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Thoughts on Watchmen (Long!)
So I went to see Watchmen last night. I'd been quite looking forward to it because the graphic novel is one of my favorites and it's one of the great classics of the comic book world. I knew going in that I was going to disagree with some of the directorial choices made by Zack Snyder, and I was okay with that, because there's just no way that something as layered and densely packed as Watchmen could ever be adapted COMPLETELY faithfully to the big screen.
But damn, they TRIED to make it faithful.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when you find yourself reciting (soundlessly, of course -- don't piss off your fellow theatergoers) the dialogue along with the actors, the dialogue that you've read so many times over the years that it's drummed itself into your head. Interactions between characters, internal monologues, and nearly all of it word for word from the source. Of course, why mess with perfection? Watchmen is frequently quoted because it's so well written. Time after time I almost squeed with sheer delight when I heard some of my favorite lines.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when scene after scene is laid out and shot exactly like the corresponding scene in the graphic novel. Action stuff, angles, freeze frames. I'd be willing to bet Snyder did the same thing with Watchmen that he did with 300: cut out the pages of the graphic novel and use those as the storyboards. Again, why mess with perfection? Dave Gibbons provided fantastic source material, so why not use it for shot-by-shot reference?
You can tell it's a good adaptation when you think to yourself, "That's just how I figured Dr. Manhattan would sound", or "That's just how Rorshach should look", or "Man, he has the Comedian NAILED". The casting was out-freakin-standing. I don't have a disagreement with a single one of the major characters or the way they were portrayed, and that's something unheard of. True, I hadn't quite imagined Adrian Veidt as a willowy effeminate Eurotrash parody, but after a bit of reflection it was a change I could live with. And Rorshach, the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl, Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre -- all of the other major players were dead solid perfect, from voice to emotional portrayal right down to look and feel.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when damn near every one of your favorite scenes is left in the film and many of them are just as they were in the original. Some of them even had additional touches added to them that made them even stronger.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when you're marveling at the attention to detail, set dressing, and little touches here, there and everywhere. Ads for Nostalgia cologne; Rorshach walking the streets as a doomsayer in the backgrounds; the newspaperman and the kid who keeps coming by to read the Black Freighter comic book but never buy it; Hollis Mason's book sitting on the shelves; newspaper headlines; bit part actors looking and sounding just like Lee Iacocca, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon; period clothing and vehicles in every era -- it's just fantastic. Even a little LED display when Laurie puts on Dan's goggles and it identifies her onscreen as "Laurie Juspeczyk" instead of "Laurie Jupiter", showing that the name thing was just done for the film.
You can tell it's a good MOVIE when the effects are worth the long wait in bringing the film to the big screen. Dr. Manhattan's powers couldn't have been accurately depicted without modern CGI, so I guess it's a good thing this film spent so long in development hell. Also, the opening credits were just kickass.
You can tell it's a good MOVIE when you walk out feeling like that was a damned good way to spend a couple of hours and a couple of bucks.
Let's get the big stuff out of the way first -- changes I didn't agree with:
-- The decision to frame Dr. Manhattan for the the world-changing events at the end of the film, instead of teleporting alien squid from another dimension. I can reluctantly agree that the inclusion of said alien squid from another dimension would have extended the film by at least another half hour in order to set up all the details needed for that plot point, but as it stood in the film, the resulting banding together of nations feels contrived. Also it seems utterly out of character for the Soviets; I feel it's much more likely that a xenophobic Russian nation would have reacted by emptying their nuclear silos at us -- "You created him, this is all your fault, DIE!" -- instead of banding together with us. I mean, look at how angry the other nations are at the U.S.A. just over our policies of the past few years; this is a thousand times worse.
-- Matthew Goode's portrayal of Adrian Veidt (and this is only a minor quibble). It wasn't difficult to see in him as Ozymandias the peak of physical perfection, fast enough to catch bullets and effortlessly outfight Rorshach, Nite Owl and the Comedian without breaking a sweat, but his altogether-too-refined Eurotrash portrayal of Adrian Veidt, with his delicate sensibilities and his delicate rosebud mouth and his delicate mannerisms and speech patterns -- I kept thinking "fop", not "genius, madman, Renaissance man". I suppose this could be seen as a parallel to Bruce Wayne's deliberately making himself seem incompetent so that no one believes he's Batman, but Adrian's secret identity was revealed long ago, so that won't wash. I just would've preferred a more robust portrayal of Adrian Veidt.
-- Rorshach taking an active hand in killing the little girl's murderer instead of burning the place down and telling him to cut off his own hand to survive. I would rather this have been left alone.
