I both desperately do and do not want to see Watchmen.
I went through the same mix of breathless excitement and deep dread when The Fellowship of the Ring debuted – despite the stunning dailies and pitch-perfect trailer, I was utterly unconvinced anyone could possibly do it justice, but I sat awed and breathless through the entire three hours. Peter Jackson managed the nearly impossible and delivered a masterpiece. A flawed masterpiece, but a masterpiece nonetheless (I’ll be happy to get into what, exactly, Jackson did very wrong indeed – if you ever have a spare two hours or so you want to cash in and never get back).
Both experiences are actually comparable in a lot of ways. Firstly, Watchmen and The Lord of the Rings are two of my absolute favorite works of fiction, and they both have a lot of personal significance. The Lord of the Rings essentially introduced me to the manifold splendors of literature at the age of 8 (thanks, mom and dad!), while Watchmen introduced me to the world of adult, intelligent comics long after I had grown bored with the increasingly convoluted storylines of X-Men and Spider-Man.
More than that, though, both stories are Important Works, the kind people like to write doctoral dissertations about and apply capital letters to.
J.R.R. Tolkien played a defining role in modern fantasy, taking it out of the realm of the fairy tale and into the darkness of the 20th century. Fantasy stories weren’t just for kids anymore, one of the most powerful and enduring metaphors for evil and corruption was created, and even the traditional denizens of fairytale realms were given new life and new nuance. Elfs were no longer mischievous sprites arbitrarily making hundreds of shoes in the night on behalf of an impoverished cobbler, they were a wise, ancient race on the brink of extinction. Hell, they weren’t even called ‘Elfs’ anymore – he even changed their pluralization to the nobler (and more linguistically logical) ‘Elves.’
Alan Moore did the same thing for comic-book superheroes, stripping away the bright charade of men in tights and plunging the whole costumed panoply into the paranoid uncertainty of Nixon’s America (and a fifth-term Nixon to boot). By adding morally ambiguous and deeply flawed people to the ranks of the super-heroic (as well as more than a few psychopaths and sociopaths), he made them more human. But more importantly, he brought super-heroes down to earth. Few of the Watchmen have anything resembling a supernatural power, and those who do find that it drives an insurmountable wedge between them and the rest of humanity. Most of all, Moore’s work is one of restraint; he never gives in to the temptation to create big action set-pieces when a simple allusion will do.
So when I found out that Zack Snyder, the bombastic helmsman of the seizure-inducing nightmare 300, would be directing Watchmen, my heart sank. Snyder was actually a good choice to direct 300, because the comic it was based on was written and drawn by Frank Miller, a thoroughly obnoxious writer and utterly unsubtle artist who never uses a scalpel when a sledgehammer will do (Miller has a lively mind, however, and has produced a number of fantastic comics, including Batman Year One and The Dark Knight Returns, two of the best Batman books ever written).
Anyway, the film reviews that have been coming in are decidedly mixed, including those from friends whose taste in movies I have near-complete faith in. I am currently marooned in the English-language cinema void that is the Russian Federation, and I refuse to completely ruin my chances of enjoying Watchmen by seeing it dubbed in Russian.
My friend Kevin McClean, on the other hand, has a fairly brilliant take on the film that has somehow managed to simultaneously raise my hopes and confirm my deepest fears.
Kevin’s take (spoiler alert, for what it’s worth):
It's not bad. In fact, if you force me to use a simple binary judgment of it, I'd say 1. I want you to remember that, because what follows is going to be a litany of issues I had with the film.
