I said I’d do it, and I did it: Last Friday, I went to see Watchmen, despite never having read a frame of the comic. I have a few thoughts, and I’d love to hear your responses as well.
Since there are so many reviews of this movie floating around, I’m going to explore other questions that it raises … Questions about the necessary evils of adaptation, the value of critical responses, etc.
And what the hell… I’ll review it, too. With mild spoilers...
Thought #1 : Any Movie That Gets Such a Broad Range of Responses Has Got to Be Worth Seeing
Metacritic reports that four print critics gave Watchmen a perfect score, while four others thought it was a near-perfect failure. There’s also plenty of reviews in between.
Bloggers are just as divided. Roommate Joe, who has read the graphic novel, was fairly pleased with what he saw, but if you check the comments on his post, you’ll find some serious hating.
I know that no one agrees on everything, and that films adapted from cult material are especially likely to elicit strong reactions, but few recent films have provoked such a broad range of feedback. Metacritic’s average score for the film is 56—putting it in the “mixed or average reviews” category—but that ranking doesn’t reflect how strongly people felt on either side of the debate.
And that’s exciting. A work of art that can’t generate a consensus is clearly affecting people, and that is so much better than creating no reaction at all.
Thought #2: It’s Weird for Me to Live on This Side of the Adaptation Mountain
In the comments section of my last Watchmen post, Collin H. made a striking point about people who see this film without reading the source material. “They’ll never know the difference between eating a gourmet meal,” he said, “and just being shown a movie of one.”
I’ve thought about that a lot. Normally I’m the one who has eaten the meal. When a movie is based on a play or a stage musical, I’ve almost always read it or seen it live. When a movie is based on a novel, I try to read it before I go.
But this time, I didn’t read the book in advance. I just don’t have experience reading comics, and it really is an acquired skill, like reading a play. I feel adrift in the movement between panels, unsure where to put my eyes, discombobulated by the interplay of text balloons and static images. Comics aren’t a form I understand, and so I rely on adaptations to help me enter their stories. It’s not about having disdain for the original material, but about wanting the material to arrive in a medium that’s already familiar, whose language already makes sense.
And like I said, it was odd for me to have no access to Watchmen’s mother tongue. I was aware of relying on the translator to tell me everything, even though I know that translations always drop things from their sources.
That said, I’d much rather know the translated version of Watchmen than no version at all. And that leads me to…
Thought #3: I Enjoyed Myself
On the whole, I enjoyed this movie. I liked the density of the plot, and I liked the satisfying-but-not-happy ending. Even more than The Dark Knight or X-Men, this film blurred the line between good and evil, showing how each of its characters was capable of both.
That’s especially why I liked Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) and Ozymandias (Matthew Goode.) For all the good the former did, I found him repulsive, and for all the evil of the latter, I saw the nobility in his ultimate plans. (That final moment, where it seems Rorschach’s well-intentioned journal will undo the positive effects of Ozymandias’ crimes, was deliciously complex.)
Another thing I dug about this film? It’s length. I initially thought it was too long, but as I’ve thought about it, I’m glad that director Zack Snyder luxuriated in telling such a meaty story. For all that was cut from the comic, this movie still gave us far more character development than most action-oriented films. I mean, I learned more about Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman) in this movie than I did about Storm in three X-Men films.
That said…
Thought #4: This Movie May Be Better Than Most Comic Book Films, But I Don’t Need to See It Again
I did have a good time, but  the following things made this a one-time-only experience:
– Malin Akerman and Patrick Wilson’s performances left me cold. Akerman floated above her scenes without connecting to them, and as a potbellied former hero, Wilson was all mannered fidgets and limp smiles. (I generally love Wilson’s work, so his phoniness here surprised me.)
– Jeffery Dean Morgan’s character (The Comedian) was boring. One remorseful scene can’t make up for all that repetitive brutality, which kept reiterating the same damn point about the futility of trying to improve upon human nature. Whatever, y’all. I got it the first time. Can he do something else now?
– The script. Good lord, the script. As Roommate Joe said, a comic book movie can get away with some blunt dialogue, but there were just too many creaky lines in this one to be excused.
Next time you’re in a movie, listen for the following exchange, which pops up early in Watchmen:
Character 1: Listen…
Character 2: No, you listen!
No one on earth has ever said this. It’s a faux-sassy exchange that’s only had by characters in lazily written films. When you hear those lines (or lines like them) in Watchmen, try to focus on your popcorn for a second.
