Charlton Comics was never one of the heavy hitters of the comics industry, but the company had a long and respectable run as a publisher from the end of World War II until the early 1980s. They had a reputation as a “minor league” comics company, as a lot of people who became well regarded artists for Marvel and DC started out doing work for Charlton: Steve Ditko, Sal Trapani, John Byrne, Roger Stern, Denny O’Neil, Jim Aparo, Sam Grainger, Bob Layton, and Mike Zeck, among many others.
In response to both DC and Marvel reviving the superhero comic book in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Charlton created their own superhero line, including Captain Atom, Blue Beetle, the Question, the Peacemaker, Nightshade, and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt. That line eventually petered out, and Charlton did mostly licensed comics in the 1970s.
This all relates to Watchmen, trust me.
By 1983, Charlton was in deep financial trouble. Their printing presses were old and worn out, and they didn’t have the money to do maintenance. They started running contests for new writers and artists, ostensibly to foster new talent, but truly because they didn’t have to pay them as much.
In an attempt to infuse some cash into the company, Charlton sold all their superhero characters to DC. Around the same time, Alan Moore—who was one of DC’s top writers—was looking to do something similar to what he did with Marvelman: take an old defunct superhero line and redo it in a more realistic setting. The notion was to deconstruct superheroes, in a way, to more closely yoke them to the real world and truly think through the consequences of what it would mean if people dressed up in silly outfits and fought crime.
His starting point was a murder. The initial pitch was for Archie Comics’s Mighty Crusaders, and then he adapted it to the Charlton characters when he learned that DC had bought them up. Dick Giordano, DC’s executive editor and the former managing editor at Charlton, ultimately rejected the idea, preferring that Moore create new characters.
Moore met him halfway and simply redid the existing Charlton characters. Captain Atom became Dr. Manhattan, Blue Beetle became Nite Owl, the Question became Rorschach, the Peacemaker became the Comedian, Nightshade became Silk Spectre, and Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt became Adrian Veidt, Ozymandias. Meanwhile, the originals were all incorporated into the DC Universe after 1985’s Crisis on Infinite Earths miniseries, many of them becoming major characters in the DC pantheon. (After the Watchmen trade paperback came out, Denny O’Neil and Denys Cowan did a delightful issue of The Question in which the title character reads the book and finds himself taking a shine to the Rorschach character—who was, of course, based on the Question.)
Moore collaborated with artist Dave Gibbons on Watchmen, a twelve-issue miniseries that took the world by storm. Superhero stories have always taken place in our world, just happening to have these costumed heroes and villains in it. Watchmen took a more aggressive look at what having such people in the world would actually mean to the world. In particular, if there was a superman, if there was a person who could change the course of mighty rivers, as it were, what would it do to the socio-political landscape?
As the miniseries went on, the plot almost became secondary to the examination of the history of superhero-dom through flashbacks and back matter; to the in-depth characterization, examining the psychology of a person who would dress up in a costume and beat up bad guys (or be the bad guy beaten up); and the changes to the shape of the world.
The back matter was a particularly amusing development, as originally Moore wrote up the excerpt from the original Nite Owl’s autobiography Under the Hood as something to put in the first three issues in lieu of a letters page, which would then start with the fourth issue, as the letters for #1 would have come in by then. But the Under the Hood excerpts proved so popular that Moore wound up continuing doing such pieces—an article on Dr. Manhattan, an interview with the first Silk Spectre, etc.—throughout the whole series. And they’re some of the most compelling stuff in the miniseries, in truth, adding texture to the world.
Buy the Book
Vengeful
The film rights to Watchmen were purchased in 1988 along with Moore’s V for Vendetta, and it then went through the textbook definition of development hell. It hopped from 20th Century Fox to Warner Bros. to Universal to Revolution Studios to Paramount and back to Warner. Among the names attached to write or direct: Sam Hamm (who wrote the 1989 Batman), Terry Gilliam (who later declared the graphic novel to be “unfilmable”) and Charles McKeown, Michael Bay, Darren Aronofsky, Tim Burton, Paul Greengrass, and others. However, one constant throughout most of this was a script by David Hayter, who retained credit even on the final version that was released to theatres in 2009, though Hayter’s script had the present-day portions in an early-21st-century setting.
After going through eighty bajillion directors, Zack Snyder was approached on the strength of his adaptation of Frank Miller’s 300. Snyder had pretty much used Miller’s comic as the storyboard for the film, and he did the same for this, with Alex Tse rewriting Hayter’s screenplay. (Among other things, Tse re-set the present-day portions in 1985, leaning into the Cold War tensions that were part of everyday life when Moore wrote it.)
Snyder and his casting people did a fine job finding the right actors for the comics roles. In particular, Jackie Earle Haley, Billy Crudup, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan look like they were drawn by Dave Gibbons when they play Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan, and the Comedian, respectively. In addition, Malin Åkerman and Carla Gugino play the two Silk Spectres, Patrick Wilson and Stephen McHattie play the two Nite Owls, and Matthew Goode plays Ozymandias. Plus, the secondary roles are a veritable who’s-who of Canadian thespians: besides McHattie, there’s Matt Frewer, Jay Brazeau, Niall Matter, Robert Wisden, Chris Gauthier, Alessandro Juliani, Fulvio Cecere, Rob LaBelle, Frank Cassini, Sonya Salomaa, and Garry Chalk, among others.
Gibbons consulted on the film while Moore refused to have anything to do with it, taking neither money nor credit. He did read Hayter’s original screenplay (written in 2001) and said it was as close as anyone could come to making a Watchmen film, but that he wouldn’t be seeing it.
The graphic novel has never not been in print since its initial release in 1987 following the final issue of the miniseries, and sales and interest spiked when this movie came out in 2009, leading DC to create an entire series of “Before Watchmen” prequel comics, and later incorporating the Watchmen characters into the DC universe.
“This is all a joke”
Watchmen
Written by David Hayter and Alex Tse
Directed by Zack Snyder
Produced by Lawrence Gordon and Lloyd Levin and Deborah Snyder
Original release date: March 6, 2009
It’s 1985. Edward Blake, a.k.a. the Comedian, sits watching the news in his high-rise apartment in New York, as they discuss the possibility of the Soviet Union invading Afghanistan, including footage of President Richard Nixon, now in his fifth term, posturing.
Someone breaks into Blake’s apartment. Blake seems to have expected him, and after a brutal fight, the assailant tosses Blake out a window to his death.
The opening credits show the history of superhero-dom, starting with a bunch of people in the late 1930s becoming costumed vigilantes. The Minute Men include Nite Owl, the Comedian, Silk Spectre, Hooded Justice, Silhouette, Mothman, Dollar Bill, and Captain Metropolis. A World War II plane has Silk Spectre painted on the hull, while after V-J Day, Silhouette, rather than a sailor, kisses a woman in Times Square. Silhouette is later found murdered with her lover, “WHORE” written in blood over their bed. Dollar Bill is shot and killed when his cape is caught in a revolving door, while Mothman is institutionalized. We see Dr. Manhattan, a large blue superhero, shaking hands with President Kennedy, and then the Comedian on the grassy knoll shooting Kennedy in Dallas. Another gathering of heroes, this time with a new Nite Owl and a new Silk Spectre (the original’s daughter, Laurie), along with Ozymandias, Dr. Manhattan, and Rorschach, called the Watchmen. We see Ozymandias, a.k.a. Adrian Veidt, going into Studio 54 in New York, and also riots in the streets.
Cops investigate the Blake crime scene. Rorschach shows up later, and finds the secret closet with all his Comedian gear. Fearing that someone is targeting masked heroes, Rorschach goes to inform his remaining colleagues, starting with Dan Dreiberg, the second Nite Owl, who’s just home from his weekly beer-and-bull session with Hollis Mason, the first Nite Owl. After Rorschach tells Dreiberg about Blake, Rorschach goes to the Rockefeller Military Base to tell Dr. Manhattan and Laurie, while Dreiberg tells Veidt. As it happens, Manhattan already knew, and he teleports Rorschach away because he’s upsetting Laurie. Laurie, however, is still upset, as Manhattan is barely even noticing her anymore.
She and Dreiberg go to dinner to catch up. Afterward, Dreiberg, Manhattan, and Veidt attend Blake’s funeral, while Manhattan teleports Laurie to California to visit her mother at the retirement home. Sally Jupiter feels bad about Blake’s death, which disgusts Laurie, given that he raped her, an event we see in flashbacks. We get a series of other flashbacks through the characters at the funeral: Veidt remembers their attempt to form the Watchmen, when Blake ridicules the notion. Manhattan recalls their fighting together in Vietnam, with Manhattan’s powers allowing the U.S. to win the war handily; afterward, a woman pregnant with Blake’s baby confronts him, attacking him with a broken bottle, and Blake shoots her while Manhattan watches. Dreiberg recalls the riots in 1977 before the Keene Act was passed banning costumed heroes; Nite Owl and the Comedian tried and failed to maintain order, the latter doing so with a rifle.
After the funeral, a man with pointed ears lays flowers on the grave. This is the former villain Moloch, and Rorschach later confronts him in his home. Moloch admits that Blake visited him before he died, crying and drinking and rambling about a list and Moloch was on it, as are Jenny Slater (Manhattan’s ex-girlfriend) and others. Moloch also reveals that he’s dying of cancer.
A young man reads a pirate comic book at a newsstand while the news vendor waxes rhapsodic on various subjects. A person we’ve been seeing throughout the movie carrying a sign that reads, “THE END IS NIGH” comes by asking if this month’s New Frontiersman has come in.
Laurie and Manhattan have a fight after she realizes that (a) he’s duplicated himself so she can have sex with him twice at the same time, and (b) a third version of him is off working with Veidt on their project. She leaves in disgust, and winds up at Dreiberg’s.
