Watchmen (Film Review)
Mar. 6th, 2009 12:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakUnspoilery verdict: a faithful adaption, and one which I think works as a film (not always the same thing). I have a few nitpicks and complaints, but nothing that outweighs my overall approval. It has a Quentin Tarantino level of violence; if, say, something like Kill Bill was too much for you, you'd want to avoid this. Also, having read the comic book dozens of times, I have no way of imagining how someone utterly unfamiliar with the source would see this film, especially someone who would have watched or read comics that followed into Moore's footsteps first. I remember a friend of mine watching The Godfather and saying it was full of quotes and clichés; well, not when Coppola made it, but decades and dozens of imitations, adaptions and variations later, it might strike you that way. Watchmen the book was revolutionary in the 80s but of course is not anymore today; what it still is, though, is a well-deserved classic. Will the film become one? No idea. Here are some impressions.
First of all, I think it was the right decision to leave the plot in the 80s - the alternate 80s of the book, that is - instead of trying to move it to the present, because the threat of a nuclear World War III between the US and the USSR is really quintessential background, and can't be replaced with something from the present. I also love details such as the 80s tech that goes with this - when Dan finally accesses Adrian Veidt's computer, there are no CD-Roms, there are 80s-style HD 3,5 discs. I remember those! The opening sequence which gives us the story of superheroes and the alternate time line from the Minutemen coming together to the Keene Act to the tune of Bob Dylan's The Times, They Are Changin' is brilliant and the point where you as a reader trust that the scriptwriter and director will pull it off, that Watchmen is filmable after all. It also adds both picks up on clues from the novel (the Comedian being revealed as the shooter at Kennedy's assassination, which is hinted at but not spelled out in the book) and adds to them - my absolutely favourite alternate history detail in that montage sequence is the restaging of the famous photo shot at the end of World War II, where a marine kissed a nurse in joyous celebration. In Watchmen history, it's Silhouette, the other female hero among the Minutemen, who smooches the hell out of that nurse and gets photographed doing it. (Which btw is also a good cinematic way of telling viewers the Silhouette was a lesbian instead of giving one of the characters an "as you know, Bob" line.)
The combination of soundtrack and imagery doesn't always work that well. The use of Nena's Neunundneunzig Luftballons when Laurie has her lunch with Dan is a bit out of nowhwere (yes, it was a big hit in the 80s, but it doesn't fit the occasion - the lyrics would be more appropriate for a scene involving the nuclear arms race, not Laurie meeting Dan again). And the use of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah during Laurie's and Dan's second and successful attempt to have sex is downright bizarre and makes the scene come across like a parody, which I don't think is what the director was going for. (Sidenote: while their first mask-less unsuccessful make-out session struck me as in tune with the novel. It has some humour but with and not against the characters.)
Back to the beginning. Again I have to say the attention to detail in this film is amazing. When Rohrschach searches the Comedian's apartment and finds the closet with his costume, weapons and the Minutemen photo, there's also a photo of Laurie there which the camera shows just briefly, not enough to draw attention to the way it lingers on the Minutemen photo. Mind you, I think the film version makes it easier to figure out Laurie's parentage anyway, but it's still a good set-up. Hollis Mason's autobiography Under the Hood isn't just around in Hollis' place but also among the books on Adrian Veidt's desk, and the Veidt advertisments are everywhere, as they should be.
Regarding the performances: my standard for actor-plus-GCI-greatness remains what Andy Serkis did with Gollum in the LotR films, and Dr. Manhattan doesn't quite reach that, but he looks suitably alien and other, and Billy Crudup does a good job with the voice and in the Jon Osterman flashback sequence. By contrast, Rohrschach's screen version is truly extraordinary, and here the actor - Jackie Earl Haley - isn't allowed to show his face most of the time, either; when he is, as in the prison sequence, one has to stare at him in repelled fascination. At the same time, the pathos and patheticness is also there - Rohrschach's expression whe he watches Dan and Laurie exit the Diner, for example (if you know who the red-haired sign-carrier is, that's a great detail), and of course in the final showdown with Dr. Manhattan. The film also includes the misogyny, homophobia and this-side-of-Dhengis-Khan right-wing stance of Rohrschach without prettifying them, though I wonder given the last film of the director whether this might lead to some viewers taking Rohrschach to be the authorial voice. (Alan Moore, being Alan Moore, did not have that problem.)
