D'OHHH NOOO ADRIANNNN
Aw shit I hate to be THAT GUY and write essays about dumb nerd shit, but I started trying to write what bothered me about the Watchmen movie and it ended up being kind of long. SORRY
Keep in mind seeing Watchmen has made me realize that it's been longer than I thought since I last read it, so if I end up complaining about something on a movie front that was in the comic, I wouldn't be surprised. Honestly though, I will stand by it even if I do, because it's not that the comic is without flaw itself, and a lot of it may also be a case where something that works in print is completely ineffective on the screen, or that the act of reading it out loud makes it ridiculous, or whatever.
- THE SOUNDTRACK. Quentin Tarantino has a dubious talent for picking over-the-top songs for intense scenes, but he works hard at the juxtaposition and it usually works-- or at worst, it's a movie like Kill Bill that's supposed to be campy as fuck anyway. Zach Snyder does not share this talent, and instead of picking obscure songs that work well with the scene, he picks what are probably the first things that came to mind for him, and the result ranges from "well I guess that works" to "pretty inappropriate" (throwing Hendrix over the arctic siege) to "completely ruins the scene."
In the book, the entire Vietnam sequence was supposed to be violence without fanfare. What does Snyder do? Add fanfare!
- Ozymandias - I felt the decision to take away the moment where he shouts "I did it!" to be a HUGE loss for the character. Jon ends up being a more developed and more flawed character than Adrian, and when the one who's supposed to be almost completely detatched from humanity comes off as more human than the one who is supposed to represent the "peak of humanity," you have a problem.
Veidt's portrayal in the movie really is the "comic book villain" he claims to be better than. I blame the delivery of his lines as a smarmy megalomaniac rather than a gaudy, ridiculous man to be part of the problem. In combination of Goode's delivery and Snyder's direction, all of the little things that made Adrian still human deep down are completely gone.
- The violence. I know Watchmen is a violent book, but adding gore just for the sake of gore really lessened the impact of the scenes that were meant to be violent and just made the movie overwhelmingly campy. The scene where we see how Rorschach snapped stuck with me for a long time for how violent and gruesome it is, but in the movie, by the time it happens in the movie the effect is completely dulled, because it's overpowered by how many times we see arms get ripped off or guts drip from a ceiling. It was completely unnecessary, and again ties back to shoving meaning away in favor of cheap titillation.
-Do I need to mention the awkwardly long sex scene? That's like five minutes we could have used to establish something of actual worth for the movie. Shit, cut that and one slow-mo fight scene and you could rework a dropped subplot in.
I have no beef with the major change to the ending-- actually, it seems a lot less ridiculous than the original. My biggest problem is another storytelling one- Snyder tried to keep the "gotcha" moment of the New Frontiersman getting Rorschach's journal at the end without spending any effort to establish the New Frontiersman. It feels rushed and awkward as a result, and the two people I went with that hadn't read Watchmen were confused by it, which tells me that this could have been handled a hell of a lot better.
Overall, all omissions made from the original source material were pretty smart choices, and a lot of awkward plot ends or subplots that would have simply taken too long were cut for the sake of brevity. Aside of the great opening montage, though, the movie made no real worthwhile additions. Zach Snyder is a director who is all style and no substance, and personally, I would much, much rather see a movie that is far less showy but carries its narrative and themes strongly throughout.
Watchmen as a movie chose to throw away the moments of quiet reflection and pathos that rule the book in favor of "cool" scenes. It's flashy, loud, and overdone. To be the same asshole reviewer that has paraphrased Dr. Manhattan a million times, they "made it into something gaudy."
A big argument I heard against the Watchmen movie, even when it was in development, was that there's no point in trying to adapt the comic into a movie because they're such completely different genres, and I think in this case, they were right. A lot can be said for a good adaptation, but the best (like the Nolan Batman movies, for example) bring something to the table that can only be done well in the film medium. I don't want a shot-for-shot remake of a comic I read, because at best all it can pretend to be is that "moving comic" they're selling on DVD now at stores, and at worst it ruins anything that made the comic good in the first place.
