* I thought it might be nice to round up some of the Watchmen reviews I’ve gotten something out of, both positive and negative ones. This gives me an excuse to pointedly ignore the critics who used the film as an occasion to flaunt their ignorance of and antipathy toward “graphic novels.” (To quote Trent Reznor, you know who you fucking are.)
* For starters, here’s my review, if you missed it or avoided it before seeing the movie yourself.
* Of all the major critics, Roger Ebert is the most unabashedly bullish about the film. He’s followed up his initial review with a second, lengthier one based on a second, IMAX-derived screening. The latter is less a review than a rumination on Dr. Manhattan and a life lived by way of quantum physics. The pure geekiness of that, the “half-stoned and chugging Diet Coke at 3 in the morning debating the ending of Lost Highway with your college roommates”ness of it, is really delightful, and precisely the kind of response I was hoping a Watchmen movie would be capable of provoking. In terms of Watchmen‘s eventual status in the pantheon, which I care a whole lot less about, Ebert’s imprimatur is interesting in that he’s become sort of a patron saint of film fans who come at the medium from either a geek or buff perspective, rather than a cineaste/scholar perspective, if you will.
* Even more effusive than Ebert is the young-ish liberal national-security blogger Spencer Ackerman. “Watchmen is a great film,” he says, which is not a statement I’m seeing made that straightforwardly even in receptive quarters (like this blog, for example). However, he serves up three quibbles involving three characters that I for one agree with: Ozymandias is too obviously sinister and his twisted altruism is too insufficiently developed; Laurie’s backstory is truncated and de-complicated, right down to the disappearance of her real, ethnic last name; Rorschach’s rightist, or perhaps fascist, politics are downplayed, except as the tics of a sociopath. I think Ackerman’s perspective is worth taking a gander at in that he represents a pretty common breed of geek: A guy who’s extremely smart, savvy, well-read, and cutting-edge in a variety of areas (politics, punk rock) but is pretty strictly superhero-based when it comes to comics.
* I haven’t been tracking the conservative political blogs for their responses, nor have I kept an eye out for which critic, Right or Left, comes up with the most hamfisted allegorical read regarding the film (“Obama and Ozymandias–they’re both effete liberals whose names start with an O, and they’re both destroying the world in order to rebuild it in their egomaniacal image,” that sort of thing. I’m sure Dana Stevens managed to compare the Comedian to Dick Cheney or something equally revelatory). But Andrew Sullivan says he thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I for one hope he posts about why. I guarantee you the letters he gets in response will be just as entertaining, no matter what he says.
* My longtime companion Jason Adams says something I’ve been thinking to myself while reading several negative reviews of the movie, which is that the massive planned Director’s Cut will likely fill out a lot of lacunae that people who didn’t like the film have been calling out; for Jason, this means giving fleshing out the vox populi in the persons of the newsstand owner and his comics-reading hanger-on. I also like Jason’s review because he says Rorschach’s last stand tugged a tear out of him even where the book itself didn’t–it did, for me, during my last read–and because he makes fun of the critics who didn’t grok that the airship sex scene was cheesy on purpose.
* Tim O’Neil basically calls it a bad movie he enjoyed. He echoes the pretty oft-voiced problem with the development of Ozymandias, says that the film’s Laurie Jupiter “looks like she’s made out of the same plastic as her costume” (killer line), and beefs with the super-ness of the non-super characters’ action scenes.
* Contra critics like Tim, who reference the film’s extraordinary fealty to Alan Moore & Dave Gibbons’ original comics (whether for good or ill), Joe “Jog” McCulloch, who did not care for the film at all, argues that the movie is in fact nothing like the comic, particularly in how it translates Gibbons’s visuals, character design, and grid-based pacing. I think he makes some rock-solid points in his treatment of such diverse “lost in translation” moments as the bloodstain on the Comedian’s smiley-face button, the damage incurred by the Comedian during his murder, and (most especially) the way the film reverse’s the book’s juxtaposition of largely bloodless run-up to extraordinarily splatteriffic climax; I don’t think that I’d even noticed the lack of bodies in the streets at the end until reading Jog’s review. (Elsewhere, he imagines Watchmen: A Film by Peter Greenaway.)