Manhattan goes on TV for an interview, with various reporters in the audience asking questions. One asks about the many associates of Manhattan’s who have been diagnosed with cancer—his best friend Wally Weaver, Moloch, a few other folks, and finally his ex, Slater, who shows up with chemo hair. Reporters gang up on him, his government handlers go ballistic, and Manhattan gets fed up and teleports everyone out of the studio and himself to Mars.
Dreiberg invites Laurie to join him for his and Mason’s weekly gathering, and en route they’re mugged. However, despite being eight years out of practice, they mop the floor with the muggers. Laurie begs off continuing to Mason’s, having had enough superheroing for one night, and Dreiberg arrives at Mason’s to see the news about Manhattan going batshit.
Laurie is questioned by the government, then she escapes their custody and flees again to Dreiberg, having nowhere else to go. He shows her around his basement lair, with his old Nite Owl costume and Archie, his airship. They start to have sex on the couch, but Dreiberg finds himself unable to perform, as it were.
Manhattan creates a structure on Mars, and we also learn his origin. A physicist named Jonathan Osterman, the son of a watchmaker, he worked at Gila Flats, and started dating Slater. Osterman got stuck inside an Intrinsic Field Generator that disintegrated him. He eventually re-forms himself, albeit as a bald blue person, and demonstrates amazing powers. Weaver goes on TV and says that “God exists, and he’s American,” adding that if that fills you with existential dread, that’s okay, it just means you’re still alive and thinking. Manhattan also recalls the Watchmen meeting and being attracted to Laurie, his and Slater’s breakup, his ending the Vietnam War, and so on.
Someone makes an attempt on Veidt’s life while he’s meeting with representatives from the auto industry. He survives, but his secretary, Lee Iacocca, and several others are killed—and the assassin swallows a cyanide capsule before he can say anything.
The guy with the “END IS NIGH” sign buys this month’s New Frontiersman. The kid keeps reading the pirate comic. The news vendor is initially annoyed that he’s reading without buying, but given that Manhattan’s departure has led to the Soviets moving on Afghanistan and nuclear war seems imminent, he just gives the kid the comic.
Rorschach investigates the assault on Veidt, noting that the assassin posed as a delivery person from a company called Pyramid, which is also a company that sent Moloch pension checks. Rorschach goes to Moloch’s apartment, only to find the villain dead of a gunshot wound to the head and the police surrounding the place. After a protracted fight, the cops arrest him, and ripping his mask off, we all learn that Rorschach is the “END IS NIGH” dude. He’s brought to prison, and he tells the prison shrink how he became Rorschach. He’d already started his career as a masked vigilante, but he didn’t become Rorschach until he took on a child kidnapping case, only to discover that the kidnapper had killed the girl and fed her to his dogs. So he kills the dogs and the kidnapper.
Several prisoners are there because of Rorschach, and one tries to stab him in the chow line; Rorschach instead hits him with a tray and then pours boiling oil on him. A crime boss Rorschach put away named Big Figure informs Rorschach that as soon as that prisoner dies of his burns, the prison will erupt.
Feeling inadequate, Dreiberg stands naked in front of the Nite Owl costume. Laurie suggests they go out on patrol in Archie, and they wind up rescuing a bunch of folks from a tenement fire. That’s enough for Dreiberg to finally get it up and he and Laurie rip their costumes off and have hot monkey sex while Archie hovers over the Big Apple. Laurie even hits the flamethrower at the moment of climax, and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujiah” is playing on the soundtrack, just in case we weren’t sure it was a sex scene…
During their post-coital snuggle, Dreiberg says they should spring Rorschach. Laurie reluctantly agrees, and they arrive shortly after the riot Big Figure promised. Rorschach is able to dispose of Figure’s two thugs and Figure himself, then leaves with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre.
Manhattan shows up at Dreiberg’s brownstone and takes Laurie to Mars. He has no reason to care about Earth, and Laurie’s arguments fall on deaf ears. Over the course of their talk, she realizes that Blake was, in fact, her father, that Sally slept with Blake a second time after the rape and that was when Laurie was conceived. Manhattan realizes that the random amazingness of life is pretty awesome and accompanies Laurie back to Earth.
Mason sees the news story on Rorschach’s breakout, and calls Sally, and the pair reminisce. Some thugs find out that Nite Owl freed Rorschach, and think it’s Mason who did it, so they go to his house and beat the crap out of him, killing him.
Rorschach found a matchbox in the apartment of Veidt’s killer, and they go to the bar on that matchbox, only to find out that someone there is also employed by Pyramid—hired by Slater. They go to Veidt’s office to consult with him, but there’s no sign of him. However, they find evidence that Veidt owns Pyramid—he’s the mask killer. (He hired the person who killed his secretary and Iacocca to deflect Rorschach’s inquiries.)
They also discover that he’s at his Antarctic base. After stopping to drop Rorschach’s journal off at the New Frontiersman offices, they fly Archie to Antarctica, where Veidt has killed the other scientists working on the project he and Manhattan were collaborating on to create a new energy source. Nite Owl and Rorschach arrive and they try to fight Veidt, but Veidt makes a fool out of them both, then reveals his plan: to destroy sections of several large cities and make it look like Manhattan did it. The world’s super-powers will unite in fear of more retribution from the superman.
Manhattan arrives to stop him, but Veidt uses an intrinsic field generator to disintegrate him. Manhattan is able to pull himself together—that was the first trick he learned, after all—but by that time, the cities have been attacked, thousands have died (including the news vendor and the kid reading the comic, who were in Times Square when Vedit’s weapon hit), and the world’s powers have, indeed, come together. Laurie, Manhattan, and Dreiberg agree to keep Veidt’s secret for the sake of this new peace. Rorschach refuses, and Manhattan is forced to kill him.
Dreiberg and Laurie think about restarting their masked adventurer careers. Manhattan buggers off to another galaxy. Veidt thinks he’s won. Meanwhile, the New Frontiersman needs a front-page story, and the intern finds this journal in the crank file…
“The end is nigh”
In a lot of ways, Zack Snyder made the best Watchmen film possible. But the real problem is in making Watchmen into a movie in the first place, which is a dangerous and difficult proposition. And it’s not because the movie is “unfilmable” as Terry Gilliam declared, because it is filmable. It’s just what you wind up filming that’s the problem.
When you adapt a longer work into a shorter work—like, for example, adapting a 300-page novel into a 100-page screenplay, or a twelve-issue comics miniseries into a three-hour movie—you have to, in essence, boil it down. You get rid of the subplots, the extras, the grace notes, the character bits, and focus on the main plot. You excise Tom Bombadil from the story, you get rid of the flashbacks detailing Domingo Montoya’s life, you combine Dubois and Rasczak into a single character, and so on.
Here’s the thing: the reason why Watchmen is so appealing is because of the subplots, the extras, the grace notes, the character bits. The actual plot is, bluntly, dumber than a box of hair. You can forgive that in the comic book because it’s been such a great ride up until then. Well, mostly. I still remember the “wait, what?????” moment I had reading the graphic novel in college when I got to the part where Ozymandias fakes an alien invasion to bring the nations of the world together. But I was captivated by the world building and the characters, so I forgave the dumbshit climax.
Harder to do that in a movie. Snyder tries his best, but in truth the ideal format for a Watchmen adaptation is to go along with the structure of the comic: a twelve-part TV miniseries.
But that’s not what we got. Instead we got this mess.
This movie winds up telling its story in four distinct sections that don’t really cohere as well as Snyder wants them to. We start out with a section that’s all about the Comedian, as we slowly learn more and more about this guy who’s been killed. But once we dispense with the flashbacks, it becomes about Dr. Manhattan, with Blake seemingly forgotten, and the focus is on how Manhattan is led to leaving Earth, culminating in a lengthy sequence that shows Manhattan’s origin. Then we cut back to Rorschach, and it’s rather a shock, as we haven’t seen Rorschach in a while and we’ve kind of forgotten about him, but he’s captured, and then we focus a lot on his travails in jail until Nite Owl and Silk Spectre break him out. Then we have the climax.
The biggest change in the plot is that Veidt’s plan is to frame Manhattan for the destruction that brings the world together instead of creating an alien monster who teleports into New York and kills a ton of people. The thing is, while that’s a bit better than the comics’ version (which was just goofy), it’s basically the same idea: a fictional, but destructive, threat brings the world together. But it’s a temporary fix in either case, one that won’t result in a lasting peace, especially since neither the alien monsters nor Dr. Manhattan are ever going to follow up.
And the movie suffers from Veidt’s plan being so much of the focus, because it’s still really dumb. We’ve gotten three character studies up until then, and they all fail on one level or another.
The Comedian section actually works well, mainly because Jeffrey Dean Morgan so perfectly nails it, but then Blake really has nothing to do with the rest of the movie. The revelation that Laurie is his daughter doesn’t land at all, nor do the “joke” references made by Dreiberg made at the end, because after being the focus for the first section, Blake’s been no kind of presence in the movie for way too long. (In addition, the whole part of the plot involving Sally going back to sleep with Blake after he assaulted and raped her has aged really badly—more so the comics version, in which Laurie talks at the end like she’s going to be more like Blake in her superhero identity, which is revolting.)
Arguably the two best issues of the original comic book are the fourth and sixth. The former tells Manhattan’s entire story, in a rather non-linear manner akin to how Manhattan perceives time, the latter Rorschach’s. The movie tries its best to re-create these issues, but fails. Manhattan’s backstory grinds the movie to a halt, but doesn’t really do his story justice (and is a bit too linear, sadly).
And Rorschach’s story is completely botched. I always found one of the two or three most interesting characters in Watchmen to be Rorschach’s shrink, Dr. Malcolm Long. Watching him change as he gets to know Rorschach is one of the most compelling parts of the comic. But we don’t get that here—Long is reduced to a quick walk-on, and we only get the last part of Rorschach’s story, which is robbed of its buildup.
