The Virgin Read: Some Lady Complains About Watchmen But It's Not Like She Read It So Who Cares

Watchmen: The Movie

I come to this blank page after leaving my email inbox, where I was reading responses to a Facebook Status update thread regarding various people's disappointment with Watchmen. (There’s a sentence that would have made no sense twenty years ago, and may still not.) I concurred with the status, while one person did not.  She wanted to know why we didn’t like it.

For the record, I love the super-hero movies I've seen.  I haven’t seen them all, and they haven’t all been “good;” but I've loved them all. For instance, Superman Returns may have dragged a bit, gone on a bit too long, and I definitely don't want to see it again...but stylistically?  I loved it!  I think comic book movies can take the movie goer exactly where they want to go sometimes in a way a lot of other movies can't.  Much like the way I imagine a Busby Berkeley film took moviegoers into a totally new experience back in his day.  It’s a total escape for me.  And comic book movies can be an escapism filled with universal themes and values, usually involving heroism and bravery, good vs. evil, and it’s usually packaged in a way that just feels cool.  I loved Iron Man.  I even enjoyed the most recent Incredible Hulk.  And yet I wouldn’t call the Hulk or Superman Returns "good" movies.  They were just comic book movies.  I had fun.

So, here am I with the movie of the comic book of all comic books, right?  No, I haven’t read it, by the way.  I read a very small part of it, many years ago, and although I wanted to finish it and impress my boyfriend – I didn’t.  (He married me anyway.) ☺  But I still went to Watchmen with a totally open mind.

I really didn’t enjoy it.  There are several reasons. Let us begin.

TMI – Too much information! 

It's not that I couldn’t understand Watchmen. Generally, it's not hard to understand.  But there was just so much thrown up there, so many back stories crammed into one little movie.  As the Virgin Watcher here (heh! No pun intended!), I feel compelled to say that I wish this one movie had been many more movies.  I don't know if I would have liked or care to watch them, but I might have enjoyed those more than this.  Wouldn’t it have been great if there was a whole movie about Dr Manhattan?  And then a whole movie about The Comedian?  An entire film about the Minutemen?  And finally, at some point in time, a culminating movie called the Watchmen that would have been able to have of brighter, more pointed thru-line?  Instead, it's just so much crammed into one space.  And when you're buried in too much information, you end up with:

CONFUSION 

The movie jumps forward and backward in time so often, it was hard to know, at any given time, what the "when" was at first.  Eventually, I finally picked up on the fact the Nixon was in his, like, 89th term, and was therefore “currently” the president in the 1980's.  But that made it confusing because that point wasn’t clearly made, it was just tossed around.  Plot, setting--these aren't tennis balls.  Like most people, if I see Nixon as president in a movie, I know it’s the 60's.  It's not a big thing, and if I liked the movie I probably wouldn't have cared, but this just added to the whole problem.

Other confusing points?  Well, I found myself saying things to myself like, “boy those superheroes are strong.  Is that why they’re superheroes?  Is it, like, genetic or hereditary?  Because these guys are punching through marble and shit.”  Apparently, this does not fall in line with the comic.  This was all added to the movie for….um, effect?  I mean, it wasn’t to add to the story, right?  Because if it was, I'm not really sure what it was supposed to add, other than looking silly and extreme.  So….whatever.  Let me get on with this.

ACTING 

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again.  I’m a sucker for story.  If the story captures me, the acting could totally suck, and I don’t care.  So, if the story – or part of the story- isn't grabbing me, and the acting sucks, then what?  I am speaking specifically of Malin Ackerman, the "Silk Spectre".  (And yes, I had to look that up despite seeing the movie less than 24 hours ago.  That woman has the depth of a teaspoon. I swear to God, it wasn’t only painful to watch her, it actually made me angry.  Sure she looks good. So do a lot of other actresses who deserve to have that role. Actresses who can actually act.  I mean, it started with her scenes with Dr Manhattan.  Her heartbreak and confusion and distress all read like a bratty, petulant 13 year old.  All her lines felt like monotone script readings.  There was no sense of history to her, no sense that the actor owned the feelings of her character.  I couldn’t take it.  “Vapid” is almost too nice a word to describe her.  (And vapid is a pretty mean word!)