My favorite thing about the movie have been the great parodies that have come out of it. I'm sure you've all seen Saturday Morning Watchmen, but I'd also recommend these awesome illustrations by my friend Quigg. Also KC Green is AWESOME.
Keep in mind seeing Watchmen has made me realize that it's been longer than I thought since I last read it, so if I end up complaining about something on a movie front that was in the comic, I wouldn't be surprised. Honestly though, I will stand by it even if I do, because it's not that the comic is without flaw itself, and a lot of it may also be a case where something that works in print is completely ineffective on the screen, or that the act of reading it out loud makes it ridiculous, or whatever.
- THE SOUNDTRACK. Quentin Tarantino has a dubious talent for picking over-the-top songs for intense scenes, but he works hard at the juxtaposition and it usually works-- or at worst, it's a movie like Kill Bill that's supposed to be campy as fuck anyway. Zach Snyder does not share this talent, and instead of picking obscure songs that work well with the scene, he picks what are probably the first things that came to mind for him, and the result ranges from "well I guess that works" to "pretty inappropriate" (throwing Hendrix over the arctic siege) to "completely ruins the scene."
In the book, the entire Vietnam sequence was supposed to be violence without fanfare. What does Snyder do? Add fanfare!
- Ozymandias - I felt the decision to take away the moment where he shouts "I did it!" to be a HUGE loss for the character. Jon ends up being a more developed and more flawed character than Adrian, and when the one who's supposed to be almost completely detatched from humanity comes off as more human than the one who is supposed to represent the "peak of humanity," you have a problem.
Veidt's portrayal in the movie really is the "comic book villain" he claims to be better than. I blame the delivery of his lines as a smarmy megalomaniac rather than a gaudy, ridiculous man to be part of the problem. In combination of Goode's delivery and Snyder's direction, all of the little things that made Adrian still human deep down are completely gone.
- The violence. I know Watchmen is a violent book, but adding gore just for the sake of gore really lessened the impact of the scenes that were meant to be violent and just made the movie overwhelmingly campy. The scene where we see how Rorschach snapped stuck with me for a long time for how violent and gruesome it is, but in the movie, by the time it happens in the movie the effect is completely dulled, because it's overpowered by how many times we see arms get ripped off or guts drip from a ceiling. It was completely unnecessary, and again ties back to shoving meaning away in favor of cheap titillation.
-Do I need to mention the awkwardly long sex scene? That's like five minutes we could have used to establish something of actual worth for the movie. Shit, cut that and one slow-mo fight scene and you could rework a dropped subplot in.
I have no beef with the major change to the ending-- actually, it seems a lot less ridiculous than the original. My biggest problem is another storytelling one- Snyder tried to keep the "gotcha" moment of the New Frontiersman getting Rorschach's journal at the end without spending any effort to establish the New Frontiersman. It feels rushed and awkward as a result, and the two people I went with that hadn't read Watchmen were confused by it, which tells me that this could have been handled a hell of a lot better.
Overall, all omissions made from the original source material were pretty smart choices, and a lot of awkward plot ends or subplots that would have simply taken too long were cut for the sake of brevity. Aside of the great opening montage, though, the movie made no real worthwhile additions. Zach Snyder is a director who is all style and no substance, and personally, I would much, much rather see a movie that is far less showy but carries its narrative and themes strongly throughout.
Watchmen as a movie chose to throw away the moments of quiet reflection and pathos that rule the book in favor of "cool" scenes. It's flashy, loud, and overdone. To be the same asshole reviewer that has paraphrased Dr. Manhattan a million times, they "made it into something gaudy."
A big argument I heard against the Watchmen movie, even when it was in development, was that there's no point in trying to adapt the comic into a movie because they're such completely different genres, and I think in this case, they were right. A lot can be said for a good adaptation, but the best (like the Nolan Batman movies, for example) bring something to the table that can only be done well in the film medium. I don't want a shot-for-shot remake of a comic I read, because at best all it can pretend to be is that "moving comic" they're selling on DVD now at stores, and at worst it ruins anything that made the comic good in the first place.
My favorite thing about the movie have been the great parodies that have come out of it. I'm sure you've all seen Saturday Morning Watchmen, but I'd also recommend these awesome illustrations by my friend Quigg. Also KC Green is AWESOME.