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Watchmen
Directed by Zack Snyder
Review by Terence Chua
Let's put it this way. Zack Snyder was always going
to disappoint somebody.
Let's put it another way. People who had no experience of the original
novel, who went in expecting a superhero
movie would have been dismayed, if not outright shocked. Note to
non-comics people: it's R-rated for a reason, folks. Don't bring your
kids. Don't even bring your parents. And if you're easily influenced by
darkness, don't bring razor blades. On the other hand, fans of the
book, who went in expecting to see the novel writ large on the screen,
would have been disappointed to see how much was actually left out, how
much was changed, and what was emphasized.
One accusation that you can't level at Snyder is
that he didn't try. Lord knows that for the last two decades everyone
has been saying that Watchmen
was unfilmable. Whenever the subject's come up in conversation I've
always expressed my opinion that the only way to do it justice was to
do it as a television mini-series - six or twelve one-hour segments. Or
maybe not to do it at all. I would have been happy with that.
But damn if Snyder didn't manage to pull some of it off. I've
also said before
that there's a huge difference between comic books and screen, and I'm
not one to demand slavish faithfulness to the source material in an
adaptation: what's important is that the story hold together first and
foremost as a screenplay, and that it adheres to the spirit of the
source material. Good examples: Spider-Man 2, X-Men.
Bad examples: Daredevil, The Spirit.
I'd also mention Batman and Robin, but that's like
invoking Godwin's Law for bad superhero
movies.
That being said, Watchmen
the movie treads a very fine line between faithfulness to its source
material and outright OCD. The fact that it holds up as well as it does
despite Snyder's tendency to blow up comic book panels into live action
is testament to how cinematic the original is, despite playing as much
in the "novel" side of the equation as it did in the "graphic". If
nothing else, the way Snyder succeeds here in a way that 300
didn't probably says more about the mindlessness of Miller's story
there as opposed to Moore's here.
Moore,
of course, will spit venom at it (as he's said) no matter what. Some
will decry the differences or the different emphases. Some will raise
the three-minute sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, or the
stylized ultra violence that goes beyond what was in the novel itself,
elevating it to an almost fetishistic level. Some will complain that
Ozymandias didn't have the same presence as he did in the novel, that
the motivations for Dr Manhattan's change of mind on Mars aren't made
clear, or that Laurie's revelation as to her paternity wasn't as subtle
or built up. Some will point out that the non-squid ending doesn't
necessarily improve on Moore's original - some will prefer the
original, some will say the new ending makes as little sense as the
original did.
But then again, if those things are what you want,
why not read the graphic novel? I'm not trying to be glib or do a "Love
it or leave it" kind of suggestion here - this movie is Snyder's
creature as much as it is Moore and Gibbons's. All the stuff you miss,
all the stuff you want, it's in the graphic novel. Snyder picked and
chose because he had to condense what is probably the densest graphic
novel ever in terms of prose and imagery in one compact package into
close to three hours. And it would have been longer - in four months
we'll see the cut with the Tales of the Black Freighter
story
integrated - but in the end Snyder made the director's choice. Because
inasmuch as the movie is aimed for fans, it must be made for a general
audience as well. It must hold together.
So it's not just as
simple as "leave the squid alone". If you sit down and examine where
that element comes from, you have to factor in Max Shea, the island,
the death of the psychic, even the Black Freighter
and Jon and
Adrian's final conversation in the novel for it all to come together.
If you want to build up Laurie's paternity, you probably need to run
through her entire life story like in the novel, with not just Eddie
and Sally's confrontation outside the Crimebusters meeting but also
when Laurie confronts Eddie at the cocktail party after she finds out
about the attempted rape. Moore and Gibbons weaved a tapestry as
intricate and as connected as Jon's Martian Crystal Clock, and if
Snyder failed it's not because he didn't try, but because it would have
expanded the film so much more. At some point you've just got to put it
aside and try to colour within the lines you have.
I won't dwell
much more on the differences between the novel and the movie. By
necessity, the movie is superficial - relatively speaking. The movie
posits two basic philosophical questions: ends justifying the means,
and the effect that God would have on society if He was an empirical
instead of a metaphysical reality. The book starts there, but doesn't
end there. Moore goes off into big ideas about quantum physics and
non-linear time, the morality of vigilantism, the joke and miracle of
the human condition, synchronicity, stuff which for lack of time (and
space) the movie can't really touch on. Ultimately, Snyder made choices
and it's up to the individual member of the audience to decide if those
choices were correct.
I have my issues with the movie. I do
think the violence was fetishistic as opposed to realistic (which was
Moore's intent). I do wish that Laurie and Adrian would have been
better acted. There are others, but in the end, they're nits. And if
nits are all I can pick, then I'd say that the movie worked on its own
terms. It didn't insult my intelligence, it broadly hit the right
notes. The best/worst criticism I can level at it was brought up by the
wife of one of the friends I watched the movie with (hi, Juliana!):
there's no real build-up. There's no real sense of suspense as you
reach the climax of the movie, which is true. I didn't notice it
because I was expecting and got the episodic structure of the movie
much as it was in the novel. So when the climax comes, for a movie it's
almost anti-climactic for someone who isn't really familiar with the
original.
Bottom line, I enjoyed it, was entertained, and don't see any betrayal
of the original. It's not the best
superhero movie ever, but it certainly is the most adult, and it's so
much better than I expected and/or feared. In the end, it's still not a
patch on the original, nor should it be a substitute. I'd still point
people toward the book rather than the movie because there's just so
much more in the former. And I also concede it's hard for me to judge
if it made sense to a general audience because the book has been in my
head for 23 years.
But do I think it's worth a watch? Hell,
yes. Just be aware of what you're going to be getting. But for those
people who walked out, I actually find that more indicative of the
movie's success in bringing Moore's dark vision to screen than an
actual failure.
© 2009 Terence Chua
Terence Chua lives in a secret volanco base somewhere in the Pacific, where he watches dozens of
TV shows and movies, often simultaneously, while reading comic books and playing video games. During
the day, he fights crime.
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