Watchmen: thoughts on the movie and thoughts as a fan

Alan Moore and David Gibbons' Watchmen is the most beloved graphic novel of all time. The trailers for the film weren't just spouting that to get people in seats. It's true. It's even my favorite graphic novel. I didn't want it to be. The Batman fan in me wanted to read it and be able to say at the end, "It's good but it's not as good as Miller's Dark Knight Returns." The Dark Knight Returns actually has a very similar tone and similar themes to Watchmen, but Watchmen is easily the superior book. It blew my mind and I've spent hours pooring over it again and again finding new depth and meaning to both the writing and the artwork. It's the best graphic novel ever written.

So, considering my love for it, seeing it and writing a proper, impartial film review is a difficult. It'd be very easy to nit-pick and hate everything that differed from the book and allow that to effect my view of it simply as a film. And that's pretty much what I did. So I decided not to write anything about it until I had allowed it to sink in a bit more. And my perception has changed but just a bit. Certain things I still stand by.

Without book comparison, I feel I can say Watchmen IS a good movie. The cinematography is stunning. Visually it's unlike anything seen before and has nearly 3 hours of rich characters and story.

For anyone who's unfamiliar with the story, Watchmen takes place in our world if masked heroes were real. For anyone who says, "well so is Spider-Man," let me explain. In the Watchmen world things were the same as ours except in 1938 after the release of Action Comics #1 (the first Superman comic), real life people began dressing in masks and going out to fight crime. None of them actually had super powers (except one who comes later on).

The story of the film itself is set in this world's 1985. America won the war in Vietnam, Richard Nixon is serving his 5th term in office, masked heroes have been outlawed, the United States and the Soviet Union seem inescapably headed towards nuclear armegeddon and someone has just murdered one of the old costumed heroes. There you go.

I feel it's important to let people know that this is very different from any superhero movie that's come out in recent years. Probably most importantly in the fact that it's rated R. And that R rating is no joke, people. If you have a problem with lots of violence, sex, and nudity but feel like this wont be so bad because it has people in tights and domino masks, I'm telling you now DON'T SEE THIS MOVIE. It's incredibly violent and has one sex scene in it I'd go as far as labeling a softcore porn scene. And, honestly, these are two reasons I have to put marks against it if only because they took me out of it.

Here's the thing. Zack Snyder is a talented but still very young director who still hasn't learned the meaning of the word "subtlety." The film he did immediately before this was Frank Miller's 300. In that film, the stylized ultra-violence was fantastic. It suited the source material and the overall testosterone and effects driven goal of the movie. I loved 300 for that. With Watchmen, however, you're dealing with a more tangible world, yet we're still seeing the same slow-motion closeup of an bone tearing through skin as it breaks, blood flying towards the screen. I felt like it was contradictory to have a real world populated by powerless people, yet have the action and violence so stylized.

It's a question of what you're wanting to see more. Stylish violence with coreographed martial arts and wire-fu is fun to watch, but the trade is that the violence loses its threat. With more realistic looking movements and impacts, we're left with something that isn't as exciting to watch, but forces us to realize that these hits hurt. I enjoy either one if done well. What it comes down to for me is what serves the film's overall established reality and mood. In 300, stylish violence fits. In Watchmen it doesn't.

On to the sex and nudity. For the most part, the sexuality and nudity are handled just fine. It doesn't deviate from the book, really, and it could've easily gone much further than it did. The most prominent bit of nudity that drew loads of giggles from the unprepared audience was Dr. Manhattan, who spends most of the film naked with no attempt to cover is big, blue, glowing dong. In this case, the nudity is warrented and even important to the character. Dr. Manhattan is the only hero in the Watchmen cast who has superpowers. And he has a LOT of them. They've caused him to become further and further distant from humanity to the point where he's lost touch entirely. The clothes are a way of representing this. He sees no purpose in wearing them so he chooses not to.

However, there's one moment of sexuality that, like the violence, was a bit too over the top. This involves a sex scene between two characters that's stretched from two panels in the book (involving a clever innuendo that thankfully made it into the film), to a full on porn scene. I should be clear on something, this doesn't come from any prudishness or religious outrage. I could care less about sex in a movie as long as it serves a purpose. Here it's so gratuitously thrown at us that even I laughed a bit and said, "Really?" I hate to think that cerain elements of the book were left out because we needed time to explore the different positions Nite Owl and Silk Spectre have sex in. It's so very important to the overall story. So important that the book was able to get it across just as plane and much more deftly without turning it into a scene you'd have to go to the curtained area of a comic store to read.

Again, it's not a moral position because, honestly, I couldn't give a crap about that. It's about knowing when to pull the reigns as director and realize when a softer approach is more effective than brow-beating. Those long rants, however, are my only criticism of the film as a film. Aside from that, it's quite good and I think you'll really enjoy it.

As a fan of the book there's one more thing in particular that upset me and that's the ending which is very different and loses a great deal of its meaning. Not just the big thing either (those who've read it know what I'm talking about) but also small changes at the end that, if put back to normal, would've made it so much better. Not to mention the changes in character's costumes that pissed me off (Ozymandias dresses like a blonde, superhero Ramses II. Not in something George Clooney threw out after Batman and Robin).

HOWEVER, by and large I was pleased even as a fan of the book. The opening montage explaining the history of this world with Bob Dylan played over was brilliant. Certain scenes are panel to panel perfect. Rorshach's diologue is almost completely unchanged and gloriously fragmented. The casting is pretty much perfect. Even Adrian Veidt, who I initially thought would be a horrible Ozymandias because he really didn't look the part, did a great job. Aside from him all the characters looked and behaved very much like their comic counterparts. Jackie Earl Haley's Rorshach was especially fun. Certain scenes and images were wonderful to see brought to life. Even structurally the story of the film follows that of the comic. These loyalties were refreshing.

Overall, I'm obviously going to prefer the book. I knew that before I went in. It was just a question of whether or not I'd hate the movie. And I don't. For the most part I like it. So while I can't say it's as good as The Dark Knight (what comic movie is?) I feel like I can recommend it. Go see it and enjoy. Leave the kids at home.