In both the cases of Manhattan and Rorschach, Snyder tries his best to include as much of these two strong issues of the original as possible, but in both cases, the pacing suffers for it. When you’re reading even the collected version of Watchmen, it’s in twelve discreet portions, each separated by the bit of back matter, so the pacing is set by the format. But a movie is a single discreet portion, and these moments need to be shortened so much in order to squeeze into the time that they don’t work as well as intended and come across as distractions to the plot.
(These pacing issues are exacerbated by the “Ultimate Cut” which incorporates the animated version of the Tales of the Black Freighter comic book that the kid reads at the newsstand. Those were among the worst parts of the comic book, and the parts I always skip over when I re-read it. It’s a nice exercise in nostalgia, but it just distracts from the storyline in both comic and movie. It honestly works best as a DVD extra—Gerard Butler does a fine job as the voice of the protagonist.)
And, again, the plot is really really dumb. I can’t emphasize that enough. On top of everything else, changing the alien monster to a simple frame-up of Dr. Manhattan makes Blake’s existential angst about the project when he learns about it and bares his soul to Moloch ridiculous. The new version of the plot doesn’t really track with Blake losing it that much.
It’s too bad because the movie does do some parts quite right. The look and feel of the 1980s, even a changed one, is nicely done, ditto the flashbacks to earlier times that are very well re-created. In general, the movie is a visual feast, with some very striking scenes, from the Vietnam flashbacks to Manhattan’s flying glass structure on Mars to the prison riot.
And many of the casting choices are letter perfect. In particular the three people who are the focus of the first three sections—Morgan as the Comedian, Billy Crudup as Manhattan, and Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach—are simply magnificent. Crudup nails the calm remove of Manhattan, Morgan (seemingly auditioning for Negan here) embodies the Comedian’s sleazy machismo to a T, and Haley is almost frighteningly spot-on as Rorschach. Props also to Carla Gugino and Stephen McHattie as the older versions of Silk Spectre and Nite Owl, though being slathered in old-age makeup doesn’t do Gugino any favors. I particularly liked Mason’s final fight, as each punk he punches flashes onto a villain from his hero days—it’s a nice little tribute to this world’s first masked hero. (I also must confess to being pleased that they didn’t go to all the contortions the comic did to avoid full-frontal nudity on Manhattan, who by 1985 has given up clothes as a ridiculous contrivance. They let Manhattan’s big blue penis just hang out there for all to see. In a medium where female nudity is perfectly fine but male nudity is often viewed as yucky, this is heartening to see.)
Sadly, not all the other casting choices work so well. Patrick Wilson is perfectly adequate as Dreiberg, but he never really conveys any kind of depth. Malin Åkerman has even less depth as Laurie, managing only the character’s frustrations but not her sadness or tragedy or strength. And Matthew Goode falls completely flat as Veidt—though, to be fair, one of the flaws of the original is that Veidt simply is too bland and uninteresting as a character. Goode does nothing to fix that, and in fact makes it worse by making him a lisping effete, leaning into Rorschach’s one-line description of him in the comics as being possibly homosexual. Given that Rorschach is the textbook definition of an unreliable narrator, focusing on that seems ill-advised, and succumbing to the stereotype of the gay guy being evil is just tired. (One of the folders on Veidt’s password protected Mac—another nicely retro re-creation—is labelled “Boys.”)
Also Snyder makes one filmmaking choice that undercuts the point of the story, which is the stylized and brutal fight scenes. I’m actually okay with the brutality—all too often, violence on screen is virtually consequence-free, so I’m fine with actual broken bones and blood and such. What I have a problem with is Dreiberg and Laurie being so incredibly good at hand-to-hand combat even after being inactive for eight years. What I have a problem with is all these normal people doing superhuman things, from Rorschach’s jump up to Moloch’s fire escape to the punishment that Nite Owl and Rorschach take at Veidt’s hands to Veidt’s fight with the Comedian, which has both of them showing strength no normal person would have. The whole point of Watchmen was to insert masked adventurers into the real world and see what happens, but making the fights so stylized and over-the-top messes that up.
I enjoy watching this movie for Morgan’s and Crudup’s and especially Haley’s performances, but it’s ultimately a failed adaptation of a great work, because the very process of adapting it into a shorter form can’t help but expose the great work’s one major flaw for all to see. It’s a noble failure, but it’s still a failure.
(This movie was also the last time I’d think well of Snyder as a director. But we’ll talk more about that when we get to Man of Steel later in this rewatch.)
For the next three weeks, we’ll be back with the X-Men franchise, specifically the three movies focusing on its breakout star, Hugh Jackman as Wolverine. Next week, X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Keith R.A. DeCandido recently won the Scribe Award, given by the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers, for Best Short Story for his tale “Ganbatte” in Joe Ledger: Unstoppable, a Lydia “Warbride” Ruiz story about martial arts, the Florida Keys, and sexual harassment.
This loses something in translation lol.
I’ve heard rumours of a TV series. I really, really hope TPTB tap Neal McDonough for Ozymandias. His looks are perfect for the role and can act both charming and dangerous with ease.
Using “Hallelujiah” in That Sex Scene always struck me as a ridiculous attempt to add something profound to that moment, so I wanted to make the tiny tweak (to, you’re right, a deeply flawed film) of, I’d hope, a better song choice. My best idea: Nick Cave’s “Are You the One That I’ve Been Waiting For?,” because it’s gentle, it seems to get to the underlying feelings the characters have for each other, and especially because of the apt line “Outside my window, the world has gone to war…”
(It’s a late-90s song, so it’s not a perfect fit.)
“The whole point of Watchmen was to insert masked adventurers into the real world and see what happens, but making the fights so stylized and over-the-top messes that up.”
This sums up my feeling in a nutshell. Snyder’s Watchmen was certainly visually striking and lovingly authentic at recreating the images from the comic, but it totally failed to capture the style of the comic. While I watched it, I kept thinking it was too slick, too stylized, too processed and unrealistic. To capture the essence of Watchmen, it should’ve been done in a cinema verite style, as naturalistic and unaffected as possible. It should’ve been the Homicide: Life on the Streets of superhero movies. The costumes shouldn’t have been so intricate and latex-y, and the makeup should’ve been more subdued. This was supposed to be in a realistic world without superpowers or mutants or anything except for Dr. Manhattan, but Moloch and Richard Nixon looked like Dick Tracy villains.
But Snyder doesn’t understand realism. He doesn’t understand anything except how to slavishly copy images from comic books. Snyder is very good at creating striking, momentary images (he started out doing commercials), but he’s no good at anything more substantive than that. His work is all surface and no depth. (Well, he is pretty good at casting, at least some of the time.)
I do think the movie is better without the squid ending, though. The squid worked in the comic, because it was such a classic comic-book trope — as one analysis I read expressed it, Watchmen deconstructed comics but still paid tribute to them, and the ending embraced something blatantly comic-booky as a way of punctuating that. Within the context of the story, the squid is a complete non sequitur, something totally bizarre that comes out of left field into this otherwise realistic world, but it works in the comic because fanciful monsters of that sort are part of the language and history of comics, and thus part of the world that Watchmen comments on and participates in. But the movie isn’t part of the comics medium, so that self-referential, metatextual aspect would be missing and the squid would simply have been a non sequitur. Having the final threat be Dr. Manhattan himself gives it more internal cohesiveness, and provides a payoff to the arc of Dr. M’s growing alienation from the world, because that alienation made it credible that he could turn on humanity.
“The revelation that Laurie is his father” — ummm …
I have to admit that I have kind of enjoyed this film (and, god help me, Sucker Punch), but only when I’m in one of those “all surface, no substance” kinds of moods. And yes, fake Nixon was particularly terrible.
I really liked the major change made, to use Dr. Manhattan’s power plants to frame him for it. I never liked the faked alien invasion, it was not a good “wft?” moment for me, and detracted some from my enjoyment of the comic.
Jackie Earle Haley totally owned this movie. The anger and the misery he showed at the end tore me up. Loved the character in the comic, and more so in the movie. Those prison scenes… awesome stuff. I do so love me some antiheroes.
But yeah, for all that I enjoyed the movie, it feels flat. Visually stunning, though; I think Snyder has a very good eye for the spectacle of comics, I really like is vision, but he’s not a good main director. He’d make a better director of photography.
@5, Oh man, I loved Sucker Punch. I mean, it’s not a good movie, but with giant cyborg samurai demons wielding chainguns fighting a girl in a Japanese high-school sailor outfit? I’m sold.
I was waiting for this review and wasn’t disappointed. Excellent coverage.
Lately I’ve been seeing more critical revaluations of Moore’s Watchmen, some even holding it as among his worst works if they’ve followed Moore’s career. I ought to reread it then take a closer look at the criticisms.
The movie looks gorgeous, but is totally ‘meh’.
My issue with having Dr. Manhattan being the ‘villain’ who brings everyone together, is that despite his alienation from humanity, at this point in time he is still seen by the world as being 100% AMERICAN. Yes he buggers off, but he has been used as a cudgel by the US government against the world for so long, I don’t feel enough time passes between him going to Mars & the ‘attack’ to fully disassociate him from the US. And even though US cities also get attacked, I’m not sure having it be done by someone who is so tied to the country’s identity would even temporarily create worldwide ‘peace’. There would be countries that would feel the US got what it deserved and the rest of the world ended up suffering because of their ‘toy’. I know people hate the squid monster, but that was one of its strengths – the idea that the threat had to be from completely outside humanity/earth so no fingers could ever be pointed.
The problem isn’t that Dan and Laurie fight with a skill and polish that belie their many years out of action; the problem is that they fight with all the brutality and sadism of Rorschach. If every character in the film is as brutal and sadistic as Rorschach, it negates everything the story purports to say about the dangers and degrees of vigilantism.
When I saw that mugging sequence, I gave up hope that Snyder might actually understand the source material, not just be slavishly devoted to its visual appearance. As he has proved time and time again throughout his career, he just doesn’t get things, particularly the implications of stuff that titillates him. He gets off on depictions of sex and violence without comprehending the philosophical points those depictions are supposed to raise.