Someone who also rocks the house with his performance and whose character isn't prettified is Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Comedian, to my great relief. (Though I'm still afraid of Comedian/Mary Sue stories.) His Edward Blake is an amoral, intelligent psychopath who ultimately finds one line he's not willing to cross against his own expectations, but that's not presented as an excuse for everything he did before. Interestingly, of the two shades-of-grey scenes the Comedian has in the novel (in all his other scenes, I'd say he's unambiguously bad news), the late night encounter with Moloch and the brief conversation with Laurie when she's sixteen and before she knows he tried to rape her mother, I'd say the film makes one look actually worse for the Comedian, instead of sentimentalizing it as I secretly feared. In the novel, I had the impression he was genuinenly trying to connect with Laurie in a secret-fatherly way; in the film flashback, he came across as sleazy instead, and you could understand why Sally panicked, immediately made the worst possible assumption and asked him whether there was no depth to which he would not sink. Incidentally, in both book and film, that reaction of Sally's - and also her response when Eddie Blake says "but I thought we'd settled all that a long time ago" - to wit - "no, things like that don't ever get settled, not completely" - is what ultimately saves the extremely tricky Sally/Comedian revelation for me. A woman nearly getting raped and years later having voluntarily sex the same man is a topic which a lot of horrible bodice rippers glorified and made horrible subt and not so subtext of. In Watchmen, you ultimately buy it because a) all the characters are screwed up and psychological messes in varying degrees, and this is the way Sally is screwed up and b) that scene makes clear that despite her one-night-stand with Eddie Blake that resulted in Laurie, she has neither forgotten nor really gotten over the earlier rape attempt, and while she doesn't hate him anymore, she still doesn't trust him and remembers very well what he's capable of.
(Where I think the film falls short of the book is showing the extent to which Laurie loathes the Comedian after finding out about the attempted rape, so her horror when realizing he's her father doesn't quite come from the same emotional background it does in the novel.)
Call me slow, but despite having read the book often, I hadn't noticed Laurie's "my whole life is a joke" outburst parallels the Comedian's earlier repeated "life-is-a-bad-joke" phrases until the film. Speaking of the whole realisation scene, I wish they'd have left Laurie's "but if my life is a miracle, then this is true for every single being" line in instead of letting Jon monologue that whole important point uninterruptedly, because that whole conclusion is the counterpoint to both Rohrschach's and the Comedian's "humanity sucks" monologues earlier, and it's important to me that Laurie makes it, not just Jon - every life is singular, and everyone deserves to live.
Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg was both adorable and adorkable; because the first promo pictures showed him in costume, there was fear the whole onsetting middle age/ paunchy, slightly overweight/ big geek aspect would be lost, but no such thing, here he was in his dorky, bellied, receding hairline glory. Watchmen doesn't really have a hero or a lead character, but Dan is probably the closest it has to a moral center, with his genuine kindness and joy in the non-fighting-parts of superheroic life (to wit, inventing cool toys and flying).
The one character I must say was miscast is Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, which starts with such details as him looking too young (he should be older than Laurie and of an age with Dan and Rohrschach) and the blond hair obviously dyed (though mind you, Laurie's trademark long hair looks like a wig, too, so he's not the only character with hair problems - but I had no trouble believing Laurie as Laurie), but more seriously hinges on him coming across as ominous from the get-go. Mind you, of course knowing the plot biases me here, but I think they should have gone for a Brad Pitt or younger Robert Redford type, an actor who can do blond-and-charming (Adrian Veidt is a media expert) instead of blond-and-creepy. This being said, his delivery of "I did it thirty five minutes ago" was perfect, and in the audience I was watching with, you could tell who wasn't familiar with the source by the intake of breath. This is one of the Watchmen elements that remain revolutionary decades after they were published, because villains STILL haven't read the Evil Overlord handbook and tell their evil plans to the heroes ahead of time. Also, here comes my big heresy: I actually think Adrian's scheme in the film works better than in the novel, for two reasons:
1) Not only would it have been next to impossible to for a cinema audience to take a giant squid as the horrible creature whom Ozymandias killed most of New York with seriously, but it also depends on everyone jumping to the conclusion that Aliens Did It, and, err, believing in aliens. Who haven't been mentioned in the novel before. Whereas the film has him faking Dr. Manhattan doing the mass murder instead of hitherto unknown aliens, which given the thematic relevance of Manhattan being used as a walking weapon and this escalating the nuclear arms race is something that makes more sense. It also allows him to use Jon's earlier outburst which he provoked to make the frame even more believable.
2) By not just using the fake Manhattan effect in New York but several other cities around the globe, the film makes it believable the superpowers (and everyone else) would band together, not just considering themselves all threatened by the same entity but actually having gone through the same loss. The film, as opposed to the book, can't help but being post 9/11 in this. An attack on New York and New York alone wouldn't do it.
