I just got home from a screening of Watchmen. I bought my tickets four hours beforehand, and as I whittled away the time wandering around Yonge and Dundas, perusing overpriced flannel shirts at Urban Outfitters, my mind always slipped back to wondering: how the hell is this going to turn out?
I suppose I'm one of the newly converted to Watchmen. I'd always known what it was, and although for years had continuously told myself "you are going to have to read that at some point or another," I never did. Unlike my boyfriend, who has been an avid fan since he first read it a decade ago, I didn't spend my childhood reading American comics. I was a dedicated follower of anime and manga, and I spent my formative years on Akira, Escaflowne, and Miyazaki movies. I didn't know a blessed thing about the comics on this side of the globe until very recently.
I'm a big believer in familiarizing myself with a work's source material. So when I discovered a film adaptation of Watchmen was in the works after more than twenty years of trying, I figured it was a good a time as any to get my hands on the thing.
My reaction to it is probably the same reaction every fan experiences after turning the final page: I thought it was absolutely mind-blowing, as a comic and as literature, a truly three-dimensional piece of art. I almost obsessively began to research the upcoming film, watching clips, reading interviews, and overall wondering, how is this intensely multi-layered and complex piece going to translate onto the big screen? I was never one of those people who despises all Alan Moore film adaptations (League of Extraordinary Gentlemen may have been a pile of crap, but V For Vendetta was smart, politically-charged, clever, and hugely entertaining), but it really didn't seem like this one was going to go over well. There was so much fanboy backlash - especially over the altered ending, which I'll get to later. Everyone had a different idea of what should be left in, what should be left out, how Rorschach's voice should sound, whether Dr. Manhattan should be naked or not, and so on and so forth in that vein. I wasn't as emotionally invested, perhaps because I was a new fan, so I essentially went into the theatre thinking whatever happens, happens, and I will approach this with as little preconceived notions as possible.
Now that I'm home and have had a few hours to debate with myself about this, I will have to conclude that the film adaptation of Watchmen is not a failure on any level. It was fairly faithful to the source material and didn't sacrifice much of its intellect and insight, but as a film itself there were several glaring faults that prevented it from being a masterpiece as the original was.
The first hour or so of the film was the absolute best, in my opinion. The pacing was a tad slow but the artistry in which the scenes were constructed was phenomenal, and the opening credit sequence was easily the cleverest and most emotionally effective I've seen in a long while. Visually, it is incredible, with some excellently constructed shots that I very much appreciated. There were moments in which things seemed too over-the-top (the action, the fairly excessive slow motion, the delivery of lines), but Watchmen itself is over-the-top in places. The key word, however, is places, and as the movie went on I found myself a little confused by the amount of over-reaching. To that effect, my main gripe about Watchmen was the score: it was terrible. It felt like more of mixtape of nostalgic-sounding Top 40's than an actual selection of appropriate music for each scene. In some instances it was oddly fitting - The Comedian and Nite Owl II fighting off the angry mob, for example - but in most cases it was a bizarre, jarring, and distracting choice.
As for the acting, it was a mixed bag. Billy Crudup is an undeservedly underrated actor and I thought that, for a performance in which he was almost entirely 3D, he did a standout job giving Dr. Manhattan the perfect blend of otherworldly detachment and humanistic characteristics. I enjoyed Jeffrey Dean Morgan as The Comedian, and although my partner in crime disagrees with me on this, I found that he gave The Comedian just the right amount of bombastic attitude without being a mere parody. Matthew Goode as Ozymandias was better than I originally thought, and his coldness and poise with only few overt signs of weakness was excellently carried out. I had high hopes for Jackie Earl Haley but I found his Rorschach more lifeless than it should have been, and more beyond the audience being able to identify with him. When his mask was off, on the other hand, he was much more effective and the subtle emotional ticks that seeped through his otherwise unchanging facade were impressive. Patrick Wilson I'm still on the fence about - I can't quite decide if I liked his performance, to be honest. It felt as though he played the entire role of Nite Owl II in superhero-mode, delivering some of his lines with too much earnestness to be serious. But he did shine in some of his scenes. Malin Akerman, on the other hand, was fairly bad. She's a beautiful lady, and although she wasn't as terrible as I was expecting, she definitely overacted with too much enthusiasm more than once.
Several instances in the overall story I wasn't sure about. On the whole I thought the narration was fairly tight and flowed well on the whole, minus the odd overly long scene, but it seemed poorly thought-out when compared to the comic. Two of my favourite scenes from the comic, Dr. Manhattan's rebirth and Walter Kovacs talking with the psychiatrist, weren't given much justice - Jon's rebirth was under-acted (why in god's name was Janey not more upset, anyway?), and the Rorschach counselling was far too short. It felt almost as if it was alienating those in the audience not familiar to the comic. Why was Bubastis even included when the squid subplot wasn't, and why leave out Kitty Genovese's dress? Two of my friends whom I'd seen Watchmen with, and who hadn't read the comic, were confused about Bubastis and were interested in knowing the story behind Rorschach's mask, and they can't have been the only ones.
Speaking of the squid - I actually was never a fan of that particular part of the comic. It seemed like a random inclusion of something so far-fetched and nutty in a comic full of hardboiled realism that it seemed arbitrary. On the other hand, I'm not wild about the new ending in the film. I won't go into any spoilers but it also seemed a bit inexplicable, albeit not as nutty.
Another instance in which I enjoyed Watchmen was that it felt like it didn't sacrifice the original's brutal violence and grittiness. There was nothing Hollywood-slick about it, despite the abundant use of CGI. None of the musings and philosophy behind the original was disposed of, either. It still prompts the same questions as the comic, but this time in an entirely different visual medium, one that, although less gut-wrenching, raw, and complex as the original, still serves to be an interesting and engaging experience nonetheless.
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