You mentioned that you'd be unsurprised to find out that it is unsubtle. Well, then prepare to not have your socks blown off, because if anything this is less subtle than 300. Part of that may be because 300, in it's original inception, if exactly what you'd expect from 90's Frank Miller: over the top, excessively violent, and spends most of the reading time running around with it's dick out, trying to prove it's the biggest kid on the block (you can thank me later for merging those two particular clichés into that specific image). So while 300 may be even more unsubtle than Watchmen (and I'm certainly not going back to check), the latter feels more unsubtle. An example from the end of the movie: Dr. Manhattan of course, blows Rorschach apart. But because Snyder can't leave well enough alone, Rorschach is blown apart into a Rorschach blot. In fact, most of the changes made to the movie are poor, at best. First, the vulnerability of the characters is removed. Remember in the comic how it's stressed that these characters are or start out as completely human? There's none of that in the movie. One of my favorite ideas contained in the Ubermensch theory is that the Ubermensch eliminates the existence of a normal man. That's one of the fundamental truths of superhero comics (the all powerful beings matter more than the average Joe) and one of the inversions in Watchmen; the Nite Owls and Silks Spectres and most of the rest of the vigilantes are just regular people, which is what makes Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandias, Rorschach, and flashback Comedian so dynamic. Of course, in Snyder's world, all this goes out the window. Instead of Laurie and Dan fending off 4 or 5 thugs in an alley, they finish off 10-12 guys, killing at least two. Which, of course, makes things more uncomfortable as the movie goes on, because you have more and more extreme violence in the film. The effect of this is to rob the end of the film of its horror. Oh, and he changes the end of the film. Instead of the destruction of New York being exposition, it's actually the climax of the film. And he changes the event, to make it both more reasonable in story terms and stupider overall. Oh, and here's some changes to the film, in no particular order: the fat dude killed off outside Rorschach's cell has his arms chopped off; Ozymandias versus Comedian is a 5 minute fight complete with knife throwing, wall tossing, and Blake being punched through a marble end table; slow-motion Matrix fights with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre; an Emo Vader moment for Nite Owl when Dr. Manhattan kills Rorscharch; Dan Dreiberg actually having a spine in the first half of the movie; and keeping Bubastis in the film despite having no mention of genetic engineering anywhere.
Now, there a couple of points to highlight. First, the story was definitely put through the Zach Snyder system; blood is bloodier, fights are slow, and pain is pornographic. As I mentioned before, the main characters are also a lot more violent. And as you mentioned, Watchmen is a remarkably actionless comic. And to his credit, Snyder doesn't add in extra fight scenes. However, he does extend the ones that exist. The most memorable example is Rorschach leaps out of second story window, hits the ground, and beats the crap out of four police officers in hand to hand combat before being taken down. Oh, and instead of wandering the deserted halls of a damaged Sing-Sing, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre fight their way through using the latest in wire-fu techniques.
Snyder also streamlines the story, which is inevitable. He removes all the text bits (obviously), and all except a single scene with the old Nite Owl. Everything having to do with the average people is omitted. The cops are gone too. Even with that the movie feels like it's playing in fast-forward, which is an odd thing to say about an almost 3 hour movie. Part of that is, in the film, it takes place of 3 days. Because of that it feels like things are rushed, and it doesn't make the rest of the events make much sense. For example, why bother to set-up Rorscharch? He's probably going to be wiped out in the New York explosion, and even if he's not and figures out the plan, there's no way he's going to get to an Antarctic base in 72 hours. It's makes zero sense of Ozymandias to expose himself like that.
Now, this movie pretty much crystallized my problem with Zach Snyder. He doesn't create art; he creates artifice. This movie looks and sounds like Watchmen, but it doesn't think or feel like it. There are exceptions to this, most notably the Comedian and Dr. Manhattan, but by and large it feels like Shakespeare with the metre ripped out of it. By because of his lack of subtlety, all of the depth of the story is removed, and you just have the straightforward tale of a group of heroes failing to stop a madman from blowing up New York. For example, the smiley motif doesn't appear as often, and because of it, it lacks the punch that it has otherwise. Also, the final shot of the film isn't a bloody smiley like in the comic, but rather of Rorscharch's journal waiting to be opened. Gone is all subtext of fetishism and sexuality (Silhoutte and Ozymandias are still gay, though neither of them are in the closet as we see in the comic). Oh, and Dr. Manhattan actually says "Edward Blake...was your father" in the film, in case we missed the five preceding minutes. It was almost a post-modern experience, watching a film that tells you what every symbol means as you're watching (I'm overstating it a bit, but it's still kind of ridiculous).
The best example of the failed subtlety is, in fact, when he confronts the child killer. Instead of chaining him up and setting him on fire, he beats him up, shackles him, tells him how disgusted his is by the man, and then meat cleavers his head. Finally, he goes outside and watches the place burn. I was a bit saddened by this, since the movie eliminated most of the voiceover that the scene so effective. In fact, Synder leaves out my two favorite lines of the novel: "I watched the fire for an hour. No one got out" and "Yes, he killed Blake and half of New York. Excuse me, Rorscharch, I'm informing Laurie 90 seconds ago" are nowhere to be found in the movie. Very, very disappointing. Also, the Nixon scenes take place in the Dr. Strangelove bunker. Don't get me wrong, if I was going to destroy the world in nuclear fire it's exactly where I would do it, but you can't watch the scene and not expect Kissinger to roll up in a wheelchair or Liddy to be flying around like a bomber. It's not the best way to show your serious intent.
