The weekend before last, an event took place that for nearly 20 years, no one thought would ever actually happen-Watchmen, the movie, came out in theaters. Before the movie even begin pre-pre-production, the fandom was split down the middle on whether Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s landmark comic book story would be utter crap or the second golden age of comic-book movies. When the first initial script came flocking about the internet depicting time paradoxes, an assassination plot and Rorschach taking it to your face, much lamenting was done.
Now, a radically different script (at least, in comparison to the original first script) has been given life, finally giving the unwashed masses (your typical fan at San Diego Comicon) a chance to watch a live action version of the film. For some, the movie is once again down the line in terms of opinion, but not quite to the degree of the previous feelings. This, for the most part, is understandably so. Even SG’s own Bryan McBournie gave his own review of the film recently, unhappy with how it went.
There is one thing you need to understand, though: Bryan McBournie is horribly, horribly wrong.
No, really. Hit the jump to find out.
Okay, let’s get something out of the way first: I’ll totally be spoiling the film. Don’t worry, I’ll give a fair enough warning before. In the meantime, enjoy my spoiler free review before I analyze the movie and give it away, give it away, give it away now. Also, this review will probably be fairly long. You have been warned.
Watchmen takes place in an alternate 1985. It’s a story about power in post-WWII 20th century AmericaNixon is still president, having been able to circumvent the two-term rule of the presidency. The how and why is not important. If you’re able to establish and use the principle of “suspension of disbelief ” as proposed by Samuel Taylor Coleridge for a movie involving a boy shooting silk threads from his wrists and a movie that sees Robert Downey Jr. as a lush and not a druggie, then why not this? In the meantime, the threat of impending doom permeates everything-the newspapers, television, even people walking on the street. A painful, radioactive death threatens everyone on this planet-but the most important thing in the world is not the death of the many, but the death of one. Edward Blake, formerly the costumed adventurer known as The Comedian, has been murdered-and if this mystery can’t be solved, then all is lost.
Let’s establish something early on-Watchmen is very faithful to the original story, almost scarily so. If I had to attach a percentage to it, I’d say somewhere around 93 percent. Also, the movie looks absolutely gorgeous. Is it long? Incredibly and (possibly to its inherent detriment) so. Clocking in at a bit over 2 and a half hours, it can get on with the time-and it’s not all of the story too. Considering that Zack Snyder’s original cut was 3 hours long and that a director’s cut to be released in July will splice in the original cut with the separately released Tales of the Black Freighter, you’ve got an entire afternoon planned out for you.
However, Watchmen succeeds. Despite having a dizzily confusing first 30 minutes, Snyder shows remarkable faith in the audience, and he has a remarkable mastery of visual storytelling. Even if the details slip through your fingers on the first viewing, the big picture remains crystal clear thanks to the way that Snyder brings the action to life. If you have never read the book: let some of the details just wash over you, and trust in what’s happening on screen. You’ll understand the main characters and the sweep of the story the first time through; savor everything else on future viewings.
Read the book first, if you can. If you can’t, realize that the characters you’re dealing with are archetypes more than established pieces of fiction. Suspend your disbelief to understand what’s happening here and now. Enjoy what’s happening in front of you and examine the pieces later on to see what you didn’t understand.
Spoilers
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Begin Spoilers.
Even with a 162-minute running time, Snyder’s film has to omit chunks of the source material. See ya later, Mister Calamari. Surprisingly, scenes involving Rorschach breaking a man’s fingers and confronting Veidt (“Possibly homosexual? Must investigate later.”) have been removed as well, along with the death of Hollis Mason. However, the new ending still works. A threat to unite the world together is still created, though the focus is on Dr. Manhattan and his radioactive blue penis, rather than Cthulu-lite. It still works and ultimately would also work in the story if Moore took a more technological rather than magical approach to his writing.
For me, the biggest surprise is the amount of backbone that Dan Dreiberg, Nite Owl II, actually shows. In the book, he’s the audience identification character that muddles around primarily in an incredibly ugly sweater. Here, in the movie, he’s a man that will shout back at you and glare if you do him wrong. He’s not afraid to be on the cuff about things, showing his ability to be petty. Patrick Wilson perfectly captures the guy whose glory days are behind him, but who even at the best of times wasn’t quite as much of a jock as the rest of the guys on the team. Dan’s a fan who had the ability to play dress up, and while the movie doesn’t have time to linger on that concept, Wilson nails it. He brings such a humanity to the character that there’s never any chance of losing Dan as the beating heart of the story.
Without a doubt though, the star of the movie is Rorschach, and rightfully so. Jackie Earle Haley seems born to play the role of Rorschach; most impressive is the way that he understands the dichotomy of the character, and how he plays him in and out of costume. In costume there’s an ease to his physique, and Haley captures the way that Rorschach is both at home in and sickened by the city’s diseased underbelly. He hates the pimps and whores and thieves, but he walks among them like he belongs, and it’s because without them he would be literally nothing. Violence flows naturally from him, requiring all the effort of an exhalation. When the mask is removed Haley becomes a coiled weapon, a switchblade about to be triggered at all times. A caged, furious animal, he has smoldering hate in his eyes… but behind that a vulnerability. He’s naked without that mask, exposed. And Haley finds levels beyond that, especially in Rorschach’s ‘origin’ flashback, when he stops being just a costumed adventurer and turns into something uglier, more violent. Wearing the mask that utterly obscures his features, Haley sells the change from a hero to a twisted vigilante all in his body language. His final scene in the movie is his most powerful, a heart breaking, gut wrenching moment when the actor brings all these pieces together – wounded boy, hero, sociopath – in one truly explosive moment.
