If you are a comic fan worth your salt, you’re going to see the Watchmen movie regardless of what anyone says about it – you’re all stubborn bastards that just have to see it for yourselves. Fear not comic fans, if you’ve read the graphic novel (get off this site if you haven’t) there are no spoilers to be had in this review. (ok, not many)
You might love it and you might hate it, but one thing you won’t be able to say is that the Watchmen movie was not true to the Alan Moore graphic novel… at least, the words and pictures part of it. Unfortunately, this is my big problem with the movie; it is so true to the text and imagery of Mr. Moore’s comic masterpiece that I found it incredibly boring to watch! I knew every line and every action before they happened. Watchmen’s director Zack Snider was really in a no-win situation from the start. If he got all “visionary” with Watchmen, the rabid comic nerds would rip him a new one. Staying ultra-true to the comic’s iconography and dialog was probably a more dangerous choice. From the silent audience and blank stares, I’m not sure many muggles (non-comic peeps) understood a large portion of the movie. To boot, comic fans can almost never be appeased with a portion saying it was not true enough to the Gospel of Alan and others like myself that know the story so well it was tedious to behold.Want a copy of the Watchmen movie script? Grab your worn copy of the trade paperback and tear out about 20% of the pages. What you will have left is literally the line-for-line dialog of this movie. Two days before going to see Watchmen, I regrettably managed to find time to re-read Watchemen #1-4. It was spooky how few lines were added or altered. If this is how adaptations work, sign me up, I’ve got scripts for almost every DC and Marvel character ready to go…
There were some things I liked. Plot-wise, the changed ending was fine as I think the original ending would have broken the minds of the audience. In addition, the opening credits did a great job of presenting a lot of character bios in very little time and space. I also liked the shameless Silk Spectre II costume and I look forward to seeing many homemade copies of it at GenCon this year.
All in all, the acting was pretty weak – maybe because there was no opportunity to improvise, or maybe because the actors just aren’t very good. None of them did enough to make me empathize with their plight except maybe Rorschach.
Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre II) Drop the smoking, 10 years, the bitchiness, and add a black & yellow latex costume and you have a Silk Spectre updated for today’s man-boy. Malin is a pretty bad actress but not too hard on the eyes. They say she is Canadian (by way of Sweden) so she must have some redeeming qualities.Matthew Goode (Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias) Mathew Goode was not. He made Malin look like a knighted Shakespearian actor. Line! He looked like Ozymandias, but, I’m sorry, it takes more…
Patrick Wilson (Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl II) The fellow who played Nite Owl did a satisfactory job, but I think his mad skills were hampered by Zach’s over-zealous following of the Moore Bible. Very little emotion came through, and, frankly, I didn’t care if he lived or died.
Haley Joel Osmond (Walter Kovacs / Rorschach) Actually played by Jackie Earle Haley, Rorschach is the only character that is of any interest. Almost all of his lines are straight from the comic, but at least he is entertaining. One thing I didn’t about his portrayal , is that the moviemakers did a poor job highlighting his ultra right-wing personality. Sure, the lines were there, but they were easily missed if you were not looking for them.
Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan / Jon Osterman) I liked him when he was human, but the 1985 Dr. Manhattan was a bit of a sad sack and too soft spoken for my liking. If you like blue wieners this is the movie for you.
Three fairly strong performances were Carla Gugino as Sally Jupiter, Matt Frewer as Moloch the Mystic, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian. Of the three, only the Comedian failed to be dead-on. Even though he committed atrocities upon the Vietnamese, US Citizens, JFK, and Sally Jupiter, he didn’t come off as much of a badass. He was about as hard as J. Jonah Jameson.
Watchmen gets a 65% from me and as of writing has a 66% on RottenTomatoes. You definitely need to see it (maybe the super-extendo version on DVD will be better) but if you go in expecting to be under-whelmed, you’ll probably have a much better experience then I did.