My favorite bit of weirdness is when Laurie is poking around Archie, and sets the storage room on fire. Instead of being Laurie bored and looking for a light for the cigarette, she instead is just poking buttons in the ship, and thinks the one with the massive flame icon would be a good one to press. The most annoying bit, though, is that all the shots and music around Veidt scream "Villain!" "Villian!," while Matthew Goode is actually being fairly understated about things.
Now, the strangest part of the movie is the sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre. Instead of being a single page that ends with the superhero version of a train going through a tunnel, instead we get a 3 minute long aerobic exercise set to Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah". I wish to God I was making that up. Before this happens, I'm more or less going along with the film, and accepting of the occasional misstep, but I and everyone I was with laughed our way through that scene, and it absolutely broke the drive of the movie. If you look around at reviews of the film, it's usually mentioned as one of the worst sex scenes in film, and considering it's 1) a near unanimous appraisal, and 2) coming in the initial wave of reviews, it's safe to say that it qualifies as gross error at best.
So having spent the last screen worth of space discussing the flaws, I'll now go over the merits of the movie. You'll notice that these are shorter, but it's worth mentioning that except for the subtlety issues, everything above technically qualifies as nitpicking. First off, the performances are almost all good to excellent. Laurie is portrayed poorly, as if she knows how she's supposed to act but not how to act like that. It's like Dr. Manhattan, but unintentional. Speaking of the Doctor, he is an exemplary bit in the film. The special effects for the Doctor are very good, and Billy Cudrup is an effective nascent god. His scenes on Mars and the story of his past are among the best parts of the film. Right next to him in the quality performances is Jackie Earl Haley as Rorscharch. If you don't know the name, he's actually Kelly Leak from the Bad News Bears (honestly. Not making that up at all). He looks, sounds, and feels exactly like Rorscharch. Either Haley is a hell of a method actor, or he's the latest example in how child stars fall from grace. Also joining the troika of quality is Jeffery Dean Morgan as the Comedian. He feels exactly like he should for the part. These three obviously understood their characters in the comic down to the smallest subtleties, and played them exactly as they should. Coming in a close second is Nite Owl and Ozymandias. Both of them, I feel, are portrayed correctly by their actors, but they both fail for reasons beyond their control. First, Patrick Wilson does not look as schlubby as Dan Dreiberg should. When he's in a suit and walking around he looks like, but he well built and muscular in the scenes where he's naked. It's like they had him a fat suit for the clothes, but couldn't be bothered to put prosthetics on him when he's naked. As for Ozymandias, Matthew Goode does a very good job with him, but for some reason they decided to make him look like he's in his early thirties. And again, the camera angles and music couldn't be more indicative of villainous intent. Finally, there is the crucial scene where the group organizes in the late sixties, and is blown apart by the Comedian. Instead of being brought together by Captain Metropolis, they're brought in by Ozymandias, and the result of that (along with some minor tweaks to the dialogue later) makes it seem like he's actually pushing against the Comedian's philosophy. And while he claims to be doing that in the novel, if you notice there is the very subtle idea that what he's doing is actually agreeing with the Comedian, except he's actually doing something about it instead of going along for the ride. Special mentions go the old Silk Spectre for looking 5 years old than her daughter, to the original Nite Owl for looking like Paul Newman, and Richard Nixon for wearing a rubber Richard Nixon mask.
Finally, a very notable high point of the film is the opening credits. It's a montage that's set to 'The Times They Are A Changin'" by Dylan. It's the whole version of the song, and neatly encapsulates the entire history of masked heroes in the world, starting with the Nite Owl's first appearance all the way to the Keene Act. It covers the life and death of the Silhoutte, and the loss of Mothman, the rise of the next generation, and all the back story you need to the film. It's an excellent bit of filmmaking to which Watchmen does not live up. Now, if was up to me, I would have used Desolation Row in the film, as it's actually mentioned in the comic, and is the perfect music to accompany the novel. Snyder has said that he intended the credits sequence to by about 10 minutes long, which would imply use of Row was originally planned. However (and for the next section you'll need a bag for barfing), it can no longer be used in the film, because the end credits use Desolation Row by...My Chemical Romance. Imitating the Sex Pistols. It's a horrible way to the end film.
So after all that, why did I like it? First, it's different then most films out there. And since superheroes movies are to the late 00's as star heavy action movies were to the late 80s, anything that pushes the boundaries of the genre is a very good thing. Second, I feel the strengths of the film outweigh the flaws, even though several of them pull you out of the film. Finally, 90% of my complaints are how they did things differently than the comic, and I don't feel you can truly compare works from differing media, even if they are the same story. Two final thoughts: it's a better film than 300, but I don't think I enjoyed it as much. And if you sit back and imagine "Zack Snyder's Watchmen", it's exactly that, both good and ill.
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