Glaring plot holes don’t exist in Watchmen. The story is regarded by many as the “be all, end all” for comic book stories for a good reason-it’s that well written. If you want to blame someone for any “plot holes” in the movie version, blame the studio and their need to fit a 12 issue, incredibly complex and dense illustrated story into a 2 hour movie that clocked at 3 hours before having to be cut to 2 and a half as a compromise. Ultimately, as stated above, the why’s and how’s of background material aren’t important, so much as the what’s are. Fans of the story should be pleased with the movie. Fans of great fiction should be pleased with the movie.
The movie itself is a triumph of adaptation. Those who claimed Watchmen was unfilmable may have been right, if you’re accepting the usual rules of filmmaking. Zack Snyder hasn’t done that, and it makes the film feel incredibly outside of the mainstream, incredibly fresh, incredibly unique. This isn’t Watchmen beaten into submission for movie screens, it’s Watchmen being allowed to exist as itself on movie screens. There will be those who are alienated by this, and those who just don’t have the ability to keep up for nearly three hours. It’s not an easy film, and it’s a movie that demands participation. It’s a movie that requires digestion; opinions walking out of the theater will not be the same as opinions three days later. That’s what makes it a good movie.
You just proved my point. This movie is by, of and for fanboys. You can fill in the huge gaps because you read the comic book, the rest of us are left with a movie that looks cool but makes sense infrequently.
Hold on, so because you might have to think about what happened with the movie and its outcome, that means that it’s automatically a movie for fanboys and fanboys alone? Besides, what huge gaps are you talking about?
No, movies that make you think are a good thing, movies that leave you without explanations throughout is an example of an adaptation meant for the devoted fans. I left the movie thinking it was cool, visually amazing, but just lacked something make it into something more, like an experience.
The origins, history, and whether or not any of them have powers is never explained. If they don’t, they seem to take a beating (smashing through marble, etc.) without major injury. Besides, the Manhattan fortune telling thing leaves some questions, as does the journal. I won’t do any spoilers here though.
Here’s the thing-would the origins of the characters actually move the story any? No.
It’s the same principle as the James Bond franchise-we don’t need to know if the James in this movie is different from the James in another movie. It wouldn’t move the story any further.
The origins of the characters (outside of Veidt) are told in the movie. They’re bare bones compared to, say, Spider-Man or Batman, but they’re all you need. To have more would make the movie (and story) needlessly complicated and long. The pacing would just be awful. Whether someone is truly injured or not in the book is never fully explained either for the same reasons.
The journal plot thing is totally wrapped up at the end of the movie. As for Dr. Manhattan telling the future, that falls under the subject of tachyons and quantum physics-which they mention in the movie.
As much as I loved the movie, Snyder couldn’t help himself from 300izing the regular human characters. It’s his illness, like Michael Bay and his exploding motorcycles:
– Rorschach’s mask should not have morphed like the death of the T-1000. At most, it could display a different pattern whenever the camera returned to him, but the morphing was gratuitous and distracting.
– Punching through concrete was another. Sure, they could throw each other through plate glass, but that’s not as hard as punching through concrete and marble.
– And, of course, everyone knew kung fu.
When Snyder threw those visual elements in, he blurred the lines between the superhero — Dr. Manhattan — and the somewhat regular heroes in masks. These were lines that Alan Moore was very aware of when he wrote their action sequences in the comic books.
It’s because of this that I can grant McB and others some confusion about the characters.
I know they are resolved, but they still have holes in them, I talked about the Manhattan ones with Rick the other day. We can only assume the holes are left by the cuts that were made.
My point it this: was it a good movie? Sure, I even said so in my review. Was it great? Only if you know the source material. I have no doubt this will be a cult classic, but from what I’ve seen, it’s a frame by frame copy of the main plot and a couple subplots, which is not ‘visionary’ nor is it something easily digested by the public.
It’s one thing to please your fanbase, it’s another to market yourself to the uninitiated who have never heard of Watchmen (like me) and say it holds up on its own.
@Rick I like to think that Captain Metropolis taught everyone kung fu. Or Dollar Bill.
All kidding aside, I was a little disappointed with how old they made Captain Metropolis. Refresh me-did Rorschach or Silk Spectre punch through granite? I can see Nite Owl doing so based off of the suit. Ozy due to his suit. But I can’t remember the other two.
I personally didn’t care too much for the “I know kung fu” or “Hulk Smashing” of stuff, but I just chalked it up to having to mainstream the movie for the general public and audience.
Now, Rorschach’s mask, I always wondered why it was different, even in the book. I ended up theorizing that the images constantly changing were based on the mood of whoever looked at him coupled with eye witness testimony theory in law, kind of like how some people in Gotham would say that Batman was a man, while others would say that they saw a gigantic bat. It was all the perception of the audience. Coincidentally enough, the literal constant shifting of the mask is totally canon.
@McBournie They spoke of tachyons and Manhattan’s ability to manipulate them. Tachyons, theoretical particles that can move faster than light particles, exist in real life (at least, in the realest way that theoretical objects can exist for scientists).
I mean, I can see plot nuances being slightly unable to be understood, but plot holes? The movie patched up the story. A plot hole exists if there’s no resolution. If you don’t understand an aspect of a movie, but know that it’s been resolved, that’s a plot nuance. The precogs in Minority Report. Plot hole. Parachuting with an all white ‘chute despite wearing all black to “sneak in” in Air Force One? Plot hole. Manipulation of currently accepted theoretical elements of modern day string theory? Not a plot hole.
Now, a plot hole that I will grant you-the original Silk Spectre’s voice. It’s not nearly as gravelly and old and withered as it should be.