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Great post Black Gobbo. I was overall happy with the film except for the the end where they just HAD to give some good guy resolution. The Watchmen is dystopian and grim. It does not need to be made more palatable. Overall I give it a solid B as an adaptation and an A- as an entertaining film. However, this was only due to my familiarity with the source material. Someone who wasn't familiar would probably just say "Huh?".
ReplyDeleteRorschach in the prison was simply excellent.
I have never read the comic books or book or graphic novel or whatever the fuck it was. But I don't understand why people think it would be so hard to understand without it. I thought the story was pretty simple. Now as a casual observer, the movie stunk. It was boring. Dr. Manhattan was awful. His parts were tedious and drawn out. Rorschach reminded me of Scut Farkus from 'A Christmas Story' once they took his mask off. The thought of an extended edition on DVD is mind numbing. I thought the movie could have been 20 minutes shorter.
ReplyDeleteHeh. Perhaps understand was the wrong word. How about enjoy. Glad to see you FMD.
ReplyDeleteGiven that the mad Canadian was the one who made me read this years ago when I first started to read stupid comics, it's not too much of a surprise that I agree with his comments.
ReplyDeleteThe director was in a no win situation in terms of what he could and couldn't do. We've seen the trainwreck of movie that was League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. It had little to do with the source material and ended up being trite crap that never even came close to the essence of the stories. So this dude decided to not fuck with too much and go with what fans wanted to see. And thus he gets eviscerated by movie reviewers for being unimaginative. Which I believe to be untrue. So, no winning there.
Given the fact the DVD sales make a buttfuck ton of money it makes sense to side with the nerds and not pander to "reimagine" a film so that it becomes a PG-13 crapfest. You can always make up for lost "family" sales with magical special DVD sets. What bugs me is when directors make two separate fucking films from the get go. While nice from a nerd point of view, it seems like cheating to me. It cheapens the art of film as a whole. I mean there aren't two fucking versions of The Bicycle Thief, or Seven Samurai, or 12 Angry Men. But I guess that's way off topic here.
I'm fine with taking images from the page and transferring them to the screen in a direct fashion. Makes sense. I never understood the thinking behind "ok, there's this great book that everyone loves and wants to see made into a movie, BUT I think the plot should go this way instead and we'll just change the main character to be hip and appealing to audiences." But, I'm not a director.
I liked the film because I already had an attachment to the characters and subplots for years. If I were going into this blind, then yeah, I'd have understood the plot and what have you without trouble. It's not an impossible concept to grasp. But I probably wouldn't have cared about too much outside of Rorschach. And the acting was indeed subpar. Though I'd rather not see a Tom Cruise or other familiar Hollywood Star up there. I'll take my chances with unknowns any day for stuff like this.
I warned you about the film and it's content FMD! Sorry about your over-excited nerd seat neighbors during the film. That kinda shit can ruin just about any film put in front of me.
Of all the ridiculous money I spend on graphic novels, Watchmen was not one I have purchased yet. So I went into this movie without any preconceived notions about story line or plot.
ReplyDeleteAs entertainment, I certainly got my $13 worth (saw it at an IMAX... the smallest IMAX evar). I'd have happily spent $20 and felt I got my monies worth. I was thoroughly engrossed by the sites and sounds.
I tend to take a long view in regards to judging films. What has Watchmen done for us?
It proved that you can come really close to the drawn costumes and still have it work on film.
It proved that with good acting and a good script suspension of disbelief is possible while people wear spandex.
It's all well and good to lambaste the director for altering the original work, but the reality is they don't work in a bubble, they are bidden to do the work of the Studio. In that light, I think it's hats-fucking-off to Snyder for what he accomplished. A great movie that will drive sales of the original work and create new blood for the comic industry.
In that cycle we can also hope that this has paved the way for the chance to create movies even more faithful to their original comic works.
Follow the trail from the first shitty comic book movies all the way up to Watchmen and look how far we've come.