Review of Watchmen (2001) by Mark H — 08 Feb 2015

[u][b]"WATCHMEN": A REVIEW AND ANALYSIS IN FIVE PARTS[/b][/u].

The genre of comic book films takes another bold leap forward. Not because of the R-rated brutal violence and explicit sex, but because of a complex narrative, strong characters and performances, and a serious examination of human nature and emotion in the midst of history and conflict.

I entered the theater expecting to have a fun time, to enjoy a well-made comic book film that was well done but with many flaws. I knew it was supposedly faithful to the core plotline and to much of the dialogue, but that many of the sub-plots and textures of the book had been removed. So my expectation was, I felt, set at a reasonably optimistic but contained level, hoping for a film that achieved the generally good quality of previous films such as Iron Man and Spider-Man, but not the level of "The Dark Knight".

As it turns out, my expectations were wrong, on many levels. What I'd like to do now is divide my review into three parts. First, I'll give a very brief review for those who haven't seen the film yet and look at the film as an entity in and of itself. Then I'd like to look at where the film got things right, with discussion of some spoilers regarding changes and literal adaptations from the book. Finally, I'd like to look at where I think the film got things wrong. I want to do this because my reaction to the film is actually threefold - my expectations and how that played out, my sense of the film as its own entity, and my reaction to the film's distillation of the source material.

[u][b]PART I: BRIEF NON-SPOILER REVIEW[/b][/u].

Most fans will be probably be thrilled by this pretty-faithful adaptation of the comic, and mainstream audiences will be mesmerized by haunting visuals, breathtaking action, and serious examinations of the faces behind masked heroes. It's a political thriller, a murder mystery, a human drama, and an action adventure stunningly portrayed by Zack Snyder, who offers a beautifully rendered film that is clearly a labor of love and tries to fit as much of the story in as possible.

The central plot of the comic remains amazingly intact here, and I'm rather stunned at how well it was preserved and condensed while still getting so many of the important sequences in, with some smart decisions about where to link sequences and where best to make cuts. The loss of the extra materials is of course more than unfortunate, but any film version was bound to lose the comic-within-a-comic and the pure text portions of the source material.

The acting is impressive overall, particularly Crudup as Dr. Manhattan, Haley as Rorschach, and Morgan as The Comedian. As great as Haley is, I personally feel that Crudup's character is the heart of the film. Despite being hidden behind CGI, Crudup brings such humanity and purpose to the character that he stands out as ultimately the one with the most understanding of and connection to the fragility of the human condition. Haley seems to have found the character he was born to play on film, and is every bit the embodiment of Rorschach that you've heard. But Morgan hasn't gotten nearly enough praise for his role, but he seemed to grasp something central to the character, the gleam of fearful joy mixed with horror at his own actions. Morgan gives us a cynical, brutal man who has seen - and carried out - the worst aspects of human nature, while hating every moment of it.

Visually, the film is just amazing. Not just special effects, but the framing of shots, the use of close-ups and wide pans, backgrounds, everything is wonderful to behold. This is without any doubt Snyder's finest work, and should remove any doubt that he is a great filmmaker who can now at least make a case for the title "visionary".

Looking at the film itself, out of the context of it as an adaptation of a previous work and just as the film itself, my feeling is that this is a phenomenal and important film, far exceeding expectations. While I still feel that "The Dark Knight" is my personal favorite and contains more overall brilliance, I would have to admit that "Watchmen" was indeed in the same league in terms of transcendent writing and filmmaking, and as a masterwork likely to change the future of comic book films and the concept of the blockbuster. I know this will be a controversial sentiment, but remember I'm saying this as if Watchmen were an original film and is viewed simply for the film itself. In that regard I feel "Watchmen" achieved something dramatically different and amazing in film. I will talk later about the fact that "Watchmen" IS based on source material, and how this has a big impact on my assessment of the film.

So as a basic non-spoiler review, I'd say that "Watchmen" joins "The Dark Knight" among the best comic films, transcending genre, reaching new heights of magnificent filmmaking. It gets a lot more right than it gets wrong, and the missteps within the context of the film itself are very few and don't diminish the quality of the vast majority of the film. Ignoring a glaring exception within the context of the adaptation aspect, which I will discuss below, my overall grade for the film is an "A".

