Sean T. Collins has written about comics and popular culture on this very blog since 2003, and also for Maxim, The Comics Journal, Stuff, Wizard, A&F Quarterly, Comic Book Resources, Giant, ToyFare, The Onion, The Comics Reporter and more. His comics have been published by Top Shelf, Partyka, and Family Style. He blogs here and at Robot 6.
(Provided that I deem them suitably fabulous, your name and message will be considered eligible for publication unless you specify otherwise.) Review Copies Welcome
Second, you may have noticed the legend at the bottom of my blogroll reading "KEEP COMICS EVIL." With that in mind, I have to admit that I'm simply chuffed that there's a full-fledged superhero movie out there now with a hard-R rating. And man, is it ever hard! Unbelievably graphic violence for a superhero action movie--I think that's important to keep in mind when reading criticism of the violence in this movie, just that it's never been shown to be like this before. To the extent that the violence is glorified or fetishized, well, isn't that what the superheroes are doing? Literally, in Dan and Laurie's case? Speaking of, there's a pretty graphic sex scene between the two of them. There's boobs, tons of man-ass, a little woman-ass, and of course, Lower Manhattan. (Which was not nearly as distracting as it's been made out to be, by the way--the movie had a way of cutting away from it when it might become so, and rumors of its kinship with Dirk Diggler's claim to fame have been greatly exaggerated.) Sex, dismemberment, and superheroes...I mean, look at my movie-review sidebar, obviously this is delightful to me in someway.
Maybe my favorite aspect of the movie is how it riffed not just on superhero conventions, but on '80s sci-fi action dystopia movies, too. I think it was Harry Knowles or Moriarty who pointed out that the score was designed to evoke the likes of Vangelis, Tangerine Dream, and John Carpenter--it's not super heavy-handed at it, nor is it as obvious as, say, "Machine Gun" by Portishead, but it's there. Meanwhile, during the sex scene, the flick uses a super-duper-conspicuous romantic pop song (Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," getting a big laugh from the audience), in much the same way that basically every '80s movie starring Tom Cruise did. The Road Warrior and that 1984 Macintosh Super Bowl ad figure prominently on Ozymandias's TV screens toward the end. It's cleverly done.
Speaking of '80s movie connections (and even The Road Warrior, given that the snippet we see is of the masked Lord Humungus shooting his big gun), the movie made explicit something I noticed upon my last re-read, which is that Rorschach's design owes as much to masked killers like Michael, Jason, and Leatherface as it does to the Question or Mr. A. How does it do this? By changing around the climax of the sequence where Rorschach "becomes Rorschach" in a way I won't spoil, but suffice it to say is a pretty direct link to slasher films. (Not to mention less of a ripoff of the climax of the original Mad Max, just to bring things full circle.)
But it's very much a superhero movie--the costume tweaks, the action sequences, the glory shots, Big Figure--and that's totally fine by me. I think it's easy to forget that for all its distrust of the genre, for all its deconstruction of the genre, for all of Moore and Gibbons's formal achievements in it, and for all of Moore's later ambition and achievements outside the genre, Watchmen is not Eightball #23. It's very, very much a superhero comic, and much of its pleasure derives from how effectively it can deploy that aspect of itself in contrast to the other things it's doing. The movie isn't wall-to-wall X-2 or anything, it saves the most superheroey stuff for after Dan and Laurie get back into costume and start kicking ass again (Patrick Wilson plays the transformation beautifully, going from sad-sack to Batman seamlessly), but it's there, and good!
Everything that was cut could afford to be cut and everything that was changed made sense in its new version. Yeah, you may notice the absence your favorite detail or line what have you. I wish Comedian's close-up "Somebody EXPLAIN it to me" plea during his drunken confession to Moloch had stayed in; ditto "The light is taking me to pieces." But I didn't exactly miss any of it, nor did I miss the ancillary characters, or having Captain Metropolis head up the ill-fated "Crimebusters" meeting, nor did I care that they called the non-existent group the Watchmen instead of the Crimebusters--what difference does it make what you call a team that never existed? The ending is the biggest change, obviously, and while I am a passionate defender of the shaggy-dog-joke punchline of the original, this solution is far more elegant and, honestly, the kind of thing Moore would totally do. I think it helps sell Dr. Manhattan's decision at the end, too.
