Boy are the reviews mixed! Here’s a pointed one over at CNN.
Caveat: I’m not hardcore here, unlike many of the folks who were at Thursday night’s midnight IMAX show. I’m not going to talk about what Zack Snyder did and didn’t do right in translating the graphic novel into the film. For that, see write-up’s by Oscar and Sunny.
Incidentally, I’ve just read somewhere that Alan Moore believes the only reason why anyone would turn a graphic novel into film is to make money. As many of us know, Moore always takes his name off the films which have been made from his graphic novels. I realize I’d become a fan of his after I read the tome From Hell, which because of its graphic depictions of violence and dismemberment of disposable women’s bodies, was a difficult read for me. He is challenging and epistemological, presenting so many layers of narrative which largely complicate conventional story. This doesn’t come across at all in the films. In the case of Watchmen, I do not remember it being an action comic, but one that I really had to think very hard about.
I read Watchmen once, in either 1991 or 1992. At the time, so much went over my head; this was my baptism into the world of graphic novel. But what I do remember from my reading was this: set in 1985, the pervasive feel of Cold War angst, the real possibility of nuclear annihilation just looming there, which is how we spent our adolescence, with our former hippie Theology and Social Justice teachers cramming nuclear holocaust films down our throats. This Cold War angst was in the (mostly) European new wave music and films such as War Games (“Would you like to play a game?” “How about global thermonuclear war!”) which inundated our pop culture lives, and I recall that Eastern Bloc militarist fashion was in vogue. Remember air raid sirens? Public service announcements instructing the populace how to survive a nuclear war by digging hole and covering yourself with wet newspaper? Anyway, these are the things stuck in my memories of my adolescent imagination.
Now, with the character of Dr. Manhattan being what he is, the former nuclear physicist who is a product of an accident with/in an “intrinsic field separator,” now a US military tool in the arms race against the USSR, this is why as in the graphic novel, this 2009 film must take place in (an alternate) 1985. There really no bringing it into our 2009 context, replacing the fear of nuclear annihilation with whatever the terror du jour is. So for reviewers who don’t get why 1985, that’s why.
Roger Ebert’s journal over at the Chicago Sun-Times has some critical and productive thoughts on the character of Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), some of the more effective acting in this film. He’s monotone, and rather than disaffected, he’s devoid of human emotions and elsewhere, increasingly detached from human beings, human lives, human needs. Dr. Manhattan is the naked, bald, blue not human being. He’s anatomically correct (i.e. not Ken doll neutered), walks with blue organ swinging. How much tittering in the audience as a result, which made me think, come on people, human modesty has no applicability in his world. Though if bodily function is of no use to him, then why be anatomically correct?
Anyway, in this alternate version of history, in which Richard Nixon is still president, the USA has won the Vietnam War and here’s one of the notable iconic bits: as Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries” booms in the background and helicopter fly in formation, a giant Dr. Manhattan disintegrates Vietcong fighters.
What I wanted to bring up about Dr. Manhattan is that he is one of two of the most interesting characters in this film, the second being Rorschach (acted quite terrifically by Jackie Earle Haley), who I will get to in a minute. With Dr. Manhattan, who appears to have human habits, just figuring out the nature of his being/existing, how he thinks or perceives of things is the challenge and what makes him interesting. What words to use to describe his capabilities, whether we can call him “he,” whether he thinks at all or just is what he is, given that he is not a human being, but rather, perhaps a force or an energy which may contain the residual consciousness of the former Jon Osterman. This is one thing that went over my head from my reading of the graphic novel so many years ago.
It seems the rift in the relationship between Dr. Manhattan and Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II is due to her (1) flawed expectations for a romantic relationship with a man/male human being, and (2) how diminished she is or allows herself to become in this relationship with this amazingly powerful not human. Here, I might add that Malin Akerman as Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II was some of the weakest, most flattened, robotic, or wooden acting in this film. Additionally, I agree with the reviewer who wrote that her fight scenes looked more convincing as a shampoo commercial than as a skilled fighter at work kicking ass.