[u][b]PART II: SOME *SPOILER* DISCUSSION OF WHAT WORKED[/b][/u].

Now some thoughts about what works so well in the film, with discussion of spoilers.

First, fans paying close attention will happy to discover that there was in fact a "squid" at the end of the film. The name of the device created by Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan spells out the acronym S.Q.U.I.D. As for this huge change made in the film, I have to admit that I'm among those who feel that the film got it more right than the original book. This ending, putting the blame on Dr. Manhattan as the big threat to humanity, is more consistent with the overall themes and narrative about humanity. It fits so well in fact that I'm a bit surprised that Alan Moore didn't come up with this concept for the book instead.

I'd like to also mention again that I think the admittedly excessive violence and added gore in the film was for a purpose beyond just shock-value. I think Snyder realized that the necessary removal of the pure-text aspects of the book, plus cutting or condensing of some sequences (again usually out of necessity), meant the loss of some of the deeper analysis of the concept of heroes and how they operate, which gave insight into the themes of violence and peace in the story.

These helped build the parallel between analysis of human violence and resort to force to achieve supposedly peaceful and justifiable ends. So to make up for the loss of this analysis in those contexts and aspects of the story that were removed, I feel that Snyder used the portrayal of the more brutal violence to keep reminding the audience that in this film's world, the fighting of superheroes doesn't just send an anonymous thug to the ground quickly and without attention to the outcome - we see that yes, this sort of typically displayed superhero violence causes bones to rip through skin, something audiences never see or have to think about in the typical summer blockbuster or superhero film.

The gore of blood and organs dripping from the ceiling when Dr. Manhattan blows up thugs in that bar, for example, and his very wonderfully subtle reaction looking at the outcome, served a strong purpose here. And importantly, the change to Rorschach's dispatching of that child-killer very much served this purpose as well. Instead of a fire where we don't see the man's actual demise (which works fine in the book because of the ample additional aspects dwelling on the theme of hero-violence), we are forced to witness exactly what happens, a moment horrible to witness even though we know the man was a brutal, bloodthirsty killer who committed an act that makes our skin crawl and would be terrible to behold... just like the act we are now seeing Rorschach commit. It's easy to say, "If I was alone with a child-killer, I'd kill the s.o.b." etc, and most people like to imagine the horrors we'd inflict upon such inhumane people. However, in "Watchmen" we are forced to WATCH what that sort of "justice" really looks like - a meat-cleaver to the head, hacking and hacking away at the man's face. That's the point behind this gore and violence, and I think Snyder used it well. It's a gutsy, smart decision for this film.

I didn't find the fake nose on Nixon anywhere near as distracting and phoney-looking as I'd heard. I thought it was the prosthetics around his mouth (particularly his upper-lip) that were more the problem. But it didn't really bother me much, although I do think that the film would've been better served if Nixon had been seen mostly from the back and the side, in shadows, as was done in the book. He talked a lot more in the film, got a lot more up-close face-time, and I don't really think it was necessary and I'm not sure what purpose this really served. Still, the makeup itself wasn't a big deal like I thought it might be. But I am glad that the film retained the time period and aspects like Nixon as president etc, because I think setting the film in the Cold War was important, and that it in fact has MUCH relevance to today and works powerfully as a parallel to modern times.

I also didn't think Akerman was bad, as I'd heard. I do feel that there were a couple of key scenes - notably the one on Mars with Dr. Manhattan - where her dramatic range didn't seem to fit into the moment, and where a stronger performance would have taken the scenes up several notches to make them as powerful as they needed to be. But overall, she did fine in the role and to the extent those few scenes would have been better served with stronger acting, the scenes didn't end up falling flat (on Mars, this was mostly due to the breathtaking spectacle of the imagery plus Crudup's strikingly powerful performance).

I think the real problem was actually the limitations of her character in the script, which oddly omitted scenes far too important for her character. For example, one reason that the scene on Mars, when she admits to herself that Comedian is her father, didn't suffer more from the lack of a strong dramatic performance is because there was no prior buildup for Laurie to really hate Comedian in the first place. Aside from the one moment in the fim where she reminds her mother that Comedian tried to rape her, what other scenes ever had her speak ill of him or demonstrated her lifelong hatred of the man, or even that she wasn't bothered by his death and actually was glad he died? None.

