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 09:22 pm (UTC)Which is not as apparent in the movie as it should be.
I think part of the problem is that the voiceover for some reason seems like a more reliable narrator on film than it does on paper. I think also that perhaps we're more used to our heroes doing brutal things in movies. But I've heard some people talking as if you're intended to take Rorschach's narration as reliable. They found the movie melodramatic and the kind of bad philosophy sophomores in high school idolize. Which Rorschach is supposed to be - he is over-the-top noirish, and sophomorically Nietzchian (sp?). But that doesn't mean the story itself is - just that he's totally nuts. I'm not sure that it came across in the film that he's not supposed to be awesome, he's supposed to be crazy. I'm a little worried we're going to have a repeat of the V-for-Vendetta guy at I-Con, spitting into his mask as he pontificates about the awesomeness of a character who was supposed to be a psychopath not to be imitated.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 09:53 pm (UTC)I think Alan Moore writes very sympathetic psychopaths, but there's always a point at which we're supposed to recoil in horror from them. The problem with movies is that we embrace those characters--look at how many people dressed up as Heath Ledger's Joker at conventions/Halloween this past year. We've established a cinematic tradition through slasher films where we root for the murderer. So Rorschach comes off as seemingly just another one who's "right" to support. (Because he really is only ever shown killing bad people and standing up to a supervillain.) If the rapist/murderer had been a little more cowardly instead of bragging and brazen--if they'd kept the part where Rorschach let him burn to a slow awful death--we might reconsider. But the movie seemed to forget that the violence Rorschach perpetrates isn't really out of the common way otherwise for "heroes" we've seen.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 11:57 am (UTC)It isn't out of the common way otherwise for heroes in the movie. The fact that Dan and Laurie cause as much bloody mayhem or more screws up the entire dynamic. The Comedian is supposed to kill bloodily because he's a bit nuts and also cynically believes that's the way humanity is. Rorschach is psychotic. Ozymandias, with the exception of the Comedian, has perfect restraint - he causes exactly as much mayhem as he needs to for the effect he's seeking. Jon makes people go pop because he's so distant that human life doesn't really mean anything to him anymore. But Dan and Laurie are supposed to just do the old fashioned beat-em-up thing. Instead, the moviemakers had every single fight be the exact same level of goriness, and so you lose the differences.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 02:37 pm (UTC)Oddly though? In re-reading the graphic novel recently, I noticed that that first fight Dan and Laurie get into? Is really violent. There's definitely blood. I don't remember it being that violent, so the movie version shocked me. The movie version is hyperbolic, but it's not out of nowhere. It's so funny I didn't remember it being that way at all.
But yeah, making all the fights as awful as possible really ruined the levels of violence and what they said about each interaction. Because that first scene with the Comedian being killed was brutal. Watching it, knowing who was doing it, I could totally see that Ozymandias was letting loose for the first and only time in his villainly career. It was amazing. Afterward, because no other fight had that personal stake to it, it just seemed to be another series following the law of diminishing returns.
no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 03:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 03:56 pm (UTC)