Watchmen 2019 Review: Condescension and Exploitation 

The Saul Goodman voice is AI. Created through Elevenlabs. I'm genuinely frightened that it needed clarification. Our cyberpunk dystopia great....

Alan Moore literally named a character Rorschach and then got pissed that people had different interpretations of his character.

"Ditko! I've already depicted your character as a soyjak and me as the chad!" - Alan Moore

Mfs be like “deconstruct the superhero genre” My brother in Christ Megamind

Sorry but a character that kills a child molester/murderer because he knows the guy is just going to be cycled in and out of the prison system, will never be a bad guy to me

The ironic thing is, come one year later and this show wouldn’t have been made because ACAB was at its peak

That bleach line is so iconic, they really thought they cooked

"I have a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach". Never has a one-liner so perfectly encapsulated the mental illness of the writers while warning everyone to not watch it by being in the trailer.

Alan Moore tries to make a parody of Steve Ditko and ends up making him the most popular character in the story.

The way Alan Moore wrote Rorschach reminds of how the director of Elite Squad (the brazilian film) wanted to portray the main character as a psycho abusive policeman, but the audience ended up loving him, because he... beats the shit out of favela cartel leaders, who kill and robs people like the audience. Both Alan Moore and Padilha are very talented individuals but they live in a bubble, and accidentaly delievered beloved characters unintentionally.

Rorschach is more demonized in this show than Ozymandias.

I'll never forget being on the hellsite formerly known as Twitter, and someone saying that they hated the original Watchmen because "it's racist" and saying how much they liked this show. Trust me guys, once you leave that site, you will genuinely start to feel better about life and other people. We humans are not meant to be subjected to such ... paste-eating opinions in such a quantity for such a prolonged period of time.

I love how people were white-knighting for this show like it's the best thing to happen the Watchmen franchise, and come 2023, people barely even remember this show exists let alone think it's a good sequel or series.

The thing is, the show actually could've actually said something about the hardships of black communities. That would've required them to be critical of the government and maybe even black communities themselves, so instead they took the cheap route and made trailer trash the bad guys. The American government has absolutely done some shady, terrible, and even racist things. However that would require legitimately critical thought and could've been, dare I say, controversial.

Rorschach was right.

Saying you're an Anarcho-Communist is like saying you're a meat eating vegan. Yeah I hate the government, so I adhere to a system that requires strict governing over wealth.

I think the reason Rorschach became so popular is because 1) his mask is cool & 2) back in the 80s Alan Moore was a good enough writer that he knew to make his characters interesting even if he didn't like them. Rorschach isn't just a cartoon strawman who gets off at the thought violating civil rights. He's a flawed, traumatized person who thinks he's doing the right thing. That's why Watchmen is so popular and stayed popular as long as it has.

Damon Lindelof is a terrible writer. That is all.

I can't believe Saul Goodman is so well-versed in the Tulsa race riots. Bravo, Vince!

Also on a side note to the Rorsach stuff, I always took the final pages as a testament to his character. Even after he made a big deal out of how much he hated the people of the city and how he wouldn't save them, when the chips were down he decided to die for them. Personally I always took it as Rorsach being at least somewhat a good person behind all his misanthropy and trauma.

Alan Moore created a character to make fun of the uncompromising hero by making him a murderous psychopath that refuses to ever change in anyway. Then makes him somehow one of the more morally upstanding people in the book and is perspective is completely understandable. Not to mention gives him a backstory where he feels completely justified in how he turned out. His worst traits are either implied (or told to us) like his racism and sexism or don't seem that bad in such a horrible world. Then his best traits are highlighted throughout most of the story since he's the only one trying to do anything. He's the only person to not give into apathy and is still trying. His ideals are SO strong that he sticks to his guns and never compromises even in the face of Armageddon. Then is not only surprised that some people like the character but is angry that they do. Dude is either salty that people connect more with his parody character or believes they morally incorrect. Either way I'm happy cause Alan Moore is insane and it's fun to see him freak out about people not interrupting the character he wanted. The very reason he created this character is because he didn't see Steve Ditkos character the way Steve Ditko intended.

I realized something a while ago. The actual contents of a source material is irrelevant; hollywood writers can turn anything into a ridiculous, convoluted soap opera. And they'll give it a nice injection of modern day propaganda for good measure.

Rorschach is a jaded conspiracy theorist that gets proven right at every turn in the story and is the only one with the balls to blow the lid on one of the greatest atrocities even committed. How exactly did Allen Moore think he was even a parody? Let alone a villain?

