Watchmen film....and Zack Snyder....

[Shazam!]

So what if movies like X-Men and Spider-Man et al are kinda stoopid. Everyone knows that. What's the point of making a movie telling us what we already know?

You're right. All superhero films should aspire to be nothing more than 'stoopid' pieces of crap. Let's get Uwe Boll to direct them all from now on.

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[Yassim]

The only way to ever put an authentic version of Watchmen on film would be to use the tropes of superhero films in a similarly holistic way and simultaneously turn the heroic assumptions put forth in superhero movies on their heads. It's not about those movies being dumb or unartistic - quite the opposite. It's about exploring the hidden depths in the assumptions of such tales.

I'm not convinced of this yet. While Watchmen was delivered as a commentary on superhero comics, I think it has enough resonance to comment on ideas of heroism, pop culture and story-telling in general. I think part of why the opening credits get so much attention (besides the fact that they were original in a sea of slavish imitation) is that they begin to point to the iconography of superheroes and put them in a wider context of cultural touchstones (the VJ photo, the Last Supper). The credits hint that something wider about our culture will be explored. It never happened, but I don't think it's necessarily impossible.

By adhering so closely to the source material, Snyder managed to miss the entire point of it. He threw some tropes in there, but they were just his favorite ones - not anything he'd given any thought to in regards to the genre.

Here I have to agree. It felt like listening to someone read phonetically - all the sounds are there, but none of the understanding.

All of which is by way of saying that the goal to make a big budget action movie hit out of Watchmen was misguided from the inception.

I believe this is what Terry Gilliam said - that to film it in two hours, would be to remove anything worth filming.

 

[Kaijima]

Many criticisms of the film remind me of the time I watched a snobbish reader of fantasy dismiss the broadway musical version of Wicked because the it did away with the stunning meta-narrative of the novel. All the sociopolitical overtones, the themes, oh, the layers, the delicious fluffy layers! Especially the ending in which, in the novel - spoiler! Not! - Elphaba dies, but in the musical she's given a poignant escape and a final reconciliation with her friend Glinda.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, I simply enjoyed the musical because it was a well told and touching story, with fantastic music and it still had a fairly strong set of themes and commentary outside the surface story of the two witches' friendship.

I realize that the problem with a piece of work like Watchmen is that it's a holy relic. An article of faith to those who take pride in understanding it as a layered example of literature. But in the end, it's a book. A book based on a set of ideas. Those ideas can be interpreted many ways.

The movie? I think it's flawed, but still a very good film. It is not flawed because it has slow motion jump kicks or emphasizes music that was referenced in the book anyway. Rather, if Synder was going to take so many scenes directly from the book, he made a critical error in removing Jon's final conversation with Ozy. That was important to the surface story as well as subtext. And the role of Ozy was miscast. I can see what Synder was going for but the experiment does not work.

That aside, the rest of the film works perfectly for what it is trying to do. I think some elements are great improvements on the central storyline, such as making Dan and Laurie stronger and more authentically heroic people, less pathetic, so that they could be a counterpoint to Ozy's beliefs at the end. (In the book, they go with the plan because their spirit is broken and they are made to feel impotent and foolish. In the movie, they know Jon has sided with Ozy and they know Rorschach was murdered. They're hostages. This makes their commitment to resume hero work more poignant at the end.)

 

[Caligula]

The fact that this movie wasn't even considered for Oscar candidacy when there is now a 10-film playing field just saddens me. For any faults that Watchmen might have, it's easily one of the ten best films of 2009... and IMO it is certainly better than at least SOME of those that will be up for Best Picture.

 

[C_Miller]

I can't believe no one has touched on this yet. The reason that people are upset about the squid being gone, isn't because the squid is gone and you need to keep everything true to the book, but because what they replaced it with didn't work in the same way. Dr. Manhattan comes from the United States. Now if he blew up several of the world's major cities, everyone would point their fingers at the US, regardless of the cities that were destroyed there, further plummeting the world into the Cold War

The reason the alien invasion idea worked was because it was from entirely abroad, so you can't point your fingers. It's a threat that's bigger than the world that would need the world to get together. That's why it worked.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

He threw some tropes in there, but they were just his favorite ones - not anything he'd given any thought to in regards to the genre.

That was why I thought the opening credits were so brilliant.

Because they mixed media from live action film to newspaper clippings to living paintings, and because the subtext of what's being shown is a subversion of the media hero-worship being rendered in all three.

That sort of total home run is hard to keep up for the running time of an entire movie.

Eh, I don't know if I believe that. Why, if it was achieved in the first ten minutes, would it have been hard to do for the rest of the movie?

The only way to ever put an authentic version of Watchmen on film would be to use the tropes of superhero films in a similarly holistic way and simultaneously turn the heroic assumptions put forth in superhero movies on their heads.

You know, I was one of the few people to defend the sound work and the musical choices in the film, because I thought they were deliberate attempts to bring you out of the film and hit you over the head and say YOU ARE WATCHING A MOVIE. The "Sound of Silence" cue, for example, is so on-the-nose and the volume mixing on it is so inappropriately high that I honestly thought [and think] that it's the kind of postmodernist in-joke you're asking for here.

That may be - which again begs the questions, if he could come up with this in bits and pieces why wasn't it done for the whole film? Maybe he was really trying throughout the whole thing and he simply is no Alan Moore, who, whatever his problems, has had his moments of true brilliance in his chosen format.

And I should say - I'm not asking for anything here. I have no attachment to Watchmen. Even when I first read it I found it an interesting intellectual exercise but I don't really think it's nearly as deep as some people would have it. The reason for this being, superhero comics simply aren't that deep a genre. Watchmen pretty much plumbed their depths in one 12-issue story.

(This is not to say that superhero comics are not loads of fun or to in any way insult anyone who enjoys them. Not everything has to be deep to be good, and lots of things that are deep are not in the least enjoyable.)

That's why despite their best will they couldn't help but make Rorschach the hero.

I always thought Moore was trying to show you that whatever you think of yourself, there's something in you that sees Rorsharch as a hero. And that that's why you* like comics in the first place. Comics appeal to the part of us that enjoys a catharsis when vicariously experiencing uncomplicated revenge-fantasy direct action.

*I am using "you" in the general sense here.

A very lovely summation.

Many criticisms of the film remind me of the time I watched a snobbish reader of fantasy dismiss the broadway musical version of Wicked because the it did away with the stunning meta-narrative of the novel. All the sociopolitical overtones, the themes, oh, the layers, the delicious fluffy layers! Especially the ending in which, in the novel - spoiler! Not! - Elphaba dies, but in the musical she's given a poignant escape and a final reconciliation with her friend Glinda.

Meanwhile, I was thinking, I simply enjoyed the musical because it was a well told and touching story, with fantastic music and it still had a fairly strong set of themes and commentary outside the surface story of the two witches' friendship.

I realize that the problem with a piece of work like Watchmen is that it's a holy relic. An article of faith to those who take pride in understanding it as a layered example of literature. But in the end, it's a book. A book based on a set of ideas. Those ideas can be interpreted many ways.

Sure they can - but the problem with your analogy of Watchmen the film to Wicked the musical is that Wicked made next to no effort to be faithful to the book. It was a free adaptation, and as such did a much better job of creating a story that works smashingly well in its own format. Snyder attempted to bring Watchmen the comic nearly wholesale to the screen - and this is what was misguided. It was a mismatch of formats.

Both Watchmen and Wicked have severe problems just as stories because they are so very involved in the delicious fluffy layers. In their orignal formats the delicious fluffy layers make up for a lot of those shortcomings (more so in Watchmen than in Wicked, which entirely falls apart in the end when it tries to brings its metanarrative into synch with the original work), but in a new, more direct and less easy to pour over format such as stage or film one has to deal with the layers. Wicked said, "poo!" to the layers and produced a successful and largely satisfying musical spin-off to the Wizard of Oz. Watchmen, on the other hand, said, "we shall pretend as if the layers can be carried purely in a panel-by-panel replication to the screen despite the fact that panels are not moving pictures."

The movie? I think it's flawed, but still a very good film. It is not flawed because it has slow motion jump kicks or emphasizes music that was referenced in the book anyway. Rather, if Synder was going to take so many scenes directly from the book, he made a critical error in removing Jon's final conversation with Ozy. That was important to the surface story as well as subtext. And the role of Ozy was miscast. I can see what Synder was going for but the experiment does not work.

There are certainly reasons why the movie has real problems of its own, and this is one. Snyder did leave out vital moments. Whether this was because he couldn't bear to leave out material from earlier in the story or because he didn't grasp what was vital about the story (even sans layers) is up for debate.

 

[Rii]

I have zero interest in comic books and only a little more in most film adaptations of same, but the Watchmen film was a rare exception, primarily on account of Dr. Manhattan and the exploration of his isolation from humanity. A rough gem, but a gem nonetheless.

