Gods & WATCHMEN
And so the WATCHMEN marched onto theaters with the clamoring expected since the first trailer popped up last July.
And for those who hadn't read any of my previous blurbs about my feelings on Zack Snyder taking helm on this, file under:worried. Not so much that I don't feel that the trailer failed in any way to make the neck hairs stand on end.(they did)Not that I don't think that he isn't talented in any way. It's more that up until this point, he had failed to truly engage me with his works.(about my personal favorite work he had done to date was the opening sequence to his Dawn Of The Dead remake- proving to me that he was more of a commercial director than any kind of serious storyteller.) And despite 300's huge ticket sales, I truly ,deeply found that film lacking in any kind of relatability.Again, it felt a lot less like an actual story, and more like a long, slogging commercial that someone had forgotten to tell was over. It is less cinema, and more of a picturebook approach that can only work in certain places, with certain material.
And WATCHMEN?
My relationship with the legacy of the Minutemen, and the Doomsday conspiracy has been one of on again-off again since a friend first handed me a copy back in 1991. Not being the biggest western comics fan in the world, the collection was a true eye-pryer, and shocked me into delving into far more independent comics and challenging material. But WATCHMEN was THE book. Next to The Dark Knight Returns, it was like shining a light on a sad, cynical part of myself who always questioned the role models and fantasy figures I had grown up with. Its look at the lives of these very real world takes on famous archetypal figures was revelatory to say the least, and inspired me to look at authority figures & action icons in a whole new way.(and definitely not in the most pleasant light either) Comics could suddenly go as deep as you wanted them to go, and be as introspective as you wished them to be. It was all up to you.
In time I've gone through four copies.(all lost copies were either lost due to wear & tear, or just never returned after being borrowed.-which I must say is a testament to just how good the book really is.)
And even though I had been aware that Hollywood had been fighting long and tough to make it a screen reality, my feelings were always with Alan Moore when he deemed the books unfilmable. Then the trailer came, and with the last few years finally proving that matching the right writer/producer/director team with tricky, literate material can produce truly effective films(LOTR,TDK,you get the idea), it felt like this could possibly get a decent pass. Add this to the book's stigma of having some thematically unsafe(even for R rated films!) events and ideas never before seen in a mainstream movie, and you could see that no matter how it turned out, it was to be an event.
So is the WATCHMEN unfilmable?
You know, I suppose I should just adopt the expected response and just say," hey, at least it got made". but that was the kind of thought that so many of us had to adopt for the Star Wars prequels.(and that only makes what I'm about to say feel that much worse)
Sorry to say that while it essentially achieves some grace in how it compresses Moore's masterwork, it severely lacks the grace necessary in order to make it jibe with anyone other than fans. And while I count myself among the legion admirers, this film plays less like an adaptation, and far more like a Greatest Hits compilation with the scenes coming in not unlike a YouTube playlist of choice clips. We definitely get great flashback imagery of the early days of masked heroes to the Dawn with the beginnings of Dr. Manhattan through the murder of The Comedian which sets the story in motion. Again, this all happens with the speed of a freight train, giving us none of the sense of loss of innocence that the world has experienced over such tumult. It never really sinks in that the world is on any kind of brink.
One of the biggest draws of the book was capturing exactly what it felt like to live as a kid in 1985.Needless to say that the fear in the book is palpable, and I still feel that the script could have sold that in a mere few well delivered lines.Then again that's why we had the newsstand owner, and the city folk talking around the edges of the story. Unfortunately- these characters were easily eschewed here for the expected stylized action set-pieces, which leads me to one of my biggest problems with the film. One of the expected casualties of atypical Hollywood filmmaking is the introduction of extended action scenes which can very easily expose laziness on the writer's part, and elicit lazy reactions from audiences. Now I can understand that Snyder was probably going for an 80s movie vibe, but in a cinematic landscape that has recently taken a black eye from Chris Nolan and Co., it really comes off as dated, and counterproductive to such poignant thematics. After all, as much as there was action in the WATCHMEN books, the scenes never felt the need to be so overchoreographed. Yes, I'm one of those folks who loved the shaky-cam, and inability to make out the fight scenes in another film.- I prefer chaos over sleek any day.
