Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

[Nothing]

But sausage, the oracles, or whatever they are called, are part of Miller's graphic novel. The one thing that the filmmakers decided to add into the film, at a time when a Democrat-controlled congress was trying to limit Bush's Iraq spending and the neo-cons were planning an invasion of Iran, was a series of scenes depicting a weak-minded council/congress seeking to appease Iranian aggression and sell out their glorious, but misunderstood, leader. Perhaps such things happened in Ancient Greece - as did many others. But why this choice, why this one addition, if not politically motivated?

It's hardly as if the filmmakers have no cause, either. Look at the backgrounds and known associates of Synder and his producers on the film.

Thanks for the Chinese insights, Lemmy

[Mr Sausage]

was a series of scenes depicting a weak-minded council/congress seeking to appease Iranian aggression and sell out their glorious, but misunderstood, leader. Perhaps such things happened in Ancient Greece - as did many others. But why this choice, why this one addition, if not politically motivated?

Well, as I said: "much of the movie is in line with standard narratives about the trials facing a king in war: the rousing of the people, the machinations of factions against the king, the pull between the duty he fears is wrong and the reckless actions he knows are right. To me it's all clearly out of a specific, non-allegoric narrative tradition, and actually hits the beats very obviously."

It's a convention of these kinds of movies to have a number of skeptics opposing the hero. Plus it adds drama of the will-they-won't-they variety. In any other movie made in any other time this kind of thing would not even be commented on because it's such a common-place. Plus the movie is about repelling a foreign invader, which is much different than proposing one invade and conquer a country that attacked first.

It's hardly as if the filmmakers have no cause, either. Look at the backgrounds and known associates of Synder and his producers on the film.

I don't much care about either. I judge the film as it presents itself, and it doesn't present itself as a neo-conservative allegory. The only way I can see forming an argument to the contrary is to take the film as generally and non-specifically as possible--in which case sure, it'll seem to fit. But when you actually look at the details you see that the movie is too haphazard and inconsistent to support that kind of over-arching structure. What 300 glorifies is something atavistic: warrior culture, which is too ancient and romantic an ideal to be neo-conservative.

[statsman]

I saw the movie last night. A couple of quick points-

1. “Rotten Tomatoes” has it at 64% currently. To parametrize with other comic book movies, that’s a C+/B-. “The Dark Knight” scored a 94%, and “Iron Man” made a 93%. Of other graphic novel adaptations, “The Road to Perdition” made an 82%, and “A History of Violence” made an 87%. Groundbreaking, visionary, “new universe” (non-comic book) films like “Brazil” and “Blade Runner” scored 98% and 91% respectively. Then there are truly wretched movies like “Ghost Rider” (28%) and “The Punisher” (29%). 64% for “The Watchmen” puts it in the range of “Spiderman III” (62%), “Hulk” (61%), and “The Incredible Hulk” (66%). It puts it short of non-classic but critically successful movies like “Batman Begins” (84%) and “Sin City” (77%). My take- I can’t make much of an argument that the Tomatometer underrates or overrates it.

2. I don’t get the political sniping at Snyder on this one. He pretty much translates Moore’s political sensibilities straight to the screen, and throws in a jab at Reagan while he’s at it. The US is shown as bad guys in Vietnam and morally equivalent to the Russians everywhere else. The Comedian and Dr. Manhattan are shown as global bullies (sociopaths in the true meaning of the word). If anything from modern politics could be construed from this, it’s that Veidt is a neo-conservative, willing to take aggressive violent action to make the world better and safer in his view.

Now, on to the movie. Like everybody else has noted, the movie adhered strictly and soul-lessly to the book. I hate to have to admit that all that is good in the movie – the narrative, the imaginary world, the deconstruction of comic book heroes, the moral debates- are there because they were in the book. Snyder explored the Dr. Manhattan apotheosis no deeper than Alan Moore, and left the viewer with no greater sympathy for Rorschak than the reader had. That’s a shame.