But no matter who had made a Watchmen movie, it would have been an inferior and pointless exercise. For one thing, the back matter in the comic is essential in showing how the world at large has reacted to the superheroes – – and since the very point of Watchmen is to demonstrate how the real world would handle the arrival of such characters, omitting that material (as just about any cinematic adaptation would have to) robs the story of its raison d’etre. Even more crucial, Watchmen was meant to be a meta-commentary on its own medium: a comic about comics. That’s a recurring motif in Moore’s work (notably his work on Supreme), as he has used the printed page to not only celebrate the virtues of comics but question their less savory aspects as well. (I always wondered if the Comedian’s tearful admission that he had done terrible things was a symbolic mea culpa for the lurid excesses of comics in general.) For that reason, I could never see a point to a Watchmen movie in the first place. The very idea reminded me of that quote from Laurie Anderson that writing about music is like dancing about architecture.
@8: Really? Maybe link them here when you find them – I’d be interested to see something like that.
I was never a huge fan of The Watchmen in the first place, though I didn’t think the movie was so bad in many respects. I am glad to hear another person point out that Laurie deciding Blake wasn’t so bad/he and and her mother reconciled was gross. Victims of assault may experience a lot of pressure (internally or externally) to just “get over it”. Sally sleeping with him could have been part of an effort on her part to convince herself that everything is OK. That or she had low self-esteem and didn’t believe she deserved better that a man that assaulted her. That the movie and comic pretended everything was hunky dory was bad.
treebee72: That is an excellent point about the changed ending. Given how Manhattan has been an American doomsday weapon for twenty years, I’m not sure the other nations would be so forgiving of the U.S.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
A couple of minor quibbles: first, Blake didn’t rape Sally. He definitely intended to, but Hooded Justice stopped him. Second, it seems a bit silly to complain about unrealistic fighting abilities when comic book Veidt literally caught a fucking bullet with his bare hands. While Moore was interested in what the real world consequences of “costume heroes” might be, he had no qualms about throwing realism out the window when he wanted to.
Also, that splash page with the big dead fake alien will always be far, far better than the stupid power plant Manhattan frame up.
@14 – I forget, but wasn’t it implied (or stated) that the rape happened after the first attempt?
The most hilarious sex scene in movie history. Not for the scene itself but the stampede of parents and children I witnessed running for the theater doors. I guess they thought it would be just another superhero movie. Hehe. Funny how they had no problem with all the violence, gore and profanity before that point. Ah, my fellow Americans…
As for me, I did eventually walk out early from the movie too, but it wasn’t for any outrageous content. I was simply bored with it.
I remember loving this film in the theaters. I have it on Blu-ray, But I cannot remember when I last watched it. On paper, this should be what I love in films. But I think you and Mr. Bennett nailed my issues here. To slick, with things just taking way too long. And I also was bothered with how over-powered people were.
But…
I loved the bookends for this film. That opening with Dylan was wonderful. But my favorite takeaway that I felt definitely improved on the comic was Ozymandias’s resolution. That brief moment when everybody leaves and we see him standing alone in the ruins of his base. The biggest bug I had with the comic was how pat everything fell into place for Viedt. I loved how there was at least “a” consequence for his actions.
Yeah, and removing the space squid and the pirate subplot were improvements. Looks like I pretty much agree with you on this movie.
@16/Drake: It’s weird how people don’t pay attention to movie/TV ratings, things that were created for the express purpose of letting them know in advance whether the content would be appropriate for children. Granted, the PG-13 rating has come to be applied so broadly that it’s become meaningless, but Watchmen was rated R. You’d think parents in particular would understand what an R rating means. Heck, when I was a kid, my father wouldn’t even let me go to PG-rated movies (which at the time were roughly equivalent to PG-13 movies today).
#18. Right, and it’s not like there’s a lack of parental guidance review sites out there that give detailed accounts of each movie. It’s on the parents for not paying attention to that stuff.
But I’ll always have fond memories of the Great 2009 Running of the Families. Sadly the best part of this movie for me.
It is astounding how many people, still, think that comics and cartoons = children’s things. As if the act of attaching a speech balloon to a picture, or making it move, made it impossible to put gore, despair, or sex into that picture. I can cut them some slack because I’ve lived most of my life in fannish culture and it’s still relatively easy to not see it even now that geekdom is mainstream. But I just laugh at the people who discover that, no, comics and cartoons are not all for children and then get mad at the vendor or creator. ‘Taint their fault if you don’t read the tags!
Back on topic: I couldn’t even finish the Watchmen comic, because “You know, if these people lived in the real world, it would all be very complicated and sad” can be disposed of in a sentence. I don’t demand that the plot reset itself at the end of every issue with zero continuity and character growth like an old school cartoon, but I am not reading about people in brightly colored leotards flying through the air as fast as a jet because I want to think about realpolitik.
@19 Drake – that experience for me was The Black Cauldron. The movie was rated PG, but it was a cartoon so it must be for little kids! Mass exodus the first time the villain appeared on screen.
Like a lot of things Moore wrote, I didn’t care for the original Watchmen comics; far too grim for me. And the movie ended up a muddled mix of movie clichés, like splashy fight scenes, and the original ideas. I think it might have been too respectful of the original source, as the story was just a bit too complex to shrink into a single film. In the end, it may have proved that the story was impossible to film successfully.
Wow – I really don’t agree with this. I thought the movie was great and I remember reading the comic afterward and liking it even more because it’s alien invasion plot was even better than the plot in the movie. An external threat is the only thing that brings people together – the plan was a good one and likely the only way forward for humanity. The one thing that will bring us together faster than anything else is finding life in the Galaxy and it somehow being hostile to us. But – I am a plot person and don’t find the digressions in novels (classic or otherwise) to be the good parts. Example – had to read Moby Dick for school and though I enjoyed all of the plot and its themes of man trying to fight the universe boy were the digressions annoying and not only because they were so scientifically inaccurate (narwhalls use their horn to spear fish…really?).
So YMMV I guess?
Watchmen opened up the world of adult graphic novels to me. I never would have discovered things such as Preacher or Neil Gamiens comics without watchmen.
@7 wait “Oh man, I loved Sucker Punch. I mean, it’s not a good movie, but with giant cyborg samurai demons wielding chainguns fighting a girl in a Japanese high-school sailor outfit? I’m sold” This is what is sucker punch? Oh man I MUST watch this tonight!
@23/dwcole: “An external threat is the only thing that brings people together – the plan was a good one and likely the only way forward for humanity.”
That’s a common idea in fiction, but history proves it’s a myth. In WWII, the US, the UK, and the Soviet Union all made nice with each other and united against the common threat of the Axis — but as soon as the common threat was defeated, the alliance fell apart and the USSR and the West became even fiercer enemies than they’d been before. Similarly, within the US, people set aside racial, gender, and religious tensions and divisions in the spirit of national unity against a common threat, but once the war was over, there was an almost immediate re-emergence of racism, sexism, religious persecution, and the like. A common enemy doesn’t magically erase or solve existing conflicts; it just suppresses them and leaves them to simmer beneath the surface, so that as soon as the pressure is eased, they erupt again.
Fiction embraces the myth that a common enemy solves divisions because it’s simplistic, an easy wish-fulfillment fix for problems that seem too hard to solve any other way. But in reality, it can never work, because the underlying factors that created those problems in the first place are still there, and they can’t be solved until those factors are directly confronted and dealt with. Sure, maybe you could argue that the recognition of a common threat would make rival nations realize they need to work on resolving the causes of their conflict, but it’s more likely that they’d be far too preoccupied with the common threat to do anything of the sort, and that they’d just gloss over and ignore the issues dividing them.
@25 oh I don’t think it would last forever – but forever peace is impossible. We are never going to remove competition and conflict from and the world – which is a good thing though because man what a boring world that would be! What we can do is unite for a common cause for a time and an external threat is the easiest way to do that – but yes of course it wouldn’t work forever as history has proven (though even as bad as things are in the U.S. right now we are not at war with each other – we are not that anarchic yet).
@24, it’s one sequence in the movie, and was featured in some of the trailers. The movie has a lot of action sequences set in a variety of themes. I thoroughly enjoyed every sequence. The movie bits around the set pieces weren’t super spectacular.
@26/dwcole: I’m not even talking about “forever.” I’m saying that the problems immediately erupt again as soon as the common threat is ended, because they never actually went away at all. If anything, they’re likely to be even worse, because the tensions were repressed and allowed to build up in the interim. You said it was “the only way forward for humanity,” but it’s not forward movement at all — it’s just stasis, a temporary hold on our conflicts while the external threat is dealt with. The way forward is to confront the actual problems and solve their underlying causes. Fighting an outside threat won’t do that any more than fighting a fire will cure one’s heart disease.
The Attack on Titan anime has a much more grim approach to the ‘common enemy’ trope. The main character even pretty much flat out calls it BS early on in the series.
@14. olethros6: “that splash page with the big dead fake alien will always be far, far better than the stupid power plant Manhattan frame up”
For the comic, sure. Especially after the dread the pirate stories built up. I always wondered how widespread the impact of the pirate comics was supposed to be. Without the cinematic versions, comics in our world have a very small audience.
But if you envision that space Cthulhu calamari on the big screen, audiences would have laughed their asses off. Just no. Also, the more elegant ending had Dave Gibbons blessing.
As far as the “rape is bad, but look! something wonderful came of it” message, Alan Moore can just fuck off already. That it was perpetuated in the movie made it worse.
I hated this movie then, and I can’t imagine wasting my time going back to watch it now. I remember blogging about it at the time, and describing it as “boring… no, fucking boring.” It was a movie that acted like it had something profound to say but couldn’t quite manage it because it was too focused on looking cool.
And I hated the comics, too.
