Watchmen

Do it, end the film now. DO IT

Now I’ve mentioned that I’m a fan of Watchmen and I went into the film with a pretension of detached pessimism, but in reality filled with surprised anticipation. When I emerged blearier eyed, exhausted into the pissed of sunlight, I learned a very good message about trusting the crowed and accepting popular option about a films quality. Don’t do it, you will only set yourself up for disappointment. Now the film wasn’t bad and I didn’t leave the theater feeling like my brain had been violated in some way (well apart from the headache from the many flashing lights), but I do actually regret those three wasted hours (not joking, I could have done some really cool things in that time). Now let it be known, I am a fan of Watchmen the comic book, because I think it has some really good stories/characters (unlike say, anything Frank Miller has ever done), and I like the Grey vs. Grey portrayal of American Society. And I really hate Zack Snyder, who I think is one of the worst directors in film history, and I don’t say that sarcastically. 300 was literally the worst film I’ve ever seen in my life, and I’ve seen Deep Space Nine, and Nazi films (actually if you’ve seen “Birth of a Nation” then don’t bother). 

And all of the cinematic elements (If not the massive racism, the homophobia, the thinly veiled political propaganda, the black and white setting, the simplistic portrayal of a much more complex historical event, the moronically stupid characters, the juvenile writing and the unoriginality), that I didn’t like about 300 return here with a vengeance, most noticeable being the absurdly stupid slow motion action scenes, extremely loud combat music and absurdly stupid over the top fight scenes. In fact, the film is chalk full of massive fight scenes, almost every encounter has some guy beating the crap out of somebody else.

 Now that is not to say that that didn’t happen in the book, but in the book the fighting was more realistic, like it was a bunch of guys literally just beating the crap out of each other while wearing masks, very realistic in a brutal sort of way. This feels like Kun Fu Hustle without the parody/good directing, the people are smashed around like rag dolls in a manner. 

In fact, every fight scene is almost the same, one guy throws a punch, the other guy effortlessly blocks with his fists, flips him, smashes him through a near by object, the other guy throws them back, they exchange these really forced and fake sounding punches until one of them ether is launched 50 feet away or bends out of shape. Which touches upon the biggest problem with Watchmen from a purely cinematic point of view, the artificiality of it all. My dad, who has never read the comic said it felt like a typical comic book movie, just loud and silly, which I find really ironic as Alan Moore wrote Watchmen in response to critics saying ‘It has a comic book plot”, hoping to prove them wrong by making an in depth graphic novel. 

The movie really does feel like a set, because all of the locations are either animated or so fancy and high text that it looks artificial and unreal. What I liked about Watchmen was the gritty realism that made it feel like real life, and nothing ruins that more than absurd explosions, men smashing each other through marble tables only to stand back up, and places that look absurdly organized and clean when they shouldn’t be are not realistic. A good watchmen movie would be designed like a Law and Order set (back in the old days when it was good of course), a feeling of actual building being run by real people. Also the fight scenes, unrealistic aside, are really graphic and that’s saying alot. I mean, I don’t mind violence in film really, but I like it to serve a purpose, such as showing how brutal real combat often is, but this served no purpose other than essentially shocking the audience often for no good reason. The fight with the vaguely Asian gangsters for example, our hero’s beat them to pieces with shocking brutality (actually I don’t think they kill them in the book) that serves no real purpose other than shocking the audience. The cutting of the man’s arms in the jail riot scene is another example of this, brutality for the sake of brutality, and graphic imagery that seems to be just brutal for its own sake. In short, the movie feels fake and I lack any empathy with the characters, ironically the exact opposite of what the writer intended. The movie presents an orgy of explosions, flashing lights, broken bones and artificial sounds, with dialogue thrown in almost as an after thought. On that note, lets talk about the dialogue its self actually. If you’ve read Watchmen, you should most likely recognize the lines from the comic book are repeated almost verbatim, which is actually not a good idea. Accuracy is wonderful, but it has to feel real, when watching Shakespeare I don’t get warm sense of happiness inside just be recognizing the speeches, I like to see how the actors say them and what creative licenses the director takes with the role and Snyder takes non here. All of the conversations, in fact all of the character interactions are presented in this stiff, wooden sort of way as they read there lines, as if they are trying to convey as much information as possible to the audience as quickly as possible. 

Even the most epic and fascinating speech (as I said before, Alan Moore is a very good writer) comes off as trite and tiresome, because the actors feel like they are going through a script rather than being real characters. I feel like when the director gave acting cues, he didn’t tell them “Ok, your father is the a ruthless Nazi who attempted to rape your mother once, how do you react” instead saying ‘Hey can you imitate this comic book scene?” The sets and chorography (apart from the god awful fight scenes) are almost copied frame by frame from the book, and that actually limits the scene, Rorschach’s various actions throughout the film are imitated to what he does in the comic book, and the actor doesn’t feel like a person so much as a dummy taking various poses. 

