Saturday night, after seeing Watchmen with TG and LG, I commented on Facebook that it was a “magnificent disaster.” After letting it sit for a few days, I think I’ll let that stick.
Why?
Really, two reasons.
First, because simply the acting was horrible (not helped by the dialog which was lifted directly from the comic and not smoothed to make it sound like real humans were speaking). With the exception of Jackie Earle Hayley, who was magnificent – as good as Cagney in ‘White Heat’ – even though I kept seeing Mooch when he spoke (my problem, I’m a ‘Breaking Away’ fanatic), the acting was consistently subpar.
Malin Akerman (Silk Spectre II) and Patrick Wilson (Night Owl II) needed to be realistic people – part of the story is how they fall in love – and just weren’t. When you see Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne, you see something in him that makes you believe that he really could be going out at night and kicking bad guy ass. Wilson left me remembering that I need a new accountant.
The problem extends throughout the movie; no one except Hayley really feels like a grounded character at all.
That works for Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian, because he’s playing an archetype, rather than a person (he also gets the grin-inducing line of the film, when he says “I haven’t had this much fun since [I’m assuming he meant to say “I killed”] Woodward and Bernstein.”)
And that’s the other problem – the core problem – with the film.
Great comic-book movies break into two groups – the fantastic (‘300’, ‘Sin City’, ‘Kill Bill’) and the realistic (‘Spiderman’, ‘Batman Begins’, ‘The Dark Knight’). the realistic films are real human dramas that involve situations that require CGI. The fantastic films are not human dramas, they are about the conflicts between archetypes that we can nontheless relate to – Leonidas, The Bride, Hartigan.
Watchmen tried, I think, to stand in the middle of that gap, and failed on both counts as a consequence.
It’s a magnificent, ambitious, failure. It’s probably worth seeing if you love visual spectacle and can relax about story and character. If you loved the comic, you’ve already seen it, so I’m not writing to you. But if you haven’t, in these hard times, I might consider picking up the graphic novel instead and saving $20.
Others have commented on the politics of the movie; it’s a period piece politically, but it’s worth remembering that the archetypes in the story (even if badly presented in the film) do have something to do with what America is about. They don’t represent all of it, by any means at all. But the comic was powerful because it was archetypical and because we see those in our national character.
Dispassionate science, and the power that comes from it. Casual brutality (read ‘Born Fighting’). The desire to help, and somehow make the dark and chaotic world a better place.
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Actually I haven’t seen it, though I read The Watchmen issue by issue as it came off the newsstands way back when.
It’s a period piece, all right – although it’s set in an alternate 80s, its politics are early 70s dyspeptic-liberal, at best. Nixon is still president, for cripes sake.
Archetype is the right word, though. To be precise, there are four archetypal characters in it: The Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Ozymandius, and Rorschach. Each represents a different attitude towards the world, and that’s what made it interesting to me.
Overall, it had some nice detail, mixed with a lot of chaff, including some plagiarism that I recognized even as a kid. It’s one thing to plagiarize Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, but you can’t rip off Mad Max and not expect anyone to notice.
I read the comic over twenty years ago, and didn’t love it, but my reaction to news of a movie was similar to that of an announcement of a Lolita movie. Why? It’s attractive features (such as the art and its take down of the comics medium) don’t translate. It’s unattractive features like plot (egad, the ending) and wooden dialogue (a take down of the comics medium) would be unappealing to anyone unfamiliar with the source material.
When the comics came out, it was well publicized that the characters were thinly veiled replicas of established super-heroes (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, the Question, etc.) The implicit promise was that this was what a story would be like if the publishers didn’t care about the licensing value of their superheroes, but created a realistic (feat of clay) event in which the superheroes were psychopaths, rapists, queers, jingoists, and fascists. I’m not at all clear what the market is for an R-rate movie about the superhero genre; I expect those who read the book went and saw it already and it’s box office is about to tank.
I’ll see it on video perhaps if the reviews end up placing it above League of Extraordinary Gentlemen — the movie that destroyed Sean Connery’s career.
This on the other hand, is my idea of a Watchman movie:
“Link”:http://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/485797
I know the Watchmen series, and I have since I spent the month between each issue frantically analyzing every clue in it. I’ve been talking about the movie with a friend who is equally steeped in it, and we’re of the opinion that it is a masterpiece.
Yes, there are things that could be improved. There always are. Iron Man is a brilliant entertainment, but Terrence Howard as Rhodey was wrong. Batman Begins was great, but Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes wasn’t. You can pick nits with the Lord of the Rings movies if you want, but they still stand as towers of cinematic greatness.
Watchmen isn’t Lord of the Rings, but it is a serious work of art of high quality.
If you are an old fan of the series, or just interested to see something different in a superhero movie, don’t let yourself out of seeing this on the big screen, as it was meant to be seen.
Armed Liberal:
I half agree. Watchmen does stand in the middle of that gap, and I think it makes it. That is part of what makes it unique.
In the foreground, you have human heroes, Rorshach and Nite Owl II, with good chemistry as old team-mates; and then you have a second tier of characters who are generally icons but very well done. This is where the Comedian and Doctor Manhattan live, as they should. And eventually you get down to the “characters” who are no more than silhouettes painted on walls (yes I’m thinking of the comic with that): Nixon and Kissinger, who are as cartoony as Sin City extras, which takes dramatic weight away from them and puts it where it belongs.
You can like that mixture or not like it, but that is what’s happening. This is not Batman Begins done wrong or Sin City done wrong. It’s got its own place on the map.
Sorry, I’ll have to make a Woody Allen-esque claim to authority:
bq. his story, published in 1986, is not suited to the big screen. He said: ‘It was designed to exploit all the things that comic books can do and no other medium can.’
“Alan Moore”:http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1162089/Hollywood-super-hairo–comic-book-genius-wont-make-penny-65m-Watchmen.html