I blame the Watchmen series, along with The Dark Knight Returns, for ruining the industry up through the 90’s (the headlong charge into everything being XTREME was thanks, in part, to Watchmen and DKR), and leading us into the grimdark era we’re in right now. At least, the era DC is in right now. Marvel figured out a while back that grimdark doesn’t sell. DC has yet to learn that lesson.
@31/danielmclark: I don’t blame Watchmen or The Dark Knight Returns for the fact that everyone afterward tried to copy them, because their creators didn’t intend them to be interpreted as templates for everyday comics storytelling. On the contrary, they intended them to be responses to and deconstructions of the normal way of telling stories, taking everything to an exceptional extreme in order to make a point. And they both did that effectively, because they actually had something to say. The problem is that too many subsequent creators adopted the extreme darkness of those stories as an end in itself, missing the fact that they had used it as a means to an end.
Speaking of sanitized violence, the movie’s choice to change the nature of Ozymandias’ threat had one probably unintended but, in my opinion, REALLY detrimental side effect.
Ozymandias’s plot to manufacture a Cthulhu is cartoonish at best; but when it lands, the book treats us to 8 double-page spreads of the carnage, of millions of New Yorkers struck down and lying where they fell, and Laurie and Dr. Manhattan walking dazed through it all. The body count includes all the secondary characters, whom we’ve been getting to know for 12 issues. In addition to removing those characters, Snyder changes the alien to a Photoprotoneutron Bomb of some sort, which creates absolutely bloodless slaughter. When Dr Manhattan and Laurie return to the city, they land in the middle of this clean, sterilized CGI crater that has NO emotional impact. It’s totally sanitized… and unnecessarily so, given the brutality of the hand-to-hand combat Snyder was clearly willing to commit to screen. He’s fine showing people dying but not with showing them dead?
In the book, we FEEL the deaths caused by Veidt’s plan. In the movie, a million is a statistic.
@28. Yeah the way Europe totally started tearing itself apart in its usual dynastic wars as soon as Germany was defeated has been fierce. Oh, wait, no that didn’t happen. It became even more peaceful with ever closer cooperation (despite the UK’s best efforts in that regard). It is almost like it is entirely possible for historic enemies to be brought together and say “never again”.
The main problem with the Watchmen movie is Snyder and his objectionable Objectivism. He kinda gets away with it here a little, because this is a dark tale which suits that kind of loathsome worldview, but it still has all the problems that would later turn his real Superhero movies into a hot mess.
@33/CWatson: I gathered at the time that the graphic deaths at the end were sanitized at the studio’s insistence, to keep the film from being too horrifying. Showing individuals dying in combat is one thing; showing thousands of corpses littering the streets is another order of magnitude. Even an R rating has its limits.
@34/random22: Yes, Europe found peace after WWII, as did Japan, but at the same time, the US and the USSR became greater enemies and the Mideast fell further into chaos and violence. Which should prove my point: That it’s not the fight against the common enemy that solves your problems; it’s what you decide to do afterward that matters. WWI led right to WWII because of the bad decisions the Allies made in its wake. But WWII did not lead to WWIII because of the good decisions the Allies made in its wake — the Marshall Plan, the United Nations, and so forth. Wars don’t magically solve problems. They just introduce new ones. But that doesn’t mean that people can’t come together and find better solutions after a war. It just means it’s misguided to see the war itself as the solution.
The movie was nice to see, once.
I had hoped the movie would fix the part I really disliked; the murder of Rorschach. All he wanted to do was hold Veidt responsible for mass murder, and Mr SmartyNopants can’t think of any way to prevent that other than murder? He had Laurie alive on Mars with no probelm, but he couldn’t at least plop Rorschach somewhere out of the way?
And yet he didn’t turn Veidt into pink mist? The one guy who really deserves it?
Shit.
@36. sps49: I agree. Moore’s logic falls apart if you pick at it. Dr. M becomes an accomplice who explicitly endorses Veidt’s plan. So he doesn’t judge Veidt for what’s already happened, but prevents Rorschach from acting in future by turning him into a bloody Rorschach on the snow. Cause R will never stop his crusade. The irony is that his journal will get published and all will be undone anyway.
About the alien invasion subplot in the comic… it was inspired by contemporary politics.
There are many things that did not move me with the film: “costumed crimefighters” having preternatural physical abilities was a sine qua non for the retelling to sustain itself. One elite bodybuilder jacked to the gills on steroids and stimulants would still get physically destroyed in an no holds barred fight against 4-5 adult men of median physical status and fighting skills. Even the most elite trained fighters would be overwhelmed with 4-5 average people fighting with–inherently primate–coordination.
Moore began with human and superhuman “heroes” interacting with the world. The given of the Watchmen story is that individual heroes were beating up street level criminals for years or decades at a time. That is–almost surely–not plausible for any human that readers would have observed in lived experience. Moore was able to square his circle by making his “human” heroes take on legend/folklore level physical capacities. The mortal heroes of Watchmen meet the textbook definition of superhuman in every physical–and mental–regard: Sadism, messainism, narcissism, nihilism–the natural results of superior beings bounded to the mundane world.
The
@39/Senglord: Realism as a fictional device doesn’t actually require being exactly like reality. After all, that wouldn’t make for a very satisfying story. It just has to feel realistic to the audience, to create a convincing illusion of reality while still functioning as a work of fiction. That’s why it’s called realism instead of reality.
Of course fictional action heroes are better able to survive a fight than real-life people. But there’s a difference between a more-than-human character whose survival is attributed to superpowers (like Superman), a peak-human character whose survival is attributed to superior skill and training (like Batman), and an ordinary mortal whose survival is attributed to luck and sheer grit (like Indiana Jones). The real-world factors that require protagonists to survive and win fights should not be confused with the in-story excuses given for their ability to do so. Because there’s a really big difference between how Superman wins a fight and how Indiana Jones wins a fight. How it happens matters more than that it happens.
The thing I struggle with is the constant idea in these superhero deconstructions that “in the real world superheroes would be sad/terrible people.” In the “real world” we wouldn’t have any superheroes. I’m glad when I see the deconstructions being deconstructed, and I don’t think Watchmen has held up well over the decades (this movie being a great example).
Um. So who Photoshopped the jock strap on the blue guy? Shame on you.
This push for “realism” in areas of fantastic fiction continually baffles me, I think it is one of the worst trends in fiction. I know that I go to fiction to get away from reality, to imagine the fantastic; peoples and places; and not deal with the rot at the heart of our lives. I do not understand the desire to drag fictional heroes down instead of enjoying raising ourselves up. So we have so little confidence and belief in ourselves that we are now incapable of seeing ourselves as more than what we are, to not be able to see the good in ourselves, but instead must drag everything else down into the gutter before we can imagine ourselves a part of a story?
@42/pjcamp: The photo at the top of the column is an in-story publicity photo of the Crimebusters superhero team in their prime, so Manhattan was actually wearing the briefs at that point. Chronologically, he started out fully clothed in the ’60s, then wore less and less over time as he came to care less and less about human concepts of propriety and modesty, until by the late ’70s he went fully nude. The photo is from an earlier time when he still made a token concession to modesty, at least for the sake of a publicity shot.
Regarding the comic book development/roots, I believed that Suicide Squad was also among the Charlton properties bought by DC, though I suppose that will be noted when you get to the SS rewatch…
@45/capt_paul77: No, Suicide Squad was always a DC property. The original version was a WWII task force appearing in DC’s The Brave and the Bold anthology comic starting in 1959, created by Robert Kanigher and Ross Andru. The modern “supervillains working for the government” version (led by the son of the original version’s leader Rick Flag) was introuced by John Ostrander in 1987.
@23/dwcole: I don’t think Moore wanted us to approve of Veidt’s plan. After all, it fails – Rorschach’s journal is going to be published. In this respect, Watchmen reminds me of Swiss writer Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1961 play The Physicists. Both feature a lone genius who takes it upon himself to save the world from the dangers brought by modern physics (and politics), who even murders to achieve this goal, and who ultimately fails.
Dürrenmatt has also written a list of “21 Points to The Physicists”. #8 can be applied to the publication of Rorschach’s journal: “The more human beings proceed by plan the more effectively they may be hit by accident.”
Also relevant:
17. What concerns everyone can only be resolved by everyone.
18. Each attempt of an individual to resolve for himself what is the concern of everyone is doomed to fail.
Although I may be a bit late in commenting this, I feel as though I should point out that Nite Owl I was inspired to become a vigilante by a newspaper article about Hooded Justice, and was not the first masked hero in this universe. Also, the article refers several times to Sally Jupiter’s “rape” at the hands of Blake. In reality, it was only attempted rape, because Hooded Justice intervened and saved Sally. I’m not saying this to try and improve Blake’s character, as he does indeed later shoot a pregnant woman who it is implied is carrying his child, one of the worst acts a human can commit. And people wonder why DC decided to go down the dark superhero film route with their universe, when Watchmen, by far the darkest of them all, is held up and recognised as the best comic ever.
This film was, for me, my first foray into the Watchmen universe. I do enjoy the film, but my experience has been tarnished by the fact that the comic book is so widely acclaimed. I understand part of the reason: Moore is fantastic at world building, and Rorschach is personally my favourite character in this story, even if Moore basically wrote him as asshole-Batman (I wonder if positive reaction to Rorschach in this film confused Snyder, making him write Affleck’s Batman as a ruthless killer, to make him more “complex” when an aged and tired Batman was more than complex enough.)
