Movie review: Watchmen
Ohh, so much to go through. Amanda picked me up on Friday and we went to Wichita with Ashley and her boyfriend and a friend of Amanda's for the 10:15 showing at the Warren Theater. Big. Damn. Screen.
And after the movie we all went to IHOP at about 2 a.m. There are lots of drunks and stoners in IHOP at that hour. It was interesting.
But anyway, the movie. Spoilers (and a lot of babbling) below, naturally.
I thought it was absolutely fantastic. There were only a couple of things I wish they'd done differently, but it wasn't anything major enough to dull my enjoyment.
The music-- I thought most of it was well-chosen, and I *loved* the fact that just before the fake assassination attempt on Veidt, they're playing an instrumental version of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" in the background. The love scene between Dan and Laurie made me a bit uncomfortable, largely because they didn't seem to truly care for each other so much as she's codependent and needs to be with somebody, and he just wanted proof that he wasn't a complete failure in his own eyes, so to speak. Though I've always liked the song Hallelujah, so I just listened to that and waited for them to move to the next scene.
Sound of Silence during the funeral scene worked so well for me, partly because I've loved the song since I was a kid, partly because of the way it was filmed. I just loved the imagery altogether. One of the few points in the movie where they don't show death in every brutal detail; when the girl puts the flower in the barrel of the gun and a moment later it's blown apart. Loved that.
Oh, and at the end credits they were crediting footage for the original 300 Spartans, so I'm guessing that was one of the things playing on Veidt's wall of screens near the end. Going to have so much fun watching this DVD over and over once I buy it so I can gradually catch everything. They packed a lot of detail into it; that's for sure.
The performances-- I haven't seen Carla Gugino in anything else, but I absolutely adore her now. :-) I thought she played Sally perfectly. I didn't like the line they added in for her about, "I don't hate him because he gave me you", it just . . . I don't know; that rubbed me the wrong way. But otherwise, I think they handled her plotline well. It's something that would have been *really* easy to mess up. I mean, just hearing the whole 'guy tries to rape her, years later she voluntarily sleeps with him and it's heavily implied she still loves him' would've icked me out enough to not read the book if I'd known of it beforehand.
But actually reading the novel, it's just fascinating how Moore has every single character as an Unreliable Narrator. It's not the book itself advocating that Sally was right to let Blake back into her life (if I'd caught any kind of "See, Blake isn't that bad! She forgave him!" in the book, it would've been back in the To Sell pile within three seconds). Instead, there were just details all over the place-- everybody in Sally's life valuing her for her looks alone until it was pretty obvious that was finally all she really valued in herself. It displays a woman who was emotionally beaten down to the point where she believed that she was partly to blame for what he did, and reacting from that, and it's just so sad. I spent most all of the book and movie just wanting to give her a hug.
I saw her starting out as a young woman in a group she enjoyed being in, but valued in it (esp. by society at large) for her looks more than her actual contributions. I think that even if she didn't have a bit of a crush on Blake at the time, that she at least cared for him as a friend. And when he attacked her, complete with that "there's got to be a reason you dress like this" line and her rescuer clearly thinking the same, it added an extra messed-up layer to the whole thing. Maybe that's partly why her "I didn't hate him because he gave me you" line bothered me; from the other stuff I'd gotten from her character I didn't see it so much as forgiving him when she had Laurie so much as her forgiving him when he came back to her for their brief affair, because she wanted to grab hold of *any* reason to dismiss the anger and betrayal that she'd never wanted to feel in the first place for someone she'd cared for.
As I said, something that it would've been really really easy to take missteps on, but I think they did a pretty good job.