Adaptations are always rated on two scales- ‘how good is the movie?’ and ‘how well did it develop the source material?’. Film and literature are two different media, each with capabilities and limitations lacked by the other. The difficulty in adapting “The Watchmen” is that the story is very long and complex, with lots of layers. The challenge of adapting it to film is the same as the challenge of adapting similarly complex narratives with big ideas, like “A Tale of Two Cities” or “Les Miserables”. There are two ways the director can go- film it all and figure out how to release it at the proper length, or cut the story into a segment that can be handled in two hours with the appropriate attention paid to the characters. We have all seen both approaches used successfully or unsuccessfully. If the final film is good enough, nobody cares what was cut out. Frankly, one of the best tributes a director can pay to a book is to derive a great film from just one plot thread of a complex novel, and create a desire in the viewers to actually read the source material.

This is particularly rich source material. It has lots of big ideas- exploring the pathologies that would drive somebody to put on a mask and fight crime, Nietzschian ideas of supermen and gods, Manichean vs. utilitarian moralities…and with romance and humor thrown in, to boot! Snyder had two reasonable alternatives to cramming everything into 150 minutes. He could have released it as two movies, using the first one for the back story (flushing it out with an added plot, perhaps about them teaming up to take down Moloch), and the second one for the main part of the story. He could have used the first movie to actually use the special attributes of film, such as the way skilled actors can reveal emotions and personalities, or display their characters’ growth. Dr. Manhattan’s distancing from humanity could have been displayed better. Then the second movie could have fully covered the big theme stuff.

Another way to approach it is to pare down the big idea stuff, and just focus on the Nite Owl/Sil Spectre/Dr. Manhattan triangle, and do it right. Done properly, you might have a nice little film that would leave viewers wanting more the option of reading the book. Or, if he was sure enough in his vision, he could have veered from the story but kept the themes, as Ridley Scott did with “Blade Runner”, a great film only loosely based on a terrific book (Dick’s “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”). Is there any doubt that this is the direction Terry Gilliam would have gone had he adapted it? That he would be more interested in his vision than Moore’s?

Instead of these viable options, Snyder went for the whole thing in one movie. He aspires to climb no higher than Moore did, and with that limit put on his goals, he falls short. It’s too bad. He seems to be very skilled technically (although I agree with the criticisms of the fight scenes). He just lacks the vision to explore the material in a new and unique way. The one change he made (or Hayter made), to the ending, worked in my opinion. Leaving Dr. Manhattan as the absent threat to the entire world, willing to return and destroy it as a whim makes an interesting parallel to primitives’ understanding of theology and its purpose in structuring societies (think Noah’s Ark, or Sodom and Gomorrah). It’s too bad he wasn’t up to the task of exploring even more avenues.

“The Watchmen” book is very much of a time. In the ‘80s, there really was a Doomsday Clock, and it movements were big news stories. There really was nuclear brinkmanship, and it seemed there was no end to the Cold War. Veidt’s decision, viewed in that zeitgeist, could actually be credibly considered as a reasonable response. Of course, 20 years later, knowing what we know now about the fall of the Berlin wall, he looks like a madman. That would have been an interesting angle to explore. Snyder really doesn’t. Did anybody watching it really feel like the earth was in danger of being blown up? Lacking that as a real fear, a lot of the plot is just something to get you from the opening scene to the closing scene. Ultimately, Snyder’s failing is that he never uses the unique capabilities of film to bring something out of the story that the book couldn’t or didn’t.

I’ve spent a lot of time asking myself if I’m criticizing the film in order to align myself with this group’s opinion. I don’t think so. I think a lot of people here are too harsh on the movie. I really wanted to like it. I’m glad I saw it, but I’ll never buy it, see it again, or rent “The Black Freighter”. I doubt I’ll ever refer to anything in the movie the way I refer to the book. 64% on the Tomatometer? That sounds about right.

“Suppose you’re in your office. You’ve been fighting duels or writing all day and you’re too tired to fight or write any more. You’re sitting there staring-dull, like we all get sometimes. A pretty stenographer that you’ve seen before comes into the room and you watch her-idly. She doesn’t see you though you’re very close to her. She takes off her gloves, opens her purse and dumps it out on a table-“
Stahr stood up, tossing his key-ring on his desk.
“She has two dimes and a nickle-and a cardboard match box. She leaves the nickle on the desk, puts the two dimes back into her purse and takes her black gloves to the stove, opens it and puts them inside. There is one match in the match box and she starts to light it kneeling by the stove. You notice that there’s a stiff wind blowing in the window- but just then your telephone rings. The girl picks it up, says hello-listens-and says deliberately into the phone ‘I’ve never owned a pair of black gloves in my life.’ She hangs up, kneels by the stove again, and just as she lights the match you glance around and see that there’s another man in the office, watching every move the girl makes-“
Stahr paused. He picked up his keys and put them in his pocket.
“Go on,” said Boxley smiling, “What happens?”
“I don’t know,” said Stahr. “I was just making pictures.”

