Watchmen: The video game?
Watchmen isn’t really a superhero comic book, it’s a deconstruction of superhero comic books. Similarly, it has been hinted that the Watchmen movie won’t be a superhero movie so much as a deconstruction of the superhero movies that have recently surged in popularity.
So this Watchmen sidescrolling beat-em-up coming to Xbox Live Arcade is… what, exactly?
It’s a prequel, is one thing it is. The game takes place in 1972, years before the alternate-universe ’80s where the comic takes place and features Rorschach and the Nite Owl cleaning up the street by beating on some dudes. It’s a team-up that is briefly mentioned in the story, if I recall correctly, to contrast Rorschach’s earlier vigilantism with the absolutist version that he practices later.
My inner comic book nerd wants to decry this as “totally missing the point, maaaaan,” but I’m forced to take a step back. Sure, Watchmen is pretty far removed from the spandex-clad adolescent power fantasies that it builds on, and the game would seem to fall pretty squarely in the category of the latter. And for comic book aficionados, Watchmen has always been a sort of sacred object, something outsiders aren’t allowed to disrespect because it proves that comics are SERIOUS ART.
But really, it’s just a little arcade brawler. It isn’t pretending to be anything weighty and deep, and the events it depicts happened in the comic, even if they weren’t the focus. It isn’t going to take anything away from the original work, and who knows? It might even be fun. Comics can still be serious art when there’s a Watchmen game in existence.
Sometimes an video game is just a video game.
Tags: life, recreation, entertainment
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This is kind of like when they developed a Fight Club game, or put Che Guevara’s face on a shirt that gets sold in the Gap. It’s capitalism. Even if it doesn’t make any sense.