**Here there be spoilers.**
Yeah, I saw WATCHMEN.
First off, probably the longest movie I've seen in theaters that didn't have hobbits in it. Or did it? Was Big Figure a hobbit? Hmm...
Well. First off, I'm not one of the psycho-geek long-time WATCHMEN worshipers, I admit that up front. I just finally got and read the graphic novel about six months ago because I had a gift certificate for wearing my Comix Connection t-shirt for a Yankee Stadium photo and got the book for half price.
As far as the book is concerned, I fully agree that it deserves it's standing as one of the most finely written examples of the comic genre. It's a dark, gritty and chillingly believable tale of manipulation and human nature in a world of paranoia and fear. Until the ending, when a giant fake alien squid kills half of New York City with its brain, and I say, "Um, seriously? Twelve issues of build up and that's what you got?" (Okay, I didn't say it out loud, because Alan Moore is kind of a prick and he scares me.)
Beyond the ending, though, I did like the book. I didn't love it, but I think that's just my personal taste. I mean, I acknowledge the Mona Lisa as a great painting, but I don't feel the need to put a copy on my own wall, if that makes sense. It just seemed to get somewhat long-winded and tedious for me.
Still, it was a cool book, and it made a cool movie, too.
What impressed me about the movie the most, I think, was its almost complete lack of 'superhero cheese.' It not only followed its source material religiously, but it boldly refused to water down or shy away from anything, from violence, from blood, from sex, just to make the story more 'family friendly' or to please a squeamish studio exec. And this includes the blue penis. I know people who said they didn't like the movie because there was too much blue penis. To them I say if you sit through a two hour and forty minute movie and walk away no impression of it beyond being offended by a natural CG-generated human body part, you probably aren't mature enough to be seeing R-rated movies anyway. I think PAUL BLART: MALL COP is still playing, that seems to be more your speed.
Anyway, the movie has a sincerity to it that you don't usually get with super hero movies. These 'heroes' aren't GQ models with snappy comebacks and slick moves. They're real people with real fucked up lives, because you can't be totally right in the head to put on a costume like that and beat people up. You've got issues, and you break bones, and when you see something so vile and horrific that you want to kill the guy who did it, sometimes you do. Just because you fight bad guys doesn't automatically make you a good guy. Sometimes you're even a piece of complete human garbage like the Comedian. Eww.
The change made to the story's climax, for me at least, actually made the ending of the movie BETTER than that of the comic, and if anyone wants to fight me about that, bring it. I mean, if I'd sat for two and a half hours being drawn into a sense of reality with the movie, only to be hit by giant fake alien squid again, I don't think my sanity would've survived. Seriously, it would be like THE GODFATHER ending with Michael Corleone fighting Dracula or the Mummy. But setting up Dr. Manhattan to take the blame like that, well, it just made a lot more sense. Some people say the ending is rushed, which it kind of is, but I think that goes back to the source material.
Basically, the changes that I noticed took nothing away from the story and proved to make it better as a cinematic experience, like the removal of the smaller sub-plots with the news stand guy and the other 'man on the street' parts, and the comic-in-a-comic "Black Freighter" which to me, though an interesting story, seemed to be more filler than anything else. I'm also glad the part with Hollis' murder was cut, just because it made me sad and I didn't want to see it. That might be a little hypocritical on my part but whatever.
I didn't walk out of the movie with anything substantial to bitch about, and that's a very rare thing for me. I didn't walk out screaming "OMG THAT WAS SO FUCKING AWESOME" either, though. I did find it to be a most excellent movie that was definitely worth my time, well acted, well directed, and with the finest soundtrack I've heard in FOREVER. And I do plan to buy it on DVD, though I don't think I need the three or four hour director's cuts. I liked it much more than THE DARK KNIGHT, which I still say was fanboy-overrated. I think I pretty much feel the same way about the movie as I did about the graphic novel, which is kinda "I like you, but just as a friend. I mean, we can go out and have pizza, but you can't stay over."
If I had one real gripe about the movie (and I had to think long and hard to come up with one, trust me) it would be the casting of Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt / Ozymandias. I mean, he's a decent enough actor, but he didn't fit the character at all, and that kind of took me a little out of the story. Veidt wasn't just supposed to be the 'world's smartest man' he was also a perfect physical specimen and extremely good looking. Goode is a spindly little guy with no chin and sometimes an accent, sometimes not. (Not gonna dump on the rubber superhero costume, though. The one in the comics was silly. I think this one was more Veidt's attempt at what he thought the public wanted a superhero to look like, because the product he marketed most successfully was Ozymandias.)
So anyway, WATCHMEN. Not my personal favorite comic book movie ever, but certainly one of the finest made to date.
That's my opinion, anyway.
Later.
Further thoughts from the comments on this review's original posting on www.savagemouse.deviantart.com...
From: *F-warp You didn't like the ending in the graphic novel?...Huh, that's a first. For me it was the ending that made the whole thing come together.
No offense or anything but are you saying that you can buy a glowing blue man-god going off to Mars to create life and a superhero-millionaire with a genetically engineered purple tiger...but a giant FAKE (keyword here) alien squid is where you go: "Naaaaah that's just silly"
I won't be seeing the movie until next week so I can't give my opinion on it yet. I'm pretty damn curious seeing as this thing seems to have critics and the geek-community in general completely polarized.
Reply from ~SavageMouse
I don't know if it was so much I didn't buy it as I figured the "world's smartest man" and a gathered conglomerate of artists and writers would've come up with something better than giant fake alien squid. I don't know, just bugged me. Other than that, I did like the ending. Though personally I don't think the plan of uniting the world would've worked long enough to make it worth the sacrifice. I mean, look at the U.S. after 9/11, we had this huge tragedy that united the nation for about a year or so, and now less than a decade later we're more divided than we've been in a long time. Of course, I'm a pessimist these days, so that's just my take on it.
