I fucking hate comic book movies.

Not to say that I don’t enjoy them — as an avid comic book reader, I’m often filled with fanboy excitement over them — I just hate that the tag of “comic book movie” has to exist. I’ll expand upon this in a later post (read: tonight, after I play the Y the Last Man drinking game), but the biggest problem with comic book movies is the weight of the “comic book” stigma that holds them down and forces ridiculous and arbitrary expectations and/or limitations upon them.

The point is: Watchmen. It was pretty good. Maybe not worth going to bed at 4am last night when I had to be at work at 9:30 this morning, but still pretty good. I enjoyed the whole thing. Was it perfect? Nah. But then, I didn’t expect it to be, because such an expectation would have been entirely unreasonable. It had plenty of problems (most of which can be blamed on its existence as a “comic book movie”) but all in all, it was an enjoyable experience.

Of course, your initial inclination is probably to ask me if the movie lived up to the hype that surrounded it. If, in fact, this is your inclination, then you, my dear reader, deserve nothing less than a laurel, and hearty skullfuck, because it’s stupid people like you who perpetuate all of the crap hype and conversation that surrounds these kind of films, and cause every other shitbag journalist with an ass hole to write his or her review on the film.

Like me.

What follows is a basic, spoiler-free review of the film from a technical standpoint. If you want to skip right to the spoiler-laden review, by all means, do so. But the rest of this stuff is important, too. Because I wrote it.

The problem with these other reviews is that they fall into two different categories, neither of which are capable in providing readers with an effective critical or, well, categorical opinion of the film. The first is fanboy douchebags who are only concerned with the film’s faithfulness to its source material. Please consider this simple fact: the source material is paper with 4-color printing. The movie is celluloid with sound. Therefore, at the purest and most basic root of the problem, the film is unfaithful to the source. According to the transitive property of equality then, your opinion is completely fucking useless. Moving on, the other category of reviewer is the kind who is not familiar with the source material, and are resigned to review the film based solely on the the hype surrounding it as generated by reviewers in the former category. These reviewers discuss the film as it relates to things they heard about the source material, and the reviewer is intellectually incapable of perceiving the film as anything other than a “comic book film” (or other such cheeky nerd subgenre). Neither one is informative, or even useful to the casual movie goer, who simply wants to know, “Should I go see this movie?”

And to that I would say, “yes.” Watchmen is, I think, an enjoyable movie for anyone to see. If you go into it expecting a “comic book movie,” you might be a bit taken aback (as one of my friends was, specifically by the dogs, and rape). For the fanboys who wonder how well the movie adapts the source material — pretty well. Zak Snyder does a really good job of telling the BASIC story of Watchmen in a film medium. I say “basic,” because Watchmen’s existence as a comic book is a crucial part of Watchmen as a comic book; much of the power, appeal, depth, and complexity of the story is inherently linked to the medium through which the story is told. Take Chapter 5, “Fearful Symmetry.” This chapter follows, amongst other things, Rorschach’s psychological examination, which is, coincidentally, full of Rorschach tests, which are, coincidentally, symmetrical blots of ink. The entire chapter of the book is actual symmetrical itself — the layout, coloring, and action of first and last page (and 2nd and 2nd to last, and so on) mirror each other; not perfectly, of course, as that would make for a chapter that was pretty redundant, but it’s there. And the exact center of the chapter is the two-page spread in which Ozymandias is attacked by his would-be assassin. You wonder why the graphic novel is so revered? That’s why.

Simply put: the story of Watchmen is replicated quite well on the screen. The acting is (mostly) solid. The production design is great, albeit different from the book. The concept, themes, and overall big idea of it are suggested, or at least referenced, but otherwise absent, due to the aforementioned complications. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; it is what it is. I could write a short story about a ballet (or vice versa), and while it might be interesting, maybe even brilliant in it’s own right (especially if I wrote it), it obviously wouldn’t be the same. Elvis Costello once said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” and I think this idea is relevant here.

Now for the spoiler-filled analytical part.
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Throughout the film, fans of the book will appreciate Zak Snyder’s fine attention to detail, a trait of his that he has worn like a badge in his previous adaptations. Things that weren’t able to make the cut are at least given a winking nod of acknowledgment in the background — the homosexual relationship between Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis, the little black kid reading Tales of the Black Freighter, even Ozymandias’s latent homosexuality (the much-revered opening credits sequence features a shot of him outside of Studio 54 with David Bowie).

