our favorite lunatic vigilante. Well first we see some poor old guy come into his apartment, read his mail, and get surprised by Rorschach when he goes to see what is in the fridge for dinner.

It turns out the old guy was a super villain back in the day called Moloch, and Rorschach wants to know why the guy showed up at The Comedian’s funeral, when The Comedian was his arch enemy. After getting smacked around pretty good Moloch tells Rorschach this strange story about how a couple of weeks ago The Comedian broke into his apartment, completely poop-faced, and was crying and going on about people’s names being on lists before he just took off out a window. Rorschach decides the story is so far fetched, it has to be true, and is in such a good mood he doesn’t F-up Moloch any more. Although Moloch telling him he has cancer probably has something to do with that too.

Back over at Doctor Manhattan’s pad, he and Silk Specter are getting busy in the bedroom. Everything gets off to a good start, and first we see one blue hand rubbing her face, and then another, and then two more. Silk Specter opens her eyes, and holy crap there are two Doctor Manhattans. Silk Specter is a little freaked out, and probably trying to figure out if it counts as a threesome, if your boyfriend makes a copy of himself, when Doctor Manhattan utters the words no straight woman wants to hear in the bedroom; “but I thought you’d like it.” These six words would probably be met with less dread, if maybe over the years so many women hadn’t of heard them uttered by a man in a tutu holding the bridle to a Shetland pony.

Silk Specter is trying to calm down, because after all, there isn’t a pony in the room, when she happens to glance out into Doctor Manhattan’s lab and sees he’s still working on his energy gizmo. At this point, realizing he made two copies of himself to do the freaky freaky with her so it wouldn’t interfere with his work, she loses her poop and tells him she’s leaving.

We then cut back and forth between Doctor Manhattan getting ready to go appear on TV, and Silk Specter heading over to old Dan’s house to tell him she’s officially back on the market. I mean that she broke up and is emotionally devastated. Dan tells her to come along with him over to the Old Night Owl’s place so they can drink beer and talk about wearing tights in a non-sexual situation.

As they walk over to Dan’s friend’s place, Doctor Manhattan appears on TV for a press conference to talk about his energy gizmo. Too bad for him this one reporter wants to talk about how pretty much all of his old friends have either died, or are dying of cancer, including his old girlfriend, the one who he dumped for Silk Specter.

While this is going on, Dan and Silk Specter duck down a dark menacing alley on the way to his friends house, because just how much street crime was there in New York in 1985? Well in this particular alley there seems to be a lot at least that would explain the street gang that corners them. Too bad for the street gang they managed to corner a pair of retired super heroes whose hand to hand skills aren’t all that rusty. A pretty serious street gang beat down then ensues.

We cut back to Doctor Manhattan’s press conference, and they’ve trotted out his old girlfriend, who judging by her hair is about half-way through a chemo-cycle and, well she’s pretty pissed. Doctor Manhattan, who up until now in the movie has exhibited all the emotion of your average rutabaga, gets pretty flustered, and when all the reporters start yelling questions at him he ends up screaming “leave me alone,” and teleporting to Mars.

This is kind of a good thing because he’s back to wearing his birthday suit, and we get yet another flashback, this one telling us the history of Doctor Manhattan. I’ve got say things were okay for Doctor Manhattan way back when, he was a nuclear physicist with the aforementioned old girl friend. Yep everything was fine right up until he got locked in a lab and had every atom in his body accelerated to the speed of light and vaporized.

The good thing for the plot is he was able to put himself back together, and in the process learned how to do all sorts of useful things like making tanks smush into big balls of metal, blow people up, stop nuclear warheads from going off, and how to do people’s taxes. (Note, one of the items on that list is a ringer.)

In other words, he turns into a kind of god, and starts to lose touch with his humanity. Well he doesn’t lose enough of humanity to not dump his old girlfriend when he hit 40 for Silk Specter who wasn’t quiet 20, that part is working just fine, thank you very much. However, what with finding out about this cancer thing and just getting dumped even though there wasn’t a pony in the room, it makes him decide to go to Mars and build a big shiny thingamajig. Hey, some guys get way into fantasy baseball, he does this, don’t judge.

We cut back to Earth and see a guy who is supposed to be Nixon, but who looks a lot more like if Bob Hope had just really let himself go. Anyway, America’s leaders have to figure out how they are going to deal with the commies now that Doctor Manhattan has headed off to the Red Planet for an indefinite sulk. Naturally their first response is to get in touch with the Soviets and try to just talk things through. Just kidding! Nixon decides in a couple of days we’ll launch a first strike because all we stand to lose is the Eastern Seaboard, and who can blame him? I mean have you been to Delaware lately?