Speaking 0f fighting scenes, there is the erotic thrill she and Nite Owl derive from kicking ass in their vigilante costumes. This is dysfunctional and a little pathetic for the diminished people who are Laurie Jupiter and Dan Dreiberg (Patrick Wilson). The sex scene in Nite Owl’s flying vehicle Archie (Archimedes) is icky that way. So there’s that conflict between the regular people and their “superhero” personae. When they say that the Keene Act, outlawing the masked superhero, is the best thing that’s ever happened to them, we see how sad and powerless (impotent) they’ve consented to become.
Then there’s Rorschach, who has become all masked vigilante, in spite of the Keene Act, with nothing left of his previous human identity. The scenes between him and the prison psychiatrist are golden for his historical background/context given on the falling away of Walt Kovac. It’s unclear what he believes is worth saving though he seems to fight to uphold “ideals,” it is clear that if human beings are capable of performing the most heinous acts upon one another, then there is no reason to have faith in them.
So, there is no compromise or negotiation for him, and what we see is what we’d consider a not just a sociopath but a psychopath. And some of his violence in the film is most striking and memorable, surrounded by so many retribution-seeking criminals, as he is responsible for many of their incarcerations. Think: the mess hall line in the prison with a metal food tray and a deep fryer, or in his little cell, with a torn shirt, a prison bar cutting rotating blade, then some water and a little frayed electrical wire.
In the end, I realize he is the only character I’ve come to care about in this film, and I believe this has to do with his being so unconflicted and single-minded. As well, “care about” I don’t think applies to Dr. Manhattan so much.
Aesthetically as well, I think even with his swirling inkblot mask (which was actually cool), Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan are the least ridiculous looking, and this allowed me to take them a bit more seriously than the other “superhero” characters. And I insist upon quotation marks around “superhero” because this is really a story about not-superheroes, and not-superheroes being kind of ridiculous, not only for the dysfunctional or unstable individuals who have chosen to create alter egos, wear silly costumes, and fight crime, but also for societies of human beings who’ve surrendered their control over their own societies to these not-superheroes, and have since backlashed against the parties to whom they have previously willingly surrendered this control.
So there. I don’t think I’ve said anything particularly revelatory.
This movie completely rocked. The one’s who hated it cannot comprehend its deep messages, and were probably not expecting such complex and “adult” themes in a superhero-movie.
I personally think this is the best superhero movie ever made. Even better than, dare I say, “The Dark Knight.”
Thanks, Zach Snyder!
Yes, I think the general expectation for a “comic book movie” is that it’s devoid of substantial content, and simply full of violence and blowing up stuff. I think this is also the general belief that folks have about the “comic book.” Now, again I’m not a hardcore graphic novel person, though I do read them, some with much interest, so I do know there is a lot of very hard and ambitious questioning of norms and storytelling going on in them. I also think they are very character invested, in which complex development takes place over time.
I liked your review, BJ, amongst other things because you engage with the characters. I disagree though that those who “hated it” did it because we did not “comprehend its deep messages.” If there is any deepness at all in the movie is not because of Znyder’s work but because of Moore and Gibbon’s. Frankly, a superficial look at Dave Gibbons’s Watching the Watchmen book proves that any visual cleverness was in the original, and almost any fairly competent and experienced director, given 100 million USD, could have translated what Gibbons had already painstakingly depicted.
As a movie it is disjointed and narratively clumsy. Some of the acting, apart from Rorschach, is frankly mediocre. There are interesting things in the movie, but it’s far from being a good film. Now, saying it’s “the best superhero movie ever made” does not say much.
There seems to be a difference here, between Zack Snyder’s treatment of Watchmen and his treatment of the 300. While story boarding from the graphic novel frames, something in Watchmen has been compromised? In my most rudimentary terms (since my reading of Watchmen was so long ago), that Snyder has translated it into an action flick, all of the stuff I remember having to think very hard about was oversimplified. So yeah, my way back into Watchmen was via the characters.
