Entries tagged with “Watchmen” from Things You Don't Care About

Last Friday marked the debut of Watchmen, the eagerly anticipated film adaptation of the Alan Moore graphic novel.  It's been years in the making -- various incarnations of the project have been in the works since 1987 -- and as one of the most respected parts of the comic "canon," so to speak, the bar was set pretty high.  I've seen it twice now, and I feel like I have a fairly good handle on my feelings about it at this point.

When I saw the first trailers for the movie with The Dark Knight, I was extremely optimistic.  From a visual standpoint, the movie looked perfect, and this is largely borne out by the final product.  You can easily take stills from the film and compare them with panels from the comic; here's one such example.  The actors, by and large, look right for their parts, though Matthew Goode is a bit slight for Ozymandius.  That's only a very small part of what is important about Watchmen though, and as a result I was prepared for the movie to possibly end up as an ambitious failure.

What Zack Snyder has given us is not a failure, but it isn't quite as good as I and probably many others would have hoped.  Yes, visually, it is stunning -- the fact that Dave Gibbons, the artist on the original graphic novel, was brought in to help with the production design no doubt had a great effect on the movie.  Sets look like they were plucked out of the pages and it looks and feels very much like a New York of the 1980s.  Even the writing, while subtly altered in many places, is largely lifted from the graphic novel.  Unlike a lot of film adaptations, I feel like Snyder was at least trying to be as true to the original material as he could -- the closest comparison I can make is to Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings movies; even if you don't like what he's done, it's hard to say he was just doing it to cash in on an established property.  It's not a Starship Troopers-esque rape of all that is good and holy.

On the other hand, while it seems like all the parts of the movie have been well crafted, the greater whole of the movie itself seems a bit rough around the edges.  Part of this, I think, is due to the fact that Snyder is trying to squeeze an incredibly dense twelve-part comic series into a 165 minute movie.  In a comic book or novel, it's relatively easy to refer back to a previous panel or spend time absorbing the small details that are embedded on the page -- a film can't really do that, though Snyder's signature slow-motion shots allow for a small amount of that sort of thing (for those of you worried it goes over the top, I did not find it really that distracting and didn't think he went overboard like some people thought he did with 300).  At times, it seems like the movement of the plot slows to a crawl -- such as during the Comedian's funeral, when all the other characters are flashing back on their interactions with him in the past.

There's other problems though; while the alternate history is illustrated beautifully in an opening credit sequence (probably the most "visionary" part of the movie), it's still hard for some people to grasp, and the fact that none of the characters in the movie are exactly household names like Batman or Spiderman means that the above problem is compounded.  Hence we get some conservative critics being shocked and appalled at the fact that these "superheroes" are all pretty messed up people, and the violence and sex in the movie gives it a well-deserved R-rating.  People who take their kids to this movie will regret it -- and if you're squeamish about people being pulverized into a bloody mess in a graphic fashion or seeing sex scenes that can come off as tasteful Skinemax soft core, you probably won't really like the movie either.

When the movie gets things right, though, it really gets them right.  Jackie Earle Haley is the spitting image of Alan Moore's Rorshach in nearly every way; his voice, presence, and appearance feels ripped straight from the page; he probably won't get another Oscar nomination for this part, but you could certainly make the case he deserves it.  Only slightly less impressive are Patrick Wilson as the Nite Owl II and Jeffery Dean Morgan as the Comedian.  Wilson manages to bring across Dan Dreiberg's frustration and impotence (literal and figurative) with aplomb; his relationship with Rorshach in the movie seems much stronger than it did in the comic, and that gives Rorshach's pathos an extra layer.  Morgan's Comedian gets across both the menace and the emptiness within; the only place his performance seemed a little weak to me was his conversation with Dr. Manhattan in Vietnam, where I felt like it was missing something.  In contrast, nearly every other scene he appears he's really good, and people who are saying he's a "Robert Downey Jr. lookalike" are really not giving him enough credit.

