Well, it's been a while since I've written here on the blog, and there's been a couple of reasons for that. But I think what it partly boils down to is that it's been a really busy week, and in addition, I knew that the post I've been waiting a week to write would require a lot of time, effort, and deliberation.
And yes, I'm talking about my review of WATCHMEN.
In the week since I've seen the movie, the public reaction and criticism from the press has only snowballed, and it's gotten to the point where, in addition to a mere review of the movie, I feel that a full-fledged rant is now warranted. Because, man, regardless of what you liked or disliked about Watchmen, you have to admit that the feeding-frenzy that's been surrounding the movie's box office prospects has been nothing short of ridiculous. It's enough to make one empathize with Alan Moore's position that he wants nothing to do with the film adaptations of his work irrespective of the quality of the movies.
Look, I get that movies are a business. And I get that it's a national fixation to track every big movie's box office take. And yes, I realize that a studio like Warner Bros. has invested millions in a movie like Watchmen and is eagerly looking to see whether they will recoup that cost.
But what kills me is when the critics and snarky web-pundits attack a movie just to spite the fanboys. They are looking at Watchmen and all the talk of how Zack Snyder stayed faithful to the graphic novel and saying "Look, see what happens when you stay faithful to a comic book? You don't get a mainstream blockbuster!"
I mean, do they realize the source material they are dealing with? Did all of these critics really expect an R-rated, postmodern deconstruction of the superhero mythos to be the next Titanic? Sure, Warner Brothers justifiably tried to market their movie to those who enjoyed the darker take on Batman in The Dark Knight, and tried to drum up a lot of hype and excitement around Watchmen. And to a certain demo, the hype was very much justified - I mean, read my previous post. For someone like me, who regards Watchmen as potentially the best and most influential work I've ever read, well, of course I'm going to be hyped, or at the least extremely curious, about this movie. And I'm going to blog about it and tell friends about it and spread the good word. And you know what? Even though I had a lot of trepidation about Watchmen even being made into a movie, I remained excited simply for the reason that this was the moment where a very niche thing that a lot of us in the know have loved for a long time would be put out there to the mainstream. Somewhere around 1995 or 1996, I knew approximately zero other people with whom I could analyze the finer points of Watchmen. Now it's everywhere, the characters are part of mainstream pop culture, and best of all, the hype around the movie inspired several people I know to check out the source material. That in and of itself is pretty cool.
But that said, I hate the whole story around how Watchmen got made in the first place. The fact that Warner was dead-set on making the movie regardless of who wrote it, directed it, or acted in it. I hate that a venerable work like Watchmen was reduced to being some undated line on a corporate accounting sheet. I am in fact happy that a fan and a talent like Zack Snyder decided to take on the challenge of adapting Watchmen, but I still don't like the circumstances that brought the film into being. It's like there's now some unwritten law out there that every cool comic book that was ever made just has to be a movie. And it goes both ways. The hardcore geeks will bitch and moan dissecting every genre movie that gets made, and yet it's like a given work can't be considered as truly legit until the Hollywood fatcats have by-God deemed it worthy of being made into a movie.
Because, geez, would anyone have really cared if there had never been a Watchmen movie? Sure, it's cool that such a landmark work is deemed worthy of adaptation. But would it kill Hollywood to make a couple of movies that are actually created AS MOVIES, with that particular medium in mind from the get-go? Would that be so hard? The irony is, of course, that Watchmen was created very, very specifically to be a comic book. Its characters, its formatting, its plotline - they are all very much a commentary, satire, and examination of the history and future of the comic book medium. So even though it makes fanboys all tingly when there's a Watchmen movie out there, does it really make any sense on a logical level to make this story into a movie, a story that is of, about, and forever associated with the history of an entirely different medium?
But putting the question of whether this movie should have even been made aside, how about the question of why it was made. When Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons created the comic book series, do you think they thought they were creating a blockbuster multimedia franchise? Do you think they were thinking about trying to make Watchmen cool? About making it appeal to a mainstream, all-encompassing demographic? Of course not - Alan Moore was doing exactly what he always does - writing whatever the hell he felt like writing, for the sake of creating something new and exciting and thought-provoking. I mean holy #$%#, what a concept! CREATING SOMETHING for the sake of art!
