A few weeks ago I saw the movie Watchmen. The movie was pretty good, but what I really enjoyed about it was the way they integrated history into the movie. The movie takes place in 1985 and the United States revolves around the period of tension we are leaning about now in AS; this period is known as the Cold War, a nuclear arms race against Soviet Russia. There are a great amount of historical references such as Vietnam, civil rights, etc., but what I really want to comment on is the decision making put into using weapons of mass destruction in the story.
Towards the end of the movie, the character Ozymandias, one of the super heroes, activates his major secret plan and sets off a weapon of mass destruction in New York City killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people. His old companions are in horrible shock as they learn what he has done; they do not understand how/why he could do this. You want to view Ozymandias as a villain immediately, but this is where the movie's brilliance shines...
Right before this bomb is set off, tensions were high between Russia and the U.S. The type of bomb that Ozymandias set off was not an atom bomb, however, but created from the energy that Dr. Manhattan is made of, a super hero who is composed of nuclear energy. After the world realized that this WMD set off in New York was the energy Dr. Manhattan uses, the U.S. and Russia blame Dr. Manhattan. Within a matter of hours, the tension between the U.S. and Russia dropped and they halted their arms race once and for all as they joined in peace to rebuild the horror that struck the world that day. Ozymandias' plan the whole time was to frame Dr. Manhattan in order to bring peace between these two destructive world powers.
This was a very interesting idea that the movie presented; in order to bring peace to the world, one man thought the only option was to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent people. I'm so glad I saw Watchmen because I will always look back to this movie when we begin discussing the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in class. The movie raises a lot of questions that can be raised directly to the parallel decision making put into dropping the atom bomb on Japan. Was it the best option? Was it the only option? Are we heroes or are we villains?
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