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Old 03-06-2009, 11:12 AM   #1
Despanan
 
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Join Date: May 2008
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Despanan Reveiws The Watchmen

I caught the midnight Showing of Watchmen with my girlfriend last night. I'm not going to spoiler this because if you haven't read Watchmen, you honestly shouldn't see this movie. Stop reading now, go buy or rent a copy, read it, Then come back. I mean it. Go.

Now, for those of us who have read it,

Walking into the theater I said to my girlfriend:

"In three Hours, I'll either be ecstatic or infuriated, either way I'm in for a highly emotional evening."

Then I saw the movie, and I realized about halfway through, I had been wrong. I've had allot of reactions to this adaptation, but the one that stands out the most is "meh."

Meh.

It wasn't good, it wasn't bad. The Watchmen movie was, above all, mediocre.

If that concept starts to raise your ire after a few moments consideration, don't be alarmed. A feeling of neutered rage at the concept of Hollywood taking something so unbelievably exceptional as Alan Moore's Watchmen and churning out something so, normal, so conventional, so...Tuesday only indicates that you still have taste.

The beginning was acceptable. The fight between The Comedian and Veidt was a little over the top of course, but I figured, "Hey, it's a movie, they're going to need some action" and truthfully it was kind of nice to see something I could previously only imagine. The main problem, as I saw it, was that it went on just a little too long, and the combat was brutal to the point where it was almost comical. Halfway through it began to remind me of the "Chicken Fight" from Family Guy. Keep that image in mind, because with little exception, that's what every fight scene in this movie will be like. Let me repeat that: The death of the Comedian is the best fight scene in this movie, action wise, it's all down hill from there.

From here we go into a picture montage which sets up the alternate American history quite well. Some of the imagery is gruesome, particularly the assassination of JFK. This image deeply disturbed my girlfriend, I was more irritated by the fact that in the book they imply the Comedian may have murdered JFK, in the movie they show you that he did, unequivocally. Let that also be an indication for how this movie will treat all the muddy moral dilemmas, ethical gray areas, and psychological conundrums: The watchmen movie answers them all. Everything is spelled out for the reader and there's nothing at all you need wonder about because director Zack Snyder has turned Alan Moore's brilliant shades of gray into a world black-and-white as well defined as Rorsharch's mask.

Speaking of Rorsharch's mask: it moves, in real time. You can see the different patterns fade into each other. This is very irritating, and never addressed. I know the mask changes in the novel, but that's a subtle little artist's trick, watching it actively move before your eyes is distracting and simply not effective in the slightest. As the film went on I was able to deal with it, but that may have been because there were so many other glaring errors in the storytelling that a little thing like that was overshadowed.

For the most part though, Rorsharch is well-cast, and well done. He is also responsible for the only instance where I actually felt fanboy glee and thought "Maybe this movie WILL be a worthy adaptation". : When he headed into the Comedian's closet and found his costume, letting loose his trademark "Hunh." Goosebumps.

Similarly Nite-Owl is dead on. I'd say that his performance is the strongest in the film, and he looks almost exactly like Drieberg, a little too thin, he looks more, "Normal guy in good shape" than "40 years old and fat", but when compared to the rest of waif-thin Hollywood and sculpted cgi abs the effect is the same. Nite Owl appears to be fat.

I'd say overall the acting is one of the most glaring problems in this movie, but Jackie Earle Haley as Rorsharch and Patrick Wilson as Nite owl are nearly perfect. The Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) is also rather good. He's really not quite there in the really dramatic scenes (like his conversation with Dr. Manhattan in Vietnam) but I'm willing to chalk that up to poor directing on Zack Snyder's part. Ozymandias (Matthew Goode) is also rather good, if a little bland, but that's in his character. Billy Crudup is also good of Dr. Manhattan, but then again, it's not difficult to play a nigh-emotionless super-being.

So why, with all this "good casting" am I harping on the acting? Two words:

Silk Spectre (I & II)

WHO THE FUCK LET THESE DUMB CUNTS ACT?

