WATCHMEN - Movie Discussion and Grading (SPOILERS)

[Dream]

A director with more subtlety.

Such as who?

 

[Norrin Radd]

Michael Bay!

 

[Dream]

Michael Bay!

Michael Bay is good with mindless action but little else. We might have gotten more action and boobs with him in charge.

The thing is that there are loads of crappy comic book directors. But the few good ones like Christopher Nolan and Jon Favreau are busy.

 

[Maurice]

Some thoughts on some of the film's missteps:

1. I never pictured the opening scene being a big fight like that. Blake had discovered the truth and it broke him. I have a hard time picturing him fighting for his life like that when he knew what was coming.

2. Laurie's hatred of Blake was largely excised, which made the revelation of her paternity flat and pointless.

3. The violence was amped up too much, which made scenes that should have been horrible less so (Blake's attack on Sally, for instance).

4. Characters without powers seemed superhuman and that clouded the issue somewhat.

5. The whole Keene Act was brushed by much too quickly and it wasn't apparent why there was a police strike: the cops were sick of these costumed weirdos messing in their business.

6. The effects of "Manhattanization" were minimized. Sure, he was still winning wars and being a nuclear deterrent, but where were the other effects? They shifted that to his working with Adrian on some new cheap power source. As such, it lessened his impact on the day to day world.

7. The score. Weeeak.

8. Nixon. The makeup was terrible. The performance was cartoonish.

9. Cutting away from things too fast so they don't register with the audience. Blink and you'll miss how Laurie got the gun. Don't know to look and you won't get a long enough look at Kovacs on the street to realize that Rorshach is him when he gets unmasked.

10. A lack of connection of the kid in the title sequence to Kovacs/Rorshach. Without that connection, why bother showing it in the titles?

 

[Praetor]

Particularly good points on 1,8, and 9.

 

[Caligula]

In my opinion, this movie shows the folly of being almost faithful to the source material. If you're going be faithful and use that to as a selling-point for your movie, then you should be completely faithful (within reason of course). You don't do it for 90% of the movie and then make up so much of the last 10%. Because it's that last 10% which is often the most important and memorable part to the fans. It is, after all, the climax of the whole work. I'm just saying, it undermines the rest of that 90% if all of a sudden you're trying to do your own thing for arguably the most essential part of the story.

I can see where you're coming from, but there's really no way that they could have done the ending as originally conceived and make it presentable to a post-9/11 audience, who have seen how little the world changes when New York is under attack. The squid alone would likely have confused the hell out of most people.

Michael Bay!

Subtlety is not a word I'd use to describe the works of Michael Bay. With him onboard, I fear that Watchmen would have been a sub-standard entry that sacrifices its plot in order to place even more emphasis on sex and cool 'splosions than is called for. You wouldn't get anywhere near even a 90% faithful book-to-film translation that way. With Mr. Bay, we might have gotten the big giant squid... but at what cost?

Zack Snyder was backed into a corner, facing the possibility of confusing the general masses or being crucified by purists. He chose not to offend the latter, and by doing so left in more of the "filler" subplots than maybe he should have, and didn't get a chance to flesh out other more important character arcs like Laurie's hatred of Edward Blake. He tried to be TOO faithful. Other changes were necessary to keep from appearing as though he were ripping off other films, like with the scene where Rorschach killed the child murderer. Sure, Mad Max was thirty years ago, but people remember that final scene. Ultimately, I concur with Dream. Snyder did as admirable a job as he could have been expected to.

 

[Dick Whitman]

I always thought that Watchmen was tailored made for Oliver Stone.

The heavy use of flashbacks
A complex conspiracy
Vietnam
Richard Nixon
John F Kennedy
1980s Corporate villain in Veidit

 

[MyCylon]

I can see where you're coming from, but there's really no way that they could have done the ending as originally conceived and make it presentable to a post-9/11 audience, who have seen how little the world changes when New York is under attack.

Interesting. I feel the opposite about this. I think it would or at least could have been very effective with a post-9/11 audience since I feel that the world has changed a lot due to the attacks as well as what followed.

I'm assuming what you're getting at is that the world has not changed in a way many people would have wanted or expected it to, i.e. in a more positive way. Suffice it to say I think that potential was there but squandered.