The attempted rape scene-- it was well-done, by which I mean it disturbed the hell out of me. When she first tries to fight him off and he starts to get back up and she gets this look on her face and says, "Eddie. . ." warningly I just shrank back in my seat, because that is it. That is how I've seen it work, with a guy trying to be charming one minute and then the next dropping any and all pretense of listening to you. ((hooray for good locks on car doors, is all I have to say))
Laurie, I didn't quite get as much from her as I did in the novel. I wish they'd kept the scene of her confronting Blake at the party; hoping that's on a deleted scene feature on the eventual DVD. She and Dan are basically the most 'normal' people in the story. Her with her wanting to live up to her mother's expectations and him with his midlife crisis and trying to decide if he made the right decision in giving up what he loved in exchange for security; they've got the most immediately relatable problems for most people, I think.
Given that, I think it's really interesting what side they land on. I see the shooting of the poor woman in Vietnam as kindof a breakdown of a main theme, with the "you could've stopped me and didn't". Rorschach, for all his general creepiness and black-and-white view of the world (pun not intended), did basically die a hero. He knew what it would mean, but couldn't just stand there and agree to keep Veidt's secret. Whereas Dan and Laurie eventually agree, putting themselves in the same place Dr. Manhattan was. They couldn't stop Veidt's original deed, but they didn't have to go along with it any more than Manhattan had to stand there and let Blake shoot the young woman. Oddly, the two scariest characters of the entire piece-- Blake and Rorschach-- end up dying rather than keep out of Veidt's way. And Dr. Manhattan, though he claims to treasure life now because of the 'miracle' of Laurie, still ends up standing on the side of detachment, of unwilling sacrifice for a goal that can never be realized.
Eddie Blake . . . I don't even know where to start. I've been a fan of Jeffrey Dean Morgan for a while now and I was really looking forward to see how he'd do in this role. He's an attractive guy, but there were maybe three or four points during the movie where I was able to acknowledge that; at every other point I was either feeling bad for him against all odds or he was seriously freaking me out (usually the latter). Well played, sir.
And Rorschach. I am still partly convinced that they created Jackie Earl Haley in a lab somewhere solely to play this character. Wow. At his "I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me" line, there was total silence in the theater for about three seconds, and then everybody started clapping. It was a very nice Geeks Unite moment. ;-)
Anyway, talk to me, people. I know I missed stuff and I want to play Film Analysis. *s*
And after the movie we all went to IHOP at about 2 a.m. There are lots of drunks and stoners in IHOP at that hour. It was interesting.
But anyway, the movie. Spoilers (and a lot of babbling) below, naturally.
I thought it was absolutely fantastic. There were only a couple of things I wish they'd done differently, but it wasn't anything major enough to dull my enjoyment.
The music-- I thought most of it was well-chosen, and I *loved* the fact that just before the fake assassination attempt on Veidt, they're playing an instrumental version of "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" in the background. The love scene between Dan and Laurie made me a bit uncomfortable, largely because they didn't seem to truly care for each other so much as she's codependent and needs to be with somebody, and he just wanted proof that he wasn't a complete failure in his own eyes, so to speak. Though I've always liked the song Hallelujah, so I just listened to that and waited for them to move to the next scene.
Sound of Silence during the funeral scene worked so well for me, partly because I've loved the song since I was a kid, partly because of the way it was filmed. I just loved the imagery altogether. One of the few points in the movie where they don't show death in every brutal detail; when the girl puts the flower in the barrel of the gun and a moment later it's blown apart. Loved that.
Oh, and at the end credits they were crediting footage for the original 300 Spartans, so I'm guessing that was one of the things playing on Veidt's wall of screens near the end. Going to have so much fun watching this DVD over and over once I buy it so I can gradually catch everything. They packed a lot of detail into it; that's for sure.
The performances-- I haven't seen Carla Gugino in anything else, but I absolutely adore her now. :-) I thought she played Sally perfectly. I didn't like the line they added in for her about, "I don't hate him because he gave me you", it just . . . I don't know; that rubbed me the wrong way. But otherwise, I think they handled her plotline well. It's something that would have been *really* easy to mess up. I mean, just hearing the whole 'guy tries to rape her, years later she voluntarily sleeps with him and it's heavily implied she still loves him' would've icked me out enough to not read the book if I'd known of it beforehand.
