A Watchmen Review

General consensus said that Watchmen was ‘unfilmable.’ Zack Snyder and co. have proved that it can be made into a movie — just not a very good one. There’s solid reasons for leaving Watchmen as a comic book. For one, it’s the story’s natural medium. Some might think that there are stories out there, and medium is just a way of expressing them. That’s not the case, as the chosen medium has major effects on the story and the way it can be told. Watchmen wants to be told as a comic book, stuck between the pure text of novels and the pure visuals of film, since it is, in many ways, a comic book about comic books. It’s the deconstruction of the super hero genre, commenting on and subverting all of those tropes, so of course it would be more effective as a comic book itself.

But the problems of adaptation have been hashed out before. Besides, you might say, if comic books should stay comic books, how do you explain Spiderman or Batman? True, they made some excellent and popular movies with those properties. But I’d argue that in the instances where it worked, the comic book was not the natural format for the story. Those punch ‘em up hero stories want 24 frames a second. So much of them are devoted to action and fight sequences. In the case of Spiderman, the medium it was first told in was limiting the experience. Seeing Spiderman swing through New York on film is far superior to seeing four dinky little panels with only six colors to show it.

Watchmen, no matter how Snyder might present it, is not really about action. In fact, I have a difficult time remembering any of the fight sequences in the book, sequences which Snyder has gorily extrapolated on in the movie, so much so that it distracts you from what the story is actually about: the characters.

These characters, so intriguing in the comic, get drowned out by the excesses of noise and violence.  While the more conventional characters come off fine — psychotic but committed Rorschach, nebbish and nerdy Nite Owl, token hot girl Silk Spectre — the more complex characters of Ozymandias and Dr. Manhattan seem poorly sketched, even for someone who’s read the comic. Manhattan gets plenty of screen time, but the simple fact of his existence is glossed over, leaving the audience confused: just what are the limits of his powers? How exactly does he perceive time? What the hell is this business about tachyons?

Ozymandias, played by a poorly cast Matthew Goode, is even more carelessly portrayed. In the comic book he’s a wonderfully unique villain, a hard-line utilitarian with a cruel pragmatism beneath the square jaw and golden hair. In the film he’s a more obvious archfiend, with a faint Jeremy Irons vibe and accent. At one point Snyder comes crashing through the fourth wall like the Kool-Aid man, having Ozymandias smirk into camera, “I’m not some comic book villain.” Unfortunately, that’s not quite true, since the Ozymandias we get is just a run of the mill comic book villain. That’s a shame, since so much of the narrative’s impact relies on the reader’s complicated feelings towards him; in one of the movie’s more on-point lines, he says he’s “killed millions to save billions.” While he says it, we don’t feel it. Really, who gives a shit about the fact that New York’s been destroyed? In the book, we have two ancillary characters to hold our sympathies and make the metropolis’ destruction suitably devastating. Here it’s just kind of pretty, with a blue orb of light pulsing NYC into rubble. It’s visually arresting, but lacks any emotional heft — a problem endemic in the film and, I’m discovering, all of Snyder’s work.

Snyder’s visual sense lends itself well to some seriously kick ass trailers — remember 300? — but flops in feature length. Not since John Woo has this much mo been slowed. Run it all at full speed, and this is a 90 minute film. It’s a cheap ploy on Snyder’s part to build tension, and rarely reaches beyond gratuity. And the things we’re treated to in slow motion; a SWAT office counting to three, his sweaty lips filling the screen, stands out as the most absurd. The strange things Snyder trains his camera on reminds me of this article, which talks about how autistic people watch movies.

When there’s a passionate kiss, most viewers focus on the lips. But people with autism look elsewhere — often at the light switch on the wall.

