It’s 1985! Put on your smiley face.
1. Watchmen works! It’s loyal to the comics but won’t alienate non-readers. More importantly it’s not an expensively-animated storyboard, it’s a crazy spectacle. We are disturbed and unsettled, and We Like It.
2. The actors’ resemblance to their graphic equivalents is uncanny: they seem to have walked out of the pages. (Except Matthew Goode, see below.)
3. After the opening scenes we’re guessing director Zack Snyder was strapped down and restrained from having all the action rendered in slow-motion. Excellent decision, or the movie would’ve run four hours instead of two hours, forty minutes.
4. Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II looks good but her delivery is robotic. Not her fault though that her fight scenes are like shampoo commercials. Billy Crudup as the anatomically-correct Dr. Manhattan has the worst gig on earth playing a character who has lost touch with his humanity. And yet he is operatically emotional compared to Matthew Goode, who plays Veidt as a marionette. Jeffrey Dean Morgan makes an oddly touching (for a total scumbag) Comedian and Carla Gugino’s Sally is a great old broad. Patrick Wilson is exactly how we imagined Dan Dreiberg. Jackie Earle Haley turns Rorschach into a figure out of Greek tragedy, and we hardly even see his face. He is the festering soul of this tale.
5. The movie is loud enough, but it gets deafening when there’s music on the soundtrack. We know the rights to the Dylan, Hendrix, Cohen etc recordings are expensive, but you don’t have to blow out our eardrums to get your money’s worth.
6. Ah, there’s the reason we don’t get to see the iMax version in the Philippines: the sex scene has noticeable cuts. We don’t really mind as the scene is cheesy, hilarious, and goes on too long. Hmm, there’s constant carnage in this movie—cleavers to the head, limbs spurting blood, bones breaking, bodies exploding, boiling fat on human flesh. Apparently violence is acceptable, but sex is verboten.
7. Trying to make a spoiler not a spoiler: the mass devastation is less squishy than we’d anticipated.
8. The movie is true to its uncredited creator’s vision. It turns the superhero genre inside out (often literally). There is no triumphalism, no saving the day, just bitterness, regret, self-loathing, corrosion and dark irony. It’s a downer, and it’s just what we wanted.
The Simpsons: Always anti-reverence.
An hour before the movie we heard the news that Francis Magalona had died. (Weird how the Eraserheads reunion concerts are preceded by wakes. First Ely’s mother, and now the band’s great friend and colleague.) We knew he was very ill, but we assumed he would recover. We grieve for Francis and his family, for all of us and for the music we’ve lost.
Answers to questions you might be asking, unless you wandered onto this site purely by accident >>>
March 7th, 2009 at 02:45
The verdict thus far on the movie seems split based on what I’ve been reading on the ‘net. I’m glad it’s not tipping over to either positive or negative sides and clears out my own personal biases when I get the chance to check it out this Sunday.
Here’s a brilliant skewering by way of the Watchmen Saturday cartoon:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YDDHHrt6l4w
As for FrancisM, I’ve always considered him to be an extension of The Eraserheads, especially from Cutterpillow onwards. His contribution to Fruitcake on vocals, the collaborative effort on a couple of tracks on Kiko’s own Happy Battle album, and that now highly anticipated team-up with Ely and the rest of Pupil is enough to seal the deal and come to that conclusion. He’ll be greatly missed.
March 7th, 2009 at 12:26
oh god, i disagree with this opinion on watchmen on almost ALL counts.
It was awful and the only thing I am thankful for is that I didn’t pay to watch the movie!
And what do you mean the actors resembled the comic book counterparts?!? the film’s OZYMANDIAS WAS FAR FROM LOOKING LIKE THE MOST INTELLIGENT, CLOSE-TO-PERFECT PERSON THAT HE WAS SUPPOSED TO BE. He looked like a wimp!!! The resemblance ended with the blond hair! And where was the Owl’s gut?!?
The actor playing Rorshach was the closest to redemption this movie had (although it was obvious he was channeling Clint Eastwood).
What an insult to Alan Moore to say that his vision was embodied in this film. His vision wasn’t to sexify, glamorize and emphasize the powers of these superheroes as the film did — it was completely the opposite (the point was that everyone, except for Dr. Manhattan, DIDN’T have superpowers and weren’t flawlessly glamorous!!!).
The ending was such a downer because it didn’t make sense anymore after the lack of nuance of the whole film. The ending seemed weak and more like a cop-out (even though it was the same ending which was compelling and brilliant in comic book form), like M. Night had something to do with it.
Funny how two people can say the same exact words but have two totally different results.
March 13th, 2009 at 01:23
i beg to disagree with thecuriousdays’ comment regarding the ending. aside from being different, it’s actually better than the orginal and in fact more believable as something that a genius would come up with. i initially hated what it did to dr manhattan’s character but on hindsight it added another layer to his epiphany. alien invasion? now that’s the weak one and i think it’s something that veidt would have laughed at. surely a genius could cook up a better plan. and the movie came up with just that.
as for emphasizing powers, i don’t think the movie did that. sure they seem to posess more strength than ordinary humans but anybody skilled in martial arts, or any combat style for that matter, would tell you that it’s easy to hurl objects many times your weight. or kick the bejesus out of thugs. nothing out of the ordinary there. it’s not as if the movie had the characters shooting beams from their eyes or something.
sure the movie is not perfect, i have several issues with it as well, especially some minor changes like rorschach’s epiphany. but it definitely is far from being a failure either.
we should realize that it would always be difficult to translate a novel faithfully into a movie version, translating a graphic novel especially one with as huge a following as watchmen, is next to impossible. the graphic novel practically had snyder’s hands tied, especially since moore didn’t want to give his input (now that’s a cop out). armed with only the original work, i’d have to say that snyder did a heck of a good job.
March 13th, 2009 at 06:19
Here is another Watchmen video which spoofs the movie brilliantly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W8h7N2mVWjk . I love how they have Rorschach’s colourful metaphors done well. For a one joke sketch, it plays really well.
Cheers.
March 25th, 2009 at 16:28
I liked the movie…which was greatly helped by having read the GN before.
It caught a lot of the original source’s most recognizable frames, but wasn’t as kiss-assingly reverent as Superman Returns. The violence levels were just right – quite fitting since we’re talking about real grown-up stuff here, not The Fantastic Four (hehehe)
Btw, Matthew Goode wasn’t that good (baad pun alert) as Ozymandias…he looked like he was auditioning for Robin in Joel Schumacher’s Bat-abominations.