Remember how Moore was appalled with people sympathizing with Rorschach and that they rooted for him despite considering him as the villain? I mean it’s not hard to see why as the guy was more of a hero than the others and his greatest trait about himself was that more than anything else, he would never have compromised his principles even in the face of Armageddon. In short: Rorschach did nothing wrong.

The villains following Rorschach is ironic when you learn that Alan Moore originally intended Rorschach as a critique of Randian Objectivist heroes like Mr. A, but the character ended up being the most traditionally heroic member of the entire cast.

You can tell how terrible this show was when the creator of the abortion uses his father's death to defend this from anyone who dares to criticize how racist this show is.

Im honestly surprised this show came out before the Summer of Love. I can only imagine how much more unhinged it would've been if it came out after.

The idea of Dr. Manhattan being so in love with a woman that he not only gives himself amnesia but also race changes himself is so absurd its frankly offensive, none the less for a dull as dishwater woman, whose biggest feat is her melanin levels. Also doesn't this technically mean Dr. Manhattan is blackfacing?

So what your telling me is that the crazy communist wizard that worships Voldemort unintentionally made rorschach based, that’s neat.😺

I always found it funny how Rorschach is hands down the biggest example of death of the author when it comes to the character's portrayal. Alan Moore wanted his readers to view Rorschach as this sociopathic right wing racist but instead he comes off as the most redeemable character in the graphic novel who was willing to die for his beliefs that a lie shouldn't be kept for the sake of a fragile alliance between the superpowers of the world. The fact that the HBO series went with Moore's take on the character and not the audience's views that has analyzed him for over 25 years, shows how out of touch the show really is. Edit: Made the comment before finishing the whole video, so Loli hits the same beats as I did, but you get the point.

"Oh yea I forgot this show existed" -mfs who were calling the next big thing like 4 years ago its the Lovecraft Country situation all over again.

Jackie Earle Haley as Rorsarch is one of the greatest movie characters of all time. Legendary.

Alan legite didn’t realize how much better of a character Rorschach is for being a nutcase with a very awful personality, it shows he still knows what is right, at no point do you see him go after gay people or minorities, he targets child predators, people you cannot sympathize with, it’s insane to think he tried to make him unlikeable but gave him such strong conviction.

I remember going to see Watchmen in the theaters back when it first came out. Having zero knowledge of the graphic novel, I didn't know what to expect. Rorschach was by far my favorite part of the film and his speech on never compromising even in the face of Armageddon stuck with me all of these years later.

There's something delightfully ironic about Moore writing Rorschach as a critique of objectivism but then being upset when people end up agreeing with Rorschach because Moore believes and intends for him to be "objectively" wrong.

“It’s so sad that Steve Jobs died of ligma.” “Who the hell is Steve Jobs?” “Ligma-balls” Immediately disintegrates the shows Watchmen franchise: NOOOOOO-

I'm shocked that Jeffrey Dean Morgan has played two psychopathic smart mouths and I only ever knew about one of them

Good shit. Couldn't agree more about stopping the hatewatch trend. Nobody owes bad media and creators who actively despise them their time. I also think the writers are so terrified of AI because you could absolutely use existing footage as training data to fix these kinds botched movies/series.

What, you mean you dont have a teleporter built out of car parts in the Kentucky backwoods?

I really do appreciate that this channel mostly reviews things that people actually love. Teardowns of bad trash are fun, but good deserving praise is harder to come by these days.

I genuinely love The Question and Rorschach. Their paranoia is endearing in a weird way, mostly cuz they end up being right.

Had no idea Allan Moor intended Rorschach is the villain, I seriously thought he was pushing something more complex, sure Rorschach is an insane asshole, but it really seemed like in a world as insane as he is, he would be the natural hero

Besides the hate-watching aspects, I no longer feel comfortable watching the majority of modern Hollywood stuff. It is making a lot of people forced to walk on egg shells. Since “The Last Jedi” came out, the majority of Hollywood projects are being used for stupid Internet fights.

So i just watched Synthetic man’s review of spider man 2 where he basically called everything woke, basically ignored a majority of the story beats or actively forgot about them. And then I get to here where this guy breaks down why watchmen isn’t just woke, it’s wokeness doesn’t benefit the story. Not just that a show has politics but it doesn’t say anything meaningful. Based Chad

Saul carrying this vid is not something I expected, good job Loli for making him a co-host

There does seem to be some hate towards traditionally heroic characters from a lot of writers. It's like their world view is so cynical that they can't even imagine that some people do good things just to do good. That not everyone is some kind of horrible hate monster deep down. I've never really cared much for that narcissistic view on humanity.

