“The Superman exists, and he’s American.”

C and I discussed it at length, and decided to take The Boy to a matinee viewing of Watchmen yesterday. We were a little unsure because of all the . . . not the violence, but the darkness. C and I are both comfortable that screen violence isn’t going to turn The Boy into a sociopath (and The Boy is in fact squeamish, so while he enjoys seeing combat and things exploding, he’s not one for blood and guts as I was at his age), but we were concerned about the way certain issues would be portrayed.

It turns out that we needn’t have worried. The film is darker than dark, and bloodier than necessary (predictably, The Boy avoided seeing all the blood by turning his face into my shoulder), but deep, too. Too deep, really, for The Boy to have gotten much of it. In fact, he admitted that sometimes he was kind of bored.

After, the three of us talked about what The Boy had taken from it, and what his thoughts were, but he wasn’t sure what to think (other than a strong desire to have seen much less blue schlong, which I can’t really fault him for). After we explained things like the way these superheroes were some of the first to be portrayed as complex (and often very screwed up) characters with layers upon layers of history and personality and ISSUES (ohmygod the ISSUES), and about the idea that no one is totally good, nor is anyone totally evil, he saw it. And I have to say that there are few Moments in Parenting for any English Major that can compare to your first discussion about Man’s Inhumanity to Man. So he saw things, and he got it, but only after the fact. We had some good discussion, and I think it was a good experience overall, but The Boy admitted later that he liked The Dark Knight much more. I can see why, because compared to Watchmen, TDK is like a toddler’s birthday party. When we got out to the parking lot, I suggested we go home and look at puppies and flowers and anything pretty.

There’s so much tension and misery. So much ugliness and fear. But still, there’s hope. And life. And goodness.

Alan Moore won’t have anything to do with this movie, but the director (the guy from 300, which I’ve neither read nor seen) seems to love Moore with complete fanboy ardor and remains very, very true to the graphic novel. Moore knows that humans a much more frail and weak and sloppy and gross than they ever want to admit to being, and the movie is no different. In fact, I think one of the characters, the “new” Nite Owl, is even drippier for a while than his counterpart in the book. The director also catches the way Moore allows that women hold humanity and life together, even if men have all the power. Watchmen never does anything to empower women, even if the movie shows that Laurie Jupiter can kick major ass, but it doesn’t bother me that much because it doesn’t necessarily denigrate women, either. In fact, it occurs to me that Alan Moore and Judd Apatow see women that same way: They both seem to think that women are awesome, but they’re not quite sure what to do with them, so they don’t do much at all.

Anyway, the movie looks right and it feels right, but sometimes it sounds a little wrong. There’s a scene, for example, where one of the main characters is standing near a bank of elevators with captains of industry including the likes of Lee Iacocca, and the tinkling elevator music is an instrumental version of the Tears for Fears song Everybody Wants to Rule the World. It’s a silly moment and a break in the tension that I don’t remember ever getting when I read the book.

Those few silly moments aside, though, Watchmen is no fun. No fun at all. It’s moving, and it may even be important, but the only real fun I had with it was in discussing it with C and The Boy after. That, and watching the trailer for the X-Men Origins: Wolverine movie. GAH! I was so excited by the trailer that I think I may have floated up out of my seat a little bit! I can’t WAIT for that one!! We also saw trailers for Pixar’s Up, which looks adorable, a new Seth Rogan movie that looks like other Seth Rogan movies, the new Star Trek, and the new Terminator. Eh, and meh. I’d see them, but I probably wouldn’t want to pay for it.

I would, however, pay for a t-shirt with Sally Jupiter on it.