And you know what, Watchmen, the comic book, became WATCHMEN, the "greatest comic book of all time," not because of some crazy marketing hype. Nope, it became legendary simply because it was that damn good. Sure, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons already had a bit of starpower when they wrote the book in the 80's. Sure, DC Comics pushed the comic and obviously has done a gret job in the years since its release of keeping the graphic novel in print and in the hearts and minds of fanboys. But part of the reason you've got to love the world of comics is that it's a place where ideas that are original, experimental, or just plain crazy can live and even thrive.
So this brings me to the letter written by Watchmen screenwriter David Hayter last week, posted all over the web. Hayter pleads with fans to go check out Watchmen a second time, because if it doesn't do big box office in Week 2, the studios will use the movie's underwhelming drawing power as justification for not doing any more big-budget, adult-themed genre movies. Personally, I was surprised that Hayter seemed to buy into all of the Hollywood cynicism that's out there. First of all, he should just be proud that he and Zack Snyder made a pretty damn good movie. When all is said and done, it's not like he or Snyder or anyone else in the movie is going to lose their shirts. We're still talking about a movie that will eventually make over $100 million, especially when you think about the monstrous DVD and Blu-Ray sales that are yet to come. Secondly, why play right into the hands of all the naysayers who put Watchmen on this pedastal only to gleefully try to knock it down?
I mean, come on! Were critics declaring the end of the comic book movie after the likes of Ghost Rider or Fantastic Four 2? How about we go all the way back to (shudder) League of Extraordinary Gentleman? That movie a.) sucked, b.) was a disgrace to its Alan Moore-penned source material, and c.) performed unimpressively at the box-office. I guess that one spelled the end of the comic book movie, huh? By the current logic of David Hayter, Watchmen should never have been made into a movie, because League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and V For Vendetta underpeformed at the box office.
My hope is simply this: that a Preacher movie or a Y: The Last Man movie will get made because some director or writer out there was a huge fan of the comic and has a kickass vision for how they'd bring it to the big screen. Not because some studio has it pencilled in on their schedule for 2012. Yes, I know this is a somewhat naive way to look at things, but I think its fair to call out Hollywood and all of its critics, pundits, and defamers out there on their seeming inability to focus on anything other than the almighty dollar. I mean, never before have I read so many reviews of a movie that discussed everything BUT it's plot and themes.
Just yesterday, I was eating dinner with some friends, and someone who had recently seen Watchmen asked me a question that really surprised me. He asked me what I thought about the ending - about whether Rorshach's determination to spread the truth about Ozymandius was morally justifiable. I mean, this is the same question that fanboys have been debating for years, and yet in the wake of the movie, people only want to talk about whether the film was too confusing for the mainstream or whether or not it it made enough at the box office. I mean, for the love of god, people are more focused on Dr. Manhattan's nakedness than they are on the question of what it means to be an omnipotent, god-like being.
I love the movies and always will, but the firestorm around Watchmen embodies a lot of what I've grown to dislike about Hollywood. How Hollywood takes other people's creative works and builds them up and then tears them down if they don't translate into instant blockbusters. How so often, box office performance is magically linked to creative success. Speed Racer flopped? It must really suck! Watchmen is underperforming? Well then hot damn, all those drooling geeks must have been wrong! If Watchmen is really the greatest comic book story ever told, then how on earth could it make less bank than 300? Never mind the fact that Watchmen will likely live on as an enduring cash cow for Warner Bros. for years if not decades to come ... if it got beat in its second week by Witch Mountain, it clearly spells the end for R-rated superheroes - right? The worst part is that now there is this whole league of snarky reviewers who blame "the geeks" for not coming out to support "their" movie. Again -- who the hell cares who did or did not come to see the movie? The only people that should be upset are WB marketers who apparently placed a whole lot of stock in the idea that one of the weirdest, darkest, and most impenetrable stories ever told could somehow be the next Dark Knight in terms of box office. And no, the movie's box office does not suddenly give some internet columnist the right to call into question the underlying greatness of the comic book or the validity of the medium as a whole. I mean, come on - the same people who follow Britney Spears' every move and pant in anticipation of the next Jennifer Aniston movie are going to call into question the works of Alan freaking Moore? Like I said, it's almost enough to make you kind of start to get where Moore is coming from with his whole "screw / ignore Hollywood" mindset.
Now, for those of you wondering if this movie is actually any good ...
