One of the best things about Culturology's credo to always be at least one week behind the times, at all times, is that I never have to worry about writing "reviews." Which isn't to say that I wouldn't mind writing reviews now and then, getting in on advanced screenings or whatever, but you know, that would have to be a separate entity to this (and given that I'm already writing these things at the last possible minute--a terrible thing to admit, I know, I'd probably be better off just doing what I'm doing). And what occasions this particular preamble? You've probably already guessed, but I went to see the Watchmen over the weekend, part of the 61%-smaller-than-last-weekend audience that hadn't gotten around to seeing it yet (I have a hard time believing that anybody went to it more than once). So what follows is a culturological discussion of said film, so will be rife with spoilers and tired commentary that you've already read in similar form elsewhere:
Gah! where to start? Okay... Watchmen had one of the worst soundtracks I've ever witnessed. Lazily, lazily done, with what must have been a mind towards "intertextuality," where, if all of the songs used were already famous from other movies, that would establish some kind of web of references to mirror the kind of inter-text play of the Watchmen book. Of course, this fails, especially as the music supervisor was also looking for great levels of incongruity along with the familiarity of the soundtrack. It's as if the only music they had to choose from was the Forrest Gump soundtrack. The most egregious fouls were using "The Times They Are A-Changin'" during the terrible opening credits sequence, a random placement of "The Sound of Silence" over the Comedian's burial, well, actually it goes on and on, but I suppose I have a particular beef of using bits of of Philip Glass's soundtrack to Reggio's Koyaanisqatsi during one of the horrendous Dr. Manhattan/Mars scenes. It's one thing to lift songs already popular from other movies (using Ride of the Valkyries in Vietnam I suppose was the most obvious "reference," though similarly annoying to all the others), but then to go so far as to snip an actual soundtrack from another movie and use that? Fucking lazy. Though I suppose there are some idiot Philip Glass fans out there (most Glass fans are idiots) that thought it was awesome to hear his music in a mainstream movie like that (forgetting that Glass already writes terrible soundtracks for other movies as well). But given that Koyaanisqwatsi is actual a brilliant cinematic artifact, the lifting of the music is cheap and shitty in Watchmen.
Which brings up my other main complaint about Watchmen (if I had to write a review it would go something like this: "I don't regret having watched it; it wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but I never need to watch it again."): who the hell was the intended audience for this movie? My experience in watching the thing was that I was constantly adding information from the book back into the movie as I watched it. Which is fine, and especially easy to do given that the look of the comic really was quite well adapted into the movie. Although, despite having the "look" pretty much dead on, they lost much of the style of the Watchmen, which, as I understand it, while definitely in a somewhat pulpy style, was also quietly innovative back in the '80s. But the movie failed as a movie. It was inelegantly paced, bloatedly long, and Snyder's fight sequence style, with all of its slow-mo/fast-mo and pose-striking just seemed bizarre to me, especially in contrast to how much he tried to play up the "normal, pathetic humans" angle of the main characters when they're out of costume. So this post is rapidly devolving into a list of complaints about the movie, which I was hoping to avoid, but probably just what it deserves...
But, again, I can't imagine that any "fans" of the book were satisfied by the movie, and I can't imagine that any newbies felt like the movie made any sense or was very good. I do think that the movie demonstrated that the central plot of Watchmen is a very solid plot (insofar as that's all that's left in the movie from the book, anyway, with the "extras" stripped away), so in spite of being mismanaged by Snyder, the plot still demonstrates its quality. I also think much of the period aspect of the movie was misguided, since Soviet plots in Afghanistan simply don't have the same kind of resonance with audiences as they did 25 years ago. This kind of "faithful" movie adaptation ends up being an exercise in idiocy, since anyone with half an imagination will prefer the comic book to the live-action movie (one notable exception was seeing Rorschach shiver when he turns down a warmer coat in the Antarctic). One of the things that made Iron Man successful was that they updated his creation story, bringing an old story into modern times. Updating Watchmen may have been difficult, but really, given how much of the rest of the book was discarded anyway--the stuff that tied it closer in to comics and written-media consumption in general--made it possible to shuffle the backstory up a couple of decades as well.
Instead, we're left with a failed artifact of turning a comic book into live action, where all that history is left with is a strange kind of half-assed nonsensical "acting out" of a text. Major letdown. I truly hope that this particular trend in comic book movie-making dies a swift and painful death (hopefully the relatively poor numbers for Watchmen will catalyse this decline). The world is much better off with better made, original, non-comic book superhero movies than vacuous exercises in treating comic books as storyboards.
i didn't wanna do this, but i think i have to... TOLD YOU SO!!!
http://www.audioshocker.com/2008/08/21/great-you-took-a-comic-book-and-adapted-it-panel-by-panel-into-a-film-who-gives-a-shit
i wrote the above piece back in August 2008. i'd only seen the very first trailer for Watchmen and read some buzz online, but i knew that Watchmen was going to be awkward and cumbersome.
let's be honest: it's no mystery that Hollywood loves superheroes... not comic books. somehow Snyder misunderstood what mass audiences want out of superhero films - they want the superheroes, not the panel-by-panel reconstruction of issues from decades ago.
i know i'm a raging hypocrite for saying this about Watchmen without even having seen the film. but what with Pete basically reinforcing what i've heard other intelligent film goers already say, i'm not going to go to the movies just to re-watch a book i have sitting around in my apartment.
