Zack Snyder's Watchmen Hits THE SPLASH PAGE

Chad Nevett finally had a chance to see the "Watchmen" movie, and we needed to talk about what he thought. Did he like it? Did he want to punch it in its smug blue face? Let's find out...

Chad Nevett: We're a little late to the party, but that's because I didn't see "Watchmen" until this past Tuesday. Why? I dislike crowds in movie theaters and, well, Tuesdays are cheap movie days at the theaters here, which suits the respective budgets of myself and my girlfriend quite nicely. You saw it opening weekend and wrote a "non-review" for your blog where you discussed a few things you liked and disliked, but didn't really get into the nitty gritty of it. So, much like you did to me with "Batman: Battle for the Cowl" last week, I'll bestow the honor of first thoughts upon you and make you wait to hear what I thought of "Watchmen." (Though, if you'd like to guess, go ahead.)

Timothy Callahan: I'm going to guess that you thought it mostly looked nice, but the musical cues were too heavy-handed, and the interpretation of Ozymandias was way off the mark. I'll also guess that you liked Jackie Earl Haley and you thought that most of the perfomances were decent (except Matthew Goode's moustache-twirling funny-accented evil approach and probably Malin Ackerman, because, you know, she's not what you might call a good actor), and you didn't mind the lack of squid. I'll guess that you thought it wasn't very effective as an actual movie, but as a companion to the graphic novel it could have been a lot worse. You'll have to admit that it's better than the motion comic, but it's nowhere in the same league as Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon's work on the page.

That's what I'm guessing for you, because that's pretty much how I feel about it, and we're usually in the same ballpark, taste-wise. I don't know if the wigs bothered you as much as they did me, though.

So, how close was I?

CN: Not that close in that I hated it. I really, really did not like it. I walked out of it and my girlfriend, Michelle looked at me, wanting to know what I thought and all I could do was mutter "Godawful." While discussing it over dinner with her, I stumbled across exactly what my problem with the movie is: it seemed like an adaptation of every stupid, lame imitation of "Watchmen" that didn't actually understand "Watchmen." We've seen so many of those in comics and this film was like that. Superficially, it shared plot elements and select lines of dialogue, but all of the small nuances were altered to make them more graphic, more obvious and, really, very dumbed down. I couldn't escape the comic when watching it and, as a result, the film didn't sit right with me.

I'm not the sort of the guy who demands perfectly faithful adaptations, because I'm not dumb enough to think that what works in comics or prose will work in film, so it's not that "Watchmen" deviated it. I didn't mind the switch from the squid to Jon. I did mind that the ending just sort of happened without any real payoff or build-up. I asked Michelle about the ending -- hell, the entire movie's forward momentum -- and she agreed that there just wasn't anything at stake there. While the comic built up to the end, the film just kind of shows up there because that's where it's supposed to go. It went through the motions, providing little to no depth of character or plot.

And, yes, it was faithful in the broad strokes, but I noticed that every scene seemed altered for no apparent reason. It may just be nit-picking on my part, sure. One example I gave Michelle is when Rorschach is talking to the prison shrink and talking about the abduction/murder of the little girl. When he kills the man with the cleaver (which didn't bother me) and says that Walter Kovacs died that night, but Rorschach was born or lived or however he phrased it, I couldn't help but wonder why they altered that line from the comic where he says, "It was Kovacs who said 'Mother' then, muffled under latex. It was Kovacs who closed his eyes. It was Rorschach who opened them again." A small change, and not really an important one, but... why do it? The line from the comic is a hundred times better and illustrates how Rorschach views himself in relation to Kovacs much better than what he said in the film -- and it doesn't take up more screen time. And the film kept on having small little changes that altered meanings of lines in small ways, making them less impactful. Then again, I noticed this stuff because I know the comic.

Michelle liked it more than I did, but we did both hate the acting. Aside from a couple of people who did decent jobs, it was just awful. The funny thing is that Michelle thought that the actors were playing their parts like that because of the comic, that the comic was an exagerated, highly unrealistic piece of work, not a work that tried to place costumed heroes within as realistic a setting/world as possible.

And don't get me started on the violence, whose utter fetishisation by Snyder proves more than anything that, yeah, he really didn't understand "Watchmen" in the same way that all of the hapless imitators in comics didn't understand it.

So, yeah, I didn't like it. If I were reviewing it, I would have given it one star probably. Maybe two if I really tried to get away from my own perspective and try to view it through the eyes of someone new to the material.

TC: Wow. I think you probably need to see it again to understand its complexities, because obviously you didn't get it.

Oh wait, you totally got it.

I agree with all of your criticisms, but I enjoyed the movie more than you did, probably because I really did have such low expectations, ultimately. I had high expectations until about a week before the release, and then my expectations kept dropping and dropping when people I trusted started saying less than positive things about it. And I really don't think the acting is terrible, except for a few really important exceptions, but I do think that Zack Snyder didn't demand anything close to consistency in the performances. (Plus, a lot of the Moore dialogue just does not work when spoken aloud.)