WATCHMEN Review:
- Okay, wow, so there's a Watchmen movie. And man, is it hard to actually think about clearly and cohesively, because it's almost impossible to review it without essentially writing a comparison to the comic book. Also, it's hard not to write a review that is simply a critique of other reviews - because as I tried to articulate above, the critics have been incredibly all over the place with this one. It's frustrating, because superhero movies have, of late, been so propped up as All-American, mainstream pop entertainement that some people seem genuinely surprised and angry when a movie about superheroes comes along that essentially deconstructs the whole mythology. Watchmen as a story is darkly satirical, nihilistic, violent, and essentially operates on the premise that, if you really think about it, becoming a superhero would require one to be a freak, a pervert, a megalomaniac, or just plain wrong in the head. That goes against everything that the mainstream loves about heroes - that sure, they have their flaws, but ultimately, their moral code is such that things ultimately boil down to black vs. white morality plays in which the good guy will ultimately come out on top.
Watchmen turns that entire concept on its head. You have Rorshach, whose moral code is SO rigid that he takes Batman-style vigilantism to new depths. You have Dr. Manhattan, whose Superman omnipotence essentially makes him amoral. And you have Ozymandius, whose drive to become an Alexander-like conquerer / uniter convinces him that any means justifies his vision of a utopian endgame.
So before I even dissect Watchmen, the movie almost needs a couple of disclaimers:
a.) Watchmen is a complex deconstruction of superhero archtypes, and also of the history and conventions of superhero comic books since their inception just prior to World War II.
b.) Watchmen presents a fascinating story and characters, but it also was originally written for an audience that grew up steeped in superhero and comic book mythology. An interest in or curiosity about this genre and its history / mythology is not required, but is certainly beneficial, in getting the full enjoyment possible from Watchmen.
I point these things out not to be a giant nerd, but to forewarn that Watchmen is a story that is almost impossible to tell as an easily-digestible, mainstream blockbuster movie. It's a story that's best discovered as a coming of age rite of passage, as a gateway into a world beyond children's stories into something darker and more sinister. It's not a story for jaded critics or close-minded cynics. And it's for that reason that generations of budding fanboys have, after childhoods filled reading brightly-colored, PG-rated superhero comics, graduated on to Watchmen at some point in early adolescence and subsequently had their minds blown. I mean, superheroes cursing, having sex, being flawed and even morally corrupt? Sign me up!
And maybe in the years since 1985, that once-revolutionary concept has been dimmed a bit if only because Watchmen helped to usher in a new era of grim n' gritty comics. But what I like about WATCHMEN, the movie, is that it doesn't cheaply try to pretend that Watchmen is something that it's not. The movie transports you back to 1985, and presents the work as is. There's some new flash, some new polish, but that's about it. It doesn't retool Watchmen into an allegory for 9/11 (even though the entire premise can't help but evoke that tragedy). It doesn't change the setting, the tone, the language, the sex, or the violence. If anything, the movie amps it all up. There's been a lot of debate about whether Zack Snyder stuck *too* close to the graphic novel. Well, I don't think anyone can argue that Snyder made the right choice in keeping the essentials. This IS the world of Watchmen brought to life, and that in and of itself is pretty awesome.
But by the same token, there are some basic storytelling questions you have to look at here. The fact is, Watchmen was originally told in 12 dense, information-packed volumes. How can one possibly fit all that into a single feature film?
Snyder and co make a valiant effort, but there are some inherent limitations. For most of the movie, you won't really miss the street-level characters that populate the graphic novel - the old newsie and the kid who frequents his stand, for example. But at the movie's climactic ending moments, you really do miss these characters, because the movie never really gives us a "man on the street" perspective of its world. What that means is that certain events lack the emotional impact that they should have. We're watching the gods from atop Mt. Olympus - in the comic, the camera is pulled back and we see that thee are millions of everyday people affected by the actions of the Watchmen.
But despite having to condense a lot of material into a short timespan, Snyder still makes his biggest mistake in not allowing the intensity to properly build, in not lingering on key moments small and large. Snyder films too much of this movie as if he's making another 300. But Watchmen's story is both dense and yet also reliant on big moments of emotional and dramatic impact. Snyder dazzles us with amazing imagery and f/x, but sometimes, he fails to do justice to at least a couple of the money shots.