The irony is Rorschach embodied what it meant to be a hero in the end better than any of the others. He kept to his principles and died believing he was standing up for truth.

The best way to tell some group is a scapegoat is the double standard that must apply for them to be blamed. The scapegoat ALWAYS has to be a cabal of secret geniuses with infinite power and reach and good public perception . . . who are also still somehow completely inferior morally, intellectually, physically and aesthetically. Once you accept this doublethink, which is what that is, it's over.

I know we talk about how this show wasted Regina King, but Wokemen also wastes Hong Chau as an actress. She was amazing in The Menu and The Whale; she's an incredible actress, but she's wasted as this generic villain who just wants to beat Dr. Manhattan and take his powers. I also want to bring something up, too: it's very subtle, but Watchmen does imply that Laurie wanted to take her father's mantle as the Comedian in the final scene of the comic, a after she and Night Owl visit Sally Jupiter; she talks about wanting a new costume that included a mask and guns. It's a very brief line, but it is there. What I don't get is why Laurie would have such a hate boner against vigilantes when the end of Watchmen outright states that she and Night Owl are still acting as costumed superheroes, which was why they had to assume new identities to begin with, which itself doesn't make sense, since I imagine the US Government would want to keep tabs on the US's former nuclear deterant and ace-in-the-whole. It doesn't make sense to me. Also, despite Watchmen's 1985 being pushed forward technologically, you see fuck all trace of that in this show. Where are the floating blimps and electric cars? What happened to the signs of Utopia that were in the end of the comic? Why would Dr. Manhattan leave Earth and Laurie when he's going to come back to Earth just so he can bang a black chick, and why did he have to make himself black in order to do that? EDIT: As a black man, thank Christ someone finally addressed all that shit behind the Tulsa Massacre. A few minutes of research would reveal that Wokemen's interpreation of the massacre and people's lack of information on it has been skewed in order to incite anger in woke people. Thank you for clarifiying that.

It's good you called out hate watching, I honestly can't be bothered giving bad media from philistines any attention and I do think rage baiting is a marketing tool. The recent Castlevainia show apparently did just that.

The 80s cartoon parody still continues to be the best Watchmen thing since the original comic.

The plot about the millionaire wanting to steal Dr. Manhattan's powers sounds so eerily similar to the same stupid plot for She-Hulk. At least on there it was played for "laughs". Edit: Just for clarification, at no point I'm advocating for She-Dull, I just find funny the similarity which is obviously an over simplification of the plot from my part.

A family friend tried to get me and my parents to watch this at his house (after we showed him episodes of The Prisoner 1967) and it was the most awkward thing ever. In the first or second episode there’s a sex scene in a closet which haunts me sometimes when I go to sleep. Watchman was so bad that it caused me to experience that existential horror where you watch your parents fumbling a social event the same way you have before and you feel dirty for being the quintessential fruit borne of their failures.

Walter Kovacs is a damn hero. Doomsday clock and this make him just seem like a villain. I'd love a comic series that has his complete story from his first day to the moment Manhattan atomizes him.

It wouldn’t be a loli video without getting a history lesson that the American public school system failed to instill into my brain.

I love when leftists make a right wing character that they want the audience to hate but then they end up being the most based one in the IP

Rorschach did nothing wrong

I really like how you tackle the whole hate watch mindset that people just must see a new piece of media even if it’s bad and actually hates the viewer, more people need to stop hate watching because it’s basically just consuming junk food and doing nothing but eating junk food is not healthy

The whole point of Watchmen was that it was the exact opposite of a traditional comic book. Bad people doing bad things to debatably worse people in a world beyond salvation. Turning it into a traditional superhero narrative misses the point.

There is now an entire genre of post-Trump panic films

Is it wrong to enjoy just regular fun, adventurous comics than the continuous edginess being made to this day, there’s so much bleakness a person can take until the nihilism can make you depressed at every turn.

This was a great break down. You really knocked it out of the park with this one.

Character assassination, bitterness and defamation. That would make a better show than this pile. 🎩 🐍 no step on Snek!🇺🇸🇭🇰

Wow amazing that you worked in collaboration with Saul Goodman. He knows a lot about this material!