Unfortunately, Watchmen, both comic and film, suffers from pointless characters that add nothing to the story, only the universe. This is primarily due to the weakness of the ending, where our supposed “heroes” give up and throw in the towel, instead of actively stopping Veidt’s monster in the comic and doomsday weapon in the film. Nite Owl and Silk Spectre’s only active contribution to the main plot of Veidt’s master plan is Laurie convincing Manhattan to return to Earth and the pair then breaking Rorschach out of prison, which I was reminded of when reading Keith’s summary of film events. All of Nite Owl’s interactions with Hollis and Laurie, while interesting and successfully developing this universe and these characters, ultimately adds nothing to the overall plot. Furthering this point is the original climax of Hayter’s 2003 script, which resulted in Dreiberg killing Veidt in Antarctica, simply to give him something to do at the climax. Excising these two characters, as well as Mason, might damage the overall mythos of the Watchmen universe, but it might make for a stronger film.
Another interesting point to note is that, thanks to Keith, I had never realised that Blake simply disappeared from the story around an hour in and was mentioned possibly once or twice again. He was simply the catalyst for the story, and it was only thanks to Moore’s development of him as an absolute b****rd that anyone remembers him at all.
The comic and film’s strengths lie with its three main characters: Rorschach, Doctor Manhattan and Ozymandias. The latter, as stated in the article, is so boring and unassuming the reader never truly suspects him until the comic is eliminating suspects, at which point he morphs into a criminal mastermind. Rorschach and Doctor Manhattan are two of the strongest characters in comic book history though, and practically save this film.
Rorschach is the only truly active character, and the only one who cares enough about the murder of Blake, horrific though he was, to do anything about it. Rorschach is a mentally broken man, who has seen the worst humanity can offer and was unable to cope, and so lashes out with brutal violence and twisted humour in a vain attempt to cover up his decaying mental state. He is a twisted interpretation of normal upstanding heroes, but is also an absolute badass, thanks to the fantastic line during the prison boiling oil scene, “I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me,” and the iconic opening monologue, taken verbatim from the comic. Jackie Earle Haley delivers one of the greatest performances in any comic book film, period. He was born to play Rorschach.
Doctor Manhattan is one of, if not the most, passive characters in the history of comics and films. He’s like Superman, if Superman had stood back and watched as Zod decimated Metropolis in Man of Steel, and then buggered off to Mars to watch as Earth becomes a new Krypton. But even then, Billy Crudup still manages to find the nuance in this character, as a tired “superman” who is fed up with humanity’s inherent capacity for senseless violence and considers Earth beyond saving. It is only when he realises that good can come from evil (Laurie from Blake) that his arc is completed, and he returns triumphantly to Earth to stop Veidt and… no, sorry, he does absolutely nothing during the climax as well. Manhattan is considered to be a hero by many, but all we see him do in this film is obliterate helpless, surrendering Vietnamese soldiers, fail to stop Blake shooting a pregnant woman, possibly obliterating an entire room of reporters, including his ex-wife (I may be mistaken here, as I don’t think it is ever confirmed if he simply teleported or outright murdered those people) sulking on Mars for the entire second act of the film, leaving his wife for a younger woman, whom he eventually grows tired of anyway, as well as failing to save millions of people at the climax of the film… and then buggering off again. And people wonder where Snyder got the climax to Man of Steel from: only the best comic book of all time, folks!
To conclude, I feel as though Moore wrote the opening chapters of Watchmen as a murder mystery featuring superheroes, but saw the popularity of the back material and decided to make it the main focus instead, shunting Blake’s death off to the sidelines and focusing on Rorschach, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, as well as Manhattan sulking on Mars (i.e. Superman’s brooding in MoS and BvS.) Watchmen is a relic of a time when Moore was a celebrated writer and nothing like this had ever been seen before. It still holds up (in some places) today, and I can see why it was so popular back in the 80’s.
It can be noted that I am currently reading Doomsday Clock, which is essentially Watchmen 2, featuring Batman and Superman, and am loving it so far. Geoff Johns understands that Rorschach, Blake and Veidt are inherently more interesting than Dreiberg and Laurie, and is focusing on them so far, as well as incorporating some wonderful elements from Watchmen that I was delighted to discover. I recommend it to any and all fans of Watchmen.
To conclude my film perspective, I feel as though Snyder was struck by the love and acclaim that people felt for this book, and believed that people nowadays wanted the same thing: Dark, gritty, complex, brooding anti-heroes, as well as allegorical story arcs, messianic references and post apocalyptic dream sequences. Lots and lots of dream sequences. Hence we got Man of Steel and Batman v Superman, two of the most divisive comic book films in the last 5 years. I can’t wait for Keith to review those.
Apologies if this was very long and boring for some of you, but I feel as though I’ve let out all my pent-up frustrations now, and can enjoy the film and comic as separate entities. For future commenters, I would be interested to know which version of the film people prefer: Theatrical, Director or Ultimate. I personally prefer Director, as it adds to the film but also omits the ultimately inconsequential Tales of the Black Freighter animation sequences.
Thanks for reading!
@46 CLB thanks for the clarification, I seem to recall DC reviving/updating Suicide Squad around the time they were starting to integrate Charlton’s characters, and thought I read in a promo or blurb about SS being part of that…
A long time elapsed between me reading Watchmen as it came out and me seeing the movie on opening day. Which may be why I love the movie without reservation. (OK, I could have done without the painfully obvious sex scene, and I hadn’t even gotten sick to death of Hallelujah by then.) When I was a comic reader as a kid, my preference was clearly for the archetypal DC heroes over the angst-ridden, whiny Marvel characters. As an adult, my deeply cynical side responded positively to the portrayal of alleged “heroes” in both the comic and the film. It’s probably not coincidental that the comic series of Watchmen coincided with me abandoning superhero comics, unless you count Flaming Carrot, in favor of things like Beanworld (at one extreme) and Those Annoying Post Brothers (at the other). For me, the numerous subplots were effectively replaced by tons of (alternate) period detail, like David Bowie and Marc Bolan outside of Studio 54. Background bits like that fascinated me enough to disregard the slow sections. Since I never saw or had any interest in 300, and only watched the 1st Matrix, bullet-time hadn’t become an annoying cliché for me. It’s use here reinforced the comic book source material, where action is also frozen in panels. Frank Miller tried to panelize Sin City with less success. Also, as you say, Haley and Morgan were letter perfect and own the movie. It’s certainly Snyder’s finest hour, since the DC Cinematic Universe should take out a restraining order against him so he never gets his mitts on any part of it again.
Nightshade, one of the founding members of the Ostrander Suicide Squad, was a Charlton character, but that’s the only connection .
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Daniel: The post hasn’t even been up for a full two days yet, you’re not late at all. Heck, people are still commenting on Star Trek rewatch posts I made in 2011. You’re fine. :)
And thanks for the thoughtful comment!
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Well, I’m a day late, but my feelings when I first saw Watchmen haven’t changed, and are in accord with our host and Mr. Bennett — Snyder knows how to make a movie that looks almost exactly like the comic it was based on, while at the same time completely missing the point of the original story. Dan and Laurie’s mugging is the example I use when explaining this to people. Not only are Dan and Laurie far overpowered for people who’ve been out of training for years, they’re actively enjoying the fight. The comic has them feeling relief at surviving a fight they had reason to believe they wouldn’t. The movie versions are never in any real danger because of their superhuman skills. It’s a mistake that Synder makes over and over — he made it in 300, he made it here, and I think he’s repeating it in his DC movies. Visually, it’s almost impossible to do better, but thematically, he’s so wide of the mark it’s amazing.
Also, as our host noted, the music choices are frequently thuddingly obvious. “All Along the Watchtower” was a given, since it’s in the comic, but Snyder even manages to hit you over the head with that one. It’s possible I’m biased because I saw a captioned theater showing, and the captions tell you what song is playing before your brain even registers it, which makes it more obvious. There’s one exception worth pointing out: During the assassination attempt on Veidt, a muzak version of “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” is playing in the background. It’s subtle, and pretty funny. I can’t recall now if the captions pointed it out, but I suspect they didn’t.
Her name is Silk Spectre so why does she wear vinyl?
If we’re raising that question, why does she look as if she’s made of plastic?
princessroxana: It’s the same name her mother had. Her mother’s costume probably was silk. But the name is a legacy.
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Anyway Vinyl Spectre sounds stupid. Her mother’s costume was prettier too.
I never got why the movie Silk Spectre’s costume looked the way it did. In the comic, Laurie was obviously wearing a skimpy black bathing suit-like garment underneath a translucent yellow dress, but the movie costume interpreted it as a single layer with black and yellow patterns, which is weird. I mean, I guess they wanted Malin Akerman to be wearing something more practical and less revealing, but in that case it’s still weird that they went with the basic lines and pattern of the costume. And it just looks awkward. The comic’s costume at least had an elegance to it. (Here’s a cosplay that more accurately replicates the original costume. It kinda looks like something a woman might wear for a day at the beach.)
@krad: “Heck, people are still commenting on Star Trek rewatch posts I made in 2011.”
I used to frequent other forums that would ding you (infraction points) for what they called necro-threading: commenting on old posts just to put them on the front page again. Maybe that could be a game we start around here…
I don’t see anything practical or less revealing about the movie costume which is pure dominatrix wear. But given that a male lead wears nothing at all one can’t complain
Sunspear: this site doesn’t work that way — the front page purely has what’s most recently posted. And necro-posting is actually encouraged, because it means the older stuff is still being read. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
@61/roxana: How are you defining the word “revealing?” I’ve always understood it to refer to the amount of visible skin. The movie version of the Silk Spectre costume may be figure-hugging, but it reveals no actual skin except the upper thighs. The comic’s costume is essentially a plunging-necklined bathing suit or teddy with a see-through mini-dress over it, so the majority of Laurie’s skin is visible and her legs are completely bare.
As for practicality, I’d imagine that the movie costume is, if nothing else, less chilly to wear at night and less likely to get torn.
If a young woman comes to a party dressed in a Catwoman outfit, I’d say that was pretty revealing, no matter how much skin she’s letting show.
Meeeeoooowwww! :)
@64: I’d call that more “figure-hugging” than “revealing.”