I'm thinking of Ozymandius' big endgame speech. I'm thinking of the reveal of Ozymadias as the mask-killer in the first place. I'm thinking of the destruction of New York and the emotional impact thereafter.
Some of this is due to some key actors (Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt, for one) not quite delivering the kind of iconic, dramatic performance that was needed from them. But part of it is, again, Snyder simply not pacing the narrative for maximum dramatic pop. Watchmen is a huge, bombastic story that should leave an audience shaking from its impact. Some parts of the film accomplished that, but others seemed too glossed over, too rushed.
That said, the care and detail that went into the movie is staggering. The art direction is phenomenal, the costumes (mostly) dead-on. There are scenes featuring Rorshach that are just overwhelmingly, jaw-droppingly cool, and that's from a visual standpoint alone. The opening of the movie plain and simply gave me chills, and is perhaps Watchmen's best overall sequence - it's an intro that artfully takes much of the comic's elaborate backstory and condenses it into a rollercoaster ride of an alternate history lesson. This scene is Snyder at his best - providing his own take on the material while staying 100% true to its spirit. I mean, come on, the scenes of the 1940's-era mystery men in outlandish costumes that look straight out of 1940's superhero fiction? Amazingly kickass. The scenes of said heroes present at various historical moments and eras - from Vietnam to the birth of glam rock? Again, kickass.
Now, that opening is a scene is an example of where the movie's iconic rock soundtrack works to perfection. Dylan's "The Times, They Are a-Changin'" plays as we span decades in minutes, and it's a perfect synchronicity of sound and image and idea. But at the same time, I go back and forth on what I think of so many of the film's crucial scenes being paired with iconic rock tunes. Was it cool to see Night Owl and Rorschach flying through the arctic to the tune of "All Along the Watchtower" - ? You bet it was. But ... would the movie as a whole have worked better if it let its awesome, 80's-style synth soundtrack provide the ambiance as opposed to sometimes-distracting and not-exactly-subtle pop songs? Well, you could make the argument. Regardless, I do think that even if certain songs worked in the context of certain scenes, the overall effect was overkill. As much as I like 99 Luft Balloons, was it really needed here, for example? And yeah, though I didn't find it quite as cringe-worthy as some others did, Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah" during the in-flight sex-scene was probably, again, a bit much.
Now, I've talked about one or two performances that were lacking, but what really helps make Watchmen explode off the screen are a couple of key acting turns that really bring these iconic characters to life.
Jackie Earl Haley, for one, rules it as Rorschach. No arguments can be made about this - Haley is everything one could want from an on-screen Rorschach. The gravelly voice, the tortured soul, the emotionally-scarred face, even the spikey red hair from the comics - it's all here. Haley delivers a shockingly powerful, iconic performance that captures everything that has made Rorshach one of fiction's most popular cult-fave characters. The dark and tortured heart and soul of Watchmen, Haley deserves immense props for delivering the performance of a lifetime here.
I also really liked Patrick Wilson as Night Owl -- visually, the guy really does capture the essence of the comic character. Emotionally, Wilson is also spot-on. Sad, lonely, removed from the exxentric yet thrilling lifestyle that had once given him purpose, Wilson as Night Owl is in many ways the "hero" of the story, even if his character in the film seems a bit softened from his comic book counterpart. And yeah, it's unfortunate that they had to give him that final, cheesy "NOOOOOOO!" towards the end of the movie, but otherwise, I thought Wilson's performance was pretty darn good.
The two other real standouts are Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan and Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian. Morgan is particularly great as the grizzled antihero whose death kicks off the movie's central mystery. Crudup is very good as Dr. Manhattan, but there wasn't *quite* the level of iconic impact I would have liked to have seen. Some of this may be due to the fact that many of his scenes were with Malin Ackermann. Visually, Ackermann looks exactly like the image of Silk Spectre II from the comic. Otherwise though, Ackermann's delivery at times is a bit flat. Still, I didn't think she was that bad. Those who are flat-out panning her performance are going a bit overboard. Across the board, the rest of the cast is good to excellent. But again, as a fan of the source material it's hard to tell how the very compressed plot and characteracter arcs ame across to the newcomer. I mean, to me, Carla Gugino seemed quite good as Silk Spectre I, but by the same token, the movie didn't quite give her enough time to really shine or grab the spotlight. As a whole, it did kind of sadden me that we didn't get to see more of the golden-age heroes The Minutemen, as their story and the whole legacy aspect of Watchmen is one of the most interesting aspects of the comic. While it's true that some of the supplemental materials (such as the DVD doc "Under the Hood") will delve more into this aspect of the story, it would have been cool to see more of Hollis Mason, of Hooded Justice, and of that whole era. But I will reiterate, as someone who really geeks out for WWII-era heroes, all those scenes of The Minutemen were cool as hell.