>Look up Damon Lindelof >Early life check every single time

I like how you change the color of your text to yellow to match the WATCHMEN title pretty cool

Hello, Tulsa native here. Really enjoyed seeing the takedown of this show, because I have hated HBO's watchmen since it came out. The sad part is that its message makes race relationships worse. Tries to rewrite events to make bad things even worse just to promote an agenda and really foster more hatred. Also, if I don't see at least a few King of the Hill jokes at the expense of Oklahoma from the fans of this channel, I'll be gravely disappointed. Stay blessed everybody.

Alan Moore is so weird. He put alot time and effort into his works yet he disavows them for really petty or strange reasons. Also this show sounds like it was written by a room full of redditors who vaguely know the comics.

AI saul is just the best part in this video

Makes me glad I tend to be apathetic towards any new shows nowadays. Even when people I watch bring up the woke, far-left elements, I just simply ignore it and move on, because there's no point in me indulging in something I know I won't like.

Yeah, I remember this show. It sounded like it was written by millennials on twitter, and was about as smart. Dr Manhattan literally teleports a mansion from earth to Europa, but can't just zap away the power stealing ray into the sun. Yep. Totally made sense.

Finding out that David Hayter wrote the movie was like hitting smelling salts

'God exists, and they are african american' -The writer most likely

I recall reading some speculation that the "Tulsa attack planes" thing possibly came from the civilian plane that was surveilling the riot dropping message canisters to try and communicate with police on the ground. Since this was before radio was really viable as a method of communication, aircraft communication had to be made with signal flares or by dropping literal written notes inside of canisters onto the earth below, so to people on the ground, it may have been perceived as dropping bombs.

I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a more spiteful adaptation than this.

Damn that Bob Odenkirk ai voice is good, it fooled me til the end thinking "when and where tf did he say this?" lmfao.

"I have a nose for white supremacy and he smells like bleach" that line was so heavy handed you could knock Rocky Balboa out with it.

When I complained on reddit they proceeded to call me racist

Something that made me incredibly sad when I went from the comics and movie to the 2019 Watchmen dumpster fire was that there was no longer any ambiguity. You can't have a character like Rorschach anymore, one that is a hilariously terrible stereotype strawman to some while being a legitimate hero with good morals to others. It's so painfully obvious how you're supposed to feel about characters now. There's no room for interpretation or seeing the good in bad characters or vice versa. Morality is a hardened pipe with which the bad writers hit you repeatedly over the head. You're not allowed to question, you're not allowed to think for yourself, you're not allowed to like the bad guy. You're only allowed to have one opinion, and that's the one the writers and director want you to have. An integral part of art is being lost. It's no longer about being posed with a question and left to think about it in uncomfortable silence. It's now about being screamed at by a mob in a way that makes you uncomfortable. Those are two very different things that "artists" today don't seem to understand.

PSA: hate watching is fine but for the love of God, don't use the official (legal) ways to watch the show

Looking Glass is the best character in that HBO show and Alan Moore is an overrated hack.

It was a massive fumble and one of the biggest signs media is really taking a high dive into a shallow puddle. Not many franchises left to destroy just a few years later.

Alan Moore is kind of a nutter. He’d have no problem with killing off most of the world if it meant “ the greater good” for humanity and the planet. I like the movie’s message better.

A disgrace to both the comic and the movie. Couldn’t even be bothered to give it a second of my time because I knew exactly what it was going to be.

i misread the title as as Condensation and Exfoliation

Remember, Gatekeeping can be good 👍🏼👍🏼

I can't believe saul goodman himself helped you narrate this video. What a great man..

I feel like Alan Moore's greatest enemy is and always has been Alan Moore.

That whole "reddit talk about republicans" you mentioned is fitting since the Watchmen's sub reddit (not the show, the whole franchise) keeps praising this show like it's the second coming. Some of them actually think the whole rotten tomatos thing is some conspiracy from [choose your own group of people with radical agenda] that didn't like the show's "boldness"

This show is actually quite useful in determining if someone you meet has any political intelligence or ability to understand logic or quality. Unfortunately, most of them liked it.

Just wanna say that your use of AI Saul was perfect in this video. Amazing work.

We need a new rule that if you hate watch something you have to pirate it.

I had to hold in my laughter when I learned that the antagonists were super Ku Klux Klan.

Loli, you’re wrong, I quote HBO watchmen, specifically the “nose for white supremacy” line as a go to example of badly written dialogue.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a cope as big as when the 'official' narrative given was that the show had been a critical and commercial success that everyone was happy with but they just felt they didn't *need* to make another season of it. It totally wasn't cancelled you guys!

