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The Patron Saint of Superheroes

“Chris Gavaler Explores the Multiverse of Comics, Pop Culture, and Politics”

January 8, 2024 What an unmade Watchmen film says about killing civilians

What do you do when your deadly enemy uses a civilian as a human shield?

  • A) Kill the civilian.
  • B) Don’t kill the civilian.

Before you answer that, let me recount an obscure little story from superhero history.

Screenwriter Sam Hamm is best known for scripting Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman. The film’s success briefly piqued Hollywood interest in other superheroes, including Watchmen. Terry Gilliam was lined up to direct. Alan Moore declined Warner Brothers’ offer to write the screenplay himself, and so the job was handed to Hamm.

The script isn’t good. I got my hands on a copy back in what must have been the early 90s. (I just searched my bookshelves, but no sign of it now.) Gilliam didn’t like it either, which led to a second draft by a different writer, and then Development Hell for the project – until the unfortunate Zach Synder adaption in 2009 and then the improbably good Damon Lindelof sequel series in 2019.

But Hamm did write an inventive opening scene to explain why superheroes had been outlawed. It’s 1975 and terrorists are holding hostages in the Statue of Liberty and threatening to blow it up. Spoiler Alert: they succeed. But only after the Watchmen prevent a SWAT team from intervening and then fail to intervene themselves, barely escaping the explosion.

30. AERIAL SHOT – MOVING OVER HARBOR – A MOMENT LATER

RORSCHACH clings desperately to the metal ladder as the OWLSHIP streaks across the harbor.  Behind him is the rapidly receding figure of Lady Liberty.

Three beats later, a GAPING HOLE blows open in her midsection.

31.  INT. OWLSHIP – THAT MOMENT

A heartsick NIGHT OWL pounds the control panel in frustration.  On an overhead monitor, the upper portion of the statue is TOPPLING.

32. INT. STATUE – A MOMENT LATER

Smoke everywhere.  The COMEDIAN and SILK SPECTRE are pressed flat against a CONCRETE BULKHEAD.  An overhang protects them from falling DEBRIS — which is raining down in copious amounts.

33. EXT. FERRY – A MOMENT LATER

The furious SWAT CAPTAIN watches in astonishment as the top half of the statue disintegrates into RUBBLE and tumbles to the ground.  He turns away from the sight, shaking his head in vehement disgust.

Hamm wrote that a decade before 9/11.

It’s the Comedian’s fault. One of the terrorists he shot and assumed was dead crawls to the detonator switch. As soon as he sees the thirty-second countdown, the Comedian is the first to run, indifferent to the civilian hostages he’s leaving behind.

But incompetence and indifference are not his worst traits. Hamm already encapsulated the character from his opening shots.

12. EXT. LIBERTY ISLAND – THAT MOMENT – DAY

A HULKING FIGURE, outfitted in SCUBA GEAR, emerges from the water. There’s an evil-looking RIFLE slung over his shoulder.  As he swaggers toward the base of the statue, he peels off his wetsuit to reveal yet another gaudy COSTUME underneath.

Superhero #4: THE COMEDIAN.  He pins a BADGE to his leather breastplate; incongruously, it’s a HAPPY-FACE BUTTON — and it matches his own nasty SMILE as he marches forward into battle.

13. INT. BASE OF STATUE – THAT MOMENT – DAY

A TRIO OF TERRORISTS standing guard near the entrance in the base of the statue.  They’re holding a JANITOR at gunpoint.  One of them is fumbling with his walkie-talkie, which has inexplicably gone haywire.

TERRORIST I

Base to head.  Base to head.  Come in!

(flustered)

I can’t get shit!

TERRORIST II

What the hell is going on??

There’s a sudden metallic CLANG behind them.  They turn in unison — just as the COMEDIAN struts into frame, assault rifle in hand.

Panic.  The three TERRORISTS fall into a tight cluster at the base of a long metal stairway.  One of them grabs the JANITOR, holds a gun to his head.

TERRORIST I

I’M NOT JOKING!!

The COMEDIAN shrugs: okay.  He lifts his rifle and fires TWO SILENCED SHOTS directly into the JANITOR’s gut.  The old man’s body jerks twice and he slumps to the floor, stone dead.

The TERRORISTS stand there aghast.  For an instant they’re too stunned to shoot.  The COMEDIAN breaks into a dopey grin —

COMEDIAN

The joke’s on you.

— and opens fire with a look of VICIOUS PLEASURE on his face.  As the saying goes . . . it’s nice to see a man who enjoys his work.

Alan Moore’s Comedian isn’t quite as overtly villainous, but Hamm’s version is a fair take. Moore’s was based on the Charlton Comics character The Peacemaker, though Moore explained to an interviewer: “we decided to make him slightly right-wing, patriotic, and we mixed in a little bit of Nick Fury into The Peacemaker make-up, and probably a bit of the standard Captain America patriotic hero-type.” Add Hamm’s spin, and he’s a right-wing Captain America who happily murders any civilian who happens to be in his way.

But he’s not the most incongruous take on Captain America I’ve seen. This one was painted on the side of a building in Tel Aviv in late October:

That’s about three weeks after Hamas’s terrorist attack. At that time Israel’s counter offensive had killed about 7,000 civilians, based on a mid-December report by the BBC. Current counts are over 22,000.

Gaza has the civilian population density of London. Would Captain America shrug as he dropped tens of thousands of bombs to defeat an enemy hiding there?

It’s an absurd question because superheroes come from a world of absolute good vs. absolute evil. Their narratives are a rejection of moral complexity. The artist of the Tel Aviv Captain America was rejecting that complexity too, preferring the imaginary simplicity of a superhero world. Though Alan Moore’s Watchmen remains one of the most successful critiques of that genre assumption, I don’t know what Moore thinks about the Isreal-Hamas war (I’m afraid to google in case he’s said something). I’m pretty sure Sam Hamm has no insights on how to end it either.

I’m also pretty sure that the question that begins this post is not a morally complex one.

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