I can go over my troubles with the film, leading up to the near excruciating final minutes, but I'd sooner save the space for what I DID enjoy about it...Jackie Earl Haley=RORSCHACH.Simple. So unexpected, and yet I truly felt a real need to experience him more as he's been my fave from the day I first read it. The performance is raw, immediate, and totally brave. Coming in at a close second was Billy Crudup's Jon Osterman which gained otherworldly perfection- I never would have imagined such a voice coming out, but the conveyance of a growing disconnection, beautiful. An amazing hybrid performance. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Eddie Blake was pretty terrific, as well as Patrick Wilson's Dan. When they nailed the book, they truly nailed it.
But when they didn't...ooohh...My god, Akermann's Laurie barely phones in with a weak signal, leaving more truth to the cliche that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. She's luminous to be true, but has none of the bruised pride, the repressed anger, and yearning to be free that Laurie requires. In many ways, she is what truly anchors the story, and without the proper attention, the film becomes a requisite fan-made movie and not a real one. If Snyder and the screenwriter's had an Achilles' heel to tend to before the battle, this was it. Laurie Juspeczyk is the key to redemption in many ways, and therefore is a largely missed opportunity. And some of the musical choices are downright juvenile when they should be thoughtful, or nixed altogether. And speaking of nixed, for a story that is fraught with emotionally gripping dialogue, it seems that Snyder is much more comfortable with excessive blood & gore, and less comfy with those icky things called human emotions. Either way, it feels like this cut is akin to a very long trailer, but I won't be holding my breath for a much better cut on the huge extended DVD coming in Fall. There are far too many gaudy choices made in this edition to undo at any later time.
Ironically enough, just as before, I'd argue that Snyder's abilities truly shine in a format more befitting commercials and music videos. To prove it, here are the ingenious opening credits which cover the early history of masks, and the setting of our heroes in history.
The contradiction of masked heroes living in a blurred real world setting was an important part of the book's themes, which...leaves me to cut to the chase and just say it,...Snyder's just not the right person for the job. And while I also admire his candid admissions that he felt that this could never truly be given its full due, I guess it's important to admit that I felt that there may be someone out there capable of making WATCHMEN into far more than a cheap & hollow modern parable.To anyone who loves this movie(and many will, I see cult classic ahead), and hasn't read the book, I'll likely be purchasing more copies in the future to be lent out and never returned.
Grain of salt..grain of salt..
After 22 years, WATCHMEN is finally here for better or worse, challenging fans new and old. A movie that will provoke and split hairs with the personal WATCHMEN movies in the minds of many. Oh well..as least it got made!
And for those who hadn't read any of my previous blurbs about my feelings on Zack Snyder taking helm on this, file under:worried. Not so much that I don't feel that the trailer failed in any way to make the neck hairs stand on end.(they did)Not that I don't think that he isn't talented in any way. It's more that up until this point, he had failed to truly engage me with his works.(about my personal favorite work he had done to date was the opening sequence to his Dawn Of The Dead remake- proving to me that he was more of a commercial director than any kind of serious storyteller.) And despite 300's huge ticket sales, I truly ,deeply found that film lacking in any kind of relatability.Again, it felt a lot less like an actual story, and more like a long, slogging commercial that someone had forgotten to tell was over. It is less cinema, and more of a picturebook approach that can only work in certain places, with certain material.
And WATCHMEN?
My relationship with the legacy of the Minutemen, and the Doomsday conspiracy has been one of on again-off again since a friend first handed me a copy back in 1991. Not being the biggest western comics fan in the world, the collection was a true eye-pryer, and shocked me into delving into far more independent comics and challenging material. But WATCHMEN was THE book. Next to The Dark Knight Returns, it was like shining a light on a sad, cynical part of myself who always questioned the role models and fantasy figures I had grown up with. Its look at the lives of these very real world takes on famous archetypal figures was revelatory to say the least, and inspired me to look at authority figures & action icons in a whole new way.(and definitely not in the most pleasant light either) Comics could suddenly go as deep as you wanted them to go, and be as introspective as you wished them to be. It was all up to you.
In time I've gone through four copies.(all lost copies were either lost due to wear & tear, or just never returned after being borrowed.-which I must say is a testament to just how good the book really is.)
And even though I had been aware that Hollywood had been fighting long and tough to make it a screen reality, my feelings were always with Alan Moore when he deemed the books unfilmable. Then the trailer came, and with the last few years finally proving that matching the right writer/producer/director team with tricky, literate material can produce truly effective films(LOTR,TDK,you get the idea), it felt like this could possibly get a decent pass. Add this to the book's stigma of having some thematically unsafe(even for R rated films!) events and ideas never before seen in a mainstream movie, and you could see that no matter how it turned out, it was to be an event.
So is the WATCHMEN unfilmable?