However, there are a number smaller details omitted or overlooked that are at least as important as the ones that were included, if not moreso. Consider the character of Rorschach: heroic and well-intentioned if not entirely sociopathic (sociopathetic?) and mentally unstable, Rorschach is so far gone that he actually believes his mask to be his real face, and the identity/skin beneath to be irrelevant. This is made clear when he is first arrested, and cries “My mask! Give me back my face!” and is later expanded upon (as in the book) during his psychological examination and the prison riots that follow. Up until the point that he is unmasked, however, Rorschach refers to his mask as a mask, and his face as his face. Even in the quote above, he first calls it a mask, and then his face. While it may sound like I’m being nitpicky about the difference between “Saw Dan and Laurie…they didn’t recognize me without my mask,” and “Saw Dan and Laurie…they didn’t recognize me without my face,” it’s still a very important character detail, no matter how subtle. It illuminates just how fucking crazy Rorschach really is, and neglecting this fine subtlety reads as lazy on the part of screenwriters David Hayden and Alex Tse.

Eighteen seconds from now I am criticizing the movie’s poor handling of Dr. Manhattan’s nonlinear existence. Sixteen hours and twenty minutes ago I am disappointed with the film’s inability to portray him existing outside of and beyond time. It is November of 2006 and I am fascinated with the way in which Dr. Manhattan engages in multiple conversations at different times and begins to confuse them and respond to things that have not been said yet (I am particularly intrigued by the potential literary value of such a clever foreshadowing device). Three Months, fourteen days, seven hours and six minutes from now, Zak Snyder is remembering that he totally forgot to make the best use out of what is arguably one of the coolest storytelling devices that was handed to him by Watchmen. Four seconds ago I am skullfucking Zak Snyder for this mistake.

Also, the sex scene between Nite Owl and Silk Spectre was absolutely ridiculous. It was so painfully comical that it took me out of the film entirely. Rather than romantic role playing to the tune of “Unforgettable” (I think? Something sultry and jazzy), it was much more of a “bom-chicka-bow-wow” super hero porno parody, backed by Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” Double you tee eff!

The most controversial part of this adaptation of Watchmen was, of course, the ending, which involves a giant Cthulu-esque artificial alien squid creature being teleported into the heart of Manhattan and utterly annihilating it and the rest of the tri-state area (Hi, Mom), thereby creating the illusion of an impending alien invasion and uniting the rest of the world in peace against this common enemy. As many people know, this ending was changed, if only slightly. While Ozymandias’s vessel of mass destruction/world peace is different, the idea remains the same; creative integrity is more or less retained. While I’ll be the first to admit that the book’s VD (vessel of doom) was a little absolutely fucking crazy and came totally out of left field — that is to say, I can kind of understand why they might want to change it — I found the new device is entirely underwhelming. I’d liked to turn things over to culturefuck’s private consultant on all things social and political, Adolf Hitler:

Thanks, Adolf. Now, perhaps this was just another one of the many differences between a graphic novel and a film: in the book, Ozymandias says, “I did it 35 minutes ago,” and the chapter ends. Turn the page to begin the next chapter, and you’re faced with something like 7 pages in a row of horrific, bloody aftermath. It’s shocking and repulsive, and really drives the point home. In the film, however, we are treated to a lengthy, effects-laden sequence of our destructive friend as it destroys Manhattan. The only aftermath that we witness is when Dr. Manhattan and Laurie teleport into the rubble and soot. The still-boiling remains of festering human flesh are nowhere to be seen. Great for my stomach, not for the potential impact of the scene. (hee-hee. Seen. Scene. I am so poetical!) On that point, a few of the bloodier scenes in the movie (specifically, Silk Spectre and Nite Owl fighting in the alley) looked like they were stolen from the cutting room floor of Kill Bill.

(Also conspicuously missing was a lack of sympathy for Ozymandias in the end. The book contains a brilliant scene where he and Dr. Manhattan are left alone and he asks, “Did I do the right thing, in the end?” Dr. Manhattan replies, “End? Nothing ever ends,” and immediately teleports away, leaving Ozymandias alone to dwell on his actions. Manhattan’s line is spoken instead by Laurie, thought credited to him, but finds itself in an entirely different context)

In the end, Watchmen was a pretty good adaptation of a great graphic novel, and until someone finds a way to make a film adaptation of a comic book or graphic novel that deconstructs the comic book adaptation while manipulating and exploiting the medium in other inimitable ways, I’ll keep it. Or at least I’ll NetFlix the “Ultimate Director’s Cut” DVD that comes out at Christmas.

I guess what I’m trying to say is this: