TV & Movies

It's finally here. Watchmen has arrived. I saw the film, today, after work, with 7 co-workers. Four of us had read the book and four had not. Being a geek in a relationship with a non-geek, I often have to give thought on whether the non-geek will enjoy something that appeals to the geek. How does Watchmen fare? As a geek - I absolutely loved it. I think a non-geek should enjoy it, too, but might need a little bit of explanation. The first thing I want to communicate is that half of the complaints you may have seen are total crap. Those people likely did not see the movie. Let's start with the most absurd - there are complaints all over the internet about the size and um... cut of Dr. Manhattan's genitalia. It looks exactly like it did in the book and I now feel quite sorry for the significant others of many of the complainers. It is also a lot less present than some reviews have indicated. Okay that's enough about that, back to the film.

Follow up:

Another complaint that I don't think I will ever understand is when a critic complains that a film is too true to the source material. What does that even mean? Who wants to see a film made by a director or writer that feels they know better than the creator of the source material?

I was pleased with all of the performers. Jackie Earle Hailey does a wonderful job as Rorschach. His face is obviously hidden, for most of the film. That means he had to act with his body language and his voice. He was totally convincing - and when he takes the mask off - his face communicates so much.

I don't think the producers could have made a better choice for the voice of Dr. Manhattan. Billy Crudup was perfect. The CGI representation of Dr. Manhattan was very impressive. Ozymandias has a line, where he talks about the subtlety of Dr. Manhattan's emotions. The artists and technicians did a great job of conveying Billy Crudup's emotions through the CGI.

Patrick Wilson was great as Dan Dreiberg (Night Owl). He managed to look both tired and impotent and strong and energetic, as the character's arc demands.

Malin Akerman is the most troubling. Physically she plays the role, well. She handles the action, looks the part, and communicates well though her facial expressions. It is her voice that is distracting. To me it felt a little forced. One of my friends said that her voice sounded "too California". I think she's actually Canadian of Swedish descent.

Jeffrey Dean Morgan, as the Comedian was perfect casting. He managed to evoke sleaze, despicability, and occasionally sympathy.

Several of the reviews I've read were displeased with Mathew Goode's performance as Adrien Veidt (Ozymandias). The first publicity stills looked bad - he looked too young and too Hollywood. A few weeks ago I saw him in a film called Brideshead Revisited and he impressed me. He brought those same strengths to this role. He had the coldness and aristocracy that I saw in the book.

Watchmen is a twelve issue comic book series. It's a big story. Filming the whole thing would probably make a 6 hour film. So, obviously, there have been some parts of the story left on the cutting room floor, or unfilmed. Nothing truly essential to telling the story was cut. But Watchmen is more than the story. The comic book format of Watchmen is as much, if not more, about the format than the plot. Cutting this material makes the film less of an artistic statement than the book but probably makes it more of a coherent story. The nature of cinema economy makes a movie more than 3 hours long impractical. The cuts make sense for the theater. That said, I can't wait to see the 4 hour version when the Blu-Ray is released.

The story is a relatively straightforward murder mystery. A former "hero" has been murdered and that hero's teammates may be next. The conflict is trying to solve the mystery without getting killed. The beats of this story are punctuated with flashbacks to provide the backstory for each of the major characters. I would expect that even someone that hasn't read the book will agree, by the end of the film, that they know these characters better than they get to know the characters in most murder mysteries.

There are two central questions that I think Alan Moore considered when he wrote Watchmen: What would heroes be like if their costumes were filled by real people? and What ways can a story be told, in a comic, that are unique to the medium? This second question is the one that causes many people (including Alan Moore) to believe that Watchmen is unfilmable. The film quite ably addresses question one. Question two it adapts to ask how can a film tell a comic book story?

Visually, the film felt like the book come alive. For someone, like myself, that has read the book (more than once) everything looked true. The newsstand looked like the newsstand, Archie looked like Archie. Rorschach's mask looked as it should. Dr. Manhattan was probably even better than the comic book could communicate (with the rather poor color separation and printing standards of 1985). The only visual aspect that didn't work, for me, was the makeup for Richard Nixon. It felt like too much of a caricature. Some have complained about the aging makeup for Carla Gugino's character, Sally Jupiter. It could have been better, but wasn't terrible. The opening credits were brilliant. They can be seen, on-line, here, at the site of the team that put them together.

Zack Snyder deserves commendations and congratulations for what he has achieved, here. As with 300, he has translated a work of art from the comic book page to the motion picture, without abusing the original source material. He has kept the visual look that is so much a part of the comic book and exchanged the visual tools that are unique to the page with those that are unique to the screen.

Oh, and the ending of the film is a far better ending than that of the book. Yeah, I said it.