'HEROES' pulls rug from under 'WATCHMEN'

by: Lufguy 1 year, 7 months, 1 week, 2 days, 16 hours, 5 minutes ago 2

Stephen Lynch takes note at the New York Post

AFTER helming the surprise Spartan war smash “300,” director Zack Snyder could write his own ticket in Hollywood.

So he did what any comic book fan would. For his next project, he chose “Watchmen."

Written by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons in 1986-87, “Watchmen” is considered a classic, perhaps the best comic book ever made. Sophisticated in its theme, complicated in its telling, Moore described himself as trying to make “a superhero ‘Moby-Dick,’ something that had that sort of weight, that sort of density."

It is also cursed, at least in Hollywood terms. Development of a “Watchmen” movie has bounced around for two decades, with everyone from Terry Gilliam to Joel Silver to Darren Aronofsky attached.

Snyder may have the clout to get it made. But it seems the curse has struck again in the form of a television show. “Heroes”, the popular series on NBC, not only swiped “Watchmen“‘s climax, it may have stolen its thunder.

(This is the part where those who don’t want to know what happens in “Watchmen” or last night’s “Heroes” should stop reading.)

“Watchmen" centers around a group of vigilantes who fight crime with their fists and gadgets, not unlike Batman. But public sentiment turns against the “masks,” and they are all forced into retirement, except one, the only one with actual supernatural powers, the nuclear altered Dr. Manhattan. The retirees find life more than a little boring, as they become paunchy middle age once weres (similar to what “The Incredibles” did to comedic effect).

But the murder of one of the vigilantes, the Comedian, sets off an investigation by the surviving masks, including the mentally unstable Rorschach and the good hearted but uncertain Nite-Owl.

What they discover is a plot by one of their former teammates, the wealthy Adrian Veidt, who goes by the ancient Egyptian name Ozymandias.

Ozymandias has staged a fake alien invasion of New York, killing half the city’s population in the process, in an effort to stop the Cold War and save the Earth from nuclear crisis by uniting the world.

Not only are the masks too late to stop Ozymandias, Veidt’s plan actually works. And all the masks are faced with the ethical dilemma of telling the world what they know and risk destroying the peace. Dr. Manhattan even kills Rorschach rather than have him reveal the secret.

“Heroes" centers around a similar catastrophe, a nuclear explosion that, coincidentally, wipes out half the population of New York at some undetermined future. In last night’s episode, the mob boss Linderman (Malcolm McDowell) reveals that he knows the bomb is going to go off and wants it to because the destruction of New York will unite the world in peace behind a new president he is grooming.

At the end of the episode, that candidate, Nathan Petrelli, (Adrian Pasdar) hinted that he was going along with the plan, even if it means the death of his brother, because of the good it will bring.

Tim Kring, the creator of “Heroes,” was out of the country, but has said in interviews in the past that he doesn’t know comics that well, similarities are coincidental. And one could argue that the show is a patchwork of popular comic book themes beyond “Watchmen,” taking the mutant gene, for instance, directly from “X-Men.” Or that the plot is different enough because Ozymandias plans the attack, while Linderman simply does nothing to stop it (as far as we know).

But Snyder and his bosses are probably more than a little ticked off. For a movie that will cost hundreds of millions, and could star Tom Cruise as Ozymandias if the Hollywood rumor mill is right, it can be galling to see such a pivotal plot twist used elsewhere.

Fans have waited two decades to see “Watchmen” put on-screen. The last thing Snyder wants is for people to think they already have.