Spoiler Alert: but if you haven’t read Watchmen, why the heck not? I mean, speaking as someone who just read it for the first time herself, after years of being lectured about it, I can tell you honestly that they were all right, everyone who said these words to me.

The Watchmen trailer is beautiful, a comic fan’s wet dream—it’s lush and dark and brooding and scary, and the world is perfect. It gives away a little too much, but that’s not my biggest complaint.

It rubbed me the wrong way only for one reason—the ages are all wrong.

Since it appears they got so much right, how did they miss out on one of the major themes of the book: age and aging?

Laurie is the youngest superhero in the comic, and she’s 35. Rorschach is 45, and Adrien Veidt and the new Nite Owl somewhere close to that. The Comedian is 61 when he hits the pavement. There’s a reason Moore finds ways to tell you the ages of all these characters, where most superheroes in most superhero comics never seem to age.

A reason why the interplay between the old and the young generations is constant, with Laurie’s visits to her mother and Dan’s visits to Hollis Mason, and the history made obvious with the extras between sections. Hollis’s autobiography is not just there to fill space and give you exposition.

Watchmen—the title itself has several meanings, one made obvious in the chapter on the origins of Dr. Manhattan. Jon wanted to learn how to repair watches, and repairing a watch is what leads to his disintegration and his becoming Dr. Manhattan.

Time, in other words. The doomsday clock set at five ‘til midnight. The history of the superheroes, all given concrete dates through Moore’s use of autobiography, newspapers, magazines, official documents. Time.

And with the passage of time comes aging. One of the reasons Laurie leaves Jon is that she is aging and he is not. She feels drawn instead to Dreiberg, who is imperfect in all the ways Jon is perfect—he’s chubby, wears glasses, can’t even perform the first time she attempts to take him to bed. He is human, like she is.

Because humans have to face their fear of aging and of death. Of course, the death threatened in Watchmen most obviously is nuclear extermination, but we also get to examine the characters growing older, retiring, and perhaps dying naturally, and with that the idea of dying fighting—is it heroic?

Jon doesn’t have to worry about dying. He’s already cheated death. And in that same vein, he experiences all time at the same time. When death does not threaten, time ceases to mean anything, and when it doesn’t mean anything, he loses concern with the world. It’s not that he’s detached, it’s that he’s equally attached to all moments, at all times.

And Adrian? When he’s disintegrated Jon and disarmed Laurie, and Dan threatens him? He says, “Do grow up.” But even there, Jon gets the last word, when Adrian asks if he did the right thing, in the end.

“Nothing ever ends,” Jon says. For him, it’s true. But for Adrian, of course there will be an end someday. For Watchmen’s superheroes are mortal, most of them, and Moore has taken pains to remind us constantly, throughout the book, of that.

So…why are the actors in the film all young people in their prime? OK, yes, Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg/Nite Owl II) is 35. A chiseled, perfect 35 in a costume that shows off ripped abs? Malin Ackerman (Laurie Juspeczyk/Silk Spectre II) is 30 but could pass for 23. Perhaps most annoying, Matthew Goode (Adrien Veidt/Ozymandias) is 30 as well, and also looks much younger.

Rorschach is played by Jackie Earle Haley, who at 47 is the only one with the appropriate age, and he’s even older than Jeffrey Dean Morgan, who is about 20 years too young to be The Comedian. And Billy Crudup is actually older than he’s supposed to look, since Dr. Manhattan stopped aging at 30. Carla Gugino, the first Silk Spectre, Laurie’s mother? 37.

I might understand if the film was packed with big-name stars who were supposed to be a box office draw. But since the filmmakers apparently went for lesser-knowns (or unknowns, if you want to be uncharitable), what purpose is served by screwing up the ages here?

I know it’s Hollywood and you want your stars to be pretty. But when the material you’re working from is so steeped in the awareness of time’s passing, of the fact that everyone is aging, of the changing of responsibility from generation to generation? You cast one man who’s 47 and others who are supposed to be his contemporaries that are nearly 20 years younger? And those who are supposed to be older than him are still younger?

Yes, there are flashbacks throughout the story–Watchmen jumps all over in time—but why is Rorschach, who spends most of the film behind a mask, the one to be cast age-appropriate? Not to mention that in the trailer, in the scenes that are in the present day, the Nite Owl is still sculpted and Laurie is still perfect.

Since most superhero comics present nearly ageless, changeless beautiful people, it is particularly annoying that the film based on one of the few that does deal with aging and imperfect bodies washes them all back into that trap. I may be griping too much and most of you probably think I should get over it, but I see the loss of the aging characters as the loss of a terribly important issue from the book. One of the things that makes it what it is. And I understand over again why Alan Moore hates seeing movies made of his comics.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 24th, 2008 at 2:13 pm and is filed under 80s, Comics, Film, Sarah Jaffe. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site. Your comments will be moderated but will appear as soon as humanly possible.