But actually reading the novel, it's just fascinating how Moore has every single character as an Unreliable Narrator. It's not the book itself advocating that Sally was right to let Blake back into her life (if I'd caught any kind of "See, Blake isn't that bad! She forgave him!" in the book, it would've been back in the To Sell pile within three seconds). Instead, there were just details all over the place-- everybody in Sally's life valuing her for her looks alone until it was pretty obvious that was finally all she really valued in herself. It displays a woman who was emotionally beaten down to the point where she believed that she was partly to blame for what he did, and reacting from that, and it's just so sad. I spent most all of the book and movie just wanting to give her a hug.
I saw her starting out as a young woman in a group she enjoyed being in, but valued in it (esp. by society at large) for her looks more than her actual contributions. I think that even if she didn't have a bit of a crush on Blake at the time, that she at least cared for him as a friend. And when he attacked her, complete with that "there's got to be a reason you dress like this" line and her rescuer clearly thinking the same, it added an extra messed-up layer to the whole thing. Maybe that's partly why her "I didn't hate him because he gave me you" line bothered me; from the other stuff I'd gotten from her character I didn't see it so much as forgiving him when she had Laurie so much as her forgiving him when he came back to her for their brief affair, because she wanted to grab hold of *any* reason to dismiss the anger and betrayal that she'd never wanted to feel in the first place for someone she'd cared for.
As I said, something that it would've been really really easy to take missteps on, but I think they did a pretty good job.
The attempted rape scene-- it was well-done, by which I mean it disturbed the hell out of me. When she first tries to fight him off and he starts to get back up and she gets this look on her face and says, "Eddie. . ." warningly I just shrank back in my seat, because that is it. That is how I've seen it work, with a guy trying to be charming one minute and then the next dropping any and all pretense of listening to you. ((hooray for good locks on car doors, is all I have to say))
Laurie, I didn't quite get as much from her as I did in the novel. I wish they'd kept the scene of her confronting Blake at the party; hoping that's on a deleted scene feature on the eventual DVD. She and Dan are basically the most 'normal' people in the story. Her with her wanting to live up to her mother's expectations and him with his midlife crisis and trying to decide if he made the right decision in giving up what he loved in exchange for security; they've got the most immediately relatable problems for most people, I think.
Given that, I think it's really interesting what side they land on. I see the shooting of the poor woman in Vietnam as kindof a breakdown of a main theme, with the "you could've stopped me and didn't". Rorschach, for all his general creepiness and black-and-white view of the world (pun not intended), did basically die a hero. He knew what it would mean, but couldn't just stand there and agree to keep Veidt's secret. Whereas Dan and Laurie eventually agree, putting themselves in the same place Dr. Manhattan was. They couldn't stop Veidt's original deed, but they didn't have to go along with it any more than Manhattan had to stand there and let Blake shoot the young woman. Oddly, the two scariest characters of the entire piece-- Blake and Rorschach-- end up dying rather than keep out of Veidt's way. And Dr. Manhattan, though he claims to treasure life now because of the 'miracle' of Laurie, still ends up standing on the side of detachment, of unwilling sacrifice for a goal that can never be realized.
Eddie Blake . . . I don't even know where to start. I've been a fan of Jeffrey Dean Morgan for a while now and I was really looking forward to see how he'd do in this role. He's an attractive guy, but there were maybe three or four points during the movie where I was able to acknowledge that; at every other point I was either feeling bad for him against all odds or he was seriously freaking me out (usually the latter). Well played, sir.
And Rorschach. I am still partly convinced that they created Jackie Earl Haley in a lab somewhere solely to play this character. Wow. At his "I'm not locked in here with you; you're locked in here with me" line, there was total silence in the theater for about three seconds, and then everybody started clapping. It was a very nice Geeks Unite moment. ;-)
Anyway, talk to me, people. I know I missed stuff and I want to play Film Analysis. *s*