Watchmen – Warner Bros, 2009, Directed by Zack Snyder

I said before I wasn’t really interested in talking about current movies in my blog, but I talked about this movie a lot with my girlfriend and other friends a lot so I decided to do a blog post. This review most certainly will have GIANT SPOILERS in it because I plan on talking about very specific things.

Full disclosure, I didn’t read the comic until this past month so I don’t call myself a rabid fan even though I did like it a lot. Watchmen was on my reading list for a very long time but I never got around to it. I first heard of it in college when I was talking to a friend, and said something to the effect of “What if there was a story about how the world would react if superheroes actually existed, like done realistically?” My friend told me to read Watchmen. I just never got around to it, but now that I’ve read it I really enjoyed it. My girlfriend hadn’t read a single page of the comic or review, just had seen the trailers and TV spots. It’s actually because of this that I was able to see the weaknesses in the film as a film.

ouch

Story – Like I said, the comic is about what if superheroes existed? Not Superman or Wonder Woman, but regular people (as regular you can be if you decide to be a superhero) with no powers who decide to become vigilantes who dress up in costume and beat up bad guys. The comic takes this what-if premise and also sets it in an alternate U.S. history where Nixon had three terms and it’s now 1985 when the U.S. and Soviet Union are building up their arms.

In the main storyline though, most superheroes have retired and moved on. Nixon passed The Keene Act which outlawed vigilante superheroes which forced most into retirement. The movie and comic start with the murder of The Comedian who is a superhero who ended up working for the government. This starts off an investigation by Rorschach who is a sociopathic guy with an abusive past who wears a mask that constantly shifts into different ink blot Rorschach patterns. Rorschach is one of only a few superheroes left including Night Owl, Silk Spectre, Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan. Night Owl is retired, though still has his high tech gear including aircraft, Silk Spectre who followed in her mother’s footsteps lives with Dr. Manhattan who is the only being with actual super powers due to a government experiment he accidentally got caught in, and Ozymandias (aka the smartest man in the world) retired a while ago and created a multibillion dollar empire using his superhero image to market himself.

Amidst Rorschach’s investigation into why superheroes are being killed Dr. Manhattan who is one of the few things stopping the Soviets from launching missiles (his super powers practically make him a god) but leaves Earth after an interview where a reporter accuses him of giving his colleagues cancer due to his alleged radioactivity.

seriously, how long would this movie be if there was no slow motion in it?

Why the comic is cool – I don’t want to just talk about the plot, because the story that’s in the movie isn’t entirely the issue. When I came out of the movie and started talking about it I became aware of just how different the movie and comic were in presentation and just what made them cool.

The comic’s strength is really how it takes this basic premise of superheroes in the real world and creates a whole history around it. Part of the comic contains excerpts from a autobiography a retired superhero wrote about why he became a superhero and lots of stories about his fellow superheroes. Stories like how he made his costume, his motivation, the motivation of other superheroes and what it was like living in this environment of costumed heroes. This is what makes the comic so interesting, these are ordinary people with no powers. There’s little that’s very flashy, people bleed, get beat up and it’s just a very dark world it creates.

Why the movie isn’t as cool as the comic – This brings me to the movie. The movie I read was supposed to even longer than its 164 min runtime so maybe a lot was cut out, but all the backstory of superheroes is reduced to dialogue bits and also hinted at in the opening credits montage that will go mostly over the heads of people who didn’t read the comic. Instead the movie is about Rorschach’s investigation and the threat of nuclear war.

No vigilantes? Can someone tell me why, because this movie doesn't...

Zack Snyder is best known for his adaptation of  the Frank Miller’s comic 300. That movie was a very stylized green-screen movie with tons and tons of slow motion and choreographed fight scenes with slowing down and speeding up being its chief trademark. Well for better or for worse he brought that same style to Watchmen. This is mostly how the movie manages to completely not be the comic book.

The fights are so choreographed with their slow motion and sped up scenes that these ordinary people via this film language appear to have superpowers. In this post-Matrix world slow motion basically equals super powers. The fight scenes are brutal, but the way they’re shot they draw too much attention to themselves and undermine the whole idea of the story. My girlfriend asked me later on if they were born with super powers because the movie made it look like they did. Especially the character Ozymandias who does lots of wire-assisted jumps and sends other characters flying through the air like rag dolls.

