Mountain FogWATCHMEN: PERHAPS DON'T WATCH THEM AFTER ALL
March 19th 2009 10:07
The Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman) demonstrates her fire retardant bangs in Watchmen.
Reading the graphic novel of Watchmen is an intense experience. Frame after turbulent frame flows together and turning the page would sometimes leave the reader stuck for a good five minutes, just trying to absorb all of the information being flung at them by writer Alan Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons. The tale of broken crime fighters and a Cold War about to explode quickly gathered a strong and dedicated fan base, one that seemed to explode once unleashed upon the fledgling internet of the late 90s. It is probably Moore’s greatest work (with the possible exception of V for Vendetta) and displayed a wealth of ideas generated by a man seemingly at the height of his creative powers.
A movie adaptation of this great work could only ever be a tricky prospect and over the past year fans of the book around the world have been putting hands to heads imagining all of terrible outcomes from such an enterprise. It came as a carefully greeted pleasant surprise then, when early reports had the film as being all that the dedicated could hope for, with many of the graphic novel’s frames being fastidiously translated directly to the silver screen. Unfortunately, while this is the case, director Zack Snyder has accidentally managed to torpedo his own ship, creating a film for fanboys, not cinemagoers.
For those who haven’t read the graphic novel, Watchmen is set in an alternative version of 1985. Ever since an American victory in the Vietnam War, the world has been moving slowly but surely towards certain nuclear conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. Richard Nixon is still in power and a large part of his remaining leverage over the Soviets is the seemingly omnipotent Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup), a man obliterated in a science experiment and subsequently reconstituted at a quantum level. Costumed superheroes are part of this alternative reality, but have long been made to hang up their masks thanks to the government sponsored Keene Act.
All that changes, however, with the murder of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a robust ex-hero whose death catches the attention of one of the country’s few active vigilantes, Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley). Rorschach quickly concludes that The Comedian’s murder was due to his past life as a superhero and sets out to warn other former members of the Watchmen, including Dr. Manhattan, Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson), Ozymandias (Matthew Goode), and the Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman). The news leads the outlawed collective to get back in touch and some of them to eventually to get back in the game as The Comedian’s death seemingly sets of a chain reaction of events that could put them in and danger and push the world to the brink of nuclear war.
There are numerous problems with Watchmen, but everything starts with the way in which Snyder and his screenwriters, David Hayter and Alex Tse, have approached the work’s transition to screen. You have to admire the trio’s almost slavish dedication to the source material and you do get a kick every now and then out of seeing memorable frames brought to the screen, but a graphic novel is not a film; the two mediums are completely different. In trying to be as faithful as possible to the frames of the book, Snyder and company have left many of their chosen medium’s tools in the box. The result is a film that in its early scenes moves at a snail’s pace, as just about every one of Moore and Gibbon’s frames are lovingly recreated for the camera. And despite their toils on this first act, little character depth is created for the uninitiated audience members.
Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Ackerman) get confused and deal out justice to some crims who are already locked up.
Part of the reason for this is the filmmakers’ incapacity to use one of Moore’s clever tricks from the graphic novel. At the end of each installment or chapter of Watchmen were multiple pages of extracts from newspaper articles, character’s biographies and the like that not only provided important back-story but also gave a lot of depth to the happenings in the book. With Snyder, Hayter and Tse’s approach to the translation there’s very little time for this background, despite a fabulous opening titles sequence that shows the modern history of the crime fighter and the late 1930s Minutemen being succeeded by the Watchmen. In fact, this opening is easily the highlight of the film and shows that when he wants to Snyder can tell a tale with clever economy.
Without the background it’s harder to invest in characters, a situation not helped by some subtle changes from the novel in terms of characterisation. Rorschach has been softened slightly and made less patently insane, which in turn makes his narration (lifted in a large part straight from the book) less the Chandler-esque mutterings of a madman and more just Chandler-lite. His character in the film earns little empathy, his meat cleaver attack on a paedophile no longer just unnecessary but completely alienating to the audience. Silk Spectre too has been given short thrift in the film, seemingly stripped of the spunk and quiet anger she carries in the novel, although things aren’t helped by a strangely toneless performance from Ackerman.
While things do pick up pace in the second half of Watchmen, by that stage things begin to lose their balance somewhat. The filmmakers start to cut more of the source material from the film, but strangely add in other brand new sequences, such as an ill-advised pastiche of Dr. Strangelove’s war room scenes where Robert Wisden as President Nixon honks some exposition through a Plasticine nose (so bad a make-up job that Snyder would have been better off sending a runner down to a local toy store to grab a Tricky Dick party mask).
Jeffrey Dean Morgan impresses as the Comedian in Watchmen.
Under all of this mess there are a few positive notes. Watchmen does indeed look like a million bucks and the casting is almost spot-on, despite Ackerman’s poor acting and the fact that the genuinely frightening Jackie Earle Hayley seems a foot too short to play Rorschach. Jeffrey Dean Morgan is particularly impressive as the physically intimidating Comedian, and it’s a shame (but not surprising) that the adaptation couldn’t give him more screen time.
At the end of the day, Snyder and his team have simply taken the wrong route with Watchmen. It’s like they were given the parts to a car and told to rebuild it, but without the necessary instructions simply made sure it looked exactly like the brochure, forgetting about the mechanics underneath. It’s an unenviable job trying to satisfy the fanboys and also the average cinemagoer, but the makers of Watchmen have seemed to avoid all of the hard decisions with their adaptation. Scared to break down the work and recreate it into a compelling cinematic experience, they’ve instead made a wax model of Moore and Gibbon’s book; it might look like the real thing, but ultimately there’s nobody really there.
Check out the trailer to Watchmen below:
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Comment by Damo
I hope this worth the effort.
I found 300 unimpressive and V just plain silly.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by Damo
"Thank you Mr V," was her attitude.
Instead she should kicked him in the goolies and run like hell from this fanatic.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by The wonderful Peter Yang
The wonderful Peter Yang's Variety blog
Power Ranger Online
Comedy TV Online
Comment by David O'Connell
Screen Fanatic
Without doubt I'll be reading the graphic novel some time down the track before attacking the film again.
The opening titles are extraordinary - very exciting and so meticulously put together, and there are some excellent moments scattered throughout, but somehow it just didn't hang together for me, not in any consistantly compelling way. It just never blew me out of my seat the way I imagined - or just hoped - I would be.
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Comment by Cibbuano
Hunt Famous
Orble Post of the Day
Fat Cult
Techbreak
the only way to make a critically successful comic book film would be to eschew the box office and make a unique film that's only influenced by the source material. "Watchmen" needed its own life on film, instead of replicating the graphic novel...
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight