There’s not much more to talk about regarding “Watchmen”, which is actually kind of interesting. It seems that no one can agree on anything.
The one thing they can agree on isn’t the music, the costumes, the dialogue, the sex scene, or the acting. It’s only that it certainly was… adapted, wasn’t it? “Watchmen” is slavishly devoted to the source material, with director Zack Snyder hanging off Alan Moore’s beard like he’s trying to rescue Rapunzel.
(I’d be remiss to not mention artist Dave Gibbon’s equal contribution to making the novel great, but he doesn’t have a beard).
List of items in Alan Moore's Beard: Battle Armor, Zack Snyder's throat, The Complete Peanuts
Also, finding the movie’s pulse is difficult because the way viewers consumed the film differs so wildly. Fans of the graphic novel essentially saw their beloved story translated panel-for-panel, making it impossible to differentiate how they felt about the film versus the original text. For non-fans, they seem to be either wrapped up in the eye candy of it all, or sinking under the weight of an incomprehensible film filled with scenes that only work if you know how they fit into the source.
I’ve struggled to write about “Watchmen” because I consumed it like a crazy person. I love the graphic novel, I’ve discussed it in a college course, and read a ton of differing opinions on it. I still have no clue how I felt about the film as a film… minute to minute I either loved it or hated it.
If I loved it, it was because of the reasons the original novel works. It really hasn’t lost its luster as a deconstruction of the superhero in both of its major forms: lone vigilante and iconic team. Major comic book stories usually follow in one of two ways, continuing the theme of superheroes as apocalyptic harbingers, constantly playing out their little human dramas amidst gunfights and atom bombs. Or, they take the opposite tactic and crawl tooth and nail away from anything serious, like “The Umbrella Academy”. If you haven’t read it, there’s a dude with a gorilla body, an insane orchestra attempting to play a song to invoke the apocalypse, and Zombie Gustave Eiffel with his rocket ship Eiffel Tower.
Unfortunately, movie fans have really only seen the former. The movies that come closest to approximating the joy of superheroics are certainly the Spider-Man films, and even those are mostly mired in angst. Somewhere along the line, film quality got largely associated with darkness and drama. “Watchmen”, then, means very little because non-fans have nothing to relate it to. All they know is the exact thing that “Watchmen” gave birth to, not the essential context it was born out of. They’re the “underwear perverts” Warren Ellis always talks about, unable to comment on anything in a world were “The Dark Knight” makes a billion dollars.
Because your script made us?
Looking at it purely as a film, Zack Snyder did a mostly admiral job. He was given a terrible dichotomy to work with, taking a dense graphic novel and translating it into a watchable, mainstream movie. The almost three hour running time is long, in the traditional sense, but it’s not bloated. The pacing is fantastic, with very little bulky fan service. Unfortunately, the story as it’s presented, due to lack of cinematic breath is a little Hot Topic. It’s all joyless violence and vapid friction.
I hope your pile of money makes you happy, Gibbons
Although Snyder did a great job adapting the material, he still manages to show how limited he is as a director. It’s not that the story is perfect, because it’s far from it. It lacks nuance as a stand alone piece. So we’re left with something bright, gothic, and violent, which tends to cover any message the film has. Being a fan of it will be associated with some methodologies mainstream audiences simply refuse to subscribe to. Without the context, it loses part of the message, and we’re left with something more traditional than comic fans would’ve liked.
The few failings of “Watchmen” as a film are due to Snyder’s lack of vision. His music cues only work part of the time, and when they don’t it’s pretty dramatic thud, audience immersion tumbling further down a well like a discarded penny. “99 Luftballoons” draws a laugh when it shouldn’t, then promptly goes away. It’s not that Snyder shouldn’t have used it at all, it’s that he really had no sense of why he was using it. We understand it’s the 80s from contextual cues and the brilliant art direction. We don’t need fifteen seconds of Nena playing as someone enters an upscale restaurant. The failure of the non-score soundtrack couldn’t be helped in the way Snyder was intent on using it, because he’s substituting the music for visual representation, and that’s a difficult balancing act. He’s forced into using things with immediate recognizability, which means that someone brings a lifetime of their own experiences to the viewing. “Sounds of Silence” during a funeral, it’s not a deft underscoring of the scene. It’s obvious pandering, the audience knows it, and they react accordingly by laughing during your dramatic scene.
Garfunkel is just happy people are laughing at things that aren't his name and/or hair.
Some reviewers are saying that Snyder shows an inability to direct actors in “Watchmen”, but the acting is almost uniformly great. Jackie Earle Haley has gotten all the good press for his flawless Rorschach, but he’s only part of a fantastic ensemble. Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Jeffrey Dean Morgan all have star-making turns, and the two actors who stumble through the movie, Matthew Goode and Malin Ackerman simply aren’t asked to do anything requiring any talent. The script really lets down Goode’s Ozymandias, robbing the character of its subtly and telegraphing his decisions from miles away. Ackerman simply doesn’t elevate her material, and she’s not helped by being in the goofiest sex scene in the history of film.
Yes, goofier than this.
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3 comments:
So did you like it?
Like I said in the review, I did like it. But that's mostly because I love the source so much, not because set aside, it's that brilliant a movie.
Not a regular reader of your blog. Just here after researching some obscure Alan Moore oddness. Can't quite believe the ABC books are a decade old.
With regard to Snyder's approach to Watchmen, I agree with some of the things you said. I'd stop short of saying this was a great adaptation in any way. I believe that a good adaptation has to live on its own merits. I just didn't find the film providing anything that made sense on its own. I tried to view it as though I had never read the books and couldn't find a reason for it beyond eye candy.
It seemed to me that Snyder's direction was too on-the-nose. My big complaint as a fan is that he never pulled back enough to let the audience make up their own mind. Consider the music cues when Veidt is introduced. The score at that point tells everyone in the audience that they're being snookered. Maybe it's just me, but I would rather have had my doubts about him. Point being: Snyder doesn't have any apparent taste for subtlety.
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