Speaking of Dr. Manhattan, Billy Crudup does an admirable job with a difficult part; while I was watching I felt like there was something just a bit "not right" about Manhattan, though it's hard to place why.  The CGI is good, but as always it's not quite right, and maybe that was it. Maybe it was because some of the line readings seemed a little off; Manhattan's "miracles" monologue on Mars with Laurie doesn't have quite the impact it does in the comic with Crudup's detached tone.  It's hard to tell, however, if this is intentional or not; certainly Manhattan is supposed to feel detached from humanity and strange -- the man, after all, is a god in all but name.  If it is intentional, it's remarkably subtle compared to some of Snyder's other choices.  And yes, you see a lot of his penis.

Matthew Goode as Ozymandius and Malin Ackerman as Silk Spectre II, however, don't really live up to the rest of the cast.  While neither is horrible, compared to the rest of the main cast they fall a little flat, and Ozymandius' part doesn't come across as layered and ambiguous as it is in the graphic novel.  Ackerman misses out on some of the characterization she gets in the comic; in particular, the pressure her mother placed on her to follow in her footsteps was not as well fleshed out.  Even so, her chemistry with both Manhattan and the Nite Owl seems off at various points of the movie, and the film suffers slightly for it.

The rest of the supporting cast does a very good job; it's always good to see Matt Frewer getting work, and Carla Gugino as the first Silk Spectre and Stephen McHattie as the first Night Owl are both good in their roles, what there is of them.  The actors playing Nixon, Kissinger, and other real-life figures worked a bit less for me, but that's a problem you almost always run into with playing well-known real life figures.  They are serviceable enough, anyway.  Unfortunately, the movie, at least the theatrical cut, does get rid of most of the small characters, like the newsstand owner and the taxi driver, that give the finale some of its impact in the comic.

The big question for the movie for many people was about the ending -- it has been changed from the graphic novel, but, in my opinion, the ending is still in the same spirit as the original, and in my mind the important parts of the antagonist's plan at the end is kept largely intact.  The important revelation -- 35 minutes worth -- is there, though the line delivery falls a bit flat for me, and the ending confrontation between Rorshach and Dr. Manhattan is a much more emotional than in the comic.  Whether this is more or less effective, I'm not sure; in the comic, this underlines Rorshach's resignation and Manhattan's detachment, while in the movie, it gives Manhattan a bit of humanity and makes Rorshach a bit more sympathetic.  I'll leave it to you to decide which is better.

Overall, I certainly can't say I'm perfectly happy with the movie; I found The Dark Knight to be a much more compelling film when it comes to comic book movies, but as an adaptation of Watchmen I feel pretty confident saying that it is about as good as we're likely to get.  It's clear that the director and the writers tried to tread a very fine line between strictly sticking to the story and images of the comic and making a movie accessible to more than just die-hard fans, and sometimes that doesn't quite succeed at doing either particularly well.  In this case, I don't think it's failed in that way -- it's a good movie and a good adaptation, and I am now eagerly anticipating the extended cut on DVD -- but it certainly didn't meet the admittedly high expectations I had going in.  It is still well worth seeing, however, and if it gets more people to read the book, that's always a good thing.

I've taken a week and a half now to digest this movie, to try and separate the hype and the anticipation from the substance.  I've seen it twice now, once at the Art and once at an IMAX theatre up in Chicago, and I feel like I've been able to take a step back and judge the film on its merits.

I suspect most people are not going to be surprised to hear that I liked the movie (and so does every other critic, it seems, from the film's 95% score at rottentomatoes), but there's a lot more to this than simply a popcorn flick.  It is a seriously dark and emotionally complicated film, and it is significantly elevated even over its predecessor, which was an excellent film in its own right.  It's definitely the best movie I've seen this year, probably in several years.

Before I get into that too much though, a few words about the Watchmen trailer.  I got to see this on the IMAX screen last night, and now I'm really excited about seeing this next year.  A bit late to the party, I read the graphic novel for the first time a couple years ago, and while it wasn't quite so earthshattering twenty years after the original release, it was just as good as people claimed.  And now, from everything I've seen, from the production stills to the trailer, I'm considerably less worried about the movie not standing up to the graphic novel.  The movie uses a much more modernized aesthetic (Ozymandias, for instance, does not have his bright purple and gold costume), but I don't see that being as much of a problem; audiences today expect those things from a "modern" superhero, despite the fact that the movie still takes place in 1985.  The original Minutemen, however, still have the look they had before, as you can see from this photo.  The trailer, to me, managed to capture the dark, doomed tone of the novel, and if the movie can do the same, and back it up with good performances, I'll be very happy, so long as they keep the storyline at least mostly intact.

