Watchmen review
Mar. 24th, 2009 01:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chuckroI saw Watchmen on Saturday, but a sore throat limited my ranting. Not so, here.
I’ll call it "a love song to the graphic novel", because they were amazingly true to the look, the sequence of events, and the dialogue. The biggest problem was one of translation versus localization: This was a near-perfect translation. But it needed to be "localized" to the new medium to work as well. As it stood, many of the advantages the comic had became liabilities for the film. The episodic style and changing narrator of the comics was the worst of these: It made the film feel fragmented and disjointed.
Music: The music was problematic at best. Far too many songs with distracting lyrics; the only one I’ll allow is “Times They Are A-Changin’” over the opening sequence. “All Along the Watchtower” was overdone in the Antarctica establishing shot (despite the fact that the original comic quotes it), and “Hallelujah” in the sex scene was totally mood-wrecking.
Costumes: 99% perfect. I can even understand why they did the change with Laurie’s costume to the body-hugging latex (more appropriate to superhero movie send-up, emphasizes the “superhero fetish” she and Dan share, looks amazing on the actress), but I’ll admit a fondness to the comic version, a throwback/reference to the stripperific costumes of Phantom Lady, Black Canary and (of course) Nightshade.
The politics: Everything political Alan Moore wrote came out of the politics of thirty years ago. With V For Vendetta, that was Thatcher’s England, and the movie updated that into a modern, Bush’s America-themed story, and it worked really well for an American audience. With Watchmen, they didn’t update (or try to update) the themes, and probably rightfully so, but they compressed or cut much of the supporting material, turned Nixon into a caricature (I mean, c’mon, the man’s nose was never that distracting), and gave him the unpleasant role of leaping into Mutually Assured Destruction headfirst, far closer than he ever got in the comic. (It was discussed, and the fallout path discussion is straight from the comic, but he wasn’t nearly as eager to first-strike Russia in the comic.)
Laurie and Dan: Two problems jumped out at me: First were their two major fight scenes; the jail is done right, the alley is done wrong. There’s too much blood, too much indiscriminate killing, too little telegraphing of how worked up it got them. Nite Owl and Silk Specter aren’t Rorschach—they’re direct descendants of golden age mystery men, and that comes with the silver age “no killing” code. They’re the contrast to Rorschach (who embraces bloody violence as justice) and the Comedian (who revels in it and it supposed to be as shocking as possible). The second problem, of course, was the sex scenes: The first was correct: Awkward, realistic, totally non-sexy. The second should have been a classic action-movie sex scene: Carefully cutting through any part that isn’t perfect and making it seem like the most awesome, spontaneous sex ever. (Also: The line about the costumes making it good? Should not have been cut!) The idea here is around their perceptions: They’re superheroes not because of a desire for justice or a need to protect, they’re in it for the thrill, and because it makes them excited. (One of the greater questions Watchmen tackles is “Why do people become costumed heroes?” Rorschach thinks he’s a hard-boiled detective finding justice. Ozymandais wants to save the world. Dan and Laurie get a thrill out of it. Manhattan is what he is, and can’t be a traditional superhero, as the scene of him versus the gangsters demonstrates.)
Ozymandais: On one hand, I can see that they were going for the Boy George thing with him (the elfin look, the swishy manner, hanging out with the Village People, etc), but I don’t think that jives with the comic (despite Rorschach repeatedly referring to him as “possibly homosexual”). Comic Ozymandais is a chiseled Greek god type, bold, forthcoming, a leader of men. It’s a different take on the character, and it didn’t work for me.
Rorschach: The actor was amazing, the costume design perfect. The origin scene with the psychiatrist? Wasted. They cut half the lines from the comic and cut the wrong half, obviously not understanding the point of the sequence. The cut line “Wasn’t Rorschach then. Was Kovacs, pretending to be Rorschach” is the key to his entire character. That, and they replaced a glorious sequence of handcuffing the murderer to a pipe, handing him a hacksaw, informing him that he didn’t have time to cut the pipe, and then setting the house on fire with…caving the guy’s head in with a cleaver. Which, again, misses the character: It’s not about the violence. It’s about the twisted idea of justice, that not only should this horrible murderer die, but he should suffer and die in a particularly horrible way, and that’s Rorschach’s idea of justice. (Also, there was one bit where Rorschach refers to his mask as “my mask” rather than as “my face”. That’s a boo-boo.)
The altered ending: I’m fine with it. It hangs together better and avoids needing the tons of hidden exposition that the comic’s ending did. (I would have altered the sequence of events slightly, though: As Ozymandais is monologuing at the end, it should intersperse with voiceovers over Manhattan being blown up, making the audience think it’s a “what if” imaginary visual. Then he delivers the “35 minutes ago” line, and cut immediately jump-cut to Laurie and Manhattan standing in the ruins.
And yes, I’ll totally rent the Director’s Cut when it comes out.
I’ll call it "a love song to the graphic novel", because they were amazingly true to the look, the sequence of events, and the dialogue. The biggest problem was one of translation versus localization: This was a near-perfect translation. But it needed to be "localized" to the new medium to work as well. As it stood, many of the advantages the comic had became liabilities for the film. The episodic style and changing narrator of the comics was the worst of these: It made the film feel fragmented and disjointed.
Music: The music was problematic at best. Far too many songs with distracting lyrics; the only one I’ll allow is “Times They Are A-Changin’” over the opening sequence. “All Along the Watchtower” was overdone in the Antarctica establishing shot (despite the fact that the original comic quotes it), and “Hallelujah” in the sex scene was totally mood-wrecking.
Costumes: 99% perfect. I can even understand why they did the change with Laurie’s costume to the body-hugging latex (more appropriate to superhero movie send-up, emphasizes the “superhero fetish” she and Dan share, looks amazing on the actress), but I’ll admit a fondness to the comic version, a throwback/reference to the stripperific costumes of Phantom Lady, Black Canary and (of course) Nightshade.