I had a lot of fun and would happily see it again. I imagine that if you suspect you won't like it, you're not gonna like it, it's not gonna change your mind. But as I always said, my Watchmen calculation was simple arithmetic: I love Watchmen the comic, I really liked Zack Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake and 300 adaptation, so I'd probably like Zack Snyder's Watchmen adaptation. Sure enough!
You know, I think I've made my doubts known about Snyder capturing the tone of the book, but damned if I'm not psyched to see this on the IMAX on Sunday. A friend of mine who's going with me said "Man, that movie is going to rock!" and I thought, you know what? Why can't a Watchmen movie flat out ROCK? Why does it have to be anything other than a blast?
I've read the series about once a year since it came out and sometimes I admire it more than I like it, sometimes I find nothing but shit that bugs me, and sometimes I just think its far more fun than people give it credit for. I'm glad to hear you liked it and thought it was entertaining.
I was a little worried when most movie critics started panning it, but am thrilled to see the comics community come out and basically say it's pretty great.
Good review, Sean. I find myself agreeing with everything here too...but in the end, I feel like the really good parts and the eye-rollingly awful parts cancel each other out, and the equation just produces flatline mediocrity. That's just for me, though...and when people have been asking me about it today, I've just been telling them that it's definitely worth seeing and to let me know what they think.
Sean, parts I didn't like:
The musical choices can be justified a lot of times, but when they can't, it's really overwrought scoring and really, really on-the-nose song choices like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." As Anthony Lane says about "The Times They Are A-Changing" in his otherwise uncharacteristically annoying review, "How long did it take the producers to arrive at that imaginative choice?"
Dr. Manhattan's turning point on Mars changes from one of the most beautifully written and affecting passages of the book into an agonizingly maudlin and clichéd monologue about the miracle of life, which misses the point of the character and rings hollow. This I think is just the most outstanding of several of these emotional turning points botched in the translation. And aside from that, I had a hard time struggling through any scene set on Mars.
And hey, I never even really thought of this before last night, but Dr. Manhattan's "sideways time" chapter just doesn't work in this medium. And it isn't that the movie fails, it's that it's just an insurmountable difference in the form. When Jon narrates moments as happening simultaneously in the book, as many of them as will fit in any given spread of two pages will actually appear simultaneous on a subconscious level, because they're all right there on the page for the eye to take in with one sweep. But film is still inescapably sequential. It's linear, it's trapped in the form of a conception of time that Dr. Manhattan steps around. And him simply telling me that things happen simultaneously while the movie continues to show me just a linear sequence of events, whether in chronological order or not, is just really boring, because explaining a concept is nowhere near as compelling as seeing it. Nothing really that anybody could have done about that in any conceivable movie version...I just think it's an interesting detail about the way the different media operate in their fundamental storytelling mechanics.
I thought it was cold when it needed to be flashy (no alternating jump-cuts between scenes? did they READ the book?) and flashy when it needed to be cold (fight in Blake's penthouse, fight in Antarctica, bone-protrusions).
Well, I'm still processing the whole thing. I can say it was a very frustrating movie-going experience for me. I kept finding myself taken out of the movie by little things that shouldn't have irked me, and I was constantly asking myself "Why am I not enjoying this more?"
I think Tom Spurgeon hits on some really key issues for me in his take that I would have had trouble articulating had he not done so: the violence in the film really isn't delivered in a way that delineates character as well as it should (with one big exception which I'll get to, since you mention it specifically and it was one change I thought worked extremely well).
SPOILERS
The fight scene in the alley is so brutal, so savage, that it actually blurs the line between Rorschach and Dan/Laurie to a fault. When you see Laurie jab an ice-pick into a guy's throat, you begin to wonder "So, what makes these guys so different from the 'nutjob' Rorschach?" I have a hard time believing this Dan Drieberg wouldn't have tossed someone down an elevator shaft. It seems like a small thing, but it's a huge problem when you're trying to define character based on moral and ethical differences. In the film, it never felt that Rorschach's violence was out of place or extreme in contrast to his fellow "Watchmen". It's one thing to get across that Dan and Laurie are efficient fighters and can deal out the damage, and in many ways there has to be some brutality to their actions in order to fuel the public sentiment against them in the 70s. I get that, but felt that the way the movie delivers their action undermined the Rorschach character by making him seem less extreme than he should be.
