Here's an entertaining Watchmen review from the Escapist's MovieBob:

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/vide...views-Watchmen

Some questionable language so not safe for work.

I still see Ozymandias as a repudiation of raw intelligence (And charisma, i.e. what we choose in our leaders) as the ultimate problem solver in world affairs. Remember that this was written in a world which still stood on the actual brink of nuclear annihilation. A world where the greatest minds of a generation had bent all their efforts to the creation of weapons that could wipe out mankind a thousand times over. In that time if we were counting on genius to bail us out we seemed likely to see the world burned down and millions of the innocent butchered.

Let's pause to remember, as well, that it wasn't genius or dramatic action which broke the cold war dynamic in the real world either. It was peasant bread lines and unpaid state functionaries that destroyed the Soviet Union. The intelligent need not apply.

We've all read our Shelley, yes? The book and the movie both quote his poem in which we are invited to look on Ozymandias' great works and find only empty desert stretching into the distance. Not a ringing endorsement.

IMHO none of the characters in the book are genuinely to be admired. They are all broken, all red handed destroyers in one sense or another, just as we all are in the real world. Watchmen deconstructs the very idea of heroism right down to the flawed presumption that some grand, noble, single action or actor can have dramatic positive impact in the world. In truth I find that the reverse is the case; we as men are truly gifted at destruction such that a single act can often wreak great havoc and terror on the world, but it takes many hands and a lot of willingness to fight through failure to make things better.