Having watched the Watchmen
So, Laura and I went to see Watchmen last night. It's about 2 hours and 40 minutes long, and I absolutely adored the first two hours and twenty minutes. The last twenty minutes, I've been thinking about since last night, and I honestly can't come to a satisfactory conclusion about it.
I've read the graphic novel something like a dozen times, or more. I have whole sequences memorized. It is the ultimate superhero book, by being completely anti-heroic.
Now, I'm not sure that there's an entire scene in the first 2:20 of the movie that isn't in the book, with the possible exception of Veidt's assassin confrontation being handled a little differently. Many of the scenes are literally identical. I love that. I would have been happy with a word-for-word adaptation of LOTR, and I also would have been happy with leaving out the sub-plot of Gorgo asking for help from the Council in 300.
Part of my attachment to the graphic novel Watchmen is that I FEEL for the characters. Dan Dreiburg is a geek who had fame (albeit under a different name) and then was forced out. Laurie is in a relationship she doesn't feel works anymore. Rorschach refuses to compromise on anything, and lives an awful life when he doesn't have his face on -- but he OWNS his choices. The Comedian thinks everything's a bad joke. And Dr. Manhattan is so detached from everything, he no longer cares what happens to anyone in the context of the entire existence of everything.
I thought they all acted well enough. But it all seemed like a series of set-piece vignettes. SEE Rorschach climb up a wall! SEE NiteOwl II and Silk Spectre II beat the crap out of assorted non-white prison inmates! SEE the Comedian shoot protesters in the back with gas-canisters!
And then with all the blood and gore, they left OUT several parts I thought were critical to character development. We DON'T see Rorschach breaking the random-guy-in-bar's fingers to get evidence. ANY evidence. We DON'T see NiteOwl II go off on a top-knot when he finds out that NiteOwl I was killed in a riot. That's a big part of Dan Dreiburg's character development. And it's missing. I also think that the lack of the News-Stand guy/comic-book kid subplot keeps us, the viewers, from being able to identify with the "masses" in the film. And having the New Frontiersman not even make an appearance till the very end totally diminishes Rorschach's impact.
I know that I do NOT like turning Dr. Manhattan into the fall guy. The flaw is that when Veidt uses his technology to make it seem like Dr. Manhattan has destroyed a dozen large cities across the globe, it seems to me that the immediate reaction on the part of the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans would have been to LAUNCH. Dr. Manhattan is unequivocally AMERICAN. The Chinese, especially, given that the Vietnam War was essentially a proxy between the US and the Chinese, should have reacted much more harshly to what they must have thought was an American sneak attack.
That's the whole point of the squid. It's utterly alien, and utterly from the outside. It is completely unrelated to any global political faction, and it is that sense of being attacked by the Other that pushes the countries in the graphic novel together. Dr. Manhattan is the Other, but he's not Other ENOUGH.
And then... please please PLEASE tell me that they didn't set it up for a sequel. "Watchmen: Rise of the Silk Spectre and her sidekick Nite Owl" would be awful. Dan and Laurie are supposed to find the humanity of EACH-OTHER behind their masks, not explore a kinky new desire to fight crime and then fuck in the clouds. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but it's just not the POINT.
I wasn't grabbed by the movie. I stayed outside it enough to say "oh, that's just like in the book" or, "hey, they changed that scene." I found the special effects fascinating (and I'm not just talking about Dr. Manhattan's schlong). I found the acting by Rorschach and the Comedian, especially, to be excellent. The costuming was impeccable, and I wasn't as bothered by the music as some, although I found that it wasn't as cohesive as Tyler Bates' work on 300, probably because of the inclusion of popular music from the era.
But in the end... where LOTR's adaptation really helped me get INTO the mindset of the Fellowship and then the broken group of Aragorn and Bilbo and Merry, where 300 made me long for the melee fields of Pennic... I just don't know. This movie didn't do that for me. I didn't feel like I got enough of anything to really care about these people.
I'm sure I'll buy the DVD, if only to get the extended version, which may restore some of the lost scenes. But I certainly wouldn't go pay to see it again in the theatre. I saw the original Tim Burton BATMAN nine times in the theatre. I even saw Attack of the Clones three times in the theatre. But not this.
I recognize that this isn't a feel-good superhero movie. I didn't walk in the door looking for that. I simply walked out the door unsatisfied.