Having said that...
I loved the change in Rorschach response to the child killer. Loved it. That entire flashback was shot and performed masterfully - it's one of the few moments where Haley's body language and emoting under the mask really worked for me, as you see him just boil up into that response. Now, I'm not convinced that Snyder shot that sequence as a deliberate homage to the slasher films of the 80s, but rather he may simply have been so familiar with that genre's motifs that he staged and shot that part in such a way because it just felt right to him. Either way, it was brilliant. The problem is, as extreme as Rorschach is in that scene, it again feels somewhat less powerful given what we see Dan and Laurie do in the alley, or even what we see Manhattan do in 'Nam or in the crime club. The child killer sequence sent chills down my spine, in a good way, but it was a discomfort that comes from my having read the source material. The film doesn't set up Rorschach's crime fighting career prior to that event well enough to show just how that event makes him crack - I think Haley's body language was fine for pre-Kidnapping Roschach, but should have been much colder, much less animated after the event. After all, this guy is supposed to admonish Drieberg not to go off on a guy in the bar because showing emotion is a weakness in front of these guys...but that's my own take and I'm sure millions of other people have different ones.
But, man, Haley fucking knocked that final scene with Manhattan out of the park though, didn't he? I got kinda choked up, and I've never had that problem reading the book.
Like I said, a very frustrating experience with so many things I loved and so many things that just felt off...but there's no doubt I'll see it again now that I know what I'm watching. How great is it to have a movie like this that you can dissect and debate, though? At least it isn't a work you can just dismiss out of hand.
something that stands out to me about Watchmen is the amazing character development; they do a great job making each person in that movie a whole, unique person
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Comments (8)
You know, I think I've made my doubts known about Snyder capturing the tone of the book, but damned if I'm not psyched to see this on the IMAX on Sunday. A friend of mine who's going with me said "Man, that movie is going to rock!" and I thought, you know what? Why can't a Watchmen movie flat out ROCK? Why does it have to be anything other than a blast?
I've read the series about once a year since it came out and sometimes I admire it more than I like it, sometimes I find nothing but shit that bugs me, and sometimes I just think its far more fun than people give it credit for. I'm glad to hear you liked it and thought it was entertaining.
Posted by Sean B | March 4, 2009 5:53 AM
I agree with everything this man says.
Posted by Zach Oat | March 4, 2009 11:15 AM
"Lower Manhattan" ASAHGSAHGH!!!!!!!!!!!
I was a little worried when most movie critics started panning it, but am thrilled to see the comics community come out and basically say it's pretty great.
36 hours and 6 minutes and counting.
Posted by shags | March 4, 2009 3:10 PM
Good review, Sean. I find myself agreeing with everything here too...but in the end, I feel like the really good parts and the eye-rollingly awful parts cancel each other out, and the equation just produces flatline mediocrity. That's just for me, though...and when people have been asking me about it today, I've just been telling them that it's definitely worth seeing and to let me know what they think.
Sean, parts I didn't like:
The musical choices can be justified a lot of times, but when they can't, it's really overwrought scoring and really, really on-the-nose song choices like "Everybody Wants to Rule the World." As Anthony Lane says about "The Times They Are A-Changing" in his otherwise uncharacteristically annoying review, "How long did it take the producers to arrive at that imaginative choice?"
Dr. Manhattan's turning point on Mars changes from one of the most beautifully written and affecting passages of the book into an agonizingly maudlin and clichéd monologue about the miracle of life, which misses the point of the character and rings hollow. This I think is just the most outstanding of several of these emotional turning points botched in the translation. And aside from that, I had a hard time struggling through any scene set on Mars.