In any case, the quintessential part about Ozymandias' scheme wasn't how he did it but that he actually pulls it off instead of the other heroes stopping him, and achieves what he wanted with it. Sort of. The very ending - with Rohrschach's diary - is identical again, and the question mark it leaves is just right, leaving the audience in the same moral conundrum as the readers. You don't know whether you should wish for the truth to come out and Veidt's Brave New World achieved at a horrible, horrible price be flung back into the one with the escalating arms race again. You don't know whether it will be.
Lastly: the credits name everyone with both their "civilian" and their superhero identity, except for Rohrschach, who's simply credited as Rohrschach. He would be pleased.
First of all, I think it was the right decision to leave the plot in the 80s - the alternate 80s of the book, that is - instead of trying to move it to the present, because the threat of a nuclear World War III between the US and the USSR is really quintessential background, and can't be replaced with something from the present. I also love details such as the 80s tech that goes with this - when Dan finally accesses Adrian Veidt's computer, there are no CD-Roms, there are 80s-style HD 3,5 discs. I remember those! The opening sequence which gives us the story of superheroes and the alternate time line from the Minutemen coming together to the Keene Act to the tune of Bob Dylan's The Times, They Are Changin' is brilliant and the point where you as a reader trust that the scriptwriter and director will pull it off, that Watchmen is filmable after all. It also adds both picks up on clues from the novel (the Comedian being revealed as the shooter at Kennedy's assassination, which is hinted at but not spelled out in the book) and adds to them - my absolutely favourite alternate history detail in that montage sequence is the restaging of the famous photo shot at the end of World War II, where a marine kissed a nurse in joyous celebration. In Watchmen history, it's Silhouette, the other female hero among the Minutemen, who smooches the hell out of that nurse and gets photographed doing it. (Which btw is also a good cinematic way of telling viewers the Silhouette was a lesbian instead of giving one of the characters an "as you know, Bob" line.)
The combination of soundtrack and imagery doesn't always work that well. The use of Nena's Neunundneunzig Luftballons when Laurie has her lunch with Dan is a bit out of nowhwere (yes, it was a big hit in the 80s, but it doesn't fit the occasion - the lyrics would be more appropriate for a scene involving the nuclear arms race, not Laurie meeting Dan again). And the use of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah during Laurie's and Dan's second and successful attempt to have sex is downright bizarre and makes the scene come across like a parody, which I don't think is what the director was going for. (Sidenote: while their first mask-less unsuccessful make-out session struck me as in tune with the novel. It has some humour but with and not against the characters.)
Back to the beginning. Again I have to say the attention to detail in this film is amazing. When Rohrschach searches the Comedian's apartment and finds the closet with his costume, weapons and the Minutemen photo, there's also a photo of Laurie there which the camera shows just briefly, not enough to draw attention to the way it lingers on the Minutemen photo. Mind you, I think the film version makes it easier to figure out Laurie's parentage anyway, but it's still a good set-up. Hollis Mason's autobiography Under the Hood isn't just around in Hollis' place but also among the books on Adrian Veidt's desk, and the Veidt advertisments are everywhere, as they should be.
Regarding the performances: my standard for actor-plus-GCI-greatness remains what Andy Serkis did with Gollum in the LotR films, and Dr. Manhattan doesn't quite reach that, but he looks suitably alien and other, and Billy Crudup does a good job with the voice and in the Jon Osterman flashback sequence. By contrast, Rohrschach's screen version is truly extraordinary, and here the actor - Jackie Earl Haley - isn't allowed to show his face most of the time, either; when he is, as in the prison sequence, one has to stare at him in repelled fascination. At the same time, the pathos and patheticness is also there - Rohrschach's expression whe he watches Dan and Laurie exit the Diner, for example (if you know who the red-haired sign-carrier is, that's a great detail), and of course in the final showdown with Dr. Manhattan. The film also includes the misogyny, homophobia and this-side-of-Dhengis-Khan right-wing stance of Rohrschach without prettifying them, though I wonder given the last film of the director whether this might lead to some viewers taking Rohrschach to be the authorial voice. (Alan Moore, being Alan Moore, did not have that problem.)
Someone who also rocks the house with his performance and whose character isn't prettified is Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Comedian, to my great relief. (Though I'm still afraid of Comedian/Mary Sue stories.) His Edward Blake is an amoral, intelligent psychopath who ultimately finds one line he's not willing to cross against his own expectations, but that's not presented as an excuse for everything he did before. Interestingly, of the two shades-of-grey scenes the Comedian has in the novel (in all his other scenes, I'd say he's unambiguously bad news), the late night encounter with Moloch and the brief conversation with Laurie when she's sixteen and before she knows he tried to rape her mother, I'd say the film makes one look actually worse for the Comedian, instead of sentimentalizing it as I secretly feared. In the novel, I had the impression he was genuinenly trying to connect with Laurie in a secret-fatherly way; in the film flashback, he came across as sleazy instead, and you could understand why Sally panicked, immediately made the worst possible assumption and asked him whether there was no depth to which he would not sink. Incidentally, in both book and film, that reaction of Sally's - and also her response when Eddie Blake says "but I thought we'd settled all that a long time ago" - to wit - "no, things like that don't ever get settled, not completely" - is what ultimately saves the extremely tricky Sally/Comedian revelation for me. A woman nearly getting raped and years later having voluntarily sex the same man is a topic which a lot of horrible bodice rippers glorified and made horrible subt and not so subtext of. In Watchmen, you ultimately buy it because a) all the characters are screwed up and psychological messes in varying degrees, and this is the way Sally is screwed up and b) that scene makes clear that despite her one-night-stand with Eddie Blake that resulted in Laurie, she has neither forgotten nor really gotten over the earlier rape attempt, and while she doesn't hate him anymore, she still doesn't trust him and remembers very well what he's capable of.
(Where I think the film falls short of the book is showing the extent to which Laurie loathes the Comedian after finding out about the attempted rape, so her horror when realizing he's her father doesn't quite come from the same emotional background it does in the novel.)
Call me slow, but despite having read the book often, I hadn't noticed Laurie's "my whole life is a joke" outburst parallels the Comedian's earlier repeated "life-is-a-bad-joke" phrases until the film. Speaking of the whole realisation scene, I wish they'd have left Laurie's "but if my life is a miracle, then this is true for every single being" line in instead of letting Jon monologue that whole important point uninterruptedly, because that whole conclusion is the counterpoint to both Rohrschach's and the Comedian's "humanity sucks" monologues earlier, and it's important to me that Laurie makes it, not just Jon - every life is singular, and everyone deserves to live.
Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg was both adorable and adorkable; because the first promo pictures showed him in costume, there was fear the whole onsetting middle age/ paunchy, slightly overweight/ big geek aspect would be lost, but no such thing, here he was in his dorky, bellied, receding hairline glory. Watchmen doesn't really have a hero or a lead character, but Dan is probably the closest it has to a moral center, with his genuine kindness and joy in the non-fighting-parts of superheroic life (to wit, inventing cool toys and flying).
The one character I must say was miscast is Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, which starts with such details as him looking too young (he should be older than Laurie and of an age with Dan and Rohrschach) and the blond hair obviously dyed (though mind you, Laurie's trademark long hair looks like a wig, too, so he's not the only character with hair problems - but I had no trouble believing Laurie as Laurie), but more seriously hinges on him coming across as ominous from the get-go. Mind you, of course knowing the plot biases me here, but I think they should have gone for a Brad Pitt or younger Robert Redford type, an actor who can do blond-and-charming (Adrian Veidt is a media expert) instead of blond-and-creepy. This being said, his delivery of "I did it thirty five minutes ago" was perfect, and in the audience I was watching with, you could tell who wasn't familiar with the source by the intake of breath. This is one of the Watchmen elements that remain revolutionary decades after they were published, because villains STILL haven't read the Evil Overlord handbook and tell their evil plans to the heroes ahead of time. Also, here comes my big heresy: I actually think Adrian's scheme in the film works better than in the novel, for two reasons:
1) Not only would it have been next to impossible to for a cinema audience to take a giant squid as the horrible creature whom Ozymandias killed most of New York with seriously, but it also depends on everyone jumping to the conclusion that Aliens Did It, and, err, believing in aliens. Who haven't been mentioned in the novel before. Whereas the film has him faking Dr. Manhattan doing the mass murder instead of hitherto unknown aliens, which given the thematic relevance of Manhattan being used as a walking weapon and this escalating the nuclear arms race is something that makes more sense. It also allows him to use Jon's earlier outburst which he provoked to make the frame even more believable.
2) By not just using the fake Manhattan effect in New York but several other cities around the globe, the film makes it believable the superpowers (and everyone else) would band together, not just considering themselves all threatened by the same entity but actually having gone through the same loss. The film, as opposed to the book, can't help but being post 9/11 in this. An attack on New York and New York alone wouldn't do it.
In any case, the quintessential part about Ozymandias' scheme wasn't how he did it but that he actually pulls it off instead of the other heroes stopping him, and achieves what he wanted with it. Sort of. The very ending - with Rohrschach's diary - is identical again, and the question mark it leaves is just right, leaving the audience in the same moral conundrum as the readers. You don't know whether you should wish for the truth to come out and Veidt's Brave New World achieved at a horrible, horrible price be flung back into the one with the escalating arms race again. You don't know whether it will be.
Lastly: the credits name everyone with both their "civilian" and their superhero identity, except for Rohrschach, who's simply credited as Rohrschach. He would be pleased.
