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.”
