For those who don't know what's going on, here's the quick rundown on what Watchmen is about: Richard Nixon enlisted some superheroes to help the US win the Vietnam War, including the aid of the godlike atomic superman Dr. Manhattan who single-handedly "spooked the gooks" into surrendering. I can't blame 'em either, since the guy marched into Saigon three times the size of King Kong and glowing like a nuked Smurf. With the war won, Nixon became so popular that nobody challenged wacky ol' Uncle Dick when he had term limits repealed and went on to successful re-election... several times. Not long after 'Nam though, public opinion of "the capes" went sour when police didn't like that their jobs were being done by goofy vigilantes straight out of the comics. As the cops went on strike, the people turned to violent protesting the superheroes, which led to the passing of "The Keene Act" outlawing spandex-clad vigilantism. Some heroes went on the government payroll, some cashed in on their alter egos by going commercial, some retired into quiet obscurity, and one in particular told The Man in which orifice he could insert his Keene Act and continued opening cans of Whoop-Ass (try new Whoop Ass Ultra Lite!) on the criminal element anyway. That was pretty much the status quo until one government employed cape, an alpha male jerk-off borderline super terrorist called the Comedian, winds up tossed out the window of his luxurious 30th floor apartment.
As the sole hero still in operation, sociopath vigilante Rorschach (like "Horshack", only with an 'R'!) is set on bringing the Comedian's killer to justice, convinced that ther persona responsible targeting former superheroes. His investigation includes warning his former partners in the failed super group The Watchmen in case they should be the killer's next targets. What 'Schach and his non-friends stumble upon though turns out to be a massive conspiracy with ramifications for the entire planet. Oh yeah, and while all of this is going on, the US and USSR are aiming atomic warheads at each other as the "Doomsday Clock" ticks closer and closer to nuclear winter. It's an actual clock too! Proof that we the people of the United States of America are completely lost on the concept of abstract metaphors, so we need a big fat visual aid to look at with our big fat eyes.
I read "Watchmen" for the first time last month in preparation for the movie, so I'm not coming at this from the standpoint of a longtime loyalist to the source material, nor as someone ignorant of it. Turning it into a movie is one of the biggest gambles that a studio could make. Ignoring the automatic detractors who shout "Nay! Nay!" when they hear of Hollywood sullying their precious nerd lore, the source material itself is a monumental task to recreate. Unlike movies like the Spider-Man or Batman stuff, there is no plethora of material to draw from. You can make a movie with one of those characters and as long as you're not proclaiming your movie to be an adaptation of a pre-existing story, you can feel free to add your own touches and still avoid most fan boy criticism for not being "faithful". Even when you are working on transforming limited material, most of said materials aren't of the scope that Snyder, Hayter and Tse were working with. The biggest problem is starting a super team movie from scratch. You not only need to introduce all of your characters, you also have to establish origins for them (unlike X-Men where it's just "they were born that way"), then involve them all in a uniform story, working towards a conclusion while trying not to leave the audience feeling that any of the characters was neglected or unimportant to the story. Marvel's doing this the proper way with their forthcoming Avengers movie, establishing all of the characters in their own films first before bringing them together for what will probably be the most ambitious comic book movie since, well, Watchmen.
Beyond the obvious obstacles involved with making the movie before even getting into the movie itself, those who have read the book will each go into it with their own set of expectations, some of which will no doubt go unfulfilled. Beyond being unable to smoosh Everything from the books into a little under 3 hours as possible, there's no real basis for how the characters are supposed to sound. Personally, my interpretations of Dr. Manhattan and Moloch were waaaaaay off from the way they ended up on screen. I thought Dr. M would have a deep, stoic, godlike voice to match his body. Instead he sounds like, well, Billy Crudup stuck on "emo". And Moloch? I pictured him as a Nazi war criminal who's grown feeble. Instead he's a wormy, whimpering little Matt Frewer. Speaking of things my ears didn't agree with, the music choices were, for the most part, terrrrrrrrrible. Yes, I disliked them so much that I had to add SEVEN extra 'r's to emphasis it. With the exception of the groovy opening montage set to Bob Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin'", the rest of the soundtrack can best be described as stupid, clichéd, and distracting. A pivotal and poignant sex scene done to "Hallelujah"?! The effect of the scene is immediately washed away because my brain's too busy saying, "What the fuck?! 'Hallelujah'?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?!". And the scene I was most looking forward to? Manhattan stomping kaiju style through the jungles of Vietnam like a living deity? "Ride of the Valkyries". If Snyder spent more than 3 seconds on that one, I'll eat my Re-Animator paperweight. And any soundtrack that includes a My Chemical Romance song? No. Note for producers of future Zack Snyder movies: don't let him pick the soundtrack. And if he's not the one responsible, I ask that whomever was be shot in the foot point blank with a double barrel. And unlike myself, who will eventually have his feet ravage and stolen from him by diabetes (and a possible bull stampede), that person will not be allowed to get Swiss Army Feet transplants. I have spoken.