I swear I have no super powers, I can just jump REAL HIGH

No one in the Watchmen universe save for Dr. Manhattan has any powers, they’re at best very well trained athletes but never is much danger perceived because they have film slow motion on their side. Rorschach who is great fun because of his brutality throwing hot oil onto people, smashing bar glasses in their hands, gets his fight choreographed moment after jumping out of a second story window he takes out several policemen before he’s overcome. It’s fun to watch, but it doesn’t fit in the context of the story.

The movie is just too shiny for its own good. To try to counteract this the movie basically tries screaming “THIS IS DARK AND GRITTY!” by showing excess violence where even the comic didn’t. In one scene a man’s arms are on screen cut with a circle saw (the comic more comically implied it by showing blood splashing from off screen). This movie is trying to prove to the audience that it’s dark and realistic, but in fact making the violence so stylized and glamorous that it has the opposite effect.

The other thing is the costume design. In the flashback scenes we see the original heroes in their cheesy gaudy costumes that looks like cheesy costumes from old movies or something you’d see at a comic convention. The latter day heroes (with the exception of Rorschach) are modern day superhero costumes of rubber and/or latex that look just about as not-homemade as they can possibly be. This is something else that just totally goes against any chance the movie has of grounding itself.

I don't think you could even find this material in the garment district of NYC!

Didn’t see that coming – Plus there are some bits where they telegraph their moves so much that there’s no surprise. The aforementioned scene of Rorschach throwing oil on a guy in prison is preceded by a shot of the french fries, Rorschach then getting in the fight, smashing the glass, picking up the fries and throwing them on the guy. Seriously, in this MTV editing day and age, a shot of the fries right before he threw them would’ve been adequate.

In another scene Dr. Manhattan is caught again in the machine that originally disintegrated his human body. In the comic it’s a surprise, but in the movie we see the machine used earlier on, then we see Dr. Manhattan walk into it, then we see Ozymandias looking at Dr. Manhattan in the machine and then activating it. Yeah, subtle. Also in a bit where Rorschach electrocutes a guy with the circle saw we get a shot of the water, then the open wire of the saw, then the water combining with the water and then the guy electrocuting. This is also after Rorschach has already thrown the huge guy into the toilet. The comic just has the big guy approach Rorschach who then calmly stands on his bed, kicks the toilet releasing the water and the guy gets electrocuted. Sometimes the simplest thing is the most badass, also it shows intelligence that he didn’t need to first throw the guy into the toilet.

More Zack Snyder Trademarks – Okay, maybe if he does this next one in another movie it’ll officially be a trademark. If you saw the movie 300 you’ll remember a very very long sex scene. Maybe not long in terms of actual movie time, but within the context of the story you know it was a lot of time. How do you know? Sheer number of positions. Obviously if there were that many positions then a lot of time passed. This long sex scene in Watchmen is so long with lots of closeups of thrusting for each character, I’d say at least two or three per character and it’s just ridiculous. The final shot is funny, but I’m sorry it’s just way too long. So long it’s funny and not the way the scene is intended to be.

Final Thoughts – I still enjoyed watching the movie, but in hindsight I can see its flaws. It definitely brings scenes from the comic to life, but it doesn’t translate the more interesting aspects of the comic into a movie. All the flash and glam is cool to look at, but it’s just Hollywood gloss. Ultimately, like the first Harry Potter movie this one just transcribes the scenes from the movie without trying to somehow adapt the more interesting backstory bits of the comic. The movie is cool, the comic is cool, but the movie isn’t cool for the same reason the comic is and why the comic is such a good story. One thing I will say is that the movie had an ending that made more sense than the comic. In the comic Ozymandias makes it appear as if an alien from another dimension appeared suddenly and killed millions of people in New York City before succumbing. It’s this common enemy that unites the world together and makes them play friendly (Like in Independence Day). The movie changes this so that Ozymandias makes it appear that Dr. Manhattan is responsible and the world unites. This simplified things nicely and tied it together rather well. Credit where credit is due.

So in the end, the movie is lots of eye candy for people who have read the comic who want to see their favorite scenes in live action, but it’s not a self-contained piece. Well, it’s a self-contained piece but only just begins to scratch the surface of why people like the story so much. Maybe if they had two movies or something to work with it could’ve been better. Or if they tried harder to adapt it instead of just translated it so literally to film.