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.
PAD
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Many people think that this change entirely undercuts Moore’s deconstruction of superhero comics.
I think that is an exaggeration, but I see where you’te coming from. Change “entirely undercuts” to “somewhat undercuts”, and I’d agree more.
As always, many fans are too hang up on details in a movie that is far more faithful to the comic than a Hollywood movie has any right to be. But that is expected of fans too.
Re: Dan and Laurie at the end of the GN. Yes, it seems like they’re going to continue adventuring. But I don’t think Laurie will be Leather Lady. From the description she gives of her new gear, I think she’ll be the Comedienne.
Veidt’s weapons were labelled “Sub-Quantum Unifying Intrinsic Device”.
The SQUID were still there, they just looked different.
Mr. David,
Your points are well made and cogent. Still, some of the little touches are there for those of us who have read (and, it seems, memorized) the original piece. – and I hope that you DID notice the S.Q.U.I.D. in Veidt’s laboratory, so he shows up (so do the newsseller and kid reading the comics, albeit momentarily.) Hollis Mason’s book shows up two or three times too (including on Adrian Veidt’s sparsely populated bookset on his desk. Interesting, that…)
But this is a movie as much for those who never read it as those of us who are so familiar with it. So, I did with this what I do with any Batman or Spider-Man or Fantastic Four or any super hero movie; I watch it on three levels. As a comic book “expert” (having been reading ’em since I COULD read); as a ten year old fanboy getting to see them on screen finally; and, with difficulty, as a viewer looking at the product with new eyes. Usually that last means I just open another file in my mind and say, “Fantastic Four, movie version 2” and accept that Galactus isn’t presented as a humanoid entity and there’s no Punisher (for example.)
By the way – you are absolutely right about the excessive violence being WAY over the top. It was completely unnecessary. Fight scenes – good. Splintering compound fractures, bloody flying everywhere – unnecessarily bad. Sex scenes were okay, but at least those were IN the original content.
Something else I’d like to point out that was, in my mind, a great positive; there was a minimal amount of tobacco use. Only the Comedian, and that seemed kind of mandatory.
And regarding Rorschach – I thought this guy was great, I thought he was perfect as Rorschach – but I did notice that he sounded an awful lot like Christian Bale’s Batman. Every now and again, I kept expecting to see bat ears – it was slightly distracting, but I may be the only one to have noticed that.
In the final analysis, this is just a movie file in my head for Watchmen, and I accept that it’s probably much more palatable to the viewing public who are completely unfamiliar with it. (And maybe the DVD will have more of the juicy stuff than could be fit into the film.)
I remain,
Sincerely,
Eric L. Sofer
The Silver Age Fogey
x<]:o){
The “gravelly” voice has become a staple, if not a cliche, of today’s pop culture. It’s use has become so preva,ent that it is a surprise when it is not used.
Rorschach’s “gravelly” voice bothered me from the first time I heard it in a trailer clear through watching the movie. It just doesn’t work for me.
Despite that I thought Haley was stunning as Rorschach he managed to deliver a knock out performance despite being saddled with the stupid character voice.
As for the Ozymandias seeming more upset over Bubastis’ death than the millions of humans he killed, it’s human psychology that the death of one or a few we know is more affecting than the deaths of many we don’t know. (I think there’s a quote that goes something like “one person dying is a loss, five people dying is a tragedy, millions of people dying is a statistic.”) The same thing happened with Nite Owl: He was stunned and ultimately accepting of Ozymandias’ massive slaughter, yet he physically attacked Ozymandias when his friend Rorschach was killed in front of him.
Having liked the film enough to want to see it again, I plan on going to the local cinema that has an IMAX screen and see it there tomorrow.
Though this got me to think, is Watchmen the first film that will present a sex scene on an IMAX screen?
Or for that matter, is Watchmen the first R rated film to be shown on IMAX?
I read the mini-series as it came out, and I loved the movie. With only one complaint (other than the fact that the heroes were never called “The Watchmen” in the book)…
Two members of the audience (sitting next to me, unfortunately) <b<laughed at the three most violent scenes in the movie (Rorshach killing the dogs and the rapist, the arms of the one prisoner being sawed off in order to open the cell door, and I forget the third).
And people wonder why people (like myself) seldom go to the movies anymore…
“Two members of the audience (sitting next to me, unfortunately) <b<laughed at the three most violent scenes in the movie (Rorshach killing the dogs and the rapist, the arms of the one prisoner being sawed off in order to open the cell door, and I forget the third).”
I can’t (and won’t) speak for the people who laughed where you saw it, but I laughed at the prison sawing scene. In fact I tend to laugh at “ultra-violent” scenes like that at most movies because, well, they’re so absurd! I know that it’s only special effects and frankly, no matter how well the effects are made, they look fake to me.