17 responses so far ↓
1 Brooke // Mar 9, 2009 at 6:11 am
I outright hated this film (review is at my blog), but to sum it up I thought it was far too long and it had too many surface flaws for me to really get into the depths that a lot of people have been saying it had.
Where the script is concerned, when a film offfers you up the line: “Can you just tell me how it all ends?” and you want to shout “YES!” I think the movie has failed.
And let us not speak of Hallelujah.
2 katy // Mar 9, 2009 at 8:27 am
A.O. Scott called the scene that involves Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah “this year’s hands-down winner of the bad movie sex award, superhero division.” He’s in the hater column when it comes to this film, though.
Moreover, Scott adds (hilariously and aptly):
“By the way, can we please have a moratorium on the use of this song in movies? Yes, I too have heard there was a secret chord that David played, and blah blah blah, but I don’t want to hear it again. Do you?”
His whole review makes me laugh, actually, although it’s a completely catty and superficial laugh since I haven’t seen the film.
Frankly (as I’ve said to you, Mark) I’m getting a little burnt out on films based on graphic novels that supposedly break all the rules of graphic novels, that are darker than *ever* before! As a non-reader of graphic novels, I have two thoughts about this:
(1) Is it too much to hope that a movie based on a comic book — oops, graphic novel — have some element of the joy and adventure, the gleeful guilty pleasure that seems to draw kids to comic books? Is it impossible for something to be both serious and fun? (2) If we don’t like the associations and conventions of graphic novels so much, if we are so bound and determined to transgress them … why don’t we just make movies about SOMETHING FREAKING ELSE in the whole big wide world?
3 Russ Jackson // Mar 9, 2009 at 9:06 am
I really enjoyed this film. I think after 20 years this is probably the best adaptation of Watchmen we’ll ever get. Most of the major scenes look like they were lifted right from the panels themselves.
Overall this film invokes the same feelings I had when I first read Watchmen, so I think the film succeeds in that regard. That said, it’s no substitute for reading the book. There’s a great deal of subtext and backstory missing from the film, and I don’t think the story stands as strong without the Curse of the Black Freighter allegory mixed in.
It’s also a hard story to tell linearly. Many events happen simultaneously, something easier to depict showing panels side by side, etc. than it is in the frame of a movie.
As long as we’re discussing spoilers, I think my major disappointment was the way they portrayed Ozymandias. From the very beginning, the way the camera lingered on him, the snarky way he spoke every line, it made it seem obvious that he was the “villain”. And I hate that because he’s really not a villain at all. Even still it’s like they tip you off from the beginning that he’s got something up his sleeve.
I also had a really hard time with Jon’s voice in the film. I always imagined it sounding cold and hollow, and it was way too soft and empathetic.
I’ve made peace with the changed ending, and despite everyone being way too pretty it was still fun to watch. I think it stands up to multiple viewings, just as the book requires multiple readings. I’ll probably see it again.
To me the music was one of the best parts of the film. Every song was fitting to the scene, yes, even Hallelujah. I love Leonard Cohen.
That said, seeing the film didn’t make me enjoy the story any more, and I have to really question why it was made to begin with.
4 MEP // Mar 9, 2009 at 10:56 am
I am sitting in the same spot as you — I saw the movie yesterday on IMAX, never read the comic(s, or whatever). I too really liked it, despite it feeling a little long, and Ackerman’s not-great Xena Jr. performance. I LOVED the opening credits, and though both Rorshach and Dr. Manhattan were great characters. My problems with the movie, plot-wise, were these (spoilers):
– Why was the Comedian worth avenging? He raped fellow superheroes, and killed JFK, his pregnant baby mama, and innocent civilians?
– As far as I know, unbuckling your belt during an unsuccessful rape attempt cannot impregnate a woman, even one with superpowers. What gives?? And why was Jupiter so devastated when she found out who her father was? She wasn’t even on a quest to find out this information.
– Why was the public hatred of superheros so intense? This was much better explained in the juvenile version of this movie — The Incredibles.
5 InfoMofo // Mar 9, 2009 at 11:05 am
OK I didn’t get to see the movie until Sunday, and I had heard pretty mediocre reviews up until that point so I went in with pretty low expectations, but I really liked that movie.
Good stuff:
1) Jeffrey Dean Morgan was awesome. The character of the Comedian actually made more sense to me on screen than he did on the book. Out of all the actors he’s also the one that looked right at each of the three ages he was made up for. That guy just needs to be in more shit.
2) In general I like to watch comic book movies and judge them on the merits of themselves, so the original content is what really gets me. The title sequence of this movie was crazy good, as were some of the original fight scenes.
3) For the most part, I liked the musical choices, and they added something new, although in some cases they were jarring. The sex scene was a little gratuitous.
4) The ending of the movie was better than the book. There, I said it.
The bad parts:
1) OK, why was there so much flaccid blue wang on the screen? It got a little ridiculous. The wang:boob ratio in this movie was unprecedentedly high.
2) Ozymandius was underdeveloped at the beginning, to the point that someone who hadn’t read the book was probably completely WTF’d when they did the reveal.
3) I was baffled by the details they chose to tone down from the book, considering they kept in the gore and grit for the most part. Rorschach’s killing of the pedophile in the book is much more off-screen, but still adds a lot to his character. It’s not like it would have been any more violent, and they already saw off someone’s hands later in the movie. It was just an odd change.
4) Rorscach’s odd speech patterns are fine in the first part of the movie when he’s doing voiceover, but when he’s actually speaking like yoda out loud to Nite Owl later in the movie, it’s pretty stupid (in a way that I guess is not as noticeable in the book).
The other dumb thing (and this is just me), is I feel really dumb for paying 5 bucks extra to see this in IMAX. It’s not the size of the big blue wang, it’s how you use it, right?
6 Mark Blankenship // Mar 9, 2009 at 11:21 am
Am I blind? I only saw the big blue wang one time, and it was just for a second. Was there lots of wanging going on?
7 InfoMofo // Mar 9, 2009 at 11:46 am
Hmmmm, maybe that’s what the IMAX users are really paying for…
8 Rommate Joe // Mar 9, 2009 at 12:11 pm
Yeah, Big Blue was definitely on display more than a few times, but it really didn’t dominate my viewing experience (for whatever reason, though, every straight guy I know can’t stop talking about it). And, for the record, the historical wang:boob ratio could use some balancing anyway.
To answer (or at least try to) MEP’s questions:
1) It wasn’t really that Comedian needed avenging. Rorschach was the only one who liked Comedian, but even his motivation was to find out why his fellow Watchmen were being targeted for elimination.
2) Several years after the rape attempt, Laurie’s mom had sex with the Comedian of her own free will and conceived Laurie. This whole subplot is REALLY short-changed in the movie (Laurie, in the book, has a white-hot hatred for Comedian that really colors so many of her attitudes to everything else); in the book, there are a lot of recurring flashbacks and accounts of Sally’s superhero days. But even in the book it’s borderline offensive that Sally would remain attracted to her rapist.
3) There isn’t really one reason given why the public turned against the superheroes. The book’s worldview doesn’t give much credit to humanity at large, so it’s likely that they were just fickle and got sick of freaks with masks being so revered. It also probably had a lot to do with Nixon getting reelected so many times and the public squirming from under the thumb of authority.
9 Russ Jackson // Mar 9, 2009 at 12:14 pm
“– Why was the Comedian worth avenging? He raped fellow superheroes, and killed JFK, his pregnant baby mama, and innocent civilians?”
I don’t know that he was really avenged. He was murdered for uncovering too much of Veidt’s plans, and if it weren’t for Rorschach, hardly anyone would have even known he was The Comedian. He didn’t kill JFK, either.
Rorschach is a moral absolutist, and for whatever reason he more or less condones Blake’s moral transgressions because he was serving a greater good.
“– As far as I know, unbuckling your belt during an unsuccessful rape attempt cannot impregnate a woman, even one with superpowers. What gives??”
They had consensual sex years later after the attempted rape.
“And why was Jupiter so devastated when she found out who her father was? She wasn’t even on a quest to find out this information.”
You don’t think you’d be upset if you suddenly found out the man you had hated your entire life was actually your father?
10 Mark Blankenship // Mar 9, 2009 at 12:27 pm
Thanks, Russ and Joe! That clarifies a couple of things for me, too.
Although, Russ… in the movie, it totally makes it seem like The Comedian kills JFK. He’s on the grassy knoll, smoking gun in hand, moments after the assassination. Is that not what happens in the book?
11 Garry Posey // Mar 9, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I didn’t like the movie. I hadn’t read the graphic novel. I had high expectations and was sorely disappointed.
That being said:
- I thought the story was meritorious
- I enjoyed the duplicity of human nature as it was explored, explained and characterized
- I appreciated the the humanness of each of the characters (they were just cops who wanted to take it a step further by dressing in costume) with the obvious exception of Dr Manhattan (which I will discuss in a moment)
- The blue wanging was a welcome relief at times, perhaps I saw it more because I was getting bored
- I appreciate long movies (with the cost of seeing a movie these days the more bang for your buck, the better); however it moved at an incredibly slow pace. GODS AND GENERALS had an intermission and I still didn’t feel like I had been dragged through a vat exhausting Jell-o, like I did with Watchmen.