* Tom Spurgeon, the Perry Cox to my John Dorian, disliked the movie too. I really enjoy the way he calls out the lack of cohesion among the performances; how the increased violence in the “Dan & Laurie vs. knot-top muggers” kneecaps our ability to see Rorschach as uniquely dangerous and crazy; and the glossed-over fact that the climax’s megadeaths were caused by an American weapon. On the flipside, he also tips his hat insightfully, if that can be done, to the acting choices of Billy Crudup and Jeffrey Dean Morgan.
* In his pan, Leigh Walton, my editor at Top Shelf, has a great line: “Snyder et al adapted Watchmen more or less exactly as they would have adapted Kraven’s Last Hunt or Emerald Twilight or Secret Wars II. ‘Here’s a great comic book story, and we’ll bring it to life on the big screen.'” The thing is, I really like Kraven’s Last Hunt.
* Over at Not Coming to a Theater Near You, one of my favorite (if in this case inaccurately named) film blogs, Victoria Large calls Watchmen an “intoxicating, messy, tough-to-shake movie. It’s a film to think about, worry about, fight about, and I’m grateful for that. So love it. Or hate it. Or do a little bit of both. But please don’t dismiss it.” I’m not quite on board with the last few bits, but I have to say that otherwise this tracks pretty closely to my own level of appreciation for the flick. In a waym this doesn’t surprise me. My favorite film of 2008 was Rambo. Granted, I didn’t see any of the Oscar-bait efforts that year, and very few of the more legit critical darlings (Let the Right One In is probably the big exception). And granted, Rambo is in some ways a deeply stupid movie, and in others a deeply problematic, even troubling one. But it surprised, entertained, thrilled, horrified, and haunted me. I think Watchmen is Rambo with costumes.
Rambo was my favourite film of 2008, too. You’ve just brought me one step closer to watching Watchmen.
Wow, man, this was a great post! Thanks for taking up my entire evening, yuh jerk.
Out of everybody, I think I agree most with Victoria Large. Radical.
I’ve finally been reading some reviews and I was surprised by the venom for the sex scene relative to the lack of same for the violence. Are we Americans really that predictable? That didn’t even make an impression on me. Was it really longer than usual? Ditto those last two sentences re: lower Manhattan, too. Anyway, I would imagine that any two people in their basic situation minus the super-duper shit would have cheesy sex, too.
Also, if you can find it I think the Hayter interview’s important because it’s the only place I’ve seen any of the primary shapers of the film suggest what it might be about, which is something about certainty and being resigned to it and its effect on people. I think that could actually work as an overlay AND be totally repugnant, which might make me want to see it again when it comes out on DVD.
PS — Rambo bored me so much I spent a good 20 minutes wondering how they were going to shoot the scene with the White Shadow so as not to make Stallone look four feet tall. Although in a way, it was the best Leprechaun sequel we could hope for.
PSS — Speaking of things I missed, where did Silk Spectre get the gun?
“I was surprised by the venom for the sex scene relative to the lack of same for the violence. Are we Americans really that predictable?”
The first (only?) moment that got a full-on ovation in my theater was Rorshach killing the midget and the guy sitting in front of me turned to his wife/girlfriend/sister/platonic female friend and asked, “What does THAT say about us as a society?”
Seinfeld backlash.