I love how they always use the Kent State imagery, with the little innocent non-MK-ultra'd out hippie girl with her inept symbolic little flower reaching for the gun barrel. The old joke was "national guard..three, hippies...zero." The irony of the original watchmen, is the cold war paranoia is at it's height in the story, but it's shown to be completely correct. The anarchist Alan Moore ends up crafting the dissident right Rorschach as correct in his paranoia, he was correct on his points, and his views...and I wonder if this clicks with the general reader. They knock the method of assessment and acquirement of the truth, whereas do not ackowledge that that truth he found was objectively valid. It's the shooting the messanger concept, where the method needs to fit this preselected sort of these lukewarm secular humanist parameters. "He's crazy because he's paranoid! See how paranoid he is though?!? Oh man he's distrustful of everyone, what a terrible life," as the world in Watchmen is one that's fundementally meant to be distrusted, as it's a deconstruction of those traditional nonsense superhero tales..coming from their own special little group of outsider writers. Jack Kirby...or Jack Kurtzberg as he was born, created captain america and these figures that fight against the leftists own paranoia induced figures, yet figures that do not actually pertain to reality. Look at the red skull, or superman and his crypto nature, always alienated by the host society he dwells within. Comic books, especially the American variety should get their own episode, or deep dive if you find any of this interesting. The intermixture of politics, neo-liberalism, the 20th century subversive rise in smut, which comic's ultimately pushed in their own little way. It all comes together, and it's no suprise Hollywood utilized those same subversize characters to push the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the saviors of multicult neolib/neocon society from usually nonsense threats. Man versus robot, man versus bug, man versus alien race, all at the behest of our sanctified tenets of democracy and fighting to instill the proposition nation against any existential outside threat. Always winning and always letting it breed and seep further and further into the foundation. Compare these to Robert E. Howard and his mythos with Conan, or Solomon Kane...vitality is the fundemental word. Abject vitality. Interesting how that thematic element is purged from these films/series, and replaced with dysgenic maladaptive expressions. I loved the original watchmen for the ending, the files sent to the conspiracy crank newspaper, the truth finding it's way beneath the waves, potentially making a brief apperance above water, and most likely being pushed right back down. The metaphysics and esotericism of our everyday lives is mirrored in these shows, we are seeing the schizo paranoia of the neoliberal expressed back at us, his fear...his realization and reorientation of his own contradictory beliefs and fears concerning them, and his cowardice is never being able to do anything but submit.

Seven minutes in and a slight error in the review has already set off my autism The "Minutemen" were the FIRST superhero team, with the first Nite Owl, the first Silk Spectre, Comedian and a bunch of randoms The "Crimebusters" were another one with all the main characters plus Captain Metropolis from the Minutemen, and THAT'S the one renamed to the "Watchmen" in the movie Carrying on Edit: This is a great video, even if I didn't really agree with some of the conclusions drawn about the comic. I think the thing that offends me most about Watchmen 2019 is that the setting and main characters are based on a contrivance so Lindelof et al. could get on their soapbox. The show takes place in this random-ass southern town instead of New York and a bunch of the Watchmen characters show up there just because Dr. Manhattan chose to meet, date, and marry a completely random civilian woman. We're expected to believe that he did this because he knows the future and that he would. Get this, though: that's not actually how his whole living in the past, present, and future simultaneously thing actually worked in the comic. He didn't do things BECAUSE the future said he would do them, he still had motives of his own, he only used knowing the future to explain why he CAN'T do something. Total contrivance. WTF does Oklahoma have to do with Watchmen anyways?

Rorschach is not the perfect hero, but for a story which main appeal was to show superheros as "more human", he gets the worst treatment out of the cast. Both Moore and the showrunners throw shade at him,But Ozymandias and Dr. Manhathan get to not be condemn for their clearly despicable deeds. So We must agree to kill people that know the truth about conspiracy just because is convenient?. NO, I will not agree, if humanity is so evil to that degree then we deserved to be banished.

I'm baffled by how not even the writer did not catch any of Watchmen's cues, at all. I suspect he only watched Snyder's movie. When you read the comic, everything just clicks and makes sense thematically. But also, it's great commentary on comic books and the genre of super hero. In this day and age, imagining a Watchmen sequel could make sense if you know how to make a careful analysis of the state of the genre in film. But clearly the real-life soyboy behind this show didn't catch the hints at all.

Honestly you one of my favorite RU-vidrs because when you talk about something you don’t like you don’t just say WOKE or THE MESSAGES but you actually talk about the root problems and you actually seem more caring and invested in your videos unlike other people who just make the same god damn video over and over again so in short you make good ass videos keep up the good work 💋