-- The scene where Laurie realizes the Comedian was her father. I thought the graphic novel did this excellently well, with Blake's "Can't a guy talk to his, y'know, his old friend's daughter?" playing over and over again, fragmented, in Laurie's head, eventually resolving to "Can't a guy talk to his, yknow, his...daughter?" The thing is that it was ALMOST perfect. The montage of images. The snippets of dialogue. All they had to do to make it perfect was just repeat Blake's line a few more times, in fragments, with maybe an alternate take for the final line, as the final realization crashes in on Laurie; instead, we get Dr. Manhattan clubbing us over the head with the very obvious conclusion: "The Comedian was your father!" *WAP* *facepalm*
-- Changing things to show the Comedian specifically being responsible for JFK's killing. NOT something I agree with. Should have been left vague.
Changes I didn't mind:
-- No excerpts from Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood. First off, I understand they're going to be available as extras on the Blu-Ray / DVD, so that's nice; secondly, they'd have added a good hour at least on to the running time. Not essential.
-- Dan witnessing the death of Rorshach. I think this actually makes the scene even more powerful.
-- The cops never finding out that Dan was Nite Owl. I don't see a problem with this.
-- The Comedian shooting his paramour in the head instead of in the belly. This was probably done to keep the rating down, but I think it would have more effectively demonstrated just how ruthless and amoral Blake could be.
-- Veidt working with Manhattan to develop new technologies and obsessing over energy and energy alternatives. Not quite sure why this was thrown in, but hey, okay.
Stuff I would have liked to see that was left out:
-- A bit more of Rorshach's relationship with his psychiatrist (no doubt cut down for running time reasons).
-- More on the relationship between the newspaperman and the unnamed kid who comes by to read his comics.
-- A bit more on the "alternate universe" thing -- we see the dirigibles, and we see Nixon's president and serving a fifth term, but the odd-shaped smoking gadgets don't make an appearance, and we don't see widespread electric cars till the end of the film, which makes it seem like that's a change resulting from Veidt/Manhattan's research. That last may have been a deliberate stylistic change (see: energy alternatives, above).
-- A few quotes here and there, some relating to internal monologues from Rorshach or Dr. Manhattan, others more specific -- for example, when the cops see the pic of the Comedian with the President, I miss the followup quotes, "Hey, so it is! Well, just between you and me, I think we can rule him out as a suspect," and "That'd be real funny if we had anything else to go on". Wouldn't have hurt to add those.
Stuff that was left out that I didn't miss:
-- Hollis Mason's murder. This upsets the hell out of me every time I read the comic so I wasn't sorry to see it go. Hollis was an old man, and a hero at that; having him callously murdered by a gang of thugs always hurts every time I read it. That, of course, is the point...still, I didn't mind not seeing it onscreen.
Stuff that was absolutely perfect:
-- Look and feel. This was the comic book brought to life, from costumes and characters to the layout and shooting of the scenes. The way the world looked, the set dressing, the attention to detail everywhere -- it was outstanding. Period music for the soundtrack, MTV on the television, world figures from the time period...wow.
-- The portrayals of Rorshach, the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl, and Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre. Extreme kudos to Jackie Earl Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Malin Akerman (most of whom I've never seen in anything else). Rorshach and the Comedian are the outstanding two, but all five of them were excellent. Voices, intonations, facial expressions, the way they moved, and especially their look.
-- A lot of my favorite quotes, and a lot of the classic quotes from the series, playing out just the way I'd always envisioned them. Rorshach's opening monologue. Hell, MOST of Rorshach's monologues. Dr. Manhattan's internal reminiscences/timeline. "Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead." "Well, he tried it on Rorshach and Rorshach dropped him down an elevator shaft." "Is that bean juice?" "Yes, human bean juice. Ha ha." "You know the kind of cancer you eventually get better from? That ain't the kind I got." "You don't understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME." "Everyone...just......leave......me........ALONE!" "A partially muscled skeleton stands in the kitchen and screams for thirty seconds before vanishing". "I am disappointed, Veidt. VERY DISAPPOINTED. Reassembling myself was the FIRST thing I learned." "Life ... I think I'll create some." Line after line, just as written, and spoken just about like I'd always heard them in my head.
-- Some scenes were just really damned powerful, utterly perfect. Rorshach's final confrontation with Dr. Manhattan was awesome. Removing his mask, going to pieces as his world is ripped away from him, breaking down: "What are you waiting for? Do it. ......... DO IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!" The Comedian's go-round with his paramour in Vietnam. The attempted rape scene -- hard to watch, but it was supposed to be. Dan's dream of nuclear holocaust. The fight between the Blake and Veidt (and what a way that was to start the film!). The conversation between Laurie and Jon as they float over the surface of Mars. Man, they got an awful lot right in this film.
In summary -- Watchmen is a damn good film and a freakin' outstanding superhero movie. Go see it if you get the chance, even if you've not read the original. You'll have a great time. When even the purists like me enjoy it, the filmmakers have done their job right.
-- END OF LINE --
[[The Oracle would like to know if you believe in ghosts.]]