In that respect, something that Snyder really does nail is that oddball juxtaposition of the real with the surreal that to me is so much a part of Watchmen. I mean, part of what worked so well with Dave Gibbons' original artwork was that it painted the Watchmen not as cartoonish comic heroes, but as normally-proportioned, exceedingly unremarkable people. Night Owl had paunch. The Comedian was old and flabby. Even Dr. Manhattan just looked like a blue bald guy with an atom symbol on his forehead. Dave Gibbons' artistic vision is in this way really captured to a T here, with one exception ...
... and that is that Snyder can't resist the urge to up the ante and make these characters "super." I do think that the superhuman-seeming fighting skills, agility, etc. of the non-super characters could have been slightly toned-down for the sake of keeping a gritty / realistic tone. The violence in the comic is actually fairly subtle and elegant - only gratuitous in certain select scenes. In the movie there's a lot of videogame-style brutality that doesn't always jive with the spirit of the comic. Same goes for the sex - whereas in the comic it was much more subtle and off-camera, in the movie it is anything but.
But back to the acting for one second -- the main person I need to take an additional few sentances to talk about is Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt. He presents an interesting twist on the character, making Ozymandias into a somewhat slimy schemer from the get-go. To me, what made the character such a great villain in the book is that Ozymandius is square-jawed, statuesque, and the embodiment of the heroic ideal. He's basically Batman without all the emotional problems ... or so it seems. The reveal of Ozymandias as the villain of Watchmen is one of the great twists I've ever read. As a kid I was genuinely shocked to discover that Veidt was in fact the dreaded mask-killer. In the movie, I think this reveal was too telegraphed and not dramatic enough. And again, part of this is that I'm not sure if Goode was the right choice for this role. The lines he has to work with - many of them tried and true classics lifted directly from the comic - are just not delivered with the gravitas they should be.
As for the details of the much-debated changed ending, I did miss the "squid" from the comics but realistically I realize that there is no possible way Snyder could have stuck to this ending in the confines of a 2.5 hour movie. The substitution of Dr. Mahattan as the big bad mostly worked for me, and really, to me the key scene is not the squid, but the aftermath - the confrontation between Dr. Manhattan and Rorshach, and the epilogue, in which Rorshach's journal is found, hinting that even the best-laid plans of mice and men can come crashing down at any moment. Snyder really nailed both of these scenes, as far as I'm concerned. Jackie Earl Haley's performance was spine-tingling as he screamed at Dr. Manahattan to put him out of his misery. Similarly, the discovery of the journal by the lowly gopher at the New Frontier rag was spot-on, pitch-perfect.
So ... if it sounds like I am going back and forth on Watchmen - I am. But that's inherently what happens when a superlative work in one medium becomes a merely very good one in another. Watchmen is one hell of a movie. Densely packed with plot and character, riveting from start to finish, and visually stunning. As a movie fan, I would put it right up there with some of the best darker, harder-edged comic adaptations - V For Vendetta, Sin City, 300, etc. Is Watchmen as good of a movie as it is a graphic novel? Not even close. But as a movie, it is a pretty remarkable achievement - it is Watchmen brought to life in a way that most never thought would be possible or plausible. Knowing the history of this production, knowing all of the cringe-worthy treatments that were out there, and knowing what might have been, at the end of the day, I have almost nothing but praise for what Snyder and team accomplished here. The movie version of Watchmen is the perfect primer for the classic comic, hopefully something that will inspire a new generation to discover Alan Moore and his writing and all of the greats that came after. By the same token though, Watchmen is in its own right a highly entertaining and visually amazing film - despite some of my complaints and comparisons, I wasn't bored for a second, and I know it's a movie that I'll want to revisit, and analyze, and discuss. Maybe one day we'll get that 12-part HBO series or whatever it is that fans have been calling for. But for now, I do feel lucky that we got a movie, given the limitations and pressures of the medium, that is this reverent to and worthy of its source material.
My Grade: A-
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