Having said that, I really like the ending in the movie a lot. I think it makes a lot of scenes, is easier to understand, that bit more realistic (within the realms of that universe, of course), and a great explanation as to why Dr. Manhattan would leave in the end.

 

[firehawk12]

I always thought that Watchmen was tailored made for Oliver Stone.

The heavy use of flashbacks
A complex conspiracy
Vietnam
Richard Nixon
John F Kennedy
1980s Corporate villain in Veidit

Except now he's making family movies like that Twin Towers movie and W.

 

[Skywalker]

And before that was Alexander. Stone is not the director he used to be.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Michael Bay doesn't equal subtlety. Not to be condescending, but I thought it was so obvious that people would understand I was joking.

 

[galleywest]

Some thoughts on some of the film's missteps:

1. I never pictured the opening scene being a big fight like that. Blake had discovered the truth and it broke him. I have a hard time picturing him fighting for his life like that when he knew what was coming.

2. Laurie's hatred of Blake was largely excised, which made the revelation of her paternity flat and pointless.

3. The violence was amped up too much, which made scenes that should have been horrible less so (Blake's attack on Sally, for instance).

4. Characters without powers seemed superhuman and that clouded the issue somewhat.

5. The whole Keene Act was brushed by much too quickly and it wasn't apparent why there was a police strike: the cops were sick of these costumed weirdos messing in their business.

6. The effects of "Manhattanization" were minimized. Sure, he was still winning wars and being a nuclear deterrent, but where were the other effects? They shifted that to his working with Adrian on some new cheap power source. As such, it lessened his impact on the day to day world.

7. The score. Weeeak.

8. Nixon. The makeup was terrible. The performance was cartoonish.

9. Cutting away from things too fast so they don't register with the audience. Blink ad you'll miss how Laurie got the gun. Don't know to look and you won't a long enough look at Kovacs on the street to realize that Rorshach is him when he gets unmasked.

10. A lack of connection of the kid in the title sequence to Kovacs/Rorshach. Without that connection, why bother showing it in the titles?

This is a great list--you've pointed out many of the things that confused me, so I can tell you that you are right on the money. I agree 100% with what you've outlined. Watchmen has also shown me something about adapting comics/cartoons to a movie. This is one of the first sci-fi comic adaptations I've seen where I personally had almost no idea going into the movie who the characters were or the general plot, so I was relying on the movie to tell the story. It didn't do that effectively and was filled with distractions, so the result is that I am left feeling slightly alienated and disinterested. It's made me aware of how outsiders going to Star Trek movies might feel, and why it's hard to draw in new viewers.

As a counter to this, I never read the LoTR books, so I was definitely in the same situation going into those movies. With those, however, I left feeling that I got the complete, vivid impact of the complex storyline.

 

[Norrin Radd]

One thing I've realized is that it's harder for Watchmen comic book readers to objectively evaluate this film. I knew exactly what was going on because I already had the book in my head. In some ways, that's a positive and in some ways a negative.

But I'm not sure how much sense Watchmen-ignorant audiences made of this film.

 

[Praetor]

Two people I know hadn't read the book before seeing the movie. They both found it somewhat predictable but were confused on the smaller details, probably due to all that cutting.

 

[Norrin Radd]

Two people I know hadn't read the book before seeing the movie. They both found it somewhat predictable but were confused on the smaller details, probably due to all that cutting.

Predictable? That's a problem. Watchmen shouldn't be predictable.

 

[Praetor]

I know, I was shocked by it. I was very surprised when I read the novel.

Granted, both persons were relatively smart but the two big things that I thought would be surprises were not. The Laurie/Comedian connection was predicted. The Veidt plot was predicted. The resolution was predicted.

I think it may have to do with how the plot was compressed for the movie and lots of the subtlety removed as a result of it.

 

[Caligula]

Michael Bay doesn't equal subtlety. Not to be condescending, but I thought it was so obvious that people would understand I was joking.

Not condescending at all. Sometimes it's difficult for me to pick up on sarcasm here on the 'Net. It's cool.

Interesting. I feel the opposite about this. I think it would or at least could have been very effective with a post-9/11 audience since I feel that the world has changed a lot due to the attacks as well as what followed.