Oscar says that some of the actors didn’t seem to get that they were playing parodies of “superheroes,” or rather, parodies of human beings who think they are superheroes when they kind of aren’t. I think he can explain this much better than I have.
Yes. But not only that. Basically the only narrative voices that are respected are Rorschach’s and Dr Manhattan’s. But, for example, however literal the visual adaptation of the “Fearful Symmetry” chapter is (at least the scene in prison with the psychiatrist), the narrative voice of the psychiatrist disappears. The whole mise-en-abîme of the pirate comic book that the kid reads at the newsstand is also lost, making the final scene of the explosion/holocaust in which kid and newsstand seller embrace meaningless. On top of that the ridiculous, exaggerated fight scenes. Precisely what Watchmen avoided were those annoying “splash panels” (full-page panels characteristic of some superhero comics, taken to the extreme by the likes of Todd McFarlane a bit later in the early 90s) by limiting the superficial narrative discourse to a grid of 9 panels. So all the multidimensional, multifocal and multitonal narration is lost. 300 might have worked differently because Frank Miller is a linear narrator, unlike Moore who uses prolepsis and analepsis at will, and Dr Manhattan is an expression of this, since he is supposed to exist/live in multiple temporal planes (again, this is lost/confusing/clumsy in the film). Then there is the political critique, the impending sense of doom of the watch ticking (Watchmen, Minutemen, the watch, the clock), and the relationship with the Minutemen is also not explained, almost disappearing completely with the exception of Silk Spectre mother. And, and, and… the opening credits sequence is brilliant, but only in a postmodern, eye-candy kind of way, and I find that so self-indulgent it’s almost patronising.
Since we’re happily trafficking in spoilers here, I thought I’d jump in. The divisiveness of the reviews seems to be roughly divided between those who read the book and those who didn’t*, and how Snyder’s adaptation surely wouldn’t even begin to render Moore’s intertwined narratives and page layout comprehensible on film. I went into the movie as one of the biased latter, and of course I was right. =) No Minutemen, no Malcolm Long and his wife, no Black Freighter, no Nova Express, barely any Hollis Mason. Boo.
I think we, commenters included, have all written about how crucial the presence of the newsstand vendor is to “Watchmen” — he’s not just the Greek chorus, but also, along with the newspapers, a/the voice of “the people”. All of which are gone, and serve to neutralize the fear of nuclear war that Moore ratchets up in the comic. (As I was writing my blog entry I realized how remote this specific Cold War anxiety now seems.)
I must say, though — here comes a mild spoiler — that the Giant Psychic Squid From Outer Space never particularly worked for me. (I think Moore introduces the island too late in the book, and other than Ozymandias’ explanation towards the end, or stray references to the comic book writer’s disappearance, there’s — what? — maybe three pages devoted to the island?) There’s a sense in which Snyder’s ending is a little more satisfactory in that regard.
But when the squid arrives in the comic it’s genuinely horrifying; the distanced explosions in the movie, seen through TV, just don’t quite cut it. The dead humans may as well have been Doc Manhattan’s termites.
*With the exception of A.O. Scott and Anthony Lane, who still perpetrate the ignorant stereotype that people who read comics must prance around in superhero underwear in their spare time.
Re: Superhero parodies and Ernesto’s last comment
It feels like Snyder didn’t prep his actors at all and that most of them either a) just read the script right before shooting or b) didn’t get that every Watchmen’s perspective is important to the story. Rorschach’s objectivity is as important as Ozymandias’ pragmatism and it’s up to the viewer to decide out of all the Watchmen which best suits their world view. As I said in my review, Snyder sacrifices all this character nuance in favor of making an action flick–a pretty fun one at that but not the best adaption possible of Watchmen.
Now that the “unfilmable” Watchmen has made it to the big screen, maybe another creative team will go for it and make the darker, character driven story that brought the original mini-series to cult status–a distinction Snyder’s film will most likely not attain. But as far as Hollywood is concerned, they’re probably more interested in getting more money from the soundtrack, the action figures, the extended-directors-version-all-the-extras-plus-a-cupcake DVD, and generating a sequel then actually getting it right.