The Right-Wing Troll Backlash Against HBO's 'Watchmen' Is Hilariously Stupid
One of the more unpleasant phenomena of this modern era dominated by fantasy, sci-fi, and superhero franchises is the online underbelly of far-right trolls who have taken it upon themselves to destroy any progressive ideas in modern movies or TV shows. They've piled on Star Wars movies that have made an effort to cast more women and people of color. They've attacked black-led superhero movies like Black Panther. They've harassed women who are starring in Marvel movies. They do this with racist, misogynist comments, crybaby petitions, review bombing, and with hilariously bad YouTube videos directed at journalists who call them out.
So far, efforts of far-right trolls have been an utter failure. These more inclusive stories are more popular—and lucrative than ever.
And now, the far right trolls are coming for HBO's new Watchmen series—trolls that are mad online that the show has the audacity to say that white supremacy is...bad.
After its premiere on HBO Sunday, more than 1,000 users have taken to Rotten Tomatoes (more than 5,000 on IMDB) to review Watchmen, where it currently has a 98 percent from critics and an audience score of 45 percent. This type of audience/critic disparity is a pretty common occurrence with these types of highly anticipated comic adaptations, where manbabies will tank a series or film's review aggregations, complaining about a perceived political agenda or efforts to have a more diverse cast.
I read through dozens of these one-star reviews on RT and IMDB for Watchmen and noticed a pretty regular theme. Granted, there are some understandable critiques of the quality of the show—some are mad the first episode didn't show the original characters. Some simply didn't like the style or tone. I disagree, but it's fair criticism, nonetheless. However, a vast majority of these negative reviews were mad that the show is too political, that white supremacists have co-opted Rorschach's mask, and that it discusses race.
Here are a couple of reviews I pulled from Rotten Tomatoes and IMDB that I think best represent the one-star complaints:
Lotheravanti writes:
They took everything that was good about Watchmen and Rorschach, then defecated all over it Last Jedi style. This isn't Watchmen, it's Wokemen, sorry, Wokepersons.
James C writes:
They took my favorite comic series and used it as a vessel for delivering political/ ideological rhetoric. Was really looking forward to this.
Bill W writes:
Somehow a show about gritty heroes became another show pandering to the SJWs of the world and inciting race divide and preaching an agenda.
What's hilarious about the sentiment of these reviews is how they fundamentally misunderstand the original Watchmen comics. These comics were deeply political, showing an alt-history in which Richard Nixon used Doctor Manhattan to win the Vietnam war and stay in power for decades. It looked through this lens to critique both liberal and conservative ideas—the liberal utopia-seeking Adrian Veidt was revealed to be the villain in the end. The deranged far-right vigilante Rorschach was also wrong in his belief in himself as the ultimate judge, jury, and executioner.
Damon Lindelof's Watchmen is equally critical of both sides of the political spectrum, showing how liberal legislation can be ineffective against the cancer that is white supremacy (the scene where strict gun control fails a police officer is a particularly biting critique). This falls in line with Moore's punk rock ethos that neither side is right, and everyone is flawed—even our blue godlike omnipotent Doctor Manhattan. In the original comics, the great evil that could not be stopped by masked vigilantes was nuclear war. In Lindelof's series, that evil is white supremacy.
It's disturbing that people find the thesis of "White Supremacy Is Bad" to be a Social Justice Warrior agenda. White supremacy is bad—and it's heartbreaking that this is not a universal truth in 2019.
What's also funny about these reviews is that most of the people who are mad about the racial themes of the show are also mad that Rorschach's likeness is now being used by white supremacists. If you actually read most of the diary entries in Rorschach's journal in the original text, he often touts a disdain and outright hatred for immigrants, and he's openly homophobic and misogynistic. Now consider the ending of the original comic, where he sends his journal to the far-right magazine the New Frontier. Does it seem outrageous that his ideas would be co-opted by a white supremacist group?
Certainly, anyone making the argument that HBO's Watchmen is too political, or that Rorschach was not racist, fundamentally doesn't understand its source material. What's kind of darkly hilarious is how much the language and politics and ideas of these trolls so closely resemble those of the 7th Kalvalry in the show. These far-right trolls in our real world hold a reverence for Rorschach that has developed into the disgustingly warped idea that white supremacy being evil is somehow debatable.
The only good thing about this review bombing is that Lindelof entirely anticipated it from trolls. His series was made to piss people off—like Moore's comics did.
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