sabotabby | Watch'd

Because you clearly don't have enough Watchmen reviews on your friends list.

Non-spoilery reactions: It's no secret that I, like all the fanboys, believe Watchmen to be the Greatest Graphic Novel Ever Written. Unlike the fanboys, though, I don't consider it or any other book sacrosanct.

It's unadaptable, though. Not because of the complicated narrative that sprawls four decades or so, which is what everyone seems to point to when they talk about it being unadaptable, but because what makes it really great (as opposed to just an incredible story with incredible characters), is that it's a comic book that redefines what the medium can do. In order to live up to that, the movie adaptation would have to redefine what movies can do. It doesn't. Maybe if Gilliam or Aronofsky had directed it and made it more of an art-house film, but—probably not. I still enjoyed it and will probably see it an embarrassing number of times, and it's definitely the best adaption of a Moore comic, not that that's saying very much.

springheel_jack had an excellent post, ~~which I now can't find,~~ here about the upcoming new Star Trek movie and how geek movies these days have to be all GRIMDARK and SRS BUSINESS, with all of the camp drained out of the source material. He attributed it primarily to homophobia (while unintentionally ramping up the homoerotic subtext by making movies so male). And of course, these movies invariably end up seeming less mature and less serious than if they'd just left the camp in.

To me, that's the movie's biggest flaw. There are still some silly bits, but there's a definite attempt on Snyder's part to weed out as much of it as possible. So there's a minimum of spandex and a lot of slow-mo. Part of what I love about the comic is what everyone seems determined to fix—the faded, out-dated costumes and colour schemes, the rampantly silly bits ("RRRAWWWL!"), the shit that makes Moore step back and have Hollis say: "Wait, what were we thinking? We were wearing underwear on top of our pants," or something to that effect.

Stuff I loved: Jackie Earl Haley as Rorschach. Holy shit, that's the most perfect casting ever, even if he was hotter than Rorschach has any right to be. Patrick Wilson was also perfect and adorkable. I think that screwing up either of those characters would have pissed me off more than the lack of giant squid or any other big change from the book, so I'm just relieved that they got them right.

The opening montage, especially the hippie putting the flower in the gun. That put a huge grin on my face.

Snyder overdid the slow-mo, but I don't think he committed horrendous crimes of CGI. Besides Bubastis, who looked like shit, everything else hit the right visual note.

He also didn't seem to horrifically misrepresent the book's politics (I'm glaring at you, V for Vendetta movie). There's obviously more than one way to read it, but he seemed to understand the satire and didn't make the movie into a glorification of fascism (I'm glaring at you, 300.)

The action and violence were definitely ramped up more than they needed to be, but the grotesque scenes—the Comedian's attempted rape of Sally, and shooting of the pregnant Vietnamese woman—weren't eroticized or glossed over. They were appropriately fast, brutal, and sickening.

I actually didn't think the changed ending was too bad. I'd have greatly preferred the squid, but it was an improvement over Tse's original script and Hamm's whatever-it-was-that-Hamm-was-doing. Though I thought it should have been more gory.

Silk Spectre II got a bit more character development, which was nice to see. I don't think Malin Akerman quite had the acting chops to pull it off, but at least there was some effort put into it.

They kept a lot of the little moments I loved, including the awkward handshake of awkwardness.

Stuff I didn't like: Akerman and Goode both seemed miscast. I like Goode, but it was too immediately obvious that he was the villain. If they were going to go with scrapping the whole "possibly homosexual, must investigate further" and making him FABULOUS! and FIERCE!, they should have gone whole-hog with it rather than have him go all soft-spoken. I dunno, he just didn't click for me.

Dan witnessing Rorschach's death and then beating up Ozymandias. WTF no. It was awkwardly blocked and it seemed to take some of the pathos out of the scene. Also, Ozymandias wouldn't just stand there and let himself get beaten up by a guy he could wipe the floor with, no matter how guilty he felt. It felt like, okay, Dan's the guy we all identify with, and we all want to punch Ozymandias at the end, so he got to. But it's too cathartic. That whole bit is the least cathartic thing I can imagine—the good guys, or at least, the guys we identify with, lose, and then roll over, and the most sympathetic character is abandoned by his friends and dies, entirely pointlessly, alone. And then we still can't really hate Ozymandias because it kind of worked. But it's all for nothing because of the journal. It's emotionally unsatisfying. That's the whole point. (Haley, again, was great, and broke my heart, which made the rest of it more jarring.)

I was deeply amused by "Hallelujah" during the sex scene (who hasn't shagged to that song? Admit it.) but I am pretty sure that Archie didn't need to ejaculate.

No lesbians, Bernie conversations, or the shrink having problems with his wife. So who are we supposed to care about when New York asplodes, I mean, other that in general a lot of people died? Hollis, I guess, since they went and cut his death scene.

I suppose I can live with the lack of Black Freighter, given that they're releasing it separately, but the dearth of Minutemen made my geek heart sad.

The New Frontiersman wasn't offensive enough. It actually looked almost reputable. It's supposed to be a freaking right-wing hate-rag run by nutcases who think Jews are putting fluoride in the water supply. Come on.

No manservants, segways, or vaginal squid. See previous point about taking all the camp out of it.

Ah, so yeah, I'm totally going again Sunday with

rbowspryte and co. In costume. Because I am a fanboy.