I haven't read many professional critics' reviews (because I don't care what they think) but it seems to me that the geek community (I love that moniker, I really do) is pretty united in support of the film whether they have issues with the changes or not. WATCHMEN is probably the most highly respected work of the comic genre, the Shakespeare of graphic novels, and I think many of us see the film as a work to almost legitimize the medium, something we can show the mainstream world that might look down on comics as 'kid stuff' and 'tights & capes fantasy' and prove that it has real social and cultural value as true literature.
Wow, sorry, didn't mean to get started on an essay there.
From ~Dreamerzina
I just saw Watchmen last night and I thought it had some interesting elements, but I have to say, even though I thought it was going to be dark, I didn't know exactly how dark!
I am more familiar with Marvel characters than DC to start with (except for Batman or Superman related characters) and I knew nothing of the character backgrounds for the Watchmen going into it since I had never read the graphic novel.
Coming from that standpoint, I was disappointed with how long it was and how graphic. The nearly pornographic scenes and Dr. Manhattan's "Blue penis" didn't bother me as much as the graphic nature the whole movie had from start to finish.
I do feel that the ending left something to be desired. It was kind of rushed and I was left with some confusion and unanswered questions. For example, was the original Silk Spectre Rorschach's mom as well as Laurie's or was his mom just some prostitute who got knocked up and happened to look like her?
I get the message of the movie that reality often isn't as pretty as we like to make it seem... it's gritty and twisted and the very worst of human nature shows itself more often than not...but I have to say, I prefer some hope and levity or maybe even the "superhero cheese" as you put it. I like a mix of entertainment and action in a movie. After all, while I have endless critiques about the X-Men movies, they contained violent actions that were by no means watered down, but still maintained the fun side of Marvel, the side that always kept me hooked as an avid fan. =)
Reply from ~SavageMouse
Oh yeah, if you weren't familiar with the graphic novel and its, shall we say, TONE, the movie probably was pretty overwhelming at some points. I myself was surprised by the violence in the graphic novel, being used to comics from the 1980's usually adhering to the "Comics Code" and all. I started getting a little frustrated with the length of the graphic novel, too, I considered playing some of that music they use at awards shows to cut off acceptance speeches in hopes of getting it to sum-up. But they did trim a lot lot LOT of stuff just to get the movie down to the current length, to the point that cutting ANYTHING else would probably have been detrimental to the plot. Also, since it didn't flow like a regular three-part-plot-line movie, with a traditional "introduction/action/climax" sort of story it seemed a lot longer I think than it actually was.
Oh, and the original Silk Spectre, Sally Jupiter, was a separate character from
Rorschach's hooker-whore mom, they unfortunately cast a similar looking actress which can understandably create some confusion with the speed that the scene slides by. The comics had a lot more background information, of course, each issue ending with a few pages that were non-comic illustrated articles, interviews and book excerpts (such as some from the original Nightowl's "Under the Hood" book) that fill in a lot of things and build up to the climax.
And don't get me wrong, I still love the super hero cheese as much as any other hardcore geek, and X2 is still my favorite comic movie ever. I'm just glad that they didn't add any where it didn't belong. It makes me very happy to see a filmmaker create a movie for mainstream audiences without catering to them, and staying respectful and honest to the source book. And as much as I dig the occasional "bad guy wins, no moral" story, I also prefer my superhero reality more on the side of levity (ver read any of my DEFENDERS fanfic?) and entertainment. :)
From =fairycthulu
"And I'll whisper.....human bean juice!"
Hehehe. Anyway....good review, and I agree mostly...the concept of blaming Dr. Manhattan for the end works, mostly...except for I didn't get how the American superman destroying other world cities as well would make them want to work with the US for peace....
But my main issue is....the ending got neutered, significantly. Up until that point the movie was hyper-violent (Dan and Laurie in the alley, Dr. Manhattan exploding people with the dripping guts left, Rorschach's cleaver party)....and then at the end they leave out the most important part, seeing the true scale of what Adrian did. In the novel, Laurie and Jon get back and literally have to wade through the corpses, streams of blood...that registers as, holy shit, look what he thinks the price of peace is worth. The movie failed for me in...bright flash, look, big clean crater! I think it seriously needed those crushed corpses lining the streets of the city, personally....it's way too clean the way they did it.
Reply from ~SavageMouse
heh heh, bean juice :D
As I understood it, the ruse of Manhattan destroying the various cities around the world was to unite everyone with a common, unbelievable tragedy into a "we're all in this together" movement. Like, say you're out at a bar, and some guy punches you in the nose, and all your enemies are like, "Ha ha, you suck." But then he punches all of them in the nose, too, so now everyone says "Let's get that asshole." In theory. Personally I don't think it would work that well in real life, but I'm a pessimist.
You're right about the movie 'glossing over' the horrific instant deaths of 15 million people, I'd thought of it at the time but it slipped my mind while writing the review. Duplicating Manhattan's powers as the weapon of ultimate destruction as they did meant losing the actual bodies, I guess, but there certainly could have been more attention paid to the resulting destruction, or at least some human reaction to it. At the very least someone should've screamed "HOLY FUCK!!" or something to that effect. Dan had a stronger reaction to Rorschach getting exploded (how great was Jackie Earle Haley, btw?) than anyone, including Nixon, to New York getting hit with the giant blue gobstopper of doom. Hmm.
Gobstopper of Doom. That's gonna be the name of my band. :XD:
