Okay, I’ve seen it twice and had plenty of time to think about it. My first question is: Am I the only person who has a mental image of three hundred Doctor Manhattans, wielding shields with happy faces or perhaps the letter “W” carved on it, bellowing, “We…ARE…WATCHMEN!”
Second, I don’t know if it’s humanly possible to have “spoilers” in any discussion since it seems a safe bet that everyone reading this blog has read the book and everyone knows there’s no squid. This, frankly, didn’t bother me one iota since I never liked it in the first place , and it wasn’t particularly original (so much so that Moore felt obliged to include a shout out to the “The Outer Limits” episode, “Architects of Fear,” from which he lifted it.)
Basically, what we have is a fairly competent, sometimes eerily accurate, “Reader’s Digest” version of the book. Subtext is lost, themes are diluted, backstory and the small human dramas that provided a lot of the punch to the climactic annihilation are gone. But essentially the story is there and the characters are there, undiluted by the same kind of Hollywood thinking that used to put forward such brilliant edicts as, “Sorry, Thor can’t be a god” and “Let’s remove the horns from Daredevil to avoid Satanic imagery and put a blindfold on him ’cause he’s blind.”
In terms of the film itself: Director Snyder sets the tone early with a dementedly over the top assault and murder of the Comedian. The noise of every cracked bone blasts over the speakers; the trajectory of every drop of spilled blood is tracked by the camera. The violence in the graphic novel was decidedly small scale and real world; it’s insanely over the top here and doesn’t let up. It continues later when the street clothing-clad Nite Owl and Silk Specter are confronted by a gang of toughs, resulting in broken limbs, punctured jugular veins, and yet more bone crunching.
When he’s not having his leads break heads or engage in explicit sex (the latter I didn’t mind so much) Snyder coaxes excellent performances out of his cast. Most notable is Jackie Earl Haley who was an absolute revelation as Rorschach. He’s Batman if there was really a Batman, and it’s a dámņëd shame that–if Alan Moore is to be believed–he will never see the film because I have to think even he would be impressed.
I think a lot of the fan analysis of the film is ultimately ridiculous. Discussing the relative dimensions of Doctor Manhattan’s nuclear junk? Really? Is that what we’ve been reduced to? (“In the original graphic novel it was drawn relatively small in order to symbolize Manhattan’s impotence in stopping the world from heading toward nuclear disaster.” Seriously?) Frankly, I just started using locker room protocol and kept my eyes fixed on Manhattan’s face during the full body shots.
What was of far more interest to me than dwelling on why the (as I recall) Jewish Jon Osterman was uncircumcised (so I’m told; I wasn’t staring that closely) were the reactions of my brother and his thirteen year old son who went with me. Neither of them had ever read the graphic novel.
They both loved the film. They both thought Rorschach was incredibly cool, were fascinated by Doctor Manhattan and the way he viewed the world, and stunned by the twists and turns of the plot. Basically, they were as blown away by it last Saturday as the rest of us were when we first experienced it twenty years ago. Perhaps that, in the final analysis, is the best measure of just how good an adaptation it is.
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