But the biggest length of barbed wire lodged in my taint from Watchmen was the treatment of the movie's ultimate antagonist. It's supposed to be a mystery, but that mystery is so dumbed down by the time it reaches the screen that even audience members who haven't read the book prior to viewing should have no trouble figuring out who the real threat to our cast is. I won't say who it is exactly, but let me just say this much: if a particular character seems to look and act more like a villain than the rest of the cast, that's because THEY ARE THE VILLAIN! This of course leaves the big finale "reveal" as little more than a way of making the those in the audience whom society normals deems as morons feel a little smarter because even they managed to predict who the bad guy was. Given that the identity of the conspirator was a big part of why the original comic became such a cornerstone in the funnybook medium, fucking this up in such epic fashion for the movie left searing pains in my stomach that are probably well on their way to becoming bleeding ulcers that will kill me in my sleep. Or, to add to my suffering, they'll kill me on the toilet instead and give me one of those deaths where they leave the details out of the obituary so I don't wind up in a wacky news segment on Letterman.
Visually the thing looks great for the most part, but Snyder's insistence on shooting much of the movie in static, "comic panel" shots to recreate the feel of the book's original visual style will come off to some as a beautiful homage while others will just say the fucker was being lazy. Given that he's a professed fan boy I'll give him the benefit of the doubt on that one. As for some of the changes he made, the violence has been ramped up to shock the weaker constitution members of the audience while feeding the gore whores (myself included) plenty of "ooohs and aaaaahs", and a fair bit of comedy was injected to give people some laughs amidst what was originally for the most part a very depressing, almost nihilistic tale. The gruesome violence I support (they went a little overkill on the slow-mo scenes though), but there's a change in the movie regarding Rorschach's defining flashback where what was once a grimly narrated ending was instead cut down to a brief bout of ultra-violence, trading in one of the vigilante's best moments for just another shot at graphic shocks. Did Snyder momentarily transform into Eli Roth while he was deciding what to do with that scene? As for the comedy, this too leads to the warping of another character's growth. Again, trying not to ruin too much, but I'll put it this way: somebody's got impotence issues and instead of the original intention where we look at this person as a fallible, vulnerable, imperfect person, it's setup instead like a joke. Maybe others didn't feel the same, but from where I was watching it was bordering on Adam Sandler territory... and I hate Adam Sandler.
Despite my gripes though, there's still plenty of positives to be had from the semi-epic. Once again, the opening montage is a great way to introduce us to the history of the Watchmen universe without tacking on another 30 minutes to the running time. The special effects and visual work were all very very well done and the money the studio pumped into the production values were well worth it. The work on Dr. Manhattan especially was tremendous... and I'm not just making a thinly veiled reference to the big blue sausage the guy's swinging between his legs neither! That brings me to another plus: kudos to the studio for not being shy about letting Manhattan's "lower east side" swing freely. Not that I feel the quantity of 12ft penises on movie screens is lacking mind you, I'm just glad that Warner Bros. didn't pussy out and force the doctor to be shot above the waist for the entire movie. That, and listening to all the homophobic guys in the audience groaning in disgust every time Mandingo Smurf whipped it out gave me a personal laugh knowing others were in such discomfort. I wonder if they have to piss with their eyes closed and refuse to eat hot dogs at baseball games...
Even though I was saddened when I first heard about the change in ending and the lack of Pseudo-Cthulhu that it would bring, I gotta say that the new ending not only makes sense to the plot, but it fits. It's not a perfect fit mind you as nitpickers will no doubt dig up some logic holes (I found one or two myself), but Synder and his writers lubed up their new finish just enough to slip it in with little discomfort. Most importantly the main theme of the comic's ending comes through, the path getting there just takes a different, less "space squid" centric route. As for the cast, I liked them. Even though I still stand behind my belief that Billy Crudup's voice doesn't fit my ideal for Dr. Manhattan, I did get used to the result and even grew to enjoy it in it's own way. I thought Patrick Wilson did a great job as Nite Owl, the less-manly-Batman with an owl shaped flying machine named Archie in his basement. I thought Jeffrey Dean Morgan made for a good Comedian half the time, suffering the other half due mostly to cheesy lines taken straight from the comic pages that worked just fine in their intended context but really should've been tweaked a little for the live version. I didn't like Matthew Goode as Ozymandias. He didn't really seem to fit the part itself. The guy's supposed to be this iconic, super intelligent, near perfect human being, but all I could think of looking at Goode was "Tobey Maguire and Andy Warhol had a baby that grew up to be a well-dressed heroin user". Uggh. I really wanted to like Malin Akerman as Silk Specter, mostly because she looks so damn fucktacular in the wig and costume, but her emotional range in this movie only consists of "Hey! Pay attention to me!", "Hehe, I like jokes", and "Somebody get that cardboard cutout of Malin Akerman out of my shot... wait... that is Malin Akerman?! Shit". Her big emotional scene that she should want to use as her Oscar submission? Yeah, that would be where the cardboard cutout joke comes in.
The king of this costume ball though is definitely Jackie Earle Haley. The man given the chance to star in a blockbuster-to-be and he didn't fuck around with that opportunity. Every review I've read praises the guy and he deserves it all. Who'd have thought that one of the original Bad News Bears could command an audience like that! Given the snubbing that Oscar likes to give comic book movies (if you haven't seen Hugh Jackman's "I Am Wolverine!" musical number, do so) I think that the loose talk of Haley getting an Academy Award nomination is not only premature but really reaching. Granted, for the few scenes where he's got his wacky pattern shifting mask off (p.s. - the origin of the mask didn't make the cut), you don't care about anyone or anything other than JEH, because he takes everything by the balls and twists 'em so you pay all attention to him, but these shining moments of creepy brilliance are few and far between all of the other scenes where his face and acting are both hidden behind that distracting-but-limitlessly-cool artificial visage. It'd be great to see him get one of those gold phallic trophies though, cuz the man deserves a Best Supporting Actor if nothing else. Even if you hate everything else about it, Watchmen is worth seeing just for Rorschach.
A lot of directors and writers have tried to take a stab at putting the now classic pop culture epic to celluloid, including crazy man Terry Gilliam, but I give a lot of credit to Zack Synder for what he managed to put together and I look forward to the inevitable DVD, no doubt packed with hours of deleted scenes that will likely turn the director's cut into something of a four hour endurance test, but make it all the better because of it. On a final note (because this review stopped being a Shortie three paragraphs ago...) Alan Moore, the book's creator and father of other film adapted comics like "V For Vendetta", "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", and "From Hell", has said for the last 20 years that "Watchmen" was not only unintended to be made into a movie, but was intentionally written in such a way that a successful adaptation would be flat out in-fucking-possible. He's gone so far as to demand his name be removed from any and all adaptations, thus leaving Watchmen's single creative credit to artist Dave Dorman, who had no problem working on the flick as a consultant. Some people say Moore's a dick about defending his work, and that if he really cared so much about the integrity of his intellectual properties he wouldn't have taken DC Comics' money to publish them in the first place. I say if the man wants to detach himself from his work, let him. You don't have to read interviews with him, you don't have to buy the shit he writes if you're so damn offended by the guy's opinion on his own friggin' creation, and as far as I'm concerned he can say or do whatever he wants because in the end DC and parent company Warner Bros. contractually own the legal rights to the material to do with as their greedy little selves please. So, if they want to sink more money into making a movie than most nations' annual GNP, I don't care. Just don't be surprised if some asshole greenlights a sequel to be made sometime around 2012...
The Moral of the Story: Nothing's
impossible to film. The only thing that's impossible is pleasing everybody.