[HarryLong]

This is particularly rich source material. It has lots of big ideas- exploring the pathologies that would drive somebody to put on a mask and fight crime

It's intriguing you put it that way because it encapsulates my main problem with the esteem in which the graphic novel is held.
Just exactly how is this a Big Idea outside the world of the comic book? Is there a problem in the real world with vast numbers of people wanting to restablish secret identities and don masks and spandex and fight crime on a freelance basis?
Now I like WATCHMEN well enough (the comic book series, that is) and it's to its credit that it contains a certain amount of political commentary that was relevant to the time of its initial appearance, and an interesting take on the idea of super heroes (though I dare say Tim Burton's BATMAN, at just about the same time, said it more succinctly). But if it added anything to an understanding of the human condition I missed it entirely. But the book's admirers seem to think it's LES MISERABLES and a bag of chips, too.

[statsman]

That's a good point, Harry Long, and forced me to take pause. Comic book "culture" is not part of everybody's life. All I have to respond with is that neither are 30' tall apes, human-like robots, and flesh-eating undead. They're all parts of the pop culture landscape, and if handled intelligently can offer a different perspective on the human existence.

By your standard, Roy Lichtenstein wouldn't be high art, because he chose to intentionally work in a base style. I find a terrific ironic statement in his work, and more insights than in more traditional compositions.

[HarryLong]

All I have to respond with is that neither are 30' tall apes, human-like robots, and flesh-eating undead.

Yer pulling my leg, right? Not veryone has to slog through those goddam zombies to get to work in the morning?
Seriously, you do have a point. Sometimes I over-react to the overly-hyped.
But I doubt you'd find all that many prople promoting any movie involving giant apes, human-like robots and/or flesh-eating undead as being the profound metaphysical pondering that some seem to profess for WATCHMEN.
I have read the comic book series & liked it well enough, but I suspect some people need to get out more. Or at least read more widely. Crack open an Umberto Eco novel, maybe.

[knives]

Dawn of the Dead gets the same sort of political applause as Watchmen.

[HarryLong]

Setting aside for the moment whether I agree with whether or not DAWN OF THE DEAD (the original, I presume) is as incisive a political satire as some of its proponents claim, I think the claims pale in comparison to those made for WATCHMEN (the comic).
And I hope no one thinks I'm claiming that genre can't be incisive social commentary. The initial INVASION OF THE BODY SNATCHERS comes immediately to mind, for one.

[JonathanM]

Setting aside for the moment whether I agree with whether or not DAWN OF THE DEAD (the original, I presume) is as incisive a political satire as some of its proponents claim, I think the claims pale in comparison to those made for WATCHMEN (the comic).

Dawn of the Dead is a straight-forward allegory. It's instantly accessible as such. Watchmen is a work of in-genre political posturing. Its comparable to say, Iain M. Banks' rehabilitation of the space opera as something that need not be colonialist and hawkish. Dawn of the Dead also function as a piece of in-genre political posturing in so much as it is one of the films that cemented the idea that zombies were allegorical beings. I think both works are comparable in so far as they are both attempted grabs at the middle brow.

The difference between the two is that Romero's Zombie movies created that middle brow respectability for horror tropes. Watchmen merely hung around as the cultural and economic might of comics became so huge that they had to be addressed by the mainstream. When that moment came, Watchmen was a useful place to look for mainstream validity.

[HypnoHelioStaticStasis]

The difference between the two is that Romero's Zombie movies created that middle brow respectability for horror tropes. Watchmen merely hung around as the cultural and economic might of comics became so huge that they had to be addressed by the mainstream. When that moment came, Watchmen was a useful place to look for mainstream validity.

Can you elaborate further on this? I'm not sure you and I entirely agree on what is "middlebrow" or not.