It’s the horrific scenes that are only implied in a movie that get me. For example, you hear someone’s bones getting broken and you see the persons’ face react to it but you never see the actual break. Those kind of scenes always effect me the most over the overt absurd acts of violence that are filmed.
You make good points, PAD. Anyway, wearing a mask made out of a woman’s dress seems more a symbol for crossdressing than for gay tendencies. Obviously, healthy gay men don’t hate women. Rorschach is fûçkëd-ûp. I don’t really think he and Ozymandias are gay in the comics. Just that one of the many things Alan Moore did to complicate these characters is to make their sexuality ambiguous.
The thing that really keep my attention early in the film was how much Dan(night owl) reminded me of how Christopher Reeve played Clark Kent. Both in look and how he related to people I thought it was a nice touch to play him like that. Not so much the down and out loser from the comic but more of a guy that knows he isn’t working at his top potential.
A couple of other observations, in no particular order.
When Snyder puts his director’s cut together, I wonder if the scene with Laurie, Sally and the Comedian will be put back earlier in film, as I’m assuming it was cut. It needs to be there, so when she remembers it at the end, she’s actually putting together all the pieces that have been in her mind for quite some time. When she remembers the ‘old friend’s daughter’ line, it has much more significance if it mirrors a scene earlier in the film.
I’ve always felt, even in the original story that Dr. Manhattan should have wiped Ozymandias off the face of the Earth. Even if his actions are justified, he’s still responsible for mass murder and should have paid a price.
Maakeup-wise, I believe the reason that Nixon was made into such a caricature was because Snyder wanted him instantly identified, a decision I don’t necessarily agree with, but as an American we’ve had him around a lot longer (hëll, he even lived here in Park Ridge after he retired) so maybe we’re more used to Nixon than the rest of the world, Regarding Iaccoca, that was originally going to be a prosthetic makeup too, but my understanding was that the original actor was barred from entering Canada because of a possible criminal record, so they ended up going with a lookalike (incidentally at the risk of a totally self-serving plug, you can read my cover feature on the makeup of Watchmen in the current issue of the Makeup Artist Magazine, with Silk Spectre II on the cover- I think it turned out pretty well and may answer a few questions about some of the characters and makeups in the film).
As previously pointed out, Moore’s original story featured the Charlton characters- some of Gibbons’ original sketches even mention which characters were which- and over the years I couldn’t help wondering what the story would have been like with established, as opposed to brand new Moore-created characters.
Re: Laurie pressing the flame thrower button.
There’s a flash of a mischievous grin right before she does it. I decided that when she was a teenager during the “Watchmen” days, she wasn’t allowed to press any of the buttons in the Owlship, and this was her chance to do something she always wanted, assuming the ship wouldn’t be armed. It’s not in the movie, but it makes me feel better about her doing it ,:)
And indeed, she doesn’t smoke because of executive fiat. Alan Horn, the head of WB said no way. It was apparently the issue he refused to budge on.
http://io9.com/5156140/warner-bros-forced-watchmens-laurie-to-go-cold-turkey
I don’t think that Moore necessarily meant to make Veidt gay at all. Remember, in the comic the ‘insight’ into Veidt’s sexuality came from Rorschach, who’s a nut-job who associates ‘pampered’, ‘decadent’, and probably ‘liberal’ with ‘gay’. (yes, i had the book nearby). Rorschach’s comment said less about Veidt’s sexuality than it did about his own homophobia.
Yes, it seems to me the only person Veidt is capable of falling in love with is himself. He is not so much gay as asexual, in the comics.
Still, I wouldn’t blame someone reading Watchmen and thinking Ozzy is gay.
Please note that when I brought up the question of Ozy’s sexuality, I was specifically talking about Matthew Goode’s performance in the film. Although some of the subsequent comments were quite interesting nonetheless.
And Scavenger, thanks for clearing up the issue about Laurie’s smoking. I never would have thought it was a command from the top, which absolutely seems like a double standard. And following Horn’s warped logic, wouldn’t it have made more sense for Laurie to try and light a cigarette and accidentally set Nite Owl’s workshop on fire? That would have been a great metaphor for the dangers of smoking.
Which is exactly how it played out in the comic where, after the fact, Laurie does comment on the filthy habit and she’s definitely quitting. But, as I wrote earlier, don’t expect an excess of intelligence from studio heads.
I did find it weird that Snyder didn’t show the scene with Kid Rorschach putting out a cigarette in the bully’s eye. It seems… uncharacteristically squeamish for Snyder, considering that he had no problem with graphically depicting fountains of blood, explosive greenstick fractures and meat cleavers sticking out of people’s heads. Seems like a strange place to draw the line. Was there an editorial fiat on that scene, too?
