Watchmen, Rambles, Etc
Point number 1 - I haven't read the graphic novel yet. This may be a drawback, it may help me judge the movie on its own merits.
Visually magnificent, without a doubt. Graphics were stunning, but much more restrained than the almost glutenous super-saturated 300. The lighting was incredible. I don't think shadows that look *that* much like graphic novel shadows have every been reproduced in on real faces before. Costume design was wonderful as well - balancing super-hero style with believability. The story basically rocks - Alan Moore knows how to tell a tale, that is for damn sure. It takes mad skills to be that damn symbolic and philosophical and crap in such a popular, "low-brow" genre. I can see why people burst into spontaneous backflips and get stars in their eyes when they refer to Watchmen as BEST GRAPHIC NOVEL EVER.
Spoilers - analysis of symbols etc in list for cus I'm tired
1. The smiley face with blood on it - represents the paradox that a "better world" forged by the type of idealism that fuels superhero mythology is unavoidably tainted by immorality and violence. This is a theme that's also touched on in Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, which I can't seem to talk about enough.
2. The title - "Watchmen" may refer to "watching" as in "watching over," or to a watch worn on the wrist, echoing the film's theme of time and its possible lack of continuity. In terms of visual symbols, the 'watching' aspect comes across in that space-ship type thing of theirs that looks like a pair of glasses, and Daniel's see-in-the-dark shades. The watch-as-in-clock motif is echoed in the doomsday clock, the watch whose rescue ironically results in Dr. Manhattan's out-of-time condition, and some others I can't recall just yet.
3. The birth of Laurie as a metaphor for all of humanity - I know it sounds heavy, but the movie said it, not me. The fact that Laurie's solid material existence (a sort of order, I suppose, in that she has form) involved a union fraught with "chaos" and contradiction is enough to constitute a miracle, at least in the eyes of Dr. Manhattan. The same can possibly be said of all humans - the urge to create - to create a life, or to forge a new and better society - is somehow entangled with the urge to destroy, to lie and be immoral. Laurie's mom violates her sense of honor and justice by sleeping with the man who tried to rape her; Adrian violates righteousness by killing some to save many. Yet these contradictions shape what humanity means, and therefore contain a certain religious beauty.
4. The ends justify the means, or do they? - I think Moore leaves some room for ambiguity about this. Though playing with it considerably, Moore remains within the typical superhero narrative, and at the end, the world is indeed saved. The question is, by who? Does Adrian save it through his pragmatic holocaust, or does Rorschach save it by re-introducing the truth of the story into the "hippie-commune" of the post-cold-war world? Daniel claims that Adrian has "tainted humanity." What exactly does this refer to? Is it a reference to the blood spot on the smiley? Can he simply not accept the sad but true contradiction of bloodstained happiness that makes Adrian's actions necessary? Or has Adrian tainted humanity by tricking people on mass, and sociopathically reducing ther actions to a sort of mathematical equation, essentially dehumanizing them? (he admits himself that he is smart at everything except for understanding people.)
Which brings me to my one complaint about the film - ironically enough, the film itself seems a little lacking in humanity. Snyder is very good at creating iconic images, and the direction of the actors is pretty much always in the service of these images. In many ways, this is awesome. However, he passes up the opportunity to get just that extra inch of emotional subtly that makes the characters both allegorical and believable as real people. I think this is the main reason that 300 leaves me cold - the fact that for all the melodramatic emotion you see onscreen, you never get the sense that there's anything going on behind the character's eyes. (That and the fact that the unnaturally high-contrast style just does not sit well with me. Its ugly, no matter how pretty it can be, if that makes sense) Anyway, I think Watchman suffers from the same problem. I think that some of the more emotional scenes (Rorschach's childhood and his later killing of the child-murderer, Laurie's realization about her father) would have benefited from a more sensitive treatment, both in terms of the actor's performance and the filmic elements. Laurie's revelation seems to be the emotional core of the story, but Malin Akerman's performance was rather flat, and that scene emphasizes CGI more than her - because of this, Manhattan's resulting spark-of-humanity revelation isn't *quite* as believable emotionally as it ought to be, even though it makes sense on a philosophical level. Along the same lines, the issue of having to kill a bunch of innocent people is dealt with very abstractly - we are never given an opportunity to sympathize with those killed, or feel the emotional impact of their lost lives. Again, their annihilation is an opportunity for pretty, epic CGI effects, which depict destruction on a grand, iconic scale, but fail to dig deeper on a human level. It wouldn't be much to complain about, as a simplification of human psychology for the sake of symbolism is a convention typical of the more intellectual side of comic books, fantasy and sci-fi. However, since the story does try to make the argument that human beings are worth saving, it would be nice if we saw some powerful examples of genuine human behavior to back that up, rather than devoting all the deepest emotional moments solely to imagery. V for Vendetta, also based on a Moore graphic novel and dealing with similar themes, more successfully humanizes its characters and explores the paradox between the hero's human personality and iconic, universalist identity. In doing so, it diverges greatly from the graphic novel, moreso, I think, than Watchmen diverts from its original source material. I would argue that because of the nature of the graphic novel, it's easier and more effective for graphic novels to work on a strictly symbolic level, while the film, which because it contains images of real people, suffers depth-wise if the balance between iconography and visual subtly tips too far towards iconography, even if the story itself is deep and complex. But that's just my humble opinion.
Now, it is time for me to sleep. Yay.