Reply #8: SPOILERS HERE

[Orsino]

1. I liked the soundtrack okay, but i rarely pay much attention to such things. I liked the Cohen, though it pales in comparison to Rufus Wainwright's version.

2. Yes, that was the Comedian shooting Kennedy. He wasn't a hero in the conventional sense of the word--just a super-badass who believed in nothing much. Killing him off early made perfect sense to me. He did have at least three redeeming points, however:

A willingness and ability to help fight crime, presumably a long time ago and long since compromised.

Some sort of affection for his daughter, probably. It's a neat trick played on the audience, I think. His cozying up to Laurie is supposed to be merely creepy, based on what we know of the attempted rape, but is cast in a different light when he's revealed as the father. This assumes that he was aware.

Some introspection and regret for what he'd become a week before his death, seen in his drunken ramblings to Moloch. It's saved as the last revelation of his character because it does the most to overturn our expectations. It shows that his cynicism wasn't absolute, that he had some notion of decency after all.

3. It wasn't just Nixon outlawing masks; Congress passed the Keene Act. I've seen enough X-Men to know that this was inevitable. We outlaw people who are too different; it just takes us longer to make up our minds when they don't actually have super powers, and have been useful (and role-models) for decades.

4. The paternity revelation solves the mystery of the elderly Silk Specter's strange serenity over the Comedian's death. It explains her change in attitude toward her would-be rapist, and opens the door for Laurie's similar acceptance, which in turn dovetails nicely with Manhattan's rediscovery of the beauty and significance of life.

5. Yeah, it's a big story, so we didn't get a whole lot of depth to every character--but that ambiguity kept 'em all interesting, in my opinion. Even that ludicrously bad Nixon impersonator came across as a bad caricature--which in a way was what the real Nixon became in our world.

6. I might give it four stars, personally. I'm not a fan of costumed superheroes as a rule, but Watchmen nicely extrapolates the sorts of personalities that might don the tights, and what might become of a world that has them in it. It's not done from purely altruistic motives, and the ones who pursue whatever-it-is the most singlemindedly are the crazy ones (Rorschach and maybe Mothman). The ones with the greatest apparent detachment, Manhattan and Ozymandias, are the ones who nearly get everyone wiped out. Everything is ultimately revealed as part of Oz' plot, but he succeeds, we can tell ourselves, because as he says he made himself feel every death he caused. It's a terrible arithmetic, and it's presented well, in my opinion, with the payoff held until the very last possible moment. The most normal of the heroes are Laurie and Dan, and it's fitting that they get to close the movie. The acting is generally fine, though Laurie was pretty terrible in earlier scenes and the Nixon impression was painful.