Watchmen: deep in print, shallow on film
Bottom line: Who watches the Watchmen? Hopefully no one.
Grade: C-
For a generation of comic book fans, Watchmen defined the medium. Sidestepping the camp and POW! of most superhero sagas, Alan Moore brought a new depth and relevance to his heroes. These weren’t masked avengers fighting arch-nemeses. These were people fighting people, a small group of protectors trying to save humanity from itself. Everything was relatable, in the truly frightening way that makes readers do a double-take on the depravity of human nature. Watchmen gave a nation of nerds what they needed — validation. Through it, comic books became legitimate, a form of art and literature instead of mindless children’s entertainment. Watchmen is the reason comic books are called graphic novels.
That’s why it’s such a shame Watchmen was turned into a comic book movie. Recent hits like Iron Man belie the long history of movie misses that continue to haunt comic book fans. Every cheesy comic book movie chips away a little bit of the credibility built up by Watchmen and other graphic novels. Taking the best of the genre and bringing it down to the level of a movie is like remixing Beethoven. It hurts everyone.
The frustrating thing is that the movie is more or less faithful to the book. The costumes are amazing. Seeing Rorschach’s ever-changing mask in motion was a high point of the movie. The casting is great. Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays the Comedian full of pathos and tragedy and Billy Crudup plays the superhuman Dr. Manhattan with the complete lack of emotion the character requires. Artistically, director Zach Snyder uses slow motion to match the effect of panels in a comic book, even going so far as to recreate panels exactly. The camera doesn’t shy away from sex and violence, showing things fully the way the book does. The plot is followed closely. Even large chunks of the dialogue made it through relatively unscathed. So why does it still kind of suck?
The short answer is because Watchmen wasn’t meant to be a movie. You can’t hold a movie in your hands, rereading pages and soaking in the art. You won’t get weird looks for reading it at the lunch table. You don’t have to seek it out. Comic books are a niche medium, where readers expect to find meaning and seriousness behind the silly costumes. Watchmen isn’t a blockbuster with a best-of-the-‘70s soundtrack. It is a comic book, the best comic book, and translating it into anything else sacrifices its meaning and its importance.
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I DON'T BELIEVE YOU, SARAH COLLINS. Or you can return home.
Did you even see the movie? This article hardly even qualifies as a review. You make passing references to the actual film and state that “Watchmen” doesn’t work on film, but give no explanation as to why it doesn’t work.
“Translating it into anything else sacrifices its meaning and its importance.” Really? All of its meaning and its importance? How does it manage to do that? Oh, that’s right. You don’t explain anything in your review. So you’re telling me, that none of the themes from the books make it on the big screen. I find that incredibly hard to believe. If the movie is as faithful as YOU claim it to be, how does it not translate to the screen? It’s generally a good idea to explain yourself when trying to argue a point. You might as well have said, “It was bad. The end.”
What your “review” amounts to is the sad whining of a fanboy, nay girl, who is too stubborn to take a movie for what it is, an adaptation, and evaluate it from that standpoint. You knew you wouldn’t like this movie walking into it. It never had a shot.
Walter Kovacs
March 6, 2009 at 2:55 am
This is Madness.
Just came back from the movie, while it ain’t perfect, it was still wonderful.
Hollis Mason
March 6, 2009 at 4:49 am
I personally found the movie highly enjoyable.
Just saying it translates poorly to film isn’t enough for a review. Why didn’t you like it as a movie, that might help a bit.
Some meaning might be lost, such as the intended absurdity of the novel’s true ending, but you still walk away with the same meaning.
Place the words “SPOILER-ALERT” in the article name and say what you really think about the film, and don’t say the film was bad because it just is (that’s really what it sounds like you’re trying to say).
I personally would recommend this film to anyone. The first few minutes of the film after the initial fight scene might be a bit slow and boring, but beyond that hiccup, it was great. The acting was fantastic minus one or two oddballs.
Alan Moore was quite wrong labeling this work as unfilmable.
Daniel Dreiberg
March 6, 2009 at 5:33 am
I always tended to agree with Alan Moore, Terry Gilliam and the author of this article that Watchmen was “unfilmable.” Then the trailers got me pumped. Maybe it wouldn’t be a perfect translation of the comic, but at least we would get to see Dr. Manhattan and Sally Jupiter and Rorschach on the big screen.
Now that I’ve seen it, it’s obvious that the movie doesn’t live up to the thematic grandeur of the novel. But it does come surprisingly close, which is more than I could have ever hoped for. This might be the best film adaptation that we Watchmen fanboys could have ever hoped for. Immensely entertaining, morally ambiguous, visually stunning.