While this is going on, a bunch of fat cats have stopped by Veidt’s office. It turns out they don’t like the idea of free unlimited energy, and start making noise about calling Veidt a commie. Too bad for them Veidt is not only the smartest man in the world, but also the richest, and he points out if they keep giving him lip, he’ll just have to buy all their companies and see how they all like the exciting career path of fry guy.

The fat cats get with the program. Too bad for them, they do it right when this guy shows up and starts shooting at Veidt. The reason this is too bad for them, is because not only is Veidt super duper smart, and super duper rich, but he is super duper fast. This means he can dodge around them, so they get shot and he doesn’t, and he then is able to take out the hit man. Too bad we can’t find out who sent the guy, because it looks like the guy was able to take a suicide pill and he dies.

We cut over to Dan and Silk Specter who have just finished having lunch and are talking about this very event. They are pretty shocked by this, but have no idea who’d want them dead. Dan uses this as a segway to get Silk Specter to stay with him now. At first she doesn’t want to impose, but Dan insists because he called dibs on rebound sex earlier…err, I mean he doesn’t want to worry about her being all alone what with all this bad stuff happening.

Night time comes, which means it’s time for Rorschach to get a little screen time. He’s heading back to Moloch’s place because everyone who’s supposedly gotten cancer from Doctor Manhattan has worked at the same company. Too bad for Rorschach when he gets there Moloch is dead, and double too bad for him, the cops have the building surrounded. Rorschach freaks out, but snaps out of it and we get a pretty cool scene where he uses an aerosol can as a flame thrower, dodges bullets, dives out of a window and fights off a bunch of cops. Too bad for him, eventually the cops just rat pack him, and get him cuffs. They also pull off his mask and holy crap it’s Jackie Earle Haley. That’s right, Kelley Leak is a super hero. Man, I just thought he was a bad boy who could hit for power, who knew?

Well we cut right from his arrest to Rorschach being sent to prison. A psychiatrist is interviewing him and ironically enough, showing him Rorschach cards. This gives the director the perfect chance to work some more flashbacks into the movie.

We find out Rorschach’s mom was a prostitute, and he first got into trouble when some older kids were calling her a whore and giving him a boat load of grief, he ended up hitting the one kid in the head with a sledgehammer and biting the other kid’s cheek open. Okay, so things start a little dark for him. Too bad they don’t get any brighter, because he then proceeds to tell the doc about how he became Rorschach. Well the flashback involves a missing girl, some dogs fighting over a bone, and a drooling psycho who wants to be arrested because “he isn’t responsible,” and a meat cleaver being repeatedly applied to a skull. At this point in the movie, I trust you to fill in the blanks with those clues. Anyway, after this, Rorschach’s ultra black and white view of the world makes a little more sense.

They put Rorschach into gen pop in the prison just in time for lunch, and hey, it’s French fry day! Pay attention, that’s an important clue as to what is going to happen next. Rorschach is in line and has his tray, and the guy behind him is giving him a bunch of crap. This is kind of a build up, because the guy tries to shank Rorsrach, and it doesn’t work out too good for him. Not only does Rorschach not get shanked, but Rorschach proceeds to drop a big boiling basket of hot French fry oil on the guy essentially melting him.

In one of the great lines uttered in movies over the last couple of years, as Rorschach is getting wrestled to the ground by the guards, he looks out at the rest of the inmates and sneers, “None of you seem to understand. I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me!” This is an awesome line, which is even more incredible because it’s being shouted by a guy who looks to be about 5’4″ on his tiptoes and it’s completely believable.

From that cool thing we cut back over to Dan and Silk Specter. She has obviously gotten bored and is puttering around down in Dan’s basement, where she finds his airship. What’s that? You don’t have an airship in your basement? Don’t feel bad, I live in an apartment, I don’t even have a basement.

Anyway, Dan just happens to have a fully functional airship in his basement, and Silk Specter finds out just how functional it is when she presses on of the buttons and triggers a flame thrower. Dan comes down and helps her put the ensuing fire out, and they look at all his old equipment and talk about the old days and Silk Specter mentions Doctor Manhattan, which kills Dan’s fragile erection.