 

[FluffyUnbound]

Eh, I don't know if I believe that. Why, if it was achieved in the first ten minutes, would it have been hard to do for the rest of the movie?

Well, because the rest of the movie is a movie.

Moore was able to play with the concept of blended media more in print because it's easier to do in print. In print, you can do comic book / newpaper clipping / psychological file / interoffice memo / magazine article / biography excerpt mashups if you want to make a postmodernist point. In movies, as soon as the characters start walking and talking you're in a movie and that's it. Maybe he could have chosen to mix styles - if it was me, I would have made the Rorsharch voiceover parts look like Raging Bull or Taxi Driver and I would have made the prison riot look like Natural Born Killers and I would have told the Dr. Manhattan story partially in black and white, partially in George Pal style cinemascope, partially looking like Apocalypse Now, partially looking like 2001, etc. And so forth. But I also understand that this would probably have made the film not very "general interest".

 

[Noname Given]

I can't believe no one has touched on this yet. The reason that people are upset about the squid being gone, isn't because the squid is gone and you need to keep everything true to the book, but because what they replaced it with didn't work in the same way. Dr. Manhattan comes from the United States. Now if he blew up several of the world's major cities, everyone would point their fingers at the US, regardless of the cities that were destroyed there, further plummeting the world into the Cold War

The reason the alien invasion idea worked was because it was from entirely abroad, so you can't point your fingers. It's a threat that's bigger than the world that would need the world to get together. That's why it worked.

Again, I haven't reaf the original GN - BUT - if it were true that Jon was held up by the U.S. as a deterant to the USSR (ie You try and attach us, Dr. Manhattan will stop you and we'll retaliate); WHY would the world be so scared of an alien invasion as I would think that the World could believe Dr. Manhattan could stip the invasion in it's tracks.

In other words, with Dr. Manhattan still around; I don't see why the world would suddenly and completely unite. Was that story point handled in the GN?

 

[JoeZhang]

I can't believe no one has touched on this yet. The reason that people are upset about the squid being gone, isn't because the squid is gone and you need to keep everything true to the book, but because what they replaced it with didn't work in the same way. Dr. Manhattan comes from the United States. Now if he blew up several of the world's major cities, everyone would point their fingers at the US, regardless of the cities that were destroyed there, further plummeting the world into the Cold War

The reason the alien invasion idea worked was because it was from entirely abroad, so you can't point your fingers. It's a threat that's bigger than the world that would need the world to get together. That's why it worked.

Again, I haven't reaf the original GN - BUT - if it were true that Jon was held up by the U.S. as a deterant to the USSR (ie You try and attach us, Dr. Manhattan will stop you and we'll retaliate); WHY would the world be so scared of an alien invasion as I would think that the World could believe Dr. Manhattan could stip the invasion in it's tracks.

In other words, with Dr. Manhattan still around; I don't see why the world would suddenly and completely unite. Was that story point handled in the GN?

As far as the world was concerned, he'd left the earth.

 

[Yassim]

I have zero interest in comic books and only a little more in most film adaptations of same, but the Watchmen film was a rare exception, primarily on account of Dr. Manhattan and the exploration of his isolation from humanity. A rough gem, but a gem nonetheless.

You've said that you aren't a comic fan, so I guess you haven't read the original Watchmen...

1) You should, especially if you really enjoyed the exploration of Dr. Manhattan.

2) What specifically did you like about the movie's treatment of Manhattan? I thought the "actor" did a good job, but the script stripped him of almost everything. I know that I can't watch it from an unbiased view, but I didn't think he got any backstory at all, and couldn't imagine how he made much sense as just a movie character...

 

[milo bloom]

Finally finished the book, great story. Definitely going to order the Blu-ray. Only flaw I would venture to put out there is that due to it's setup (the final story of the characters), even with all the well done flashbacks, we're still asked to feel for these characters right away without the benefit of years of comics/tv shows/movies. The fact that they're distillations of existing comic characters certainly helps that aspect, but still a pretty crackin' story.

 

[Zeppster]

Alright I know this is late. I'm not a fan of the book but I finally got around to watching this film. And I really like the characters a lot. The story was kind of week. But the characters are really easy to get into. Even the bad ones or not so likable ones. I think the actual plot is probably the weakness of the movie but I can watch movies on each of these characters more then I could an X-Men movie.