Watchmen
One hour into Watchmen, I thought it was going to beat out Dark Knight as my favourite superhero film.
I didn’t expect much. The graphic novel is dense and long and literary, and although 300 (the director’s previous film) was visually lush, I wasn’t moved by it. I knew it was going to be pretty long, and would nonetheless have to do some fairly savage cutting to get it finished under three hours. I was prepared for compromises. That was the first surprise. It fit in far more than I was expecting, and patiently laid things out without the kind of mad rush that infected such films as The Golden Compass. It even made an improvement in discarding the giant squid in favour of the very logical “Doctor Manhattan goes nuts” scenario, tying things together very effectively.
Still, perilously close to greatness, the second half meandered into setpieces that were cool but left the plot hanging. The subplot about Black Canary’s patrimony *was* rushed and so was Doctor Manhatten’s ultimate conversion to save humanity.
For a change, let’s open the comments for suggestions for changing the film, even if it is just me in the end.
March 6th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
How lucky you are to have seen it already! We must wait a few more weeks.
March 8th, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Oooh, even a few days later, I still can’t decide how this film should be changed, or even what I thought about it. It was clearly trying very hard to be faithful, and succeeded to a degree. It was also trying to be kick-arse, and succeeded to a degree.
As Stephen Notley (Bob the Angry Flower) notes, the rule of cool (and the heightened violence) takes away some of the humanity of the characters. When Nite Owl and Silk Spectre kick the crap out of some thugs, it goes rather startlingly brutal and some of the thugs are definitely dead by the end of it, but it’s still treated as lightly as the comic: both characters find the experience cathartic and a little like foreplay.
I still like the removal of the squid, though. Even though Hitler didn’t.
March 9th, 2009 at 11:48 pm
WARNING: Do not click the above link when at work. Liable to induce hysterical yet inappropriate-for-the-time laughter.
March 18th, 2009 at 11:13 am
Based on a meatspace discussion with shellshear…
I really liked the movie ending, but there was something naggingly annoying about it that I only put my finger on this morning.
The squid was an unambiguously external, alien threat. It makes some amount of sense for the world to put aside their differences because of it. But Dr Manhattan is, as far as the Soviets are concerned, an American superweapon. It’s not clear to me that their first reaction after Moscow disappeared would be anything other than hitting the Big Red Button and asking questions later… and, perhaps more importantly, I can’t imagine that Adrian’s plan depended on it.
Obviously the fact that Dr M publicly flipped out and left Earth a few days earlier lends some credibility to it, and makes the whole idea quite elegant, to the extent that I think this could have been addressed with only minor tweaks. They could have stuck more closely to the novel and only attacked New York… although then it might have looked more like revenge on the US than a declaration of war on the world. Even if New York had been the first in the row of monitors, rather than the last, so that Russia had time to find out that America had been attacked before they were attacked themselves…
Hmm.
I agree about the Rule of Cool messing up a few notes in the movie. Only Rorschach and Adrian have any excuse to be in shape – Dan and Laurie kicking butt in the prison break scene was a bit of a mood breaker. And even Rorschach after he jumps out the window was too competent fighting off the SWAT team in fair combat – he’s a guerrilla who fights dirty on his own terms, not a l33t Kung Fu Master.
March 18th, 2009 at 4:59 pm
As Mr McLeish and I discussed, I think Veight would certainly have considered the implications of Doctor Manhatten being American, and would have a plan for how to deal with the anger at the US (possibly recognising that the US has the be the fall-guy, and invest more in Europe). It’s an unshown detail which would have complicated the denouement. But it’s an interesting detail.
While there are plenty of films that have problems that can be solved by off-screen actions that may have been done (eg. in Children of Men we don’t, as far as I can tell, discover how the baddies found Michael Caine’s house, but we can assume that Julianne Moore would have known it and passed it on to Ejiofor) it’s still not quite as satisfactory as if the off-screen explanation is hinted at by some apparently loose threads in the main story (as, for example, in “The Departed” when we never do find out who was supposed to receive DiCaprio’s “on the event of my death” letter – it doesn’t require much though to reveal it was Wahlberg, which explains why he kills Damon.)
March 30th, 2009 at 4:12 pm
I’ve finally said something about Watchmen, but desperate for acknowledgment I’ve put it on my blog.
August 12th, 2009 at 10:55 pm
Without seeing the squid whilst visiting other climes, why did the comedian need to die?
August 13th, 2009 at 12:30 am
Ooh, good point. One assumes he got wind of the scheme somehow. We don’t get to see his investigation either, I think – I wonder if that’s in the extended cut.