There were flaws, sure (no explanation for Bubastis, no mention of the New Frontiersman until the end, not enough psychic evaluation by Dr. Long, no Long subplot with his wife, zero Bernard the news vendor, etc.), but for a 2 and a half hour Watchmen film I don’t think we could have hoped for any better.
Can’t wait for Snyder’s 3 and a half hour extended version (with Black Freighter and all) that should be out by Christmas.
Jon Osterman
March 6, 2009 at 4:13 pm
“The short answer is because Watchmen wasn’t meant to be a movie.”
I’d like to see the long answer, because the short answer simply doesn’t cut it for this to be a legitimate movie review.
Edward Blake
March 6, 2009 at 6:08 pm
“You can’t hold a movie in your hands, rereading pages and soaking in the art. You won’t get weird looks for reading it at the lunch table. You don’t have to seek it out.”
- You do have to seek it out – by going to the movies.
- Why do you have to hold it in your hands? Just go see it again if the awesomeness is too much to digest the first time. It’s a trade-off, where with books you can flip through it as you see fit and with movies you can just watch and enjoy it without squinting to read. If you think the movie format is so inferior to that of the comic book, why are you reviewing movies? Take it for what it is – a movie.
- Why do you want to get weird looks? That seems like a masochistic pleasure that most of us probably don’t share with the reviewer. Do you derive some pleasure from being the lone-comic-book-reader? Do yo have delusions of being the comic-savvy cool kid a la Mallrats? You only had so many words to write in that review, why waste them saying something stupid about the personal enjoyment you derive from sitting at the lunch table (in middle school?) reading The Flash? Did you even do that?
Honestly, this reviewlooks like a patchwork smattering of those written by professionals who actually defend their opinion – sans the defense; it doesn’t even look like you saw the film.
Also, please stop writing reviews if you don’t have any respect for the art form.
Adrian Veidt
March 7, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Sorry guys, I agree with the author here. Like most of America watching this movie, I have not read the novel. I felt distanced from the movie the entire time. The movie was a little too long and bloated, had an intro that packed in way too much background information, and had pacing issues.
The movie was visually stunning. The performance by the actor who played Rorschach did a terrific job as well as good performances by other characters. But there was never any point where I really felt into and with the movie.
The previous angry commenters all seem like they have their panties in a twist because someone gave their long-awaited movie that stayed true to their novel a poor review. I’m sure Watchmen is a terrific graphic novel. But this movie was only slightly above-average.
EE
March 8, 2009 at 12:22 pm
EE,
First, the reviewer would have had to make a point in her criticism for you to agree with her.
Also, it’s fine that you don’t like the movie. It’s far from perfect, but what I do have a problem with is someone dismissing any movie without giving a fair shake. What Sarah Collins does is skirt any real criticism and make the same conclusions she planned on making before she had even seen the film.
Not only does Sarah unfairly dismiss a good film without a real explanation as to why she feels it didn’t work, she trashes the medium of film as a whole. The closes thing to an argument she presents is little more than “Comic books > movies,” and even that is more eloquent than this review.
Walter Kovacs
March 8, 2009 at 1:04 pm
nah, i liked the movie. some cheesy parts, but all in all, well worth my $8.50
good movie
March 8, 2009 at 4:56 pm
Your review sucks.
It has nothing to do with importance or significance,
You have a good point about the soundtrack but just stating that it wasn’t meant to be a movie doesn’t cut it. You sort of have to like, argue it.
Like I understand Alan Moore wrote the graphic novel in a way that is untranslatable to literature or cinema, but that’s not what’s wrong with the movie. It’s missing the point more than anything.
Talk about why the book is strong and the movie leaves you with a weak feeling.
Jesus Christ finish up your premature ejaculation of a review.
Jack
March 20, 2009 at 6:33 am
Sorry Sarah, but to make any kind o review about a film, it´s necessary some kind of knowledge about the language os films u know? Come here and just wright about the “impossibilities of life” is garbage for me… Watchmen on film does not uses the same language of Watchmen on the Graphic Novel(even with the respect that Snyder had for the original) and thats the only thing important at all. I believe that Watchmen is one of the best adaptations made, and it plus have some kind of “personality” on the cinema that goes beyond the simple concept of adaptation, just take a look at the DARK(on the photograf, on the faces, on the backgrounds on the speechs) in this Watchmen and you start to understand that the atmosphere and the social critic of Moore is there, but with sound and light and emotion united in one EXTREMELY COMPLEX MOVIE!!! Cause thats what Watchmen surely deserve…Complexity in all manners of the word.
Guys, sorry if the text got some wrong words…It´s because Im Brazilian^^
Champignon
March 26, 2009 at 12:56 am