You know, I suppose I should just adopt the expected response and just say," hey, at least it got made". but that was the kind of thought that so many of us had to adopt for the Star Wars prequels.(and that only makes what I'm about to say feel that much worse)
Sorry to say that while it essentially achieves some grace in how it compresses Moore's masterwork, it severely lacks the grace necessary in order to make it jibe with anyone other than fans. And while I count myself among the legion admirers, this film plays less like an adaptation, and far more like a Greatest Hits compilation with the scenes coming in not unlike a YouTube playlist of choice clips. We definitely get great flashback imagery of the early days of masked heroes to the Dawn with the beginnings of Dr. Manhattan through the murder of The Comedian which sets the story in motion. Again, this all happens with the speed of a freight train, giving us none of the sense of loss of innocence that the world has experienced over such tumult. It never really sinks in that the world is on any kind of brink.
One of the biggest draws of the book was capturing exactly what it felt like to live as a kid in 1985.Needless to say that the fear in the book is palpable, and I still feel that the script could have sold that in a mere few well delivered lines.Then again that's why we had the newsstand owner, and the city folk talking around the edges of the story. Unfortunately- these characters were easily eschewed here for the expected stylized action set-pieces, which leads me to one of my biggest problems with the film. One of the expected casualties of atypical Hollywood filmmaking is the introduction of extended action scenes which can very easily expose laziness on the writer's part, and elicit lazy reactions from audiences. Now I can understand that Snyder was probably going for an 80s movie vibe, but in a cinematic landscape that has recently taken a black eye from Chris Nolan and Co., it really comes off as dated, and counterproductive to such poignant thematics. After all, as much as there was action in the WATCHMEN books, the scenes never felt the need to be so overchoreographed. Yes, I'm one of those folks who loved the shaky-cam, and inability to make out the fight scenes in another film.- I prefer chaos over sleek any day.
I can go over my troubles with the film, leading up to the near excruciating final minutes, but I'd sooner save the space for what I DID enjoy about it...Jackie Earl Haley=RORSCHACH.Simple. So unexpected, and yet I truly felt a real need to experience him more as he's been my fave from the day I first read it. The performance is raw, immediate, and totally brave. Coming in at a close second was Billy Crudup's Jon Osterman which gained otherworldly perfection- I never would have imagined such a voice coming out, but the conveyance of a growing disconnection, beautiful. An amazing hybrid performance. Jeffrey Dean Morgan's Eddie Blake was pretty terrific, as well as Patrick Wilson's Dan. When they nailed the book, they truly nailed it.
But when they didn't...ooohh...My god, Akermann's Laurie barely phones in with a weak signal, leaving more truth to the cliche that a chain is only as strong as it's weakest link. She's luminous to be true, but has none of the bruised pride, the repressed anger, and yearning to be free that Laurie requires. In many ways, she is what truly anchors the story, and without the proper attention, the film becomes a requisite fan-made movie and not a real one. If Snyder and the screenwriter's had an Achilles' heel to tend to before the battle, this was it. Laurie Juspeczyk is the key to redemption in many ways, and therefore is a largely missed opportunity. And some of the musical choices are downright juvenile when they should be thoughtful, or nixed altogether. And speaking of nixed, for a story that is fraught with emotionally gripping dialogue, it seems that Snyder is much more comfortable with excessive blood & gore, and less comfy with those icky things called human emotions. Either way, it feels like this cut is akin to a very long trailer, but I won't be holding my breath for a much better cut on the huge extended DVD coming in Fall. There are far too many gaudy choices made in this edition to undo at any later time.
Ironically enough, just as before, I'd argue that Snyder's abilities truly shine in a format more befitting commercials and music videos. To prove it, here are the ingenious opening credits which cover the early history of masks, and the setting of our heroes in history.
You can watch this video on www.livejournal.com
The contradiction of masked heroes living in a blurred real world setting was an important part of the book's themes, which...leaves me to cut to the chase and just say it,...Snyder's just not the right person for the job. And while I also admire his candid admissions that he felt that this could never truly be given its full due, I guess it's important to admit that I felt that there may be someone out there capable of making WATCHMEN into far more than a cheap & hollow modern parable.To anyone who loves this movie(and many will, I see cult classic ahead), and hasn't read the book, I'll likely be purchasing more copies in the future to be lent out and never returned.
Grain of salt..grain of salt..
After 22 years, WATCHMEN is finally here for better or worse, challenging fans new and old. A movie that will provoke and split hairs with the personal WATCHMEN movies in the minds of many. Oh well..as least it got made!