Back to The Dark Knight.  This is definitely a movie that needs to be seen as free of preconceptions and spoilers as possible; I noticed a distinct change in my reactions to many of the movie's twists and turns on a second viewing, just because I knew what to expect.  I'll discuss exactly what those are behind the cut, but there's plenty more to say before we get to that point.

I don't think there's any part of this movie that isn't expertly done.  The sets and cinematography are amazing, with great detail -- not quite Blade Runner levels (someone I know mentioned the fact that they can't seem to decided if the police are "GPD" or "GCPD", both of which appear many times in different places), but there are a lot of other things you can catch; I noticed last night that there are a lot of Gotham-specific things on Harvey Dent's desk in one scene, including a Gotham phone book, for instance.  The action scenes drop you into the middle of things in a visceral way (especially in IMAX), and it seemed like the shakycam Greengrass-style shooting of the fight scenes had been dialed back considerably, making it much easier to follow the action.

But even that doesn't stand up to the true strength of this movie, which is the writing and acting.  While Heath Ledger's performance is every bit as good as it has been hyped to be, the frightening portrayal of his Joker owes as much to the excellent script as it does to his acting.  This is not the Joker that Jack Nicholson portrayed -- that Joker was kuh-raaaaazy! and goofy, and it's probably fair to say that a lot of it was just Nicholson playing Nicholson.  While his performance was appropriate to the Burton-aesthetic of the 1989 Batman, it wouldn't have fit with the style set up by Batman Begins.

Ledger's Joker is not goofy...he is fucking insane.  His "jokes" are twisted and sadistic, his motivations are far deeper than simple amusement, and he is utterly frightening, one thing that I think was deeply lacking from Nicholson's portrayal.  He has a few moments of levity (the "magic trick" he does early on brought out some nervous laughter, though it made a lot more people squirm), but for the most part, the only one that finds his antics funny is himself.  He also does a great laugh that seems to be a more sinister version of Mark Hamill's voice acting.

The only problem with Ledger's portrayal is that it overshadows some other performances that are worthy of note.  While Christian Bale does a good job, as do the other returning actors from the first movie (plus Maggie Gyllenhaal), but really, Aaron Eckhart's Harvey Dent is also worthy of special praise.  I won't go into it too much, since it will go a bit too close to spoiler territory, but he does an admirable job with Dent's descent into Two-Face and brings across the change from one to the other.

One note on Bale's "Batman voice" -- I know a lot of people give him crap over this, but I don't think it is as bad as they claim.  I think Michael Keaton did it a bit better, but Bale doesn't do too bad when his lines are kept to short sentences rather than long soliloquies, something that this movie failed on a bit.  Of course, the person who has done this better than all of them is Kevin Conroy -- but then, it perhaps shouldn't be surprising that a trained voice actor manages to convey the difference between Batman and Bruce Wayne (sorry, couldn't find a good example) the best.

For me, the biggest measure of how different this movie was from all the other movies I've seen this summer, and even how different it was from its predecessor, was how emotionally wrecked I felt when I left the theatre the first time I saw it.  It was blunted the second time, but I still felt like someone had punched me in the gut at the end, and I remember squeezing Marc's hand pretty hard.  This is not a "fun" movie, like Iron Man; it is extremely dark and it will push you around emotionally if you let it.  I compared the experience to that of something like The Godfather or Platoon; leaving aside whether it is as good a film as those for a moment, I think that kind of experience is most like what I took out of The Dark Knight.  There are very few moments of levity, even less so than in Batman Begins; I can probably count them all on the fingers of one hand.

To cut a long story short (too late!), this is an excellent movie; I have to concur with Todd Alcott's assessment that it elevates itself from a "good superhero movie" to simply "a good film" in the same way that The Godfather elevated itself above preconceptions of gangster movies at the time.  It is well worth seeing, especially if you can see it on an IMAX screen.  You won't regret it.

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