Post by Rorschach on Mar 8, 2009 18:28:43 GMT
Here's my review of the new 'Watchmen' film if anyone cares to read it! It's rather long and I'm a bit of a fanboy of the original novel so bare that in mind... oh and don't read it if you don't want the film spoiled....
The wait is finally over and ‘Watchmen’ has been made into a movie, after decades of failed attempts, legal problems and funding issues. Finally one of the most celebrated graphic novels of all time would be made into a movie and fuck was I looking forward to it.
It’s undoubted that Zack Snyder is a big fan of the novel and you could see that enthusiasm shining through in all of the interviews and promotions leading up to the film’s release. There was good reason to be optimistic; the trailers looked fantastic, the website including images, back-stories and so on were detailed and exciting and the visuals of the film looked stunning. However I left the film with a strong sense of disappointment and confusion.
One big problem was always going to be how people relate to the movie. The novel was written in a time when Cold War tensions were still fresh in everyone’s mind and anti-communist feeling was still rife in America, how would the majority of the audience today relate to that. Thankfully the novel doesn’t suffer from that problem because it transports you back to that era and puts you in the thick of it, the film on the other hand totally fails to get over this problem. Instead the 80’s Cold War setting is merely taken advantage of by Snyder and portrayed as quaint and kitsch, which always hangs over the movie and detracts from any of the seriousness and more dramatic moments. This lack of relation to the setting of the movie was further amplified by the total exclusion (aside from a brief cameo at the end) of the newsstand reader Bernard, who perfectly encapsulates the paranoid, terrified emotions involved in the social and political tensions and also amusingly parodies peoples’ fickle opinions based upon the media. After so much talk of reverence to the original text, how could a character like that be left out? A character that contributes so importantly to the atmosphere and setting of the novel and links you to the people on the street; the gangs for example, as well as giving you more of a glimpse of Rorschach without his mask on, meaning it’s much more of a revelation when it is eventually, visibly taken off by the police.
That brings me neatly onto the issue of things being left out. Now, I’m not being stupid or pedantic, I’m totally aware that the overall running time of a film is a big consideration for a director, as is making the film accessible to the general viewing audience, many of whom won’t have read the novel. However if you’re taking on a project like this then that just shouldn’t be an issue; I never felt confused, alienated or let-down after reading the novel. Don’t assume I’m talking about the omission of the “Tales of the Black Freighter” sub-story, because I’m not, I’m well aware they’re going to make that into an animated DVD extra. I’m talking about things like the back-stories of characters like Dr. Malcolm Long, Adrian Veidt and Janey Slater. Slater and Long may only be minor characters but they’re vital in fleshing out the story and the complexity of the main characters like Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan, and the omission (aside from a blasé description) of Veidt’s history was genuinely stupid; his back-story gives you a massive insight into his megalomaniac, God-complex personality, whereas in the film he simply comes across as a forgettable, smug, detached figure on the sidelines and it gives you no reason to feel that he is actually an incredibly intelligent, dangerous man who has grandiose, yet shockingly bloody plans for the world. The ignorance of Veidt’s personality and history ruins the character and leaves it hollow and pointless.
Another problem with Snyder’s direction was the music. In my opinion, music plays a massive role in films; it is hugely important in setting the scene, creating emotions, building tension and so forth but sadly the music in Snyder’s ‘Watchmen’ is largely throwaway and serves absolutely no purpose, only adding towards a feeling that the novel was simply being patronised and giggled at. The only music that was appropriate was during the sex scene with Dan and Laurie inside of his ship, “Archie”, and that was due to it actually being in the novel too, albeit because Dan had put the music on earlier, which the film gives no inclination of. After the film, my girlfriend said she could never tell whether the various songs in the film were actually relevant to the novel or just token songs in an attempt to create a retro feeling, and she has only read about the first ten pages of it.
Going back to the portrayal of Adrian Veidt, it brings me onto the problem with how the characters were acted. The only highlight was Rorschach, who was played to utter perfection by Jackie Earle Haley, which is even better because he was always the most interesting character to me and I always found him strangely likeable despite being a psychopathic, right-wing, homophobic head-case; his tragic life, social awkwardness and isolation made me feel for him and, despite his massive flaws and dubious opinions, actually like him. However the other characters were quite frankly wooden and forgettable. In the novel they’re complex people with screwed up past stories, personal flaws and mountains of baggage, however in the film I ended up not really giving a shit about them. They moved from scene to scene with no real emotion, just woodenly reading out the lines as though they had the novel in front of them, but that’s not to say I think it was down to bad acting, because I don’t. It was down to Snyder’s inability to create a script that was both faithful to the original script of the novel but also adding room for the actors to improvise and add their own emotions and give a much more complex, human feel to the characters. Adrian Veidt aside, the character I was most disappointed by was Dr.Manhattan. The special effects to create his glowing blue figure were astonishingly good, I’ll give them that, and he was superbly acted by Billy Crudup, but the film gave no reason for his gradual detachment from humankind and absolutely no hint of his utter fascination with obscure physics and his marvelling at the bleak purity of Mars, instead it left him coming across as bland and pretentious.
