(#17) Watchmen

Somewhat predictably, I liked this. Although I had hoped I would love it.

  I like comics. When I was a kid I would get my allowance on a Friday, and walk down to my local comic shop, and within the hour have spent it all, with a little extra left for some Chinese food. Now back then I was still just reading basic superhero stuff, and Watchmen, a comic with characters that resembled the mainstream characters I did follow, didn’t really capture my interest. However, anyone who has spent any time in a comic shop, knows Watchmen is regarded as one of  the finest examples of the form, and held  with the kind of reverence many reserve for classic movies.

It wasn’t until college, that I picked up Watchmen, at a discount bin at a comic book shop in Worcester, and sat down to read it. As cliché as it sounds, Watchmen brought me back to comics. It’s complexity, thoughtfulness, and maturity really were a high water mark for the genre, and the perfect gateway someone with a background of comics, to get back into it. It lead me to seek out a whole generation of graphic novels that came after it, and for that reason, I think I’ll always have a soft spot for this story and the characters.

  As a movie Watchmen works. It’s an incredibly faithful to the source material, and because of that hit mostly all the right buttons with me. That said, I can totally understand how, for those same reasons, the movie is a less enjoyable for an audience without any of that experience with it’s earlier incarnation.  There is a subtext to the whole movie that plays off of typical superhero archetypes, and gleefully deconstructs the conventions of the genre, that works the more having read more superhero comics. Watchmen walks a funny line, asking you to apply an added realism, seriousness, and logic to the world of superheroes; but at the same time asks you to accept a flying owl car, and omnipotent blue man.  It wasn’t a problem for me, but I think the point is certainly debatable.

  Watchmen the comic pushed comics towards a realism, and seriousness that was markedly different from tone of the other comics of it’s time. Think, Dragnet, versus The Wire. However the years that have passed, make the newness of what Watchmen represented, a little less suprising. We have already seen a more realistic take on superheros with the Christopher Nolan’s Batman, and to some extent the recent Spiderman and Iron Man films, and I think that also significantly waters down Watchmen’s impact.

Watchmen raises so many questions, about government, morality, power, and human nature, that I think resonate with people toady, but the film doesn’t really reach for that, and that may be it’s biggest weakness. Snyder missed an opportunity to connect with the audience by being so faithful to the source material. He didactically sticks to a Cold War/doomsday theme that’s firmly set in a dystopian 1980’s, and doesn’t transcend its setting.  Watchmen doesn’t fit the formula of what we expect from a superhero movie,  with  the yin and the yang of the hero and the villain, playing out a primal/operatic struggle between good and evil. Synder understands that but emphasizes the wrong moments, so it feels like there is no real payoff at the climax of the movie.

  I really agree with Berto’s take on the actors, especially the critique of a soulless Malin Ackerman as the Silk Spectre. Billy Cruddup as Dr. Manhattan, and Jackie Earl Harley as Rorschach really do bring their A game, and for my money steal the movie.

  The action is compelling, even though I think that the movie fetishsized the violence at times, in a way the graphic novel didn’t. It’s played for gore and a visceral impact that I don’t know added much.

  Reading over what I just wrote I am realizing it probably sounds like I didn’t like this movie, which isn’t the case. Although I was left wondering why I loved the graphic novel, but just enjoyed the movie.