The politics: Everything political Alan Moore wrote came out of the politics of thirty years ago. With V For Vendetta, that was Thatcher’s England, and the movie updated that into a modern, Bush’s America-themed story, and it worked really well for an American audience. With Watchmen, they didn’t update (or try to update) the themes, and probably rightfully so, but they compressed or cut much of the supporting material, turned Nixon into a caricature (I mean, c’mon, the man’s nose was never that distracting), and gave him the unpleasant role of leaping into Mutually Assured Destruction headfirst, far closer than he ever got in the comic. (It was discussed, and the fallout path discussion is straight from the comic, but he wasn’t nearly as eager to first-strike Russia in the comic.)
Laurie and Dan: Two problems jumped out at me: First were their two major fight scenes; the jail is done right, the alley is done wrong. There’s too much blood, too much indiscriminate killing, too little telegraphing of how worked up it got them. Nite Owl and Silk Specter aren’t Rorschach—they’re direct descendants of golden age mystery men, and that comes with the silver age “no killing” code. They’re the contrast to Rorschach (who embraces bloody violence as justice) and the Comedian (who revels in it and it supposed to be as shocking as possible). The second problem, of course, was the sex scenes: The first was correct: Awkward, realistic, totally non-sexy. The second should have been a classic action-movie sex scene: Carefully cutting through any part that isn’t perfect and making it seem like the most awesome, spontaneous sex ever. (Also: The line about the costumes making it good? Should not have been cut!) The idea here is around their perceptions: They’re superheroes not because of a desire for justice or a need to protect, they’re in it for the thrill, and because it makes them excited. (One of the greater questions Watchmen tackles is “Why do people become costumed heroes?” Rorschach thinks he’s a hard-boiled detective finding justice. Ozymandais wants to save the world. Dan and Laurie get a thrill out of it. Manhattan is what he is, and can’t be a traditional superhero, as the scene of him versus the gangsters demonstrates.)
Ozymandais: On one hand, I can see that they were going for the Boy George thing with him (the elfin look, the swishy manner, hanging out with the Village People, etc), but I don’t think that jives with the comic (despite Rorschach repeatedly referring to him as “possibly homosexual”). Comic Ozymandais is a chiseled Greek god type, bold, forthcoming, a leader of men. It’s a different take on the character, and it didn’t work for me.
Rorschach: The actor was amazing, the costume design perfect. The origin scene with the psychiatrist? Wasted. They cut half the lines from the comic and cut the wrong half, obviously not understanding the point of the sequence. The cut line “Wasn’t Rorschach then. Was Kovacs, pretending to be Rorschach” is the key to his entire character. That, and they replaced a glorious sequence of handcuffing the murderer to a pipe, handing him a hacksaw, informing him that he didn’t have time to cut the pipe, and then setting the house on fire with…caving the guy’s head in with a cleaver. Which, again, misses the character: It’s not about the violence. It’s about the twisted idea of justice, that not only should this horrible murderer die, but he should suffer and die in a particularly horrible way, and that’s Rorschach’s idea of justice. (Also, there was one bit where Rorschach refers to his mask as “my mask” rather than as “my face”. That’s a boo-boo.)
The altered ending: I’m fine with it. It hangs together better and avoids needing the tons of hidden exposition that the comic’s ending did. (I would have altered the sequence of events slightly, though: As Ozymandais is monologuing at the end, it should intersperse with voiceovers over Manhattan being blown up, making the audience think it’s a “what if” imaginary visual. Then he delivers the “35 minutes ago” line, and cut immediately jump-cut to Laurie and Manhattan standing in the ruins.
And yes, I’ll totally rent the Director’s Cut when it comes out.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 09:17 pm (UTC)In many interpretations, Lex Luthor is a major philanthropist and technology tycoon who thinks that Superman's existence stunts the human race and prevents us from living up to our full potential. He hates Superman for making human effort insignificant and for making humans stop bothering to take care of their own problems. He tries to cause the occasional catastrophe to free us from Superman, and considers death in the name of freeing the human race to follow its own destiny to be well worth it.
There are plenty of other examples from comic books that I'm not quite coming up with now. But Ozy is someone who deliberately destroys all of his friends in the most personal ways possible, risks pushing everything to the brink of nuclear war, and then caps it off by killing the populations of most of the major cities in the world. In the process, he drives off the most brilliant scientific mind in the world, whose abilities are what makes their transportation system run and who could do who-knows-how-much-more good. He lies, murders, and gives people cancer. At the end, he kills off all his assistants and monologues in his remote hideout while beating up the heroes who are trying to save the world from what they think will be nuclear armegeddon. Plus, he kills his cat.
Whether he's right to do so or not, I think that qualifies him as a supervillian.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 09:46 pm (UTC)I'm better now with considering Ozymandias as a villain. I think I was just persuaded by the fact that, no matter how cold he could be, he always seemed to genuinely feel what he was doing. That there wasn't just a cavalier or superior attitude, but that there was also depth of feeling. This decision was not made lightly, and the academic approach that he uses to surmount questions of morality doesn't preclude him from feeling responsible for the deaths and mayhem. He doesn't feel guilty or bad, which, you're right, marks him as a villain, but I think he does regret that every death was necessary.
I think some of that might have been lost in the movie with how unfeeling he seemed. From the graphic novel, I got the sense that he genuinely regretted having to murder even one more person than he absolutely had to in order to maintain secrecy. The exception was the Comedian, and there I think the movie was closer to the book in that it really seemed that, though his high-mindedness keeps him afloat, he really does enjoy smiting the Comedian a lot.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 10:31 pm (UTC)