They head upstairs, and after dinner, Silk Specter decides it’s time to start making with the sweet, sweet love. Too bad, well remember that fragile erection we were talking about in the last paragraph? Well it’s back. Silk Specter wants to know what’s wrong and Dan knows it’s way too early in the relationship to bring out the pony, so he stalls for time.

Meanwhile back at the prison, even though everybody should be scared out of their mind by Rorschach, this former kingpin that Rorschach put away shows up with his goons to threaten Rorschach. Aside from some very deadpan short jokes from Rorschach (did I mention the kingpin is a dwarf?) not a whole lot happens, but the kingpin promises Rorschach this isn’t over and he and his goons exit stage left.

We cut a dream Dan is having, and no he’s not naked and eating pudding in his freshman typing class. He’s with Silk Specter and she peels off his Dan skin, and underneath he’s wearing his Night Owl costume, and then they almost kiss, but get blown up in a nuclear explosion, and nobody even eats pudding. Sicko.

He heads downstairs and is looking at his suit and launches into a little speech about how he’s tired of being afraid of being blown up, or getting killed, but mainly of how much he misses wearing his tights. Silk Specter suggests they dress up and hit the town for a little crime fighting, and seeing as Carson has probably been over for at least an hour they suit up and do just that.

After they get in their outfits and take out the airship, they just happen to find a burning building, and save everyone in it. Oh and guess what? Dan’s erection? Not so fragile anymore. He and Silk Specter proceed to get busy and we know all systems are go because the flame thrower goes off on the airship again. And for those of you under 30, this is what the world was like for middle aged men before the invention of Viagra.

Afterwards, Dan is in such a good mood he decides to break Rorschach out of prision. Me personally, I can always go for pudding in these situations, but we’ve already established that Dan is a sicko.

Meanwhile back at the prison there is a big riot happening, because somebody screwed up French fry day for everybody else. The kingpin shows up at Rorschach’s cell with his goons and a power saw. One of the goons make the huge mistake of putting his hands in the cell, and after Rorschach breaks the guys thumbs, he ties his arms up so the guy can’t pull them out the cell and he is blocking the lock of the door so nobody can get in. The kingpin has a solution, and has his goon with the saw cut the arms off of his other goon so they can get to Rorschach.

This takes awhile, and it’s just as bad of idea as we in the audience knew it would be. When the other goon gets the door of the cell open and promptly goes inside. Rorschach wastes no time, and smashes the guy’s head into his toilet bowl spilling water all over the floor. Now if the goon hadn’t of taken that electrical saw into the room with him, when the water hit the cord he wouldn’t have gotten electrocuted. Do you kids see now why paying attention to the safety briefings in shop is so important? Anyway right at about the time his last goon stops sizzling, the kingpin realizes he’s fresh out of goons and the door to Rorschach’s cell is wide open. This causes him to exit stage left as Rorschach gets ready to pull the tab on the whoop ass can.

This is right when Night Owl and Silk Specter show up to save the inmates from Rorschach. I mean save Rorschach. Although he is doing pretty good on his own, and the last we see of him he is getting his mask back from his psychiatrist. We cut away from this to watching Night Owl and Silk Specter walk down a hallway and kick the poop out of a whole mess of mooks in semi-slow motion. They hook up with Rorschach, but Rorsrach tells them he needs to use the men’s room before he leaves. When he goes in we see the kingpin cowering in the corner and after he leaves a pool of blood seeps out under the door. We’ll miss you kingpin, or maybe not.

Well everything is going great for Night Owl right now. He’s got his old partner back, a hot, relatively young, girlfriend, what’s the worse that could go wrong? Did you guess Doctor Manhattan would show up and get Silk Specter to come with him to Mars to talk about saving the world? No? Well cheer up, neither did Night Owl.

He must have some aggression to work through, because he goes along with Rorschach idea of investigating which involves torturing lowlifes in bars. Guess what? It works. They find out Doctor Mnahattan’s cancer girlfriend worked for a company owned by their buddy Veidt and made sure they hired a bunch of ex-cons, including the guy who tried to kill Veidt. They exit stage right to check in with the smartest man in the world.

Meanwhile, back on Mars. Doctor Manhattan and Silk Specter have a little chat. Doctor Manhattan doesn’t want to save humanity, because well we’re kind of boring to him. Silk Specter thinks this is a bad idea, and I’ve got to say I’m pulling for her in this argument. Doctor Manhattan tells her she never sees things from his point of view, and this leads to last two flashbacks of the movie.