Snyder has a similarly distracted directorial eye. For instance, if there’s blood on the screen, you will see it. I can think of three shots devoted solely to the way blood spurts and fountains. There’s one where Dr. Manhattan makes giblets out of some thugs, and we’re treated to a lingering shot of the gore splattered on the ceiling, and not just blood — you can even see a blood-slicked skeletal hand swinging from the rafters. That’s more of a grace note for Snyder, really. How about the back alley brawl between Nite Owl, Silk Spectre, and a gang of Asian anarchists? There’s a real plot mover for you. See, it establishes that Nite Owl is capable of inflicting gruesome compound fractures on his enemy, and that Silk Spectre can plant a knife in some sucker’s jugular without any change in expression. It’s all part of Snyder’s complete inability to understate anything. This is cinematic maximalism on the order of Tarantino, but with none of the self-awareness.

In one (of course bloody) sequence, Snyder takes a shot at some dark humor and sets himself up for a little bit of subtlety. During the absurd prison break sequence, Rorschach is menaced by a dwarf named Big Figure (played by Danny Woodburn, aka Mickey from Seinfeld). When the tables are turned and it’s Rorschach doing the menacing, Big Figure hustles into the bathroom to hide. Of course Rorschach sees him step into the bathroom, but as he goes to follow, Nite Owl stops him. Let’s go, Dreiberg says, but Rorschach tells him to wait a minute. He needs to use the men’s room. Then he shoves the door open and enters the bathroom, and here Snyder shows some actual finesse. He positions the camera right outside the door, so as Rorschach approaches the cowering dwarf, the swinging white door obscures more and more of the action, finally closing right as Rorschach is about to kill. Then we get a few shots of Patrick Wilson and Malin Akerman hamming it up while Rorschach carries out the deed. After a few more seconds, he steps out of the bathroom and all three heroes move on. Great, good stuff. But Snyder won’t let it lie. To hammer home his point, he slowly pans to the crack beneath the door, and of course a lake of blood seeps out from beneath it.

Far as I could tell, none of this mega violence served any purpose beyond getting Snyder off. He shoots his fight scenes as passionately and with as much erotic energy as other directors shoot their sex scenes, and then tries to port those techniques into the actual sex scenes, which results in some of the least erotic, most laughable on-screen fucking I’ve seen since his last movie. After playing fireman and rescuing a roomful of grubby tenement dwellers, Dan and Laurie abscond to Dan’s airship. They take her up above the clouds, and then, horny at the thought of all that heroism, strip off their latex and go at it. Cue the slow motion. We’re treated to Skinemax softcore, all in the most painstaking slow mo. Most horrifically, we’re subjected to a shot of Patrick Wilson’s much-filmed ass (dude must have no nudity clause in his contract, which you’ll discover if you ever look up¹ Little Children, which has him jack hammering Kate Winslet on a washing machine), and the slow motion is so slow you can see his buttocks rippling. Pair this with the absolute lack of heat in the scene, and you’re squirming only a little less than you are in the fight sequences. But of course, Snyder has to throw on a little capper. So he has Akerman, transported by her simulated arousal, slap one of the airship’s many buttons. This particular button is the flame thrower, causing the airship to ejaculate a gout of fire. Nice.²

But that’s not all. Did I mention that the song playing throughout is Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah? I hope you just shuddered, because I know I did when I heard the opening chords. Look, I really enjoy the song. I have no less than 4 versions of it on my computer, all by different artists. But this is really not the right song for this scene. Same story for the rest of the movie, as Snyder makes some music choices so blatantly obvious that they’re almost incongruous. I mean, Sound of Silence for a funeral? Really? A five second snatch of 99 Luftballoons? Random Hendrix? The Times They Are A-Changing for the opening montage? Hell, he even uses Ride of the Valkyries for his Vietnam sequence, which is probably just an homage to Apocalypse now. The only problem was it reminded me of a much better filmmaker and his much better film.

¹ Don’t. It’s terrible.

²(Sidenote: I’ve seen it argued that the apparently ham-fisted handling of the sex scene is a bit of irony by Snyder. I reject that. First, it completely undermines what you’re trying to convey in the scene, which is the consummation of Laurie and Dan’s relationship. Second, it underlines the fact that Dan can only get it up for Laurie after a bout of heroism, which is a pretty dismal commentary on the character and further weakens the relationship for the viewer. While the point’s moot in either case, I really do think Snyder is just this tone deaf. Consider the sex scene in 300 between Leonidas and Queen Gorgo, which is another boner shrinker.)

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