[Mr Sausage]

Just exactly how is this a Big Idea outside the world of the comic book? Is there a problem in the real world with vast numbers of people wanting to restablish secret identities and don masks and spandex and fight crime on a freelance basis?

I don't know what the "real world" has to do with it (whose world, anyway?), but the idea of someone donning an emblamatic or symbolic outfit and using it to combat representatives of darkness, chaos, or error is one that recurrs in the imaginative consciousness throughout western culture. Think of the genres of romance or epic or picaresque, where knights donned suits of armor, usually marked with Christian and other allegorical symbols, and wandered out to battle evil and stabilize the landscape. The costumed heros of comic books are simply the modern example of a centuries old imaginative concern, and anything that has such a pervasive grasp on the human imagination deserves I think the appelation "Big Idea." If I guess correctly, what it seems some are saying about Watchmen is that its unique contribution to this archetype is a thoroughly pursued psychological realism which, given our age, manifests itself as skepticism (ie. the deconstruction/demythologizing of the hero, in this case the costumed, representational hero).

What's of interest (since I know it'll be raised as an objection) is that the vigilantism of many comic heros is something like a realignment of the hero in spatial terms. Heroes are generally isolated from the crowd: in a romance the knight-hero is isolated from the crowd because he is on a moral/spiritual plane above them; in modern comics there is an increasing trend to have the hero isolated on a moral/spiritual plane, not above, but on the edge of, the crowd. There is usually always, tho', an implicit acceptance, or at least passive enabling, of the comic hero. Watchmen it seems removes that, or at least reduces its pervasiveness, and makes the consequences of the hero's outsider status much harsher. I wouldn't remove Watchmen from the list of works that could make an contribution to culture (I wouldn't necessarily put it there, either; I'll leave that duty to someone else).

So...um, my favourite bit from Dawn of the Dead is the zombie who gets scalped by the helicopter. Anyone with me?

[Antoine Doinel]

In yet another pointless use of BDLive, the forthcoming disc of Watchmen will allow users to sync up their Facebook friends network to comment on the film simultaneously.

[swo17]

Wouldn't that require more than one person in the world to be watching the film at the same time? That seems like a tall order.

[domino harvey]

It will however allow viewers and their friends to synchronize their masturbation to the film without having to be in the same room together

[geoffcowgill]

In start-stop slow motion, no doubt.

[Polybius]

Is there some Pink Floyd involved as well?

[Caged Horse]

Watchmen is the Sarah Palin of superhero movies: the fans, the 'base', loved it, praised its purity, lapped it up, couldn't get enough of it -- but to everyone else the more they heard about it, the more its purity seemed like strident stupidity.

[Cde.]

Watchmen is the Sarah Palin of superhero movies: the fans, the 'base', loved it, praised its purity, lapped it up, couldn't get enough of it

Is this really true? I'm a fan and I sure as hell didn't lap it up. Obviously you refering to a different breed of fan, but I've heard some fairly negative or ambivalent word from the comic book fanboy contingent as well.

[Jean-Luc Garbo]

Snyder's fanbase certainly fits the description.

[Barmy]

I loved the film (saw it twice on IMAX) and I've never read a comic book (at least not since I was 10).

[Cde.]

I loved the film (saw it twice on IMAX) and I've never read a comic book (at least not since I was 10).

Weren't you also a fan of the Sarah Palin of people?

[Caged Horse]

I did not say that Watchmen's fans tend as a rule to be Sarah Palin supporters (or vice-versa), though given the NeoConservative values shared by the periodical, picture and politician, this would not surprise me. For now, the only similarity I suggest is that the bellicose purity embraced by 'the base' is precisely what put off everybody else.

[knives]

NeoConservative values shared by the periodical

If you're referring to the comic there then you are way off base.

[Cde.]

I did not say that Watchmen's fans tend as a rule to be Sarah Palin supporters (or vice-versa)

Obviously. I was being facetious.

though given the NeoConservative values shared by the periodical, picture and politician, this would not surprise me.

What knives said; the Watchmen comic in fact learns further to the left than anything else, and was written by an anarchist.

[Caged Horse]

So? A lot of prominent NeoConservatives came originally from the (far) left.