I thought the biggest missed opportunity of the movie was they didn’t do a good job of continually building up the tension about the impending nuclear apocalypse–the Nixon/Strangelove scenes were too hamhanded and cartoony to do this effectively–so you didn’t get that ambiguous sense of catharsis when you found out that Ozymandias’ horrible plot had actually saved the world from total destruction (and it didn’t help that they also made the destruction caused by Ozymandias’ plan to appear fairly bloodless, so the end just felt like one of those standard unrealistic comic doomsday plots or disaster movie scenarios with no emotional weight). Check out the section from 4:40 – 6:40 in this interview with Alan Moore where he talks about how his real-world horror at the idea of nuclear war was one of his main inspirations for writing Watchmen, which I think came through pretty well in the comic. Also would have been nice if they included some bits of Ozymandias’ speech on p. 21-22 of chapter XI which showed how much he had been thinking through the problem of nuclear war in the years since the Comedian busted up the Crimebusters meeting, particularly this part which I think was meant to come across as pretty heartfelt:
Each step had to be taken carefully, constantly striving to keep in mind the enormous scale of what was at stake! The Earth. Humanity. All we’ve ever known…”end of the world” does the concept no justice. The world’s present would end. Its future, immeasurably vaster, would also vanish. Even our past would be cancelled. Our struggle from the primal ooze, every childbirth, every personal sacrifice rendered meaningless, leading only to dust, tossed on the void-winds. Save for Richard Nixon, whose name adorns a plaque upon the moon, no human vestige would remain. Ruins become sand, sand blows away…all our richness and color and beauty would be lost…as if it had never been.
(plus the stuff about ruins and sand ties in so nicely with his superhero name!)
Your obviously a leftwing hack if you think “liberal national security blogger” isn’t an oxymoron in terms, let alone site one in support of your theory. What you say about Osama Hussein is true, so why do you mock it? As for WATCHMEN, you should read John Nolte’s review at Big Hollywood (very telling that you don’t link to it here), but never mind Debbie Schlussel’s.
That comment is so awesome, right down to the anonymity and the “your” and the “site.”
I don’t think that Snyder et al. manage to find a cinematic correlative for what Gibbons & Moore do in the comic. I’m not sure that that’s even possible, barring the superpower to go back in time to and have Dennis Potter adapt it as a BBC miniseries (with a budget only slightly higher than that of an avergae Dr. Who episode).
That said, I liked the movie (quite a bit), though I think as art it falls short of the Moore/Gibbons graphic novel in almost exactly the same way and at about exactly the same magnitude as Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man movies fall short of the Ditko/Lee/Romita Spider-Man comics. I’d even say that Snyder’s movie is basically a more “adult” version of Raimi’s Spider-Man movies, although I think Watchmen has more visual invention and poetic imagery (which doesn’t quite get the room it needs to really breathe as it would in a De Palma movie, say) than the Spider-Mans or any of the other recent super-hero blockbusters.
(And I like Kraven’s Last Hunt, too. It’s probably my favorite non-Stan Lee-scripted pider-Man story.)
Tom: Just getting this now–“That didn’t even make an impression on me. Was it really longer than usual? Ditto those last two sentences re: lower Manhattan, too.” LOLOLOLOL
Thanks for these! I tend to agree alot with Tom and Jog, actually, in their arguments against specific elements of the film, even though I was more taken with it than not.
One thing, though…
Jog singles out the overt (and obvious) use of music in the film, specifically the Hendrix bit, as being a strike against Snyder. He’s not the first person to say this. The thing is, that specific Hendrix match-up actually captures the kind of ham-fisted juxtaposition and cross-referencing Moore beats into the ground in the comics. For every elegant piece of cross-pollination between text and image, there are bits like the Black Freighter caption boxes overlaid atop the newstand scenes. At the time these seemed very clever, but now feel so obvious that they’re almost wince-inducing. And while you can argue that Snyder is using the Hendrix song in a way that’s far less effective than the lyric selection in the final panel that closes that particular chapter/issue, I think that’s a bit unfair. I mean, the second to last panel is Dan and Kovacs riding along in the snow and then we get in the last panel: “Two riders were approaching, and the wind began to howl.” Subtle indeed. In fact, I was struck by how awesome the editing and timing synced up as the Owlship crested over the edge of the revine right as Hendrix hits that sweet high screech on the guitar break. It’s obvious, yes, but it’s also cinematic and nothing Scorsese and other film makers haven’t done in the past to far less scorn. It’s far less offensive to me than the Wagner piece in the ‘Nam flashback, anyway, which totally didn’t work for me.