Anyway, semantics aside, the point is that the movie’s Silk Spectre costume is one of the least authentic interpretations, along with Ozymandias’s. (That’s another one where the comics’ version had loosely draped fabric on the torso.) And it’s always looked to me as if the costume designers just didn’t understand what the comic art was showing and mistook it for a single layer, although I doubt that’s really the case.
I suppose Nite Owl’s costume is also a pretty significant reinterpretation, since the one in the comics looked like it was basically along the same lines as Adam West’s Batman costume in terms of materials and construction. The Comedian’s costume is close, but more complicated than the original. The only really dead-on ones are Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan, although one can’t really call the latter a costume. And I’m not sure they got the texture of Rorschach’s mask right. It was described in the comic as containing a fluid sandwiched between two layers, which was how its patterns could change shape, but the movie shows it as a porous woven fabric. Then again, he could breathe through it, which kind of requires it to be porous.
Christopher: Yeah, Rorschach’s mask had to be something that Jackie Earle Haley could actually function in……….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Speaking of Jackie Earle Haley, anyone who’s not seen season two of the new Tick series is missing out. He plays the villain, the Terror, with more nuance than I would’ve expected. He’s the perfect foil for the sunny disposition and touchy-feelyness of the hero.
@59/Christopher: That cosplay dress looks lovely, but not well suited for crimefighting. But that’s how Laurie’s costume should look like, isn’t it? Because her mother designed it, and she didn’t have practicality in mind.
@68/Jana: Yes, exactly. SS’s costume in the comic was presumably a meta-commentary on how many superheroine costumes in comics are more like bathing suits or fetish wear than practical athletic or protective garments. And it served character, illustrated how the Silk Spectre identity was a consciously sexual one for both generations. It was impractical, but that was kind of the point of Watchmen, that superheroing is not a particularly practical or rational undertaking in a realistic world.
I guess the movie costume is trying to be sexy in a different way, but it’s latex fetish wear with a color pattern designed to look like a skimpy teddy, and that’s just a weird juxtaposition that doesn’t work for me. It’s sort of like one of those t-shirts printed to look like tuxedos. It’s silly.
@63, CLB, IMO the loose over tunic however transparent, is less revealing. It’s a YMMV thing obviously.
@70/roxana: Less revealing than the undergarment by itself, sure, but a lot more revealing than the movie costume. In the comic, Laurie’s cleavage is clearly drawn and distinct, while in the movie costume, there’s only the vaguest hint of the shape of cleavage. Plus the comic’s Laurie has completely bare legs while the movie’s has thigh-high boots. Heck, even her hands are more covered up in the movie.
I can’t help thinking how hot and sticky that unbreathing latex must be.
@72/Roxana: I agree. Laurie’s comic costume looks much more comfortable than her film costume.
@73/Jana: More comfortable indoors, I can buy. But would you want to wear it while patrolling dank alleys for crime in the middle of the night? Heck, I doubt either costume would work well for that.
@74, Agreed neither outfit would be what I would choose to fight crime but as a woman I’d be MUCH more comfortable wearing the comic costume in public, as a matter of modesty. Skin aside the movie version seems much too sexualized. It’s a matter of taste and opinion.
@74/Christopher: No, of course not. But I tend to judge clothing by how comfortable it looks, and therefore I could relate to Roxana’s comment about the hot and sticky latex.
CLB, I think I’ve parsed why I feel the Comic costume is ‘less revealing’ it’s not about the amount of skin showing. The comic costume, as you said, looks like beachwear, a bathing suit and cover-up, something you’d wear in public. The movie costume looks like lingerie, something you wear in the privacy of your bedroom.
@77/roxana: Hmm, that’s interesting. I was thinking of “revealing” in terms of being the one looking, as in how much skin is revealed to me. You’re thinking in terms of being the one wearing it, as in how exposed/revealed it would make you feel. I understand the difference now.
Although I’ve always interpreted the comics costume as more like lingerie than beachwear, really. I think the cosplayer’s interpretation, while accurate as to the construction of the costume, was a bit more modest than the comics version, with the “bathing suit” slightly less skimpy and the outer garment (chemise?) not quite as sheer and transparent. Understandable, of course, since she had to wear it in public.
It’s weird but true, a woman feels less exposed in the sexiest bikini than she does in the most modest underwear. I think it’s a matter of intent. You intend to show your body in the bkini but you don’t plan to show your underwear, except maybe to a certain someone.
@79/roxana: Maybe the difference is also whether there are other people around you dressed the same way, which would happen more often with bikinis than with lingerie (unless one is a Victoria’s Secret model or something). If you’re just one person in a crowd, it’s easier to be comfortable with it.
CLB, that’s true too. If everybody else is in bathing suits you don’t feel exposed. But when you walk into the hotel lobby you start feeling awkward.
If you hang out with guys who wear tighs or nothing at all, latex lingerie doesn’t feel exposed. It’s still hot and sticky though.
A comment above triggered my memory of the Dick Tracy movie from about 1990 or so … was that part of the re-watch and I missed it? I don’t see it in the index.
@82/cecrow: Hmm, interesting. Technically Dick Tracy is a cop rather than a superhero and thus would be beyond the purview of this column. Then again, Keith did cover The Spirit — who wears a mask but is otherwise basically a detective character — and Judge Dredd, who’s a police officer. (And I still can’t figure out what made Tank Girl and Barb Wire qualify for a superhero column.) And Tracy was known for using advanced gadgets and had a colorful rogues’ gallery rivaling (and inspiring) the likes of Batman’s or Spider-Man’s rogues. (Indeed, Dick Tracy is the source of “rogues’ gallery” as a term for a comics hero’s recurring foes, because it was originally a police term for the forerunner of mug books.) So maybe Dick Tracy should be covered.
I wasn’t planning to cover Dick Tracy, but I could probably be convinced to change my mind…………….
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
I’d be interested in seeing Dick Tracy covered.
A quick nitpick. The opening credits don’t show “[a] World War II fighter plane” with Silk Spectre nose art. The plane named “Miss Jupiter” is a bomber and, given the mushroom cloud in the background behind it, was probably the Watchmen universe analog of the Enola Gay. This was in keeping with the film’s (and comics’) focus on atomic warfare.
Croesos: Good catch. I’ve edited it to remove the modifier, it’s just a World War II plane now. :)
—Keith R.A. DeCandido
Sucker Punch is an awesome movie (with a disturbing plot about what men in power do in a prison full of supposedly mentally disturbed/challenged teenage girls). And the soundtrack is one of my favorite movie soundtracks of all time, especially the rap mix with Queen’s we will rock you in the background.
The comic explained why Ozy was so physically gifted in one of his character flashbacks: he was basically Captain America in that he conditioned his very human body (and mind) to the point of perfection. Something the movie completely did not address.
Dr. Manhattan and the full-frontal shots showed all the immature people in my theater, there was a whole lot of snickering when the blue penis showed up, personally I was mildly surprised they put it in (at least one panel in the comic had him full nude)
Keith: “They let Manhattan’s big blue penis just hang out there for all to see. In a medium where female nudity is perfectly fine but male nudity is often viewed as yucky, this is heartening to see.”
This is one of those times when I suspect I’ve wandered into an alternate world. In my timeline’s Hollywood, male genitalia are R-rated, while female genitalia are — banned altogether. The recent R-rated comedy, The Spy Who Dumped Me, is an example: you can talk about female genitalia, but that’s as far as it goes.
“The whole part of the plot involving Sally going back to sleep with Blake after he assaulted and raped her has aged really badly”. In a sense, it’s right that it “aged … badly”: this is supposed to have happened in, what, 1955? And is being recalled in, what, 1985? I don’t mean to bash the Fifties— we can only envy their low murder rate — but the past is a different country.
@18/ChristopherLBennett: “You’d think parents in particular would understand what an R rating means.“ Trouble is, it’s sometimes applied to a film merely because of four-letter words. Or “violence”: Mel Gibson’s The Patriot got it because some boys bang away at the Redcoats with flintlock muskets.
@88, that sounds more like Doc Savage, who’s special abilities were due to rigorous training from birth.
@90/taras: Since 1990 (for R-rated films, 2000 for other films), MPAA movie rating labels have specified what content the rating is for. The specifics are printed on the lower line of the rating banner at the beginning of every movie trailer and on every movie poster and ad. The MPAA’s full rating for Watchmen read, “Rated R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language.” The Patriot‘s rating read “Rated R for strong war violence.” This isn’t a guessing game. The information is made clearly available. It’s parents’ responsibility to pay attention to it.
Read the small print. At twelve i was shocked when my mother took me to an R movie. It was Network and I left wondering what was so bad? I heard worse language on the playground. Was it the scenes with characters in bed together?
Which brings to mind this Simpsons side-gag. Distilling complex information into simple categories is probably always going to create edge cases and misleading signals. But when the categorization is based on social preferences, which are themselves heterogeneous, it seems even more likely to create some weird outcomes. Still, I agree people really shouldn’t be surprised that something does what it says on the tin.
SPOILERS FOR AN UNRELATED WORK FOLLOW
The novel Wild Card by Raymond Hawkey and Roger Bingham, published in 1974, has a much more believable “fake alien invasion” plot with a very similar “surprise ending.” I wouldn’t be all that surprised to learn that Alan Moore read it and used a variant of the idea in Watchmen. You can find the reissue (1992) on Amazon.
@95/DaveL: Contrary to popular belief, writers accidentally hit upon similar ideas all the time, so much so that it’s hard to avoid. Writers who find out their works are too similar to something earlier will usually try to change them to reduce the similarity, so a strong similarity is usually evidence that the writer didn’t know about the earlier work.
And the idea of a fake alien invasion goes back much farther than 1974. The Outer Limits did it in their third episode, “The Architects of Fear,” in 1963. There’s actually a nod to that episode in Watchmen, because Moore happened upon a reference to it while he was writing the comic and realized it was very similar to what he was doing, so he lampshaded the similarity in the text.