Loved Jackie Earl Haley’s performance as Rorschach. He sorta played Rorschach like a short, growling, insane Clint Eastwood. 🙂
The total absense of Laurie smoking is a combination of the studio not wanting to endore smoking (during the end credits (yes, I stayed for all of them, no, there wasn’t any extra scene) there’s a disclaimed that no one involved received any monetary compensation from tobacco companies) and the blanding down of Laurie’s character (she smokes, says she’s quitting, then lights up again after sex with Dan). It’s also another way that, in the comics, she has a lot in common with her brash, outspoken mother.
Stragely enough, I think Laurie in the comics was considerably more whiny, pathetic, and broken down than in the movie.
(But I agree that she should be a smoker)
Just a few comments:
* Although Rorschach wasn’t quite the Rorschach of the comic, I thoroughly enjoyed his movie interpretation. Fantastic work.
* The opening montage showing the history of this alternate Earth to the tune of “The Times, They Are A’Changing” was utterly brilliant and deserves to be listed among cinema’s all-time-greatest opening credit sequences.
* Although THE DARK KNIGHT is a great film, it is a movie that doesn’t require analysis — it is a enjoyable film on the surface and can serve as a perfectly fine popcorn film without requiring the viewer to think deeply about it. WATCHMEN doesn’t allow that; it requires its viewers to engage their brain and put some thought into it. I’ve heard anecdotes of audience members walking out of WATCHMEN not because they thought it was a poor film, but rather because they could not understand it or thought they were walking into a superhero flick (rather than a movie about superheroes). WATCHMEN demands intelligence and will infuriate some — making it exactly the correct adaptation of the original work that it should be.
So the returns are in for the second week…huge drop, which is not good…when all is said and done, the film will be considered a box office underperformer, if not a bomb (which it isn’t but when a film gets this much hype and doesn’t break the bank the B word gets tossed with abandon.)
Like Blade Runner, I think it will age well and be remembered fondly, even by some of those who did not appreciate it when it first came out. Some have said that it will be a very influential film. Not so sure about that.
Since the movie’s now out, can somebody tell me….years ago in its early days of possibly being a film, that Sam Hamm fellow had written a script which had a different ending which apparently was considered better than that in the comic.
Does anyone know how that ending went?
Considered better by who?
If I remember right, Sam Hamm’s ending involved a time travel machine in the ending. The heroes manage to send Ozymandias back in time to Jon Osterman’s intrinsic field chamber. Both Osterman and Veidt die, and the alternate world of Watchmen is somehow changed back into our own reality, with Dan, Laurie, and Rorschach being transported to it.
Pretty crappy if you ask me.
I have a copy of Sam Hamm’s script but moved recently so I’m not sure I can find it. If I do I’ll post about what it contains.
I’ll maintain that in the current media environment, with all of its options for delivering a story, Watchmen should have been an HBO mini-series. However, as a person who collected the story issue by issue, around the same time I ‘discovered’ a writer with the initials P.A.D., I think this film was the best of which we could hope. I’ll determine later if it’s a success for those who haven’t read the comics (sorry, “Graphic Novel”) when I finally convince my wife to see it.
Here’s hoping someone with vision turns “Promethea” and “Apropos” into mini-series. Hey, Peter, the comic Apropos is fine — but a series would be golden.
Does anyone know how that ending went?
Ozymandias used time travel to prevent Osterman from becoming Dr. Manhattan; Dan and Laurie wind up as the only ones who remember the original timeline. (I had a copy at one point but can’t find it now, so I can’t check the details.)
(They arrive in a world which looks like normal 1985–no electric cars or zeppelins–which makes sense given the lack of Manhattan-driven technology, but leaves open questions of how much this world would otherwise resemble our history. If Nixon didn’t win in Vietnam but still had the Comedian assassinate Woodward and Bernstein, how would Watergate have played out?)
Starwolf: It wasn’t the flame thrower that made her say she’d quit in the comic..it was the realization that she could have pressed the missile launcher instead.
JamesLynch: That the removal of smoking is interpreted by you as a watering down of Laurie’s character tells me that Laurie’s character was pretty waterlogged to begin with. Whether it’s by design, or by disinterest (I’m told there’s an Interview with Moore where he states she was pretty much put in there just so there’d be a female character)I don’t know.
Considering how hysterical people are getting at the sight of Dr. Manhattan’s pëņìš on the screen (even though the movie is rated R, and it follows the precedent of films like The Crying Game, The Piano, and Boogie Nights), I wonder if there is any danger of somebody trying to sue Borders for openly displaying Watchmen the book for anybody to pick up?
