Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
I finally did it. Last night I watched Watchmen. And you know what? Not too bad. Seriously. I watched the Director’s cut and I think they did a pretty solid job of translating the comic to the big screen. No, it is not exactly the same. How could it be? And what would be the point of watching if it was.
I had a few expectations for disappointment and none were met. Seriously. I mean, the way some people talked, Billy Crudup’s Dr. Manhattan blue penis would be waving in the breeze every time he was on screen. Come on, peeps, you barely saw it. And trust me, I was looking.
They handled the end pretty well too. I mean, without blowing it for comic fans or movie fans who want to experience the other medium at some point, it would be pretty impossible to translate the ultimate end of the comic to the big screen…unless you wanted to add another couple of hours to the narrative. I liked the rewrite, though. Less comic-ish but very very movie-ish, so that’s cool.
I liked Dreiberg. I especially liked how they framed him with love handles at a few of the crucial naked moments. When he is staring at Archie in the basement after his first fumble with Laurie. Just like in the comic, he looks soft and middle-aged and not-quite-ready-for-crime-time. He’s not totally in the market for weight loss supplements or anything – at least not yet – but he definitely is not completely buff and trim and airbrushed-six pack. Not without the suit.
And that, I think, is something I never realized before. Moore really captured a sort of middle-aged ennui in the book, and it came through in the movie. As someone who has crested mid-30s and can see 40 somewhere down the not-too-distant road, I am all too familiar with the “how exactly did I get here?” sense that all of these fantastic characters convey. It just one more level of complexity that one can appreciate in the book that has just so much going on. Kudos to you Mr. Moore, even if you are too much of a freak to keep your name associated with the film projects spawned by your books.
What did I not like? The Rorschach scene when Rorschach really becomes Rorschach. Good, but not great. They didn’t need to show the shoe. The magic of the book is when you figure it out. The shoe made it too…obvious.
And there was a bit of gratuitous bludgeoning here and there. I know that modern special effects allow for the representation of broken bone popping through the screen, but I don’t need to see it. The sound of the crack is so much more compelling than the complete visual.
You know that slow motion thing they do in fight scenes…where they slow down the action for a moment to let you see teeth and blood flying out of somebody’s mouth when they’ve just been punched? I hate that. Either do the passage in full slow-motion ala John Woo, or keep it in real time. But the roller coaster speed stuff looks like MTV direction and rarely works. I blame Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon.
My only other significant complaint? The sex scene. The bang after the burning building is great, and some of the framed shots truly mirrored the comic images. They came alive. It was sexy and moving and visually very artful. But it was too damned long. Did they have to shoot it over the whole song? It was like a Skinemax music video. The length (no pun intended) was too much and seemed to reduce the scene from shared catharsis to porn. And most tragic of all, by the time they get to the fireball punchline, the humor is massively diminished.
But these are, I think, minor criticisms. Overall I felt it was an accomplishment and I was quite pleased. At times I truly saw the comic come alive and breathe. Yet I never felt bored with anticipation of an expected next scene. In fact, the retelling of a story I have read very closely on dozens of occasions over the past 15 or so years, was fresh, inspiring and exciting.
Thank goodness because I really thought it was going to suck.