So lacking a strong characterization that included sequences showing how she despised the man and had long suppressed her memories to avoid confronting this horrible truth, that truth becomes not quite as huge a deal or as powerful a part of her character arc. Thus her crying and anger at the realization while on Mars didn't end up needing as strong a dramatic moment, and whatever limitations existed in the performance had less of a negative impact on the film, because the characterization was lacking in the first place. That sounds strange, I know, but it might have been awkward if the role had been filled by someone who gave a strong emotional portrayal during moments like the one on Mars, because it would've seemed so out of place and out of nowhere, that I actually think the film was served better the way it is.

Finally, I'll mention again how overall amazingly true to the book's central plot this film is. I am really stunned that they got so much of the book's main plot and scenes on the screen like this, and did it so well. If a DVD version of the film inserts the "documentary" Under the Hood into the extended 3 hr 20 minutes of main-plot footage, and then the comic book "Black Freighter" is also broken up and inserted as well, fans would have probably a four to five hour version of the film that is probably THE closest thing to a living version of the comic that is possible to create. I hope they do make such a version on the DVD, or give the option of playing the Director's Cut of the film along with insertion of the other two items (the comic and documentary) into the film. Since of course a theatrical release of the film simply could not and was never going to be that long and include such extended elements, however, I feel that this film - and probably even more so the upcoming July Director's Cut - is the closest thing to the source material in a theatrical release that we could possibly have hoped for.

And if you can just do your best to forget the source material in a way, and just watch this film itself without preconceptions and for what it IS, considering "what would I think of this if it just came out in theaters one day without any previous source material, as a brand new original superhero film?" In that context, this film would - I have no doubt about this whatsoever - be hailed as a true masterpiece of the genre, as a film that just pushed comic book films to an entirely new level of filmmaking and analysis.

Even considering it as a mainstream big-budget Hollywood film adaptation of the book, however, there is so much to praise and love in this film that it is still highly enjoyable, a terrific piece of filmmaking, a mostly-faithful interpretation, and among the top tier of comic book films as well as among the new generation of such films that will transform the genre and how audiences and Hollywood look at and make these films from now on.

[u][b]PART III: SERIOUS *SPOILER* DISCUSSION OF WHAT DIDN'T WORK[/b][/u].

Well, having laid out what I think DOES work in the film, and all of the reasons I give the film an overall grade of "A", now I want to look at the very limited area where the film went wrong. I'm not even going to talk about minor things here or there, like how the fight scenes being a little shorter and a little less Nixon would have allowed more time for this or that extra scene elsewhere. Those are small concerns that don't ultimately detract from the greatness in the film. I want to focus here on one aspect that was a problem of such large proportion that it causes me to have such a very mixed reaction to the film.

On the one hand, the film is as I said an amazingly faithful distillation of the main plot and most of the key sequences of that story. Where aspects of the story or key scenes are condensed, it's done incredibly well (like fitting Rorschach's in-prison story with the psychiatrist into a single sequence on film) and preserves the best of the moments in a valid interpretation of the material in each of these scenes.

However - and this is an unfortunately pretty big "however" - there is a difference between getting the central plot right, and getting the important narrative points right. Most of them are indeed preserved and portrayed very well. But where the film misses one particular BIG narrative point, it misses by a huge margin.

I'm talking about the ultimate message of the story and in particular the entire point of casting the tale and the message in the context of superheroes. This happens rather subtly, because throughout the vast majority of the film the buildup to this message is actually maintained strongly, and is (I believe) at the heart of why Snyder utilized excessive violence and gore in moments of the film (to draw attention to the comparison between the violence of the heroes - as in Dr. Manhattan's consideration of his own actions after the gory eruption of some of his enemies).

Yet at the end, a decision is made to avoid bringing this arc to fruition, by altering or entirely removing a tiny number of moments from the original story. This doesn't just avoid bringing the arc to it's powerful conclusion, it also creates an entirely different arc that is in.