Watchmen begins where both Christianity and humanism have already failed. God is absent. Meaning is exhausted. History no longer believes in progress. What remains is power—naked, ironic, technologically amplified—and the question the New Testament and Nietzsche each pose in opposite ways: Who bears responsibility for the world when transcendence is gone?
The film does not answer this question, it stages it.
The New Testament World That No Longer Believes in Redemption. The New Testament assumes a broken world, but not a meaningless one. Evil is real, suffering is unavoidable, and innocence is lost—but redemption remains imaginable. Salvation does not arrive through domination, but through self-giving love. Power redeems itself only by relinquishing itself. Watchmen inherits the brokenness but discards the hope. In this world: sacrifice is suspected, compassion is weakness, truth is destabilizing, salvation dangerous. The cruciform logic of the New Testament—power perfected in weakness—no longer makes sense here. No one believes that suffering can redeem. They believe only that suffering must be managed.
This is one aspect of Christianity coming home to consciousness. God Without Love. Dr. Manhattan is what happens when transcendence returns without incarnation. He is omniscient. He is omnipotent, but he is detached. From a New Testament perspective, he is the anti-Christ not because he is evil, but because he lacks relation. He sees all of time at once, which means he cannot participate in time. He knows everything, which means nothing addresses him. He is Logos without Sophia. Power without love. Eternity without suffering. Nietzsche would recognize Manhattan immediately: this is the death of God completed, followed by the return of godlike power stripped of meaning. Manhattan confirms Nietzsche’s fear—not that God would disappear, but that something colder would replace Him. The New Testament insists that God must suffer with humanity to save it. Manhattan refuses this condition. He leaves. And by leaving, he tells the truth: the universe does not care.
Rorschach, on the other hand, believes in moral absolutes after belief itself has collapsed. This makes him terrifying. He operates entirely within Law: good and evil are fixed, compromise is corruption, mercy is betrayal, truth must be spoken regardless of consequence. In New Testament terms, Rorschach is Pharisaical righteousness without God. He clings to judgment precisely because grace has disappeared. He believes that if morality softens, meaning dies. Nietzsche would see him as a reactive soul—driven not by creation, but by resentment. Rorschach does not affirm life; he condemns it. His rigidity is not strength but fear of chaos. Yet Watchmen refuses to mock him. Why? Because Rorschach is honest. He will not lie to preserve peace. He will not sacrifice truth for stability. When asked to accept the world-saving deception, he refuses—even knowing it will kill him. From a New Testament lens, he is John the Baptist without Christ: truth without redemption.
It seems as if Ozymandias has misread Nietzsche’s Übermensch. Adrian Veidt believes he has moved beyond good and evil. He has read Nietzsche—but selectively. Nietzsche’s Übermensch does not impose meaning from above. He creates values out of overflowing strength. Veidt, however, creates order out of fear. His genius is instrumental, not generative. His morality is utilitarian, not affirmative. He believes that the world must be saved, even if it must be lied to, this is the greatest heresy in New Testament terms. Salvation cannot be coerced. Peace built on falsehood is not peace. Unity imposed through terror is not reconciliation. Veidt sacrifices millions not out of cruelty, but out of certainty. He believes history needs a decisive hand. He becomes what Nietzsche warned against: the tyrant disguised as a savior. Nietzsche warned against the coming catastrophe, not in support of it! The Absence of Resurrection. The New Testament culminates not in the cross, but in resurrection. Watchmen stops at the cross—and then questions whether the cross meant anything at all. No one rises. No truth is vindicated. No sacrifice redeems. The world is saved, but no one is reconciled. This is Nietzsche’s world after God: humanity must live with the consequences of its own decisions. But Watchmen adds something Nietzsche did not fully confront, and that is, what happens when humanity is not strong enough to bear that burden? Then there is Silk Spectre and the Fragile Remnant of Eros. Laurie is not a savior. She is something smaller—and rarer. She represents attachment that has not been justified. She loves imperfectly. She doubts constantly. She remains human in a world that has outgrown humanity. When she reminds Dr. Manhattan of the improbability of life, she does not offer meaning—she offers relation.
This is the faint echo of New Testament Eros:
not law, not power, not sacrifice—but …
It almost works.
Almost.
Finally, Watchmen stages a courtroom where Christianity and Nietzsche prosecute each other. Christianity asks: What is salvation without truth, love, and voluntary sacrifice? Nietzsche asks: What is morality worth when it cannot prevent catastrophe? The film refuses to acquit either. Rorschach dies for truth. Veidt lives with his lie. Manhattan abandons humanity. The world continues—uneasily. And the final question lingers, unresolved: Was the world saved—or merely postponed? The New Testament would say: Without truth, there is no peace. Nietzsche would say: Without strength, there is no future. Watchmen answers neither. It leaves us where modernity actually lives: after God, after innocence, after certainty—wondering whether humanity is capable of bearing either truth or power?
Brenton L. Delp