I’ve ranted and raved in the past few months about the upcoming Watchmen movie directed by Zack Snyder. Now it seems the movie’s producers are reconsidering. Why? Well, do you watch Heroes? Have you read Watchmen by Alan Moore? Warning: Serious plot spoilers ahead.

Watchmen (first published in 1986) is set in 1985, in an alternative history United States where costumed vigilantes (real life superheroes) fight crime and the country is edging closer to a nuclear war with the Soviet Union. The story begins with one of these vigilantes being murdered, and revolves around unravelling a dirty plot behind the murder.

The end involves the murderer (who is one of the masked vigilantes) staging an alien invasion by creating an artificial, squid like creature which he’s going to have appear in the middle of New York City …. wait, Wikipedia explains it quite nicely:

[The masked vigilante creates a] genetically-engineered, psionic creature [and teleports it] into the heart of New York City, knowing that the teleportation process will kill it. In its death-throes, the creature releases a “psychic shockwave” containing imagery designed to be so violent and alien as to kill half the residents of the city and drive many survivors insane.

His motives? To unite humanity against what the public will perceive as a new threat (alien invaders), thereby ending threats of nuclear attacks and war.

So, what’s the latest Heroes plot? Linderman, a superhuman, is planning a nuclear explosion in NYC using another supherhuman’s radioactive power. Why? You guessed it. To unite humanity. This is even a lame version of the plot, as the imminent threat of nuclear war isn’t there (not that Heroes weren’t lame to begin with, in comparison to Watchmen).

The problem is that if Watchmen were to be adapted, people have recently seen a similar major plot and most of them would probably think Watchmen stole it from Heroes. Terrible turn of events for the Watchmen movie, I sincerely hope it won’t impact the production. But, oh well, we’ll still have the novel if worst comes to worst.

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