Oh shut the fuck up Pete. A 'failed artifact', are you kidding? Watchmen could have been done SO. MUCH. WORSE. than this. (think Wanted) Why don't we ask non-comic readers what they thought? Did the movie make any sense to them? Were they entertained and engaged? This is a movie afterall.
You, me, Nick, the legions of fanboys, we all have a colored perspective on what The Watchmen should look/feel like onscreen. Any "adaptation" is subject to the same line of criticism.
And your major commentary relates to the soundtrack and lack of the "extras"? Irrelevant! I suppose I don't process soundtracks the way you do, but the music didn't move me one way or another. I certainly didn't feel like it was out of place. The opening credits establish a tremendous amount of background for the movie - there really is nowhere else for Hollis' material in the movie. Given the changed (and much more Hollywood-appropriate) ending, the whole Black Freighter comic thing wouldn't make any sense either.
Seriously Pete, don't you ever have anything nice to say? I hope they never adapt Cerebus for the silver screen, your head may very well explode.
OMG! Kirsten logged in under Neal's username!!!
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har har har nick.
Okay, for Neal's sake, let me re-iterate: The biggest flaw with Watchmen (besides the soundtrack) is that it sacrifices pacing, tension, flow, and style for a quasi-frame-by-frame approach to comic book adaptation, which, regardless of who the primary demographic of the movie is, will never succeed, because either a) non-book readers won't give a shit and wish the movie was better or b) book readers will be inevitably disappointed by the adaptation to live-action and wish the movie was better.
I agree that the new Hollywood ending, despite my qualms about movies that end by installing a new God over humanity (no matter how much of an Old Testament God it is), actually worked pretty well, in terms of condensing the plot down into a manageable size.
You know how else Snyder could have trimmed the movie down? By cutting out all the time-wasting pose-striking in his terribly choreographed fight scenes. If real movie-going Americans actually like that shit, then fine, I admit it, I hate everything.
I happened to go see Watchmen with a friend who is about as white-bred American as it gets and who had never read the book, and he was noticeably bored once the movie was about 45 minutes into it, and had very little to say afterwards. I supposed bored ambivalence isn't negative, but it sure as shit isn't positive.
And, as for the "extras": part of what makes Watchmen work so well is that its plot is metatextual; we read The Black Freighter in order to understand what a horrifying nightmare is being implanted into peoples brains at the end by the giant psychic vagina-squid. And we see the people milling around the newsstand because it gives personality and emotion to the people that are being killed in that blast as well--so cutting that out cuts out any linking to how a viewer might care about the normal humans that are killed in Ozymandias's plan. The Hollywood ending, though more efficient, resorts to, of course, Hollywood style city-destruction, which never packs an emotional punch. How can we as movie viewers believe that Ozymandias is regretful and feels every death he's caused if we ourselves have no inkling of anyone that died in his plan?
So yes, by stripping the meta-textual aspects of the book, Snyder effectively stripped the movie of its humanity.
i'm a little embarrassed to ask this... but it's been a long time since i read Watchmen...
how does Black Freighter fit into everything exactly?
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as i recall... it is supposed to echo/mirror Veidt's whole life story or something weird like that. gotta wikipedia that shit yo.
I ignored all the Black Freighter shit in the book. I never read ANY of that. And I skipped over most of the Under The Mask stuff too. Perhaps the BF would have added to and enhanced my comprehension of the work - but I do not feel less competent about the Watchmen without it.
It was a distraction to me. I know it compliments the plot, but Alan Moore's hard-on for meta-text, which is present in Top 10 (great) and Promethea (drawn/colored well) mostly as annoying sight gags, is tiresome.
I think your argument about meta-textual elements is an erroneous cover up for the real problem - which is poor acting by Matthew Goode (Ozymandias), Billy Crudup (Doc Manhattan), and Patrick Wilson (Nite Owl) of their regular shmo selves. Rather than show us the despair everyone seems to be feeling in this time period (which is demonstrated best in the book by Hollis and Moloch) - we just see their bloodlust when they finally let loose.
So, How could Snyder have better integrated that into the movie without alienating all but the most diehard of fans? As I said before: this is a movie afterall. I asked Nick the same thing before the movie came out and neither of us could come up with a feasible scenario. How would you have done it?
I can appreciate your point that The Watchmen lacked 'humanity', but I cannot buy your cinematic algebra nor rhetoric.
Neal, how am I supposed to engage with you in this conversation if you didn't even read the whole book?
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Because I am no poorer for not having done so. I still read the Watchmen, I just ignored the shitty BF/meta stuff. It highlights my point that metatext is boring and superfluous.
You're an idiot. Conversation over.
i love a good Culturology arguement. FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT!
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