Overall the Snyder’s adaptation just glosses over important sections in the novel and nothing gets built up, there’s no inclination that you’re leading up to a final showdown with Adrian Veidt, probably because you couldn’t give a shit that it was him that did it and Dan’s discovery of that fact is simply a minor footnote that caused absolutely no stir amongst the audience, rather than a revelation that has shocked all of the major characters to the core. When presented with Veidt’s plans I couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t give a damn about the millions of people he was killing because there had been almost no glimpse of them throughout the entire film, there was nothing, no engagement with them and the huge significance of what the plan entailed was lost and replaced with a feeling of “big deal” or “who cares?” instead of making the viewer hate him and feel outraged at the plan before having a slow realisation that actually, in an incredibly twisted and bloody way, he’s right and has actually “saved” the world.
Talking of Veidt’s plan, why was it changed? It was totally unnecessary and the only reason I can think of is that Snyder possibly considered the ending in the novel to be too outlandish, but you can hardly justify that when you have a bloody blue glowing superhero who verges on being a god and a totally alternative history of America. The ending in the novel made far more sense than the rushed, pointless ending in the film and the events linked to it such as the missing writers and artists all clicked together beautifully to create an even bigger sense of shock and awe at Veidt’s messianic grand plan. Instead we just get some cop-out explosion and the worlds’ blame falls on Dr. Manhattan. Although quite frankly by that point I didn’t really care anymore, I’d actually lost interest in the film adaptation of one of my favourite novels of all time.
Overall the film simply drifts through the novel with no tension, no depth and no sense of attachment to human feeling. The visuals, special effects, costumes and Rorschach’s portrayal were genuinely brilliant but the actual flesh and bones of the story, the human side of it, the tensions and fears, the emotional baggage and flaws and the questionable morals of people who are supposed to be saving us. I’m not saying it was an awful film, it wasn’t, it was very well made and acted, but sadly it seems Snyder was more occupied with making it slick, stylish and cool as well as adding extra gore (chopping into the kidnapper's head rather than leaving him inside a burning house, brutally sawing the inmate's arms off rather than slitting his throat and leaving him there on the bars) and sex (Dan and Laurie's sex scene in the novel is brief, compared to the gratuitous shag fest in the film) rather than giving the story the depth and complexity it has in the novel.
I think if I had to rate it, out of 5 I would give it a 3.
The wait is finally over and ‘Watchmen’ has been made into a movie, after decades of failed attempts, legal problems and funding issues. Finally one of the most celebrated graphic novels of all time would be made into a movie and fuck was I looking forward to it.
It’s undoubted that Zack Snyder is a big fan of the novel and you could see that enthusiasm shining through in all of the interviews and promotions leading up to the film’s release. There was good reason to be optimistic; the trailers looked fantastic, the website including images, back-stories and so on were detailed and exciting and the visuals of the film looked stunning. However I left the film with a strong sense of disappointment and confusion.
One big problem was always going to be how people relate to the movie. The novel was written in a time when Cold War tensions were still fresh in everyone’s mind and anti-communist feeling was still rife in America, how would the majority of the audience today relate to that. Thankfully the novel doesn’t suffer from that problem because it transports you back to that era and puts you in the thick of it, the film on the other hand totally fails to get over this problem. Instead the 80’s Cold War setting is merely taken advantage of by Snyder and portrayed as quaint and kitsch, which always hangs over the movie and detracts from any of the seriousness and more dramatic moments. This lack of relation to the setting of the movie was further amplified by the total exclusion (aside from a brief cameo at the end) of the newsstand reader Bernard, who perfectly encapsulates the paranoid, terrified emotions involved in the social and political tensions and also amusingly parodies peoples’ fickle opinions based upon the media. After so much talk of reverence to the original text, how could a character like that be left out? A character that contributes so importantly to the atmosphere and setting of the novel and links you to the people on the street; the gangs for example, as well as giving you more of a glimpse of Rorschach without his mask on, meaning it’s much more of a revelation when it is eventually, visibly taken off by the police.
That brings me neatly onto the issue of things being left out. Now, I’m not being stupid or pedantic, I’m totally aware that the overall running time of a film is a big consideration for a director, as is making the film accessible to the general viewing audience, many of whom won’t have read the novel. However if you’re taking on a project like this then that just shouldn’t be an issue; I never felt confused, alienated or let-down after reading the novel. Don’t assume I’m talking about the omission of the “Tales of the Black Freighter” sub-story, because I’m not, I’m well aware they’re going to make that into an animated DVD extra. I’m talking about things like the back-stories of characters like Dr. Malcolm Long, Adrian Veidt and Janey Slater. Slater and Long may only be minor characters but they’re vital in fleshing out the story and the complexity of the main characters like Rorschach and Dr. Manhattan, and the omission (aside from a blasé description) of Veidt’s history was genuinely stupid; his back-story gives you a massive insight into his megalomaniac, God-complex personality, whereas in the film he simply comes across as a forgettable, smug, detached figure on the sidelines and it gives you no reason to feel that he is actually an incredibly intelligent, dangerous man who has grandiose, yet shockingly bloody plans for the world. The ignorance of Veidt’s personality and history ruins the character and leaves it hollow and pointless.