And hey, I never even really thought of this before last night, but Dr. Manhattan's "sideways time" chapter just doesn't work in this medium. And it isn't that the movie fails, it's that it's just an insurmountable difference in the form. When Jon narrates moments as happening simultaneously in the book, as many of them as will fit in any given spread of two pages will actually appear simultaneous on a subconscious level, because they're all right there on the page for the eye to take in with one sweep. But film is still inescapably sequential. It's linear, it's trapped in the form of a conception of time that Dr. Manhattan steps around. And him simply telling me that things happen simultaneously while the movie continues to show me just a linear sequence of events, whether in chronological order or not, is just really boring, because explaining a concept is nowhere near as compelling as seeing it. Nothing really that anybody could have done about that in any conceivable movie version...I just think it's an interesting detail about the way the different media operate in their fundamental storytelling mechanics.
Posted by Alejandro | March 4, 2009 9:01 PM
I thought it was cold when it needed to be flashy (no alternating jump-cuts between scenes? did they READ the book?) and flashy when it needed to be cold (fight in Blake's penthouse, fight in Antarctica, bone-protrusions).
Posted by Leigh Walton | March 5, 2009 8:39 PM
Q: How's it Manhattan?
A: A little upper west side.
Posted by Robert | March 6, 2009 3:26 AM
Well, I'm still processing the whole thing. I can say it was a very frustrating movie-going experience for me. I kept finding myself taken out of the movie by little things that shouldn't have irked me, and I was constantly asking myself "Why am I not enjoying this more?"
I think Tom Spurgeon hits on some really key issues for me in his take that I would have had trouble articulating had he not done so: the violence in the film really isn't delivered in a way that delineates character as well as it should (with one big exception which I'll get to, since you mention it specifically and it was one change I thought worked extremely well).
SPOILERS
The fight scene in the alley is so brutal, so savage, that it actually blurs the line between Rorschach and Dan/Laurie to a fault. When you see Laurie jab an ice-pick into a guy's throat, you begin to wonder "So, what makes these guys so different from the 'nutjob' Rorschach?" I have a hard time believing this Dan Drieberg wouldn't have tossed someone down an elevator shaft. It seems like a small thing, but it's a huge problem when you're trying to define character based on moral and ethical differences. In the film, it never felt that Rorschach's violence was out of place or extreme in contrast to his fellow "Watchmen". It's one thing to get across that Dan and Laurie are efficient fighters and can deal out the damage, and in many ways there has to be some brutality to their actions in order to fuel the public sentiment against them in the 70s. I get that, but felt that the way the movie delivers their action undermined the Rorschach character by making him seem less extreme than he should be.
Having said that...
I loved the change in Rorschach response to the child killer. Loved it. That entire flashback was shot and performed masterfully - it's one of the few moments where Haley's body language and emoting under the mask really worked for me, as you see him just boil up into that response. Now, I'm not convinced that Snyder shot that sequence as a deliberate homage to the slasher films of the 80s, but rather he may simply have been so familiar with that genre's motifs that he staged and shot that part in such a way because it just felt right to him. Either way, it was brilliant. The problem is, as extreme as Rorschach is in that scene, it again feels somewhat less powerful given what we see Dan and Laurie do in the alley, or even what we see Manhattan do in 'Nam or in the crime club. The child killer sequence sent chills down my spine, in a good way, but it was a discomfort that comes from my having read the source material. The film doesn't set up Rorschach's crime fighting career prior to that event well enough to show just how that event makes him crack - I think Haley's body language was fine for pre-Kidnapping Roschach, but should have been much colder, much less animated after the event. After all, this guy is supposed to admonish Drieberg not to go off on a guy in the bar because showing emotion is a weakness in front of these guys...but that's my own take and I'm sure millions of other people have different ones.
But, man, Haley fucking knocked that final scene with Manhattan out of the park though, didn't he? I got kinda choked up, and I've never had that problem reading the book.
Like I said, a very frustrating experience with so many things I loved and so many things that just felt off...but there's no doubt I'll see it again now that I know what I'm watching. How great is it to have a movie like this that you can dissect and debate, though? At least it isn't a work you can just dismiss out of hand.
Posted by Sean B | March 9, 2009 8:45 AM
something that stands out to me about Watchmen is the amazing character development; they do a great job making each person in that movie a whole, unique person
Posted by coffee | March 14, 2009 4:21 PM