But it is certainly not the graphic novel, not even what you could honestly think of as an adaptation of it. It's a completely new, post-"Mystery Men" cheesy, faux-grand superhero epic without any kind of humanity to it. It's all artifice. I really do think it's a terrible movie, with moments that made me cringe for aesthetic reasons, but I'm kind of fascinated by it and maybe that's why I get some perverse enjoyment out of it. I certainly wouldn't recommend the movie to anyone, but I do want to see what my wife thinks about it. I'm curious.

Let's talk about the fetishized violence a bit. It's obviously a different perspective than we get from the graphic novel, but we really need to distance it from the source material if we're going to have any kind of conversation about it as a film. So is there any merit to the notion that this is "Watchmen" for superhero movies? That is to say: does the fetishized violence comment upon the traditions of supehero action movies, and to portray the violence in a more down-to-earth, "realistic" way would have disconnected it from the movies it was meant to comment upon? Does this movie even work as a gloriously deranged, artificial pastiche of the Hollywood superhero film?

To be continued at GRAPHICONTENT!

I Saw the Watchmen Movie Last Night and Here's a Non-Review Review

I saw it last night. So here's...

A non-review of "Watchmen," by Zack Snyder, in 12 parts:

1. The movie is somehow really close to being excellent and simultaneously very, very far away from quality. That's kind of weird.

2. I thought the casting of Danny Bonaduce as Rorschach was provocative at first, but it turns out that he's the best part of the movie. Yes, this joke is terrible, but I couldn't resist. (I blame it on the wig.)

3. The opening credits sequence is really and truly the best part, and it's pretty great.

4. And the Oscar for "Worst Wigs in a Movie Ever. Seriously, Ever!" goes to..."Watchmen."

5. The deep focus and over-lighting make the movie look a lot like the comic but those wigs are really, really terrible.

6. I need to talk about the wigs some more. Maybe there's an in-story reason for the badness of the wigs. I mean, you'd think Adrian Veidt could afford a better rug and all, but Rorschach's a crazy person so he's off the hook. Sally Jupiter: she's old, and probably crazy as well, so maybe she just likes bad wigs. I don't know. Maybe hanging out with Dr. Manhattan did make all their hair fall out and part of the conspiracy is the let's-not-point-out-how-bad-everyone's-wigs-are thing that's going on in the movie.

7. Because the wigs are really bad. And the old age makeup doesn't work at all either.

8. Hollis Mason is cool. There should have been more of him. Note that they didn't go with old age makeup on him, they just cast two completely different actors for the young and old versions and, wow, it actually looks so much better that way.

9. The musican cues are as bad and cheesy as everyone says. At one point, "99 Luftballoons" kicks in, because it's the 80's I guess, and though I am a proponent of two things in movies (the use of "99 Luftballoons" whenever possible -- see "Nights, Boogie" for a great example -- and freeze-frame jumps to close things out -- see "Gordon, Flash" for a great example of that), Snyder throws in the Nena musical gem and then doesn't seem to know what to do with it so it just awkwardly fades out. Poor form, Mr. Snyder. Nena needs nourishment. Though if the movie ended with a freeze frame high-five between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, it could have redeemed itself.

10. I really like Patrick Wilson.

11. One of the questions people had after seeing early clips from this movie was how well Zack Snyder can direct actors. The answer is pretty clear: he can't do it well at all. It's not that the performances were bad, it's that they were wildly inconsistent, with some actors hamming it up like crazy (like Max Headroom as Moloch -- though, really, what do you expect when you cast Max Headroom in a role?) and some actors playing it kind of straight and somewhat subtle (sort of). Part of the problem was that Alan Moore's dialogue doesn't work that well when spoken aloud, but part of it was that some actors seemed to think they were in "Mystery Men" (Carla Gugino), while others seemed to think they were in "The Big Chill" (Patrick Wilson). Matthew Goode didn't seem to know what movie he was in, but he knew that it was one that involved a lot of stylized movements and an ever-changing accent. His performance doesn't really work well at all.

12. Seeing the movie divorced from its comic book context made two things apparent: (a) there's really no in-story reason for the characters to wear costumes (with the exception of maybe Rorschach, who keeps screaming about his "face"), and while costumes seem perfectly natural in a superhero comic, they seem perfectly silly in a superhero movie, and that's hard to get past; (b) "Watchmen" is really a story about Batman vs. Superman. I never realized it before, because I was always reading it as a book about Charlton analogues, but the movie doesn't have that same context and so the movie becomes about the three aspects of Batman (the obsessed vigilante, Rorschach; the kind-hearted gadgeteer, Nite Owl; and the self-made fighting machine with a gazillion bucks, Ozymandias) in conflict with an ever-distant, alien Superman (Dr. Manhattan, obviously). As a Batman vs. Superman movie, "Watchmen" is pretty cool.

And a bonus #13: I actually liked "Watchmen," even with all of its flaws. It's an imperfect, not-even-close-to-a-masterpiece of artificiality. But I enjoyed it.