Some Issues I need clarification on:
- Beyond Rorschach, Dr Manhattan, and Ms Jupiter; it wasn’t until I read this blog did I realize the other’s names. Maybe I wasn’t apying as much attention as I thought I was. But I never knew Patrick Wilson’s name (I thought it was Archimedes at one point, then I thought that Archimedes was the name of the ship); I never knew Laurie’s name, I remember that Rorschach said it when we were introduced to her in the lab/house at the army base, but it was so quick that I missed it.
- Superpowers- what were they and what were they supposed to be. Dr Manhattan has the time warp ability power and then Rorschach has the changing mask thing and cat-like agility. Nite Owl (if that’s Wilson’s name) has this flying ship and presumably some super intelligence (I think) and then The Comedian has no remorse for being fiercely brutal. Then of course there are the others shown in the opening credits (powers?). So my question is ARE they superhuman or are they just human with some fierce hand-to-hand combat techniques?
I grew up reading XMEN and XFACTOR and I want the gritty reality and cinematic techniques used in WATCHMEN in the XMEN movies because it takes away what I would call the HOKEY FACTOR. I am sure had I read the graphic novel, I might have been somewhat pleased with the movie, however I never read 300 and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
12 Rommate Joe // Mar 9, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Comedian totally kills JFK. (Woodward and Bernstein too!)
Garry: Only Dr. Manhattan has superhuman abilities. Rorschach’s agility is impressive but human, and even his mask has a practical explanation (…that is not addressed in the movie, granted). Dan’s just great with gadgets. Laurie has superhuman complaining powers. Ozymandias is the World’s Smartest Man, but again, it’s not superhuman intelligence.
13 Russ Jackson // Mar 9, 2009 at 1:10 pm
I didn’t recognize the guy on the grassy knoll as Blake. Perhaps it was, and it was just lost on me. I plan on seeing it again and I’ll look closer this time. Like the book, I think it stands up to multiple viewings to take everything in.
I don’t recall that part in the book at all. However, Blake was a secret government operative and it’s mentioned a few places that he probably assassinated Woodward and Bernstein, presumably to keep the Watergate scandal from being exposed. So, it isn’t much of a stretch that he might have been ordered to take out JFK as part of a larger government conspiracy.
14 Jen // Mar 9, 2009 at 1:17 pm
There’s just a throwaway line in the comic about JFK — the Comedian says “Don’t ask me where I was when JFK was assassinated”… or something to that effect. It’s heavily implied that he was involved.
15 michelle @ TNS // Mar 9, 2009 at 3:33 pm
lover of the book. loather of the film. walked out about 2 hours. spend remaining 45 minutes in the lobby with brother in law, who manages the movie theater. i don’t think lifting panels straight from the book makes a good movie. movie, comic, 2 different forms. i saw no adaptation.
re: the script, the writer should be forced to return his salary because 80% of the script was lifted verbatim from the source materials, and the remaining 20% was awful and turgid. YMMV.
also: only noticed the blue dangle once. but then again, i half clocked out 10 minutes in because i was so bored and disappointed.
2 perks: (1) they nailed the mclaughlin group parody. (2) brother in law manages the theater, so i didn’t have to pay.
16 bstewart23 // Mar 10, 2009 at 1:19 pm
After seeing it yesterday in IMAX, I concur with practically everything you’ve written, Mark, with two exceptions and an addition:
1) LOTS of blue wang from where I was sitting
2) I’ll buy it the day it comes out on DVD and I may see it two or three times before it leaves the theatres. And like you, I couldn’t get more than a few panels into the novel.
Addendum: I have an unnatural sensitivity to makeup on television and in movies. I cannot explain it other than… if a character’s make-up is not smoothed into their hairline properly, I notice it, even on non-HD television. I notice it to the point of distraction. So in IMAX? Good golly, I was distracted by Silk Spectre !’s wig netting, Nite Owl’s not-found-in-nature hair colour and Ozymandia’s helmetlike hairdon’t.
I think I might be able to read the graphic novel now.
17 Mark Blankenship // Mar 10, 2009 at 2:32 pm
Nice observation a bout the wig netting, bstewart! It seems likely that I’ll come across this movie again in my life, and when that happens, I’m going to look for it.
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