They are awful. Just fucking horrible. They were so bad they almost pulled this movie out of "Meh" and made it something truly bad. (And no doubt they would have if they'd had more screen-time.) By far Carla Gugino (Sally Jupiter) is the worse out of the two. Thankfully she's got little to no screen time, but every single scene she's in she manages to fuck up. Her acting isn't even soap-opera worthy. It's "I'm the only pretty girl in a community theatre production of Oklahoma! so I don't need to be able to act or sing to play the lead" sort of bad. It's like she's doing a caricature of the emotions she's supposed to be feeling.

Malin Akerman (Laurie) is better, but better sort of in the sense that it's better to be a deaf/blind quadriplegic than a deaf/blind quadriplegic with cancer. The whole time I was watching her I was thinking: Kirsten Dunst in Spider-man 3. No emotion, no build, just going through her lines like a mindless automaton. If you watch this film, here's a little game I picked up, watch her scenes with Dr. Manhattan and try to figure out who seems more detatched from reality and exhibits less emotion. It's a very tight competition.

But enough about that, on to the fight scenes: These were REALLY weird. As a viewer I have little to no problem with gore and violence. That being said, when Nite Owl and Silk Spectre go into an allyway and start very graphically breaking limb after limb off their topknot attackers, the scene becomes ridiculous. Like python-esque ridiculous. Seriously, they remind me of the Black Knight. All of the fights in this movie are like this to an extent: unnecessarily over-done, over the top, and too long, but the alley-way fight really stuck out. It was like a non-musical big-lipped alligator moment. Laurie and Dan viciously, brutally beat sixteen or more thugs to death and then never talk about it. What's more disturbing is seeing them get turned-on from the fight. I mean, I know that's in the book, but in the book Laurie didn't needlessly snap an already-defeated opponent's neck with her bare hands. Seriously Nite Owl WATCHES THIS and just seems to think to her: "Hey baby, watching you commit senseless murder gets me hot."

No WONDER he and Rorsharch got along so well.

Going into this movie, I was really afraid they were going to make major changes to the story, with the notable exception of making Dr. Manhattan the scapegoat instead of "Aliens" (which I did not find too problematic) they didn't. Nite Owl didn't kill Ozymandius, We got to see John's willy, and the Comedian gunned down a pregnant woman. Laurie didn't smoke, but aside from what it implied about the thought-process of the stupid, talentless hacks behind this adaptation, I really didn't care.

It seems that Hollywood, faced with a story it couldn't outright CHANGE, decided to add little touches to "nudge" all of the scenes out of Alan Moore's brilliant moral grays, and into the safe, simple, Mediocre black and white , good guys and bad guys, good is rewarded and evil is punished fantasyland of Hollywood and mediocre writers everywhere. The first man Rorshach kills has a gun when he returns home and verbally confesses his child-murder to Rorshach before he is dispatched. Nite Owl witnesses Rorshach's death and punishes Ozymandias with a few weepy punches, and then verbally admonishes him, stating unequivocally the he (Veidt) is wrong.

All in all, Watchmen is a broken movie, and clearly a story which was far beyond the ability of it's production team to tell. There are some cool scenes (It's nice to watch the Comedian beat up on hippies) and some fun eye-candy. What I found most disturbing is that Zack Snyder failed so utterly to tell this story properly. All of the beautiful, powerful monologues and moments eaither rang false for one reason or another, or became comical. In the book Nite Owl's impotence is disturbing and sad, in the movie it's a joke. This is a symptom of the sheer emotional disconnect of the audience, due to the inadequacey of this movie's direction.

This movie did not feel like The Watchmen. The pace was off, the story was slightly off-kilter, and the soul was gone. Zack Snyder did not so much **** The Watchmen. He more or less took it out to dinner at a moderately-priced restaurant, made idle conversation, briefly held it's hand for an awkward moment or two, and then dropped it off on it's doorstep without a goodnight kiss and never called The Watchmen again.

If you have already read the book, and can deal with what this movie is: see it, just once. See it, enjoy the maybe 1 hour of good stuff, and never give it another thought. Do not buy the DVD.

The Watchmen Movie is a moderately sized pile of lukewarm Tuesday. Honestly, If I ever met Zack Snyder I'd like to think my reaction would be similar to Nite Owl's final attack on Ozymandias. I would flail impotently and cry, but in the end, I can't even begin to bring myself to hate him for what he did.

And that is almost worse than if he'd completely changed the story.
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