Here’s an essay that tracks back several earlier uses of the fake-invasion trope, from Marvel’s Tales of Suspense #2 in 1959 all the way back to a 1927 French novel:
http://www.comicsbeat.com/did-watchmen-steal-from-the-outer-limits-or-from-jack-kirby/
The real-life 1938 The War of the Worlds Halloween broadcast by Orson Welles, while not intentionally a hoax, was undoubtedly an influence on many of the fake-invasion stories that followed.
@65/66: It always got me that Moore WROTE Rorshach’s mask as something that he couldn’t breath in. SURPRISE: Rorshach was loopy due to long-term hypoxia. Keep the mask off a few days and he cracks a smile.
@92/ ChristopherLBennett: “The MPAA’s full rating for Watchmen read, ‘Rated R for strong graphic violence, sexuality, nudity and language.’ The Patriot‘s rating read ‘Rated R for strong war violence.’ This isn’t a guessing game.”
Well, actually, even if you read the small print, it was still a guessing game. At the time, “nudity“ virtually never meant genitalia which, most people assumed, would mean a rating of NC-17. (“Nudity” meant something like Hedy Lamarr frolicking in the woods in soft focus.) Recently, of course, the MPAA has made it a little less of a guessing game by using “graphic nudity“ as a euphemism for male (never female) genitalia.
Just how the borders of the R rating were stretched in this particular direction probably dates from those prestige, Merchant-Ivoryish costume melodramas in which handsome young men doff their award-winning period costumes to go skinny dipping. At first, the cameras were far away, but they gradually crept closer.
Similarly, when The Patriot got an R rating for “strong war of violence“, audiences would tend to assume it must be gruesome and bloody out of the ordinary, which was far from the case. Its problem was mostly political, in that some people disapproved of the boys shooting muskets at the British. (These days, the MPAA is also factoring in tobacco use!) By contrast, Stephen Spielberg had a lot more clout in Hollywood, so Saving Private Ryan also got an R, instead of NC-17.
There may also be a political issue behind the way the “graphic nudity“ designation has developed. Hollywood may feel that, unlike the female, displaying male genitalia is not exploitative.
Personally, I think if Jason Segel wants me to look at his junk, he should pay me, and not the other way around!
@98/taras: Aren’t you parsing it a little too closely here? We’re talking about parents taking their young children to see Watchmen. It doesn’t matter what exact flavor of nudity or violence we’re talking about — the point is that the fact that the film contained material inappropriate for children was clearly advertised, right there at the front of every trailer and the bottom of every poster. So parents who go around whining “Well, I had no way of knowing the film was inappropriate for children!” are making excuses for their own failure to pay attention.
@89. taras: Agreed. This false equivalency between male and female nudity amuses me every time it comes up. The fact is that we’ve seen dicks in mainstream Hollywood films, but no female genitalia. Yes, female nudity is more prevalent, but it’s of the T&A variety. When some people say we should have more male exposure and they mean penises, it’s just plain odd.
One recent inversion is the series Sharp Objects, where the male lead had a graphic scene fondling himself, while Amy Adams stayed fully clothed (there’s character reasons for that).
@100/Sunspear: It has irked me all my adult life that in our culture male toplessness is perfectly okay, whereas female toplessness is considered nudity. That isn’t fair! At least in my country it doesn’t extend to little girls, too.
@101. Jana: As a male who loves women, I would fully endorse any female toplessness anywhere men are allowed to do so.
Among the issues with Snyder’s adaptation that hasn’t been mentioned: Snyder, an Ayn Rand fan, thinks Rorschach is the story’s hero when Moore was pretty obviously satirizing Steve Ditko’s Mr. A / The Question by reinventing the Objectivist character as a mentally ill, narcissistic misanthrope whose selfish absolutism literally has the potential to bring the world (back) to the brink of destruction on the comic’s last page.
Snyder thinks Rorschach is cool. Moore thinks he’s an implicit joke. The movie falls apart around that difference. Snyder’s shallowness and fetish for violence doesn’t help.
I read the comic shortly before the movie came out so I could have some context – I agree about how great all the back matter was.
Regarding the movie – I enjoyed it when it came out and have rewatched it a few times. It was gorgeous to look at (and the prologue/credits is one of my favorite movie-establishing sequences ever), although the fight scenes were a little too stylized for a movie that’s supposed to be about ‘realism’ in comics. I think all the actors and actresses did a really good job (including the actor who played Dreiberg – I thought his blandness was kind of the point).
At the time I liked the Manhattan twist better than the alien brain, but I do agree that as a US agent, framing Manhattan might not have had the desired affect of bringing the world together (although like you said, it’s kind of a dumb idea anyway), and also lacks some of the visceral horror and weirdness. On the other hand I think it does serve to tie Manhattan into the plot more (and as CLB notes, the weirdness might not translate as well into the movie. Alsi, if I recall, didn’t the pirate comic in the comic foreshadow the squid?)
I also really missed the prison shrink scenes – his dinner party was actually my husband’s favorite part of the comic.
I still enjoy watching it from time to time – but you definitely raise some good points about how the different stories don’t quite gel together (for example, Comedian and his murder kicking off the story, but then not having a ton to do with it after that). I don’t think I ever caught the Veidt was intended as gay (I totally missed that he had a ‘Boys’ folder on his computer); I just assumed he was a less stereotypically masculine and more ‘refined’ (it’s been years since I’ve watched it so I wonder if I would twig on to more).
Stephen Schneider @@@@@10 – “As he has proved time and time again throughout his career, he just doesn’t get things, particularly the implications of stuff that titillates him. He gets off on depictions of sex and violence without comprehending the philosophical points those depictions are supposed to raise.” – this is a really concise/interesting point.
random22 @@@@@43 – I definitely emphasize with you here. I don’t mind Watchmen on its own as it’s an interesting diversion and thought provoking, but I do get weary of it taking over the genre in general.
Daniel @@@@@48 – Your takedown of Manhattan is probably a great example that goes to show that just because a person has/gets powers doesn’t suddenly make him a hero.
Sunspear@@@@@ 60 – why would we want to discourage it? All it does it put it to the top of your conversations page, and I like seeing them :)
I agree with other comments that Snyder is great at casting, and with framing shots, transferring a static image from the page onto the big screen. But Dawkins Beard, he isn’t a story teller.
I knew that from Sucker Punch. Wow, I hadn’t felt so cheated by an ending since watching Vanilla Skies. At least with Watchmen it’d have an ending that kind of made sense (Ozy’s plan wouldn’t have worked, for all the reasons other commentators have pointed out, but at least you could see someone carrying it out because they *believed* it would work). Oh no, Snyder’s changed the ending. And now it’s even worse.
I mean, granted, Ozymandias thought he’d manage to scatter Dr Manhattan, rendering him inert. Then he’d carry out his plan with the Doctor as patsy. However, as the Doc points out, as his origin is literally reassembling himself from his component atoms. Ozy should have know it wouldn’t work. And Ozy’s plan b is to rely on the Doc’s apathy? That seems… weak.
That’s not the reason I think it’s worse though. Compare Dr Manhattan to the Artificial Tentacle Alien. The salient difference is the ATA is dead. “If it bleeds, we can kill it.” It might be technologically superior, but it has weaknesses that suggest humanity might survive if we’re ready for them when (if) they intentionally arrive, instead of showing up in a transporter accident. Dr Manhattan is functionally immortal. His powers are limited only by his intellect. What can the countries of the world do? There is no possible defence or offence. What could motivate them to coordinate? Far more likely is Country A pre-emptively nuking Country B for fear they would annoy Dr Manhattan and thereby bring his unilateral response indescriminantly against all countries for Country B’s infraction.
At least they lost the Tales of the Black Freighter. Sweet Christmas, that annoyed me no end reading it. I mean, here’s this superhero mini-series, and then halfway through there’s an entire issue that has no superheroes at all. I felt cheated. It’s a fictional story inside a fictional world. It’s supposed to be story of pirates, representing the type of comic that substituted for superhero comics in a world where superheroes were real. Instead it’s a homage to the EC horror comics that caused the moral panic that led to the Comics Code Authority to be set up. It’s a nihilistic narrative that reflects and enhances what’s going on in the story arc, but I threw it down in disgusted disappointment. In our world, Superheroes and super villains are supposed to fill the niche legends of gods, demigods and monsters or previous eras. In the Watchman world, since there really are superheroes, that niche was supposedly filled by pirate comics, with Tales of the Black Freighter being the most popular. Except it’s not a pirate comic, it’s a psychological horror, and I fail to see how a man’s homicidal mental breakdown triggered by PTSD could ever be as popular as the narrative insists it should be.
One good thing they did: they kept the 30 minutes dialogue. Underwhelmed as I was with the comic, and indeed with Alan Moore in general, that is a neat piece of writing.
Nite Owl: you want to be stopped. Why else would you be telling us your plan?
Ozzy: don’t be absurd. This all happened 30 minutes ago. I’m telling you this because I want you to understand.
OK, and having just rewatched the film (inspired, in part, by this article), I think the reason it doesn’t work (and the reason that, by contrast, Zack Snyder’s 300 kind of does work) is Snyder’s insistence that everything on screen be kewl — it almost seems like he feels that the entire movie is leading towards Nite Owl & Silk Spectre’s slow-motion walk/fight down the prison corridor.
Still, it’s kind of an amazing technical achievement. But I’m not sure if it actually needed to be as long as a Cecil B. DeMille biblical epic.
Keith– it’s not a movie, but I would love to hear your thoughts on the HBO show once it’s finished.
I’m not sure the timing works, but wouldn’t it have been pretty darned Excellent to see Ozymandias played by Mr Viggo Mortensen? It recently occurred to me that he has the perfect ‘Nordic Demigod Superhero’ looks for the character while also having the talent to make a memorable hero and snake-in-the-grass villain.
If nothing else he definitely has the CHIN for a superhero role! (-: