Well, I probably shouldn’t drink so much, at least not at work. The opera was actually called Doctor Atomic, and it was about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist in charge of the, uh, Manhattan Project, and covered the time immediately leading up to the first nuclear weapon test. I got the other two names wrong, too. We were about a third of the way through the show when I figured out it wasn’t at all Watchmen-related, which at least was sooner than the last time I got burned like this, at a special naked performance by the Blue Man Group.

This time, what clued me in was the abundance of fedoras.

If you ever need to evoke the dawn of the Nuclear Age, dear readers, step one is to stick a fedora on every man in sight. You can’t get enough fedoras. Get a group of six to eight behatted guys huddled in a circle, hands in their pockets, chatting rapid-fire, drop a couple of wooden crates next to them, and tell two men in military uniform to wander around a few feet away, possibly smoking. Everyone who sees that tableau will know atoms are gonna get split sooner or later.

In Watchmen, however, Rorschach is sporting pretty much the only fedora in sight—which is no coincidence. As the Cold War went on and men realized that felt offered little to no protection against hydrogen bombs or even the attendant fallout (and with the concurrent improvements made to hair product), most of them chose to enjoy feeling the sun shine on their naked heads before it was blotted out of the sky forever. Rorschach, of course, is a throwback; he wears his fedora not because it’s practical, but out of loyalty to an earlier time (and also, presumably, because he thinks Vidal Sassoon is part of a Communist plot).

That time he’s remembering is back when an individual person was still somewhere in the same order of magnitude as the weapons that could be leveled against him or her—even the worst bombs used throughout most of World War II could take out a neighborhood at best, and would leave some neighbors surviving. That changed during the handful of days marked in Doctor Atomic.

And if the opera, which draws directly from the characters’ history for source material, is right, the change was entirely deliberate. It was tempting, as I watched, to associate Oppenheimer with his fellow scientist Jon Osterman, especially when he quoted John Donne in the aria that closed the first act: “Overthrow me, and bend your force, to break, blow, burn, and make me new.”

Really, though, he was closer to another Watchmen character, whose identity I won’t reveal here for fear of spoiling a book written before spoilers were invented. Those of you who’ve read it will know whom I’m talking about: After his colleagues come forward with petitions for President Truman asking at least to warn the Japanese before unleashing their “gadget” upon them, Oppenheimer dismisses them, explaining that bombing cities containing civilians is the only way to “make a profound psychological impression” that will end the war for good. Essentially, he says, the only way to stop war is to scare people out of it by killing a bunch of them.

He may not have been wrong. No conflict in the last 63 years has approached the scale of World War II, anyway, and the philosophy of mutually assured destruction was what kept both sides safe throughout the Cold War.

But although the Soviet Union is gone, we’re still dealing with some of the consequences of that conflict, only in a much less stable world. And I couldn’t help but think about that when Oppenheimer’s wife, Kitty, sang at the start of the second act that “the peace the spirit needs is peace, not lack of war—but fierce, continual flame.”

Is it enough for those of us who want peace to be satisfied with less war, like I think that Watchmen character is? Or do we have to actively cultivate peace? Because I think that’s harder.

You go to the opera because you’re married, after all—but not just with a sigh, because you’re afraid your wife will be upset if you don’t. At least, not if you’re doing it right. You go and you smile about it, because you want her to be happy.

Commenter Moff's real name is Josh Wimmer, and he can usually be found at scribblescribblescribble.com/blog.

What first attracted me to the film was Anthony Stewart Head, also known as too-sexy-for-his-age Watcher/librarian Giles of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Head lent spectacular and commanding vocals to that series' status-quo-busting musical episode, and he's quite fit to be the lead tenor here as the eponymous Repo Man who steals organs from the poor to give to the rich.

He's also the loving yet unsettling father to sweet, sick Shilo Wallace (Alexa Vega). The drama between father and daughter is at the heart of the show, set against the backdrop of a frightening future where health care is so dire that massive conglomerate GeneCo is out to rip the bloody viscera from the chests of anyone who can't front their bills. Among the many screaming denizens of this dystopia, Vega and Head are the talented, charismatic duo that hold this bewildering movie opera together.

Repo! grew out of a ten-minute stage show in 1999, and it's picked up lots of plot along the way: Each character comes with oodles of sizzling backstory and a few racy graphic novel panels that serve as explanation. There's a lot to keep track of here, meaning that devoted fans will have excess material by the boatload to pore over when all is said and done. Appearances by Sarah Brightman and Paul Sorvino lend significant vocal cred to the ensemble, and Terrance Zdunich's creepy Graverobber is the perfect de facto narrator. These five (Vega, Head, Brightman, Sorvino, and Zdunich) are probably the only sympathetic characters here – the only ones to whom the film has time enough to lend a bit of complexity. As for Paris Hilton, if you close your eyes and think of England, she goes away soon enough.

The look of the film is pretty much what you'd expect. The cinematography is heavy with highlights and shadows – Repo!'s landscape uses light only to emphasize the dark, and its indulgent sweeps of a grimy, holographic future city will be a delight to anyone who thrilled at Blade Runner. Of course Victorian goth suffuses every costume. It's no surprise that people were ready with Repo! outfits this Halloween, before the movie even came out. Plus, it features a cool new futuristic drug – the painkilling Zydrate, which can be extracted easily from fresh corpses.

There are simplistic though mildly insightful one-liners – "Why is genetics such a bitch?" croons Vega as Shilo, the girl with the seemingly incurable blood disease. Though it might not achieve the same critical acclaim, it has the Rocky Horror geek perv vibe: Repo is an overwhelmingly odd, shockingly sexual, rocked-out celebration of all that is gory and scary and alive.

So if you've already been keeping an eye on the publicity and feeling a tingle in your throat, trust me, Repo! delivers. It may not be polished or genius, but it's fun – and Hollywood could use a bit of crazy, idea-filled fandom, if you ask me. But if the idea of watching naked women get slashed open to song in a world of corruption and despair – yeah, those parts were not so fun and idea-filled, as Fantasy Magazine pointed out. So if naked gore is a dealbreaker, stick to rewatching Chicago and The Matrix back-to-back this holiday season. For the rest, it's time to shoot some Zydrate and get ready to rock.

According to Reuters, Cronerberg has said that the opera version of The Fly isn't a straight remake of the movie — so opera-goers can expect some surprises. Reuters continues:

Movies have rarely made the transition to the world of opera, but Cronenberg said the basic plot of "The Fly" had the elements of love story, retribution and transformation common to many operas that made it ideal for a stage treatment.

If this opera version of The Fly goes well, I'm hoping for an adaptation of 2001 for the opera hall. Call it a space opera opera.

The Fly opens this month at the Los Angeles Opera.

The Fly Gets Opera Treatment [Reuters]