I found Watchmen crass, where a number of people whose opinions I tend to respect seem to have found it full of what right-thinking liberals tend to call “rude vitality” (cf. “lusty” and “earthy” as descriptions of fancy restaurants’ versions of traditional European foods): crass in its aesthetic choices from the much-reviled music to the much-reviled slow-motion ass-kickin’*.
* An aside: I long for the day when movie characters who win fights or get soaring Atticus Finch-esque arias of self-actualization are described as something other than “badass,” “kickass,” “ass-kicking” or “butt-kicking.”
My thoughts on Watchmen:
1. It was visually brilliant.
2. I was entertained for nearly three hours and never felt a desire to get up and leave.
3. I think many, though not all, people who did not read the comic will not necessarily dislike the movie, but find themselves confused by a lot of points we who have read it take for granted. I saw the movie with my fiancee, who didn’t hate it, but has not read the comic and had a litany of questions coming out that I wouldn’t have thought to ask, but which were all very legitimate. The one I use to sum up her view was when she asked me why Dr. Manhattan had something akin to a costume in the flashbacks but was naked in the present day, which was certainly a point that gets explained in the comic, but not in the movie. She had a lot of questions like that and it’s reasonable that she expected them to be answered in the film.
4. The question I have been asking myself since about a quarter into the movie: can you take all the non-super hero stuff out of Watchmen (the shrink, the newspaper vendor, the lesbians, etc.) and still have it be Watchmen? No, I ultimately don’t think you can. Again, that doesn’t make it a bad movie, but I don’t think it’s Watchmen in the purest sense as much as “inspired by Watchmen” to some extent.
5. I feel like I’m just repeating a point made by others, but there are some moments in Watchmen the comic the comic that just can’t be replicated in real time because they rely on you pausing and taking time to process. One example of this is the shock reveal of Ozymandias’ master plan, because you really need time to absorb it, whereas in the movie it is explained very quickly and then you have to keep moving forward because that’s how movies work (this is another point crystalized to me by my fiancee). Also, I think there is something brilliant about “I did it 35 minutes ago” coming at the end of an issue and then the next chapter opening up post-destruction that can’t be duplicated in actually showing the carnage happening.
6. I think Zack Snyder made probably the best Watchmen movie he could, but ultimately proved Alan Moore right. He cut exactly the right stuff to make it palpable as a movie of reasonable running time and he was as faithful as he could be to what he left in. I think he got a decent movie out of it, but not necessaily the best adaptation of Watchmen. I think Watchmen the movie stands on its own just fine, but in the shadow of Watchmen the comic, it may not hold up so well. And that’s ok with me.
No matter our individual feelings on the film, I’m sure we can all agree it needed more Nixon.
YOU’RE a fucking dick, CITE that on your stupid SITE. As for Anonymity, why shouldn’t I, since you obviously have nothing better to do with your time than scour the internet for typographical errors to criticize? I bet you still haven’t read John Nolte’s review, just because it’s on a known conservative SITE (not CITE, Ha Ha!). Maybe if you read that instead of “liberal national security bloggers” you’d understand something. I notice you read comics. Well, did you know that Big Hollywood has articles on comics too? Oh, but it’s CONSERVATIVE! Maybe it will say something true about Osama Hussein!
Keep on speaking truth to power, Anonymous!
“I notice you read comics.” What tipped you off?
I love how the definition of “scouring the internet for typographical errors to criticize” now includes reading the comment thread on your own blog.
I… I have no idea if Anonymous above is serious, or just a clever parody. If he’s fakin’ that’s some Andy Kaufman shit right there.