I'm assuming what you're getting at is that the world has not changed in a way many people would have wanted or expected it to, i.e. in a more positive way. Suffice it to say I think that potential was there but squandered.

I won't sit here and deny that the entire world was irrevocably changed by the events of 9/11. To do so would be foolish on my part. You are correct in your assessment that the point I was aiming for was that the world has not changed the way we would have preferred it to since then. Quite the opposite, in my humble opinion. So, the reason I feel that Watchmen's ending as depicted in the graphic novel would not resonate with a post-9/11 audience is the cynicism that many have adopted due to our government's failure to act against those who were actually responsible for the crimes or even wait for help from the United Nations.

There are some conspiracy theorists out there who would tell you that the Bush administration set the whole thing up behind the scenes to gain the American public's trust. Those people might have found something eerily familiar about Watchmen's original ending (except for the squid, of course), and so for them it would have most definitely been effective. As much as I have against the policies of the Bush administration, even I find those conspiracy theories offensive. Not meaning to lump you into that group, if it comes out that way. Just using people with that mindset as an example.

 

[Lapis Exilis]

In watching the movie, I was struck by the fact that Watchmen is quite a good story - up until the denouement. I haven't read the book in 15 years, and back then I read it 2 or 3 times. It's really a very good science fiction story. It is earth-shattering in, and only in, a superhero context. As a science fiction story, it's good, very well-told, but not particularly ground-breaking.

The movie, it seemed to me, played much more as a science fiction story, almost entirely lacking the subversion of the superhero concept that made the book such a big deal in the comic book world. This falls entirely to the direction, which made a huge misstep in playing up the action fight scenes, tremendously heroicizing the superheroes visually, and thus completely undercutting the issues that made the book a radical deconstruction of the concept of the superhero.

Other than that, the movie was pretty good. The detective story is bizarre and absorbing, and Dr. Manhattan's story is particularly compelling. I personally never got the romanticization of Rorschach, and the movie played this up, making me feel rather dirty in the way it so wanted me to sympathize with a man who is a total psychopath. Casting seriously exacerbated an inherent weakness in the book - which is that it has a weak villain, storywise. Adrian always seemed to me a bit pulled out of a hat at the end. He's basically a non-entity in the story (as I recall, it has been a while) who suddenly appears at the end as the ultimate puppet-master. But since you haven't gotten to know him at all, he simply has no emotional impact. His action is horrible, but the ending feels engineered for horror, it feels written, rather than genuinely gut-punching horrible because you are deep in the story.

My biggest gripe with the movie though is the very, very end. By having the voiceover of Rorschach reading his journal, the movie assumes what has certainly become a popular interpretation of the ending, but one I think is very wrong. The ending of the book does not at all imply that Rorschach's journal will bring the truth out in such a way as to undermine Adrian's New World Order. Quite the contrary, it implies that the truth will come out, but because it's in a conspiracy mag that only wingnuts read (and even the staff of the magazine thinks the material is pure nutter fantasy, thus why it's in the "crank" file), no one will believe it. Since the movie did not set up the New Frontiersman as a right-wing conspiracy magazine, and adds the voice over, it hits you over the head with the exact opposite of what the book actually says.

 

[Misfit Toy]

The movie, it seemed to me, played much more as a science fiction story, almost entirely lacking the subversion of the superhero concept that made the book such a big deal in the comic book world. This falls entirely to the direction, which made a huge misstep in playing up the action fight scenes, tremendously heroicizing the superheroes visually, and thus completely undercutting the issues that made the book a radical deconstruction of the concept of the superhero.

I saw the book as a deconstruction of the "superhero comic book " and the movie as a deconstruction of the "superhero movie". That (to me) explains the emphasis on action, as well as the nipples on Ozymandias' costume.

 

[TGTheodore]

One thing I've realized is that it's harder for Watchmen comic book readers to objectively evaluate this film. I knew exactly what was going on because I already had the book in my head. In some ways, that's a positive and in some ways a negative.

Excellent point. That's why I avoid "reading the books" (like Harry Potter, etc) before seeing the film. If you're producing a film it should stand on its own as a self-contained piece of work. (As well as be as faithful as possible to the spirit of the original work).

--Ted