We see Silk Specter’s mom having that argument with her husband again, and it becomes pretty obvious he wasn’t Kathy’s dad, and we get a second flashback of Kathy meeting The Comedian when she first became a super hero, and her mom freaking out, and then we get the big reveal that The Comedian was her father!

By the way, what this has to do with nuclear war is beyond me, but it makes Silk Specter start to cry and that is a good enough reason for Doctor Manhattan to save humanity. So, yay?

While this is going on, Night Owl and Rorschach head over to Veidt’s office, but he’s not there. Not that it matters because Night Owl is able to hack his computer in like two tries, and finds out Veidt is behind everything in the movie. Yep, he’s killing masks, giving people cancer, framing Rorschach, and even making it look people are trying to kill him, and why is he doing this? That we don’t know yet, which is why Night Owl and Rorschach end up flying to Veidt’s secret lair in Antarctica.

Because this is a movie it takes about a quarter of a Hendrix’ song to fly from New York to Antarctica and that’s why are guys are able to sneak up on Veidt in his lair. Too bad for them he’s super duper fast, and super duper strong, and he’s broken out his super hero suit too, so they get a pretty severe ass whooping.

To add insult to injury Veidt lays out his whole master plan, and the big kicker. That he is going to blow up New York, LA, Hong Kong and Moscow, and make it look like Doctor Manhattan did it. He is going to do this because it will bring humanity together and keep people from nuking each other. He also makes a comment about The Comedian and how he is pulling off the world’s biggest practical joke, to tie that into where the plot is going.

Now this sounds bug fugging nuts, so Night Owl tells him he’s not going to let him get away with it, and this is when Veidt proves he really is the smartest man in the world, because he tells him it already happened 35 minutes ago.

We see New York go hooie kablooie, and then we see Nixon finding out we didn’t just get nuked by the Ruskies, and Doctor Manhattan and Silk Specter show up just in time to see they screwed the pooch too. Doctor Manhattan figures it all out in about two seconds and he and Silk Specter teleport over to Antarctica to put the smack down on Veidt.

When Veidt sees Doctor Manhattan he again proves he’s the smartest man in the world, and runs out of the room. This seems like a dumb strategy, but Doctor Manhattan walks down a hallway, which is actually an electronic gizmo, and Veidt accelerates all of Doctor Manhattan’s atoms to the speed of light and makes him explode.

Silk Specter is pretty pissed, so she shoots Veidt, and he catches the bullet. He smacks her around a little bit and then starts to tell everyone how he won and they all need to get over it.

Too bad for him Doctor Manhattan isn’t dead. Oh and he’s like forty feet tall and pretty pissed off at this point. He smashes in Viedt’s glass roof and shinks down to human size to finish Viedt off. This is right when Viedt pulls out his secret weapon, TV. Nixon is on TV and he says the US and the Ruskies are totally like bestest buds now, and this is good enough for Doctor Manhattan to get with Veidt’s plan.

But do you know who doesn’t want to go along to get along? Yep, Rorschach. He heads out to tell the world, and Doctor Manhattan comes out to stop him. They have a little philosophic chat, and then Doctor Manhattan blows him up.

With that improbable plot point out of the way, Doctor Manhattan decides he’s leaving for a clothing optional galaxy, and after putting a lip lock on Silk Specter he exits in a big cloud of sparkles.

Night Owl is pretty pissed about losing his best friend, so he gives Veidt a punch in the mouth, well several of them, calls him a dick ,and exits with Silk Specter to his airship of love.

We cut back to the good old US of A and Laurie and her mom have a little heart to heart, about The Comedian being her dad. There’s a little boo-hooing but everyone comes out at the end saying I love you. Dan comes in and Laurie asks him if everything is going to be okay, and he says sure as long as everyone thinks Doctor Manhattan is watching, and they kiss.

We see New York, or what’s left of it, and an old guy at a paper is complaining that what with world peace there is nothing to write about any more to a young guy. The young guy says something about using stuff out of the crank file and we see a book on the top and hear Rorsrach’s narration from his journal about The Comedian. The end.

There you have it Gasmi. The greatest story ever told six frames at a time, and a very faithful movie version where we learn some very important lessons. Such as spandex and tights lead to excessive plot twists. You shouldn’t spring ponies or copies of yourself on your sweet baboo, because taking her for a ride in your airship will get the same response. Oh, and public nudity is only acceptable if there is tipping involved. At least that’s what I took away from this movie, thanks for stopping by.