You’ve just put your finger, Ed, on what was one of the major concerns in the Gordon Lee case. Gordon was being prosecuted under a law so broadly written that simply displaying Watchmen could result in prosecution.
PAD
I saw the movie this weekend with my best friend, who never read the comic book. It had been so long since I read the comic book, that I forgot nearly everything. We both agreed that although the plot was interesting and it the production value was excellent, the movie was incredibly SLOOOOOOOW and LOOOONG. It was beautifully done, but we think it would’ve worked better as a mini-series. For a movie, at least half could’ve easily been cut to make a much better experience.
When Laurie was talking about how “it never ends”, I called out “Like this movie?” and got more laughs than the jokes, even the unintentional ones–the whole theater laughed at the arm-sawing scene.
Daniel
Saw this movie with my family on Friday night. Wished I’d stayed home and stabbed my eyes with needles… it would have been more fun.
FWIW here’s the description of the Hamm script @ the Watchmen wiki (http://watchmen.wikia.com/wiki/Watchmen_Wiki):
Upon arriving at Karnak, Veidt’s Antarctica base of operations, the team discovers that not only is Veidt responsible for Rorschach’s framing, Moloch’s murder, Jon’s exile, and Blake’s death, he is planning to go back in time using a taychon chamber to revise the timeline of history. He reasons that Jon’s becoming a superpowered being has caused the world to become the way it is, and it is his existence that the Cold War hinges upon. His rationale is that going back in time to 1962 and assassinating Jon before his accident will straighten the timeline and avoid the impending nuclear war altogether.
In the end, Veidt is vaporized by the machine as he attempts to return to the 1960s. Having regained his humanity, Doctor Manhattan sacrifices himself by going back in time to save his former self from becoming disintegrated and reformed, and he thus gives Jon Osterman the chance for a happy life with Janey Slater. The timeline is readjusted so that America does not win the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon resigns from the presidency after the Watergate Scandal, the war with Russia is averted, and costumed heroes are confined to the pages of comic books. However, Rorschach, Nite Owl, and Silk Spectre are transported to New York City in the late 1980s where Watchmen is a successful comic book maxi-series. As they create a sensation from the local pedestrians due to their uniforms standing out of place, a group of policeman descend upon them. The script then ends with Rorschach hissing at the cops, implying that they will fight back.
I finally saw the film on Monday, and wanted to chime in. I’ve read Peter’s post, but none of the responses yet.
As Lisa put it, “If you had to make a Watchmen film, this worked pretty well.” The original story is still pretty close to unadaptable in a “proper” way, but the film kept the essentials.
Positives:
1) Casting. Peter already mentioned Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach, but I also thought that Jeffrey Dean Morgan was a fantastic Comedian, and everybody else was at minimum fine and at best very strong.
[I was amused, though, that even the “schlumpy” Dan Dreiberg was at least 30-40 pounds lighter than the comic version. Gotta love Hollywood.]
2) The visual look of the film. It wasn’t surprising given that Dave Gibbons was consulting, but virtually everything just looked right. Loved Rorschach’s mask.
3) The changed ending. I thought it worked at least as well as the squid.
[Lisa had an issue with both versions, though — why does Ozymandias let Dan and Laurie go?]
4) Most of the non-action scenes felt very right, and I liked the way the flashbacks were integrated in.
The negative:
1) The action scenes, specifically the over-the-top violence that Peter mentioned. I’m not generally squeamish and wasn’t bothered by it per se, but it was absolutely gratuitous and unnecessary. (The sex scene was somewhat over-the-top, too, but I wasn’t as put off by that — Malin Akerman is certainly verrrrrry easy on the eyes.)
2) Some of the music choices were … well, a little too forced and/or obvious to say the least. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” during an Ozymandias scene? C’mon.
The “yes, and?”
1) All the discussion of the Big Blue Dong. Why? Gee, he’s male. Got a pëņìš. Yep, it’s blue, like the rest of him. And?
Overall: Liked it quite a bit, and I’m really happy that it seems to have gotten sales of the original story skyrocketing. Good stuff.
TWL
Quick technical question for anybody who knows: is there a way to make line breaks show up on the new look for the site? I haven’t had any luck yet.
Experimenting…
This will either work or it won’t.
Let’s post now and see…
Nope. Didn’t work.
–
I tried manually doing HTML break tags ([lessthan]br/[greaterthan]), but they didn’t take.
.
So that leaves the method of putting just a lone – or . on a line to forcibly “simulate” a blank line.
I have not had a cigarette in 6 years. The most terrible thing about quiting smoking most likely the first few weeks. Luckily for me this part were short lived and things improved as time went on on account of the e-cigs. Never give up. Simply persevere and you will definately be a non-smoker once and for all.