Another problem with Snyder’s direction was the music. In my opinion, music plays a massive role in films; it is hugely important in setting the scene, creating emotions, building tension and so forth but sadly the music in Snyder’s ‘Watchmen’ is largely throwaway and serves absolutely no purpose, only adding towards a feeling that the novel was simply being patronised and giggled at. The only music that was appropriate was during the sex scene with Dan and Laurie inside of his ship, “Archie”, and that was due to it actually being in the novel too, albeit because Dan had put the music on earlier, which the film gives no inclination of. After the film, my girlfriend said she could never tell whether the various songs in the film were actually relevant to the novel or just token songs in an attempt to create a retro feeling, and she has only read about the first ten pages of it.
Going back to the portrayal of Adrian Veidt, it brings me onto the problem with how the characters were acted. The only highlight was Rorschach, who was played to utter perfection by Jackie Earle Haley, which is even better because he was always the most interesting character to me and I always found him strangely likeable despite being a psychopathic, right-wing, homophobic head-case; his tragic life, social awkwardness and isolation made me feel for him and, despite his massive flaws and dubious opinions, actually like him. However the other characters were quite frankly wooden and forgettable. In the novel they’re complex people with screwed up past stories, personal flaws and mountains of baggage, however in the film I ended up not really giving a shit about them. They moved from scene to scene with no real emotion, just woodenly reading out the lines as though they had the novel in front of them, but that’s not to say I think it was down to bad acting, because I don’t. It was down to Snyder’s inability to create a script that was both faithful to the original script of the novel but also adding room for the actors to improvise and add their own emotions and give a much more complex, human feel to the characters. Adrian Veidt aside, the character I was most disappointed by was Dr.Manhattan. The special effects to create his glowing blue figure were astonishingly good, I’ll give them that, and he was superbly acted by Billy Crudup, but the film gave no reason for his gradual detachment from humankind and absolutely no hint of his utter fascination with obscure physics and his marvelling at the bleak purity of Mars, instead it left him coming across as bland and pretentious.
Overall the Snyder’s adaptation just glosses over important sections in the novel and nothing gets built up, there’s no inclination that you’re leading up to a final showdown with Adrian Veidt, probably because you couldn’t give a shit that it was him that did it and Dan’s discovery of that fact is simply a minor footnote that caused absolutely no stir amongst the audience, rather than a revelation that has shocked all of the major characters to the core. When presented with Veidt’s plans I couldn’t have cared less, I didn’t give a damn about the millions of people he was killing because there had been almost no glimpse of them throughout the entire film, there was nothing, no engagement with them and the huge significance of what the plan entailed was lost and replaced with a feeling of “big deal” or “who cares?” instead of making the viewer hate him and feel outraged at the plan before having a slow realisation that actually, in an incredibly twisted and bloody way, he’s right and has actually “saved” the world.
Talking of Veidt’s plan, why was it changed? It was totally unnecessary and the only reason I can think of is that Snyder possibly considered the ending in the novel to be too outlandish, but you can hardly justify that when you have a bloody blue glowing superhero who verges on being a god and a totally alternative history of America. The ending in the novel made far more sense than the rushed, pointless ending in the film and the events linked to it such as the missing writers and artists all clicked together beautifully to create an even bigger sense of shock and awe at Veidt’s messianic grand plan. Instead we just get some cop-out explosion and the worlds’ blame falls on Dr. Manhattan. Although quite frankly by that point I didn’t really care anymore, I’d actually lost interest in the film adaptation of one of my favourite novels of all time.
Overall the film simply drifts through the novel with no tension, no depth and no sense of attachment to human feeling. The visuals, special effects, costumes and Rorschach’s portrayal were genuinely brilliant but the actual flesh and bones of the story, the human side of it, the tensions and fears, the emotional baggage and flaws and the questionable morals of people who are supposed to be saving us. I’m not saying it was an awful film, it wasn’t, it was very well made and acted, but sadly it seems Snyder was more occupied with making it slick, stylish and cool as well as adding extra gore (chopping into the kidnapper's head rather than leaving him inside a burning house, brutally sawing the inmate's arms off rather than slitting his throat and leaving him there on the bars) and sex (Dan and Laurie's sex scene in the novel is brief, compared to the gratuitous shag fest in the film) rather than giving the story the depth and complexity it has in the novel.
I think if I had to rate it, out of 5 I would give it a 3.
