More evidence Zack Snyder's Watchmen misses Moore's mark.

Hunting around for an item required to address the comments on the previous post, I came across a still from Watchmen's credit sequence:

As Meredith Woerner writes:

The opening shot, with Nite Owl giving a fist full of justice[,] has a big Batman reference.  First, check out the posters to the right.  Look familiar?  And isn't that Mr. and Mrs. Wayne at the back entrance of the opera, being saved from a bloody death?  And . . . the opera bills say: "Die Fledermaus" (The Bat).  So can we safely come to the conclusion that the original Nite Owl stopped Batman from popping up in their universe?

No.  If we could, there wouldn't be a poster for a comic book? film? play? radio serial? starring Batman in the background.  There is Batman-themed entertainment in this universe.  (And if the opera being exited by the Waynes is Die Fledermaus, Snyder alludes not to Batman lore but Batman Begins.  Scratch that.  The opera in Batman Begins is Mefistofele.)  The larger problem with this scene neatly encapsulates the larger problem with Snyder's aesthetic.  He is faithful in act but not in spirit.  His heart sins.  In Watching the Watchmen, Dave Gibbons says outright what every careful reader of the novel already knew:

I mentioned to [Alan Moore] the idea of pirate comics, reasoning that a world with real superheroes would have no need of them in comics.  Alan later took that throwaway idea and constructed an entire allegorical narrative from it within the main story.

So why did Snyder include an advertisement for some sort of Bat-themed entertainment in the credit sequence?  Because it would be cool.  Who cares if it violates the fundamental narrative logic of the work Snyder purports to love? 

Comments

[Minivet]

Um: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Fledermaus

[Minivet]

Wait, never mind. I can't really make out the posters, assumed you were talking about the opera depicted. Sorry.

[SEK]

Don't you "wait, never mind" me when you're correct. Shows you how much I know about opera.

[StevenAttewell]

I think that's a bit strong, SEK. A tiny, background detail of an opera indicates sinning in his heart? I think it's a rather clever detail.

[JPRS]

So what you're saying is, a movie failed to live up to the book? Wow, that is unusual. I'd devote two or three more blog posts to that one.

[Vance Maverick]

And take these in the context of the credit sequence as a whole -- structured as a series of giant unmissable references. The bat-details here are microscopic in comparison, for fanboys and makars only.

[SEK]

I think that's a bit strong, SEK. A tiny, background detail of an opera indicates sinning in his heart? I think it's a rather clever detail.

I suppose I take it just another brick in the wall of Snyder's over-literal fanboy obsessiveness. Says nothing in itself, but added to the evidence presented in the other post, it becomes significant. Another way to say this would be:

Yes, it's clever, but it's only clever.

[Minivet]

Don't mind me, I was suddenly overcome with doubt that I could have caught SEK in such a basic error.

[Adam Roberts]

"I mentioned ... the idea of pirate comics, reasoning that a world with real superheroes would have no need of them in comics."

I'm trying to get my head around the logic of this. As it might be: '... a world with real wars would have no use for war comics'; or 'a world with real weedy men and pneumatic women living in it would have no use for Robert Crumb.'

[SEK]

I'm trying to get my head around the logic of this.

Don't ask me to explain your countrymen to you, Adam, as it seems they love something called "brisket."

[Adam Roberts]

According to this, it's especially popular 'in the Southern States of the USA'. And with that, the pingpongball comes hurtling back at you, over the net.

[SEK]

And with that, the pingpongball comes hurtling back at you, over the net.

You mean "bowled," don't you?

[Adam Roberts]

You can't properly bowl a pingpongbowl. No seam, you see.

[Josh]

it seems they love something called "brisket."

I always knew you were a self-hating Jew.

[Josh]

Hey, Other Josh: he's talking about "brisket," which is a fixture of barbecues as well as of Jewish cuisine. Not bris kit, an exclusively Jewish tool which a mohel carries with him.

[Avram]

Except that Hollis Mason establishes (in Under the Hood) that he'd read a Superman comic, so we know that superhero comics did exist at some point in the Watchmen continuity. The first issue of Bat-Man came out in 1939; the pirate comics essay at the end of Chapter 5 says that pirate stories didn't come to dominate the medium until the end of the 1950s. That gives a two-decade range during which that opening shot could be set, and if it's the opening shot, that implies it comes early.