The movie is emotionally dead really, its not so much a film in its own right as a near endless list of moving photo shoots, and is so constricted by its imitation that it just comes of as hollow. The movie doesn’t really bring anything to the story, it just re-shows it. I don’t know about other fans, but I didn’t watch the movie thinking “Wow, it would be so cool if I could see this frame but acted out”, I more was looking forward to an interesting and engaging storyline, and having people who would otherwise never read the book be able to experience a really cool and interesting plot. Instead Zack’s single minded devotion (oh in my option, lack of any actual talent), just stagnates any real feeling of fulfillment from this. In fact this is typical of Zack who did this method of copying in 300, and here is the thing, that actually isn’t very impressive. In the modern age of computer graphics and advanced cameras, there is little that is actually impressive about copying a comic book’s pages, its like taking a picture of the Mona Lisa, congratulations I hope your impressed. The real art in directing a movie is taking something somebody has done and remaking it into something engaging, like the Godfather, Last King of Scotland, or Maltese Falcon. They were based after books certainly, but they added new life to the story and had there own spin to the events, it wasn’t just mindless copying. The acting varies, through there are no really impressive people, most of it just comes off as mediocre, because of their limited room in there roles, and the director’s choices just renders the acting talents impotent.
The only real changes I noticed in the movie apart from the added violence (And the WTF ending)was making Rorschach and the Comedian look slightly less evil. Now in any other movie I wouldn’t care, but knowing the radically right wing (and racist) message of 300, its worth looking into a tad bit, through to be fair some of this might just be in favor of time. The Comedian’s face isn’t horrible ruined, so when he opens fire upon protesters he isn’t wearing that creepy gimp mask that inspires a feeling of “Hey Nazis”, and he is shown as a little less brutish and more badass in this version, through its most likely just me touching upon minor details. Rorschach through comes off as a lot less, well, pathetic. His voice sounds a lot like Clint Eastwood, and some of his details are changed. While still the son of a prostitute, it kind of misses the point of explaining his back-story. The idea is that Alan Moore is averting the “total badass stoic who never losses his cool, never looks bad” idea by showing him as emotionally traumatized, and one thing I found interesting was his fear of women and women’s clothing, and the highly hinted at sexual frustration within him, which is dropped, possibly due to time or because it makes the radically right wing character look less cool. I know his more controversial scenes were dropped, such as his torturing random people until he gets the right information (opposed to the one torture of an actual evil dude), as well as his more controversial dialogue. For example, in the book when Ozymandias calls the Comedian a Nazi, Rorschach goes into a rather interesting triad about how the Comedian fought and died for his country, and that if he is a Nazi, then so must Rorschach, drawing a parallel between that sort of far right wing extremism/paranoia and fascism, as they are directly related (in the same way the really far left can move into communism), and that is dropped, as his comment about the Comedian “moral lapses” (see also attempted rape). Also the child killer he murder is much more obviously guilty, where in the book its kind of vague, I mean it could have been coincidental (unlikely but hey), and as of such, the serials killers demands for an arrest seem just stupid, as if the director is trying to drain any sympathy from him so his brutal murder doesn’t look so bad (yes I know he is most likely a child murderer but I’ve seen “M”, I don’t believe murder is right even to those people). It might just be my paranoia, but it is interesting to note nonetheless
My final note of complaint is the pacing. For a film that has so much grounds to cover, it sure wastes a lot of time doing flash backs. I mean, it makes sense in a comic to do a flashback after each chapter, because it can take a while to read through that, but I don’t need to see the Silk Specter 1 parent argument 4 fucking times within a movie. Doing each part of the movie in terms of character segments may sound cool, but when you realize how fast they go by it feels more like your just showing a series of scenes rather than telling a story.
Now I didn’t really feel horrible watching the move and when I walked out I wasn’t filled with revolution, and there were plenty of parts I enjoyed, but I realized that the parts I actually enjoyed were the parts that I had forgotten from the book. The rest of it felt like I was reading the comic book but with flashy lights and loud noises. Was it an accurate adaptation? Yes I suppose, but it in doing so we just got a stagnant production. Through it did prove an important point, Watchmen is not “unmakable”. You can do a film of watchmen, and can do it very well, it just requires a good screen writer. So basically if you haven’t read the book and don’t plan to, then I recommend the movie, it’s a nice way to get the basics of the story without reading the book. And if you felt that the book needed just a wee bit more blood and gore, then by all means watch the movie. But if you’ve read the comic and really enjoy the story and want other people to understand why you love it without reading the book, then spare yourself 3 hours.
From
EE