post-script, addendum
After talking to the house full of Other People Who Saw Watchmen Tonight, I am even more sure of what I previously stated. There is a line between those who really get superhero comics and love Alan Moore's seminal graphic novel/comic miniseries Watchmen and those who just dabble in the more popular titles or movie adaptations, and that line is never more clearly delineated than it is by this movie.
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge those on the other side of the line (though I think you're all missing out, personally) -- we're all dabblers in something or other. I'm a dabbler at best when it comes to television, to name one example, and therefore I don't really "get" some of the more clever deconstructions of that medium when they come along (like the savvy meta-sitcoms). For dabblers to be trying Watchmen is like me only reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and other Austen-inspired works, having never got into or understood (or maybe even read) anything by Jane Austen. Of course it's going to feel like I'm outside some kind of special club... because I am!
And so: for superhero comics dabblers, for people who haven't ever bought a comic book with a caped or mutant or superpowered dude or lady in it, for those who haven't pored over histories and back issues and weird crossover miniseries -- for anyone who has never had at least one favorite series that they read monthly, or weekly, or whatever -- I am beginning to think Watchmen might not be for you. Which makes me think it's probably not going to be the raging success all us comic-geek movie-fans (I'm looking at you, Internet) predicted/expected it to be, though it did okay opening night. The showing I went to today (Saturday, admittedly at Broadway and not at the mall so as to avoid the crowds) was pretty sparsely attended.
Still, as I said before, I'm perfectly happy with it as a dramatization of a dense text. Again, I think Watchmen is less like a primer to superhero comics and more like advanced studies, and therefore not for everyone.
(I had to go back through this post and add the qualifier "superhero" to my comment on comics, which seems to be experiencing a much-welcome boom in the non-superhero genres lately. Warren Ellis, I believe, once described the comics market by saying it's as if literature was loved the world over, but unless you wrote Nurse Literature nobody would take you seriously. Sure, lots of things you can make a story about, but the world only wants to read stories about nurses. It's nurse lit or total obscurity. I've always enjoyed, and often repeated, that analogy.)
Don't get me wrong, I don't begrudge those on the other side of the line (though I think you're all missing out, personally) -- we're all dabblers in something or other. I'm a dabbler at best when it comes to television, to name one example, and therefore I don't really "get" some of the more clever deconstructions of that medium when they come along (like the savvy meta-sitcoms). For dabblers to be trying Watchmen is like me only reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and other Austen-inspired works, having never got into or understood (or maybe even read) anything by Jane Austen. Of course it's going to feel like I'm outside some kind of special club... because I am!
And so: for superhero comics dabblers, for people who haven't ever bought a comic book with a caped or mutant or superpowered dude or lady in it, for those who haven't pored over histories and back issues and weird crossover miniseries -- for anyone who has never had at least one favorite series that they read monthly, or weekly, or whatever -- I am beginning to think Watchmen might not be for you. Which makes me think it's probably not going to be the raging success all us comic-geek movie-fans (I'm looking at you, Internet) predicted/expected it to be, though it did okay opening night. The showing I went to today (Saturday, admittedly at Broadway and not at the mall so as to avoid the crowds) was pretty sparsely attended.
Still, as I said before, I'm perfectly happy with it as a dramatization of a dense text. Again, I think Watchmen is less like a primer to superhero comics and more like advanced studies, and therefore not for everyone.
(I had to go back through this post and add the qualifier "superhero" to my comment on comics, which seems to be experiencing a much-welcome boom in the non-superhero genres lately. Warren Ellis, I believe, once described the comics market by saying it's as if literature was loved the world over, but unless you wrote Nurse Literature nobody would take you seriously. Sure, lots of things you can make a story about, but the world only wants to read stories about nurses. It's nurse lit or total obscurity. I've always enjoyed, and often repeated, that analogy.)