But damn, they TRIED to make it faithful.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when you find yourself reciting (soundlessly, of course -- don't piss off your fellow theatergoers) the dialogue along with the actors, the dialogue that you've read so many times over the years that it's drummed itself into your head. Interactions between characters, internal monologues, and nearly all of it word for word from the source. Of course, why mess with perfection? Watchmen is frequently quoted because it's so well written. Time after time I almost squeed with sheer delight when I heard some of my favorite lines.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when scene after scene is laid out and shot exactly like the corresponding scene in the graphic novel. Action stuff, angles, freeze frames. I'd be willing to bet Snyder did the same thing with Watchmen that he did with 300: cut out the pages of the graphic novel and use those as the storyboards. Again, why mess with perfection? Dave Gibbons provided fantastic source material, so why not use it for shot-by-shot reference?
You can tell it's a good adaptation when you think to yourself, "That's just how I figured Dr. Manhattan would sound", or "That's just how Rorshach should look", or "Man, he has the Comedian NAILED". The casting was out-freakin-standing. I don't have a disagreement with a single one of the major characters or the way they were portrayed, and that's something unheard of. True, I hadn't quite imagined Adrian Veidt as a willowy effeminate Eurotrash parody, but after a bit of reflection it was a change I could live with. And Rorshach, the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl, Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre -- all of the other major players were dead solid perfect, from voice to emotional portrayal right down to look and feel.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when damn near every one of your favorite scenes is left in the film and many of them are just as they were in the original. Some of them even had additional touches added to them that made them even stronger.
You can tell it's a good adaptation when you're marveling at the attention to detail, set dressing, and little touches here, there and everywhere. Ads for Nostalgia cologne; Rorshach walking the streets as a doomsayer in the backgrounds; the newspaperman and the kid who keeps coming by to read the Black Freighter comic book but never buy it; Hollis Mason's book sitting on the shelves; newspaper headlines; bit part actors looking and sounding just like Lee Iacocca, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon; period clothing and vehicles in every era -- it's just fantastic. Even a little LED display when Laurie puts on Dan's goggles and it identifies her onscreen as "Laurie Juspeczyk" instead of "Laurie Jupiter", showing that the name thing was just done for the film.
You can tell it's a good MOVIE when the effects are worth the long wait in bringing the film to the big screen. Dr. Manhattan's powers couldn't have been accurately depicted without modern CGI, so I guess it's a good thing this film spent so long in development hell. Also, the opening credits were just kickass.
You can tell it's a good MOVIE when you walk out feeling like that was a damned good way to spend a couple of hours and a couple of bucks.
Let's get the big stuff out of the way first -- changes I didn't agree with:
-- The decision to frame Dr. Manhattan for the the world-changing events at the end of the film, instead of teleporting alien squid from another dimension. I can reluctantly agree that the inclusion of said alien squid from another dimension would have extended the film by at least another half hour in order to set up all the details needed for that plot point, but as it stood in the film, the resulting banding together of nations feels contrived. Also it seems utterly out of character for the Soviets; I feel it's much more likely that a xenophobic Russian nation would have reacted by emptying their nuclear silos at us -- "You created him, this is all your fault, DIE!" -- instead of banding together with us. I mean, look at how angry the other nations are at the U.S.A. just over our policies of the past few years; this is a thousand times worse.
-- Matthew Goode's portrayal of Adrian Veidt (and this is only a minor quibble). It wasn't difficult to see in him as Ozymandias the peak of physical perfection, fast enough to catch bullets and effortlessly outfight Rorshach, Nite Owl and the Comedian without breaking a sweat, but his altogether-too-refined Eurotrash portrayal of Adrian Veidt, with his delicate sensibilities and his delicate rosebud mouth and his delicate mannerisms and speech patterns -- I kept thinking "fop", not "genius, madman, Renaissance man". I suppose this could be seen as a parallel to Bruce Wayne's deliberately making himself seem incompetent so that no one believes he's Batman, but Adrian's secret identity was revealed long ago, so that won't wash. I just would've preferred a more robust portrayal of Adrian Veidt.
-- Rorshach taking an active hand in killing the little girl's murderer instead of burning the place down and telling him to cut off his own hand to survive. I would rather this have been left alone.
-- The scene where Laurie realizes the Comedian was her father. I thought the graphic novel did this excellently well, with Blake's "Can't a guy talk to his, y'know, his old friend's daughter?" playing over and over again, fragmented, in Laurie's head, eventually resolving to "Can't a guy talk to his, yknow, his...daughter?" The thing is that it was ALMOST perfect. The montage of images. The snippets of dialogue. All they had to do to make it perfect was just repeat Blake's line a few more times, in fragments, with maybe an alternate take for the final line, as the final realization crashes in on Laurie; instead, we get Dr. Manhattan clubbing us over the head with the very obvious conclusion: "The Comedian was your father!" *WAP* *facepalm*
-- Changing things to show the Comedian specifically being responsible for JFK's killing. NOT something I agree with. Should have been left vague.
Changes I didn't mind:
-- No excerpts from Tales of the Black Freighter and Under the Hood. First off, I understand they're going to be available as extras on the Blu-Ray / DVD, so that's nice; secondly, they'd have added a good hour at least on to the running time. Not essential.
-- Dan witnessing the death of Rorshach. I think this actually makes the scene even more powerful.
-- The cops never finding out that Dan was Nite Owl. I don't see a problem with this.
-- The Comedian shooting his paramour in the head instead of in the belly. This was probably done to keep the rating down, but I think it would have more effectively demonstrated just how ruthless and amoral Blake could be.
-- Veidt working with Manhattan to develop new technologies and obsessing over energy and energy alternatives. Not quite sure why this was thrown in, but hey, okay.
Stuff I would have liked to see that was left out:
-- A bit more of Rorshach's relationship with his psychiatrist (no doubt cut down for running time reasons).
-- More on the relationship between the newspaperman and the unnamed kid who comes by to read his comics.
-- A bit more on the "alternate universe" thing -- we see the dirigibles, and we see Nixon's president and serving a fifth term, but the odd-shaped smoking gadgets don't make an appearance, and we don't see widespread electric cars till the end of the film, which makes it seem like that's a change resulting from Veidt/Manhattan's research. That last may have been a deliberate stylistic change (see: energy alternatives, above).
-- A few quotes here and there, some relating to internal monologues from Rorshach or Dr. Manhattan, others more specific -- for example, when the cops see the pic of the Comedian with the President, I miss the followup quotes, "Hey, so it is! Well, just between you and me, I think we can rule him out as a suspect," and "That'd be real funny if we had anything else to go on". Wouldn't have hurt to add those.
Stuff that was left out that I didn't miss:
-- Hollis Mason's murder. This upsets the hell out of me every time I read the comic so I wasn't sorry to see it go. Hollis was an old man, and a hero at that; having him callously murdered by a gang of thugs always hurts every time I read it. That, of course, is the point...still, I didn't mind not seeing it onscreen.
Stuff that was absolutely perfect:
-- Look and feel. This was the comic book brought to life, from costumes and characters to the layout and shooting of the scenes. The way the world looked, the set dressing, the attention to detail everywhere -- it was outstanding. Period music for the soundtrack, MTV on the television, world figures from the time period...wow.
-- The portrayals of Rorshach, the Comedian, Dr. Manhattan, Dan Dreiberg / Nite Owl, and Laurie Jupiter / Silk Spectre. Extreme kudos to Jackie Earl Haley, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Billy Crudup, Patrick Wilson and Malin Akerman (most of whom I've never seen in anything else). Rorshach and the Comedian are the outstanding two, but all five of them were excellent. Voices, intonations, facial expressions, the way they moved, and especially their look.
-- A lot of my favorite quotes, and a lot of the classic quotes from the series, playing out just the way I'd always envisioned them. Rorshach's opening monologue. Hell, MOST of Rorshach's monologues. Dr. Manhattan's internal reminiscences/timeline. "Well, what do you expect? The Comedian is dead." "Well, he tried it on Rorshach and Rorshach dropped him down an elevator shaft." "Is that bean juice?" "Yes, human bean juice. Ha ha." "You know the kind of cancer you eventually get better from? That ain't the kind I got." "You don't understand. I'm not locked in here with you. You're locked in here with ME." "Everyone...just......leave......me........ALONE!" "A partially muscled skeleton stands in the kitchen and screams for thirty seconds before vanishing". "I am disappointed, Veidt. VERY DISAPPOINTED. Reassembling myself was the FIRST thing I learned." "Life ... I think I'll create some." Line after line, just as written, and spoken just about like I'd always heard them in my head.
-- Some scenes were just really damned powerful, utterly perfect. Rorshach's final confrontation with Dr. Manhattan was awesome. Removing his mask, going to pieces as his world is ripped away from him, breaking down: "What are you waiting for? Do it. ......... DO IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT!!!!" The Comedian's go-round with his paramour in Vietnam. The attempted rape scene -- hard to watch, but it was supposed to be. Dan's dream of nuclear holocaust. The fight between the Blake and Veidt (and what a way that was to start the film!). The conversation between Laurie and Jon as they float over the surface of Mars. Man, they got an awful lot right in this film.
In summary -- Watchmen is a damn good film and a freakin' outstanding superhero movie. Go see it if you get the chance, even if you've not read the original. You'll have a great time. When even the purists like me enjoy it, the filmmakers have done their job right.
-- END OF LINE --
[[The Oracle would like to know if you believe in ghosts.]]