And then there's whats-his-face?   (I'm done "researching" this movie.)  You know, the "smartest guy in the world."  What was with that accent?  It’s like he figured out he could "do American” if he just never opened his mouth.  Yeah, you kinda sound American on some words….when I can hear you!  It’s not theater!  He’s miked, for god's sake!  This is a movie, they have sound editors!  How is it that I couldn’t hear him or understand him?  And again…this is who they gave the part to?  According to some nerd who came with us, Tom Cruise and Jude Law wanted the part at one point!  They may not be the greatest actors alive, but at least you can rely on them to enunciate and speak at a proper volume.

Let me give credit where credit is due, though.  I loved the guy who played Rorshach.  He was awesome. He carried every scene he was in, for the whole movie.  Bravo to him.

BLOOD 

Dude.  Seriously.  I mean, once is enough.  I don’t need to see people get annihilated by nuclear energy and see the blood stain of the body they left behind. I saw so many people just get annihilated. Hello, I got it, gratuitous.  Pull up a chair.  In the jail when Rorshach went into the bathroom after the midget…and we watched through the swinging door as he approached him to, well, to kill him?  And then the toilet flushed?  And then (still!), we saw the bloody water come rushing out the door?  Upon seeing the blood I literally said out loud in the theatre, “Okay, Enough already. We get it.”  I was that girl!  The out-loud-talking-girl!  I hate that girl, that girl that I was!  Which brings me to my next issue with this movie. The director’s obsessive knack for…

CLINGING TO THE OBVIOUS

I feel our director friend--this is the first of his movies I've watched all the way through--could stand to learn a bit about the art of seduction. Less is more.  Better storytelling through cinema.  It's just like when I complain that in comic books the writer and artist aren’t really using the medium – they’re using words where pictures would serve better. Well, in this case, with camera acting as the eye of the observer, this observer needs to learn to look away now and then.  I mean, let’s just talk about that sex scene.  Any need for something of that length? I mean, sure there was a need for the sex between them, but for the full on gyrating?  You watch the entire sexual act!  It could have been alluded to!  And the same can be said, after a while, about a lot of the gore and the death.  We don’t need to see every single piece of what physically happens.  Leave something to the imagination, something besides the story. Which brings me to my truest complaint:

DIRECTOR OBJECTIVE SUPPLANTING STORY

If you’ve ever taken an acting class, you know that the first thing to look for is your character’s main objective – what s/he wants in that scene.  I had a really good teacher, and he early on pointed out that my desire/want/objective to “be good” at acting was constantly overriding my character’s objective. I constantly made my character's truest desire impossible to achieve, because I was so wrapped up in myself.

I felt like the Watchmen's director was trying so hard to be a cool, edgy, awesome director, he lost his way in really telling a story.  Point of view kept getting skewed for me.  I mean, he focused so much on shattering glass and how it shattered and the way the light bounced off it as it hit the ground, that he lost us caring about who went through the window.  And it’s because his desire to have really "cool" effects overrode his desire to tell a good story.

Here's the culminating factor as to what I didn’t like about it.  As we approach the end of the movie, an apocalypse-type thing occurs.  Yes?  I watch people, characters whom we’ve met, get lifted up by the blast, hover and then get turn to blood and guts before my eyes.  What does this do to me as a viewer? Makes me feel sorry for them.  Makes me feel angry about what’s happened.

So, at the end, I cannot and will not get on board with the idea that doing this, and blaming Dr Manhattan is truly the way to world peace.  I don't mean that I can't get on board with it being "right" or something crazy like that.  I mean I can't get on board with it even being a believable climax in the context of the film I just watched.  I mean it just doesn't work, because I don't believe I'm watching a world that cares about that sort of thing, that sort of tragedy, that sort of death.  I can’t do it.  Maybe in the comic book it makes some sense.  But in the movie, you showed me people die, in my city, in a horrific way from that blast.  And if you’ve showed me that, then psychologically, I’m not going to say “okay” minutes later. The director made that impossible.  Whatever point was originally made by this comic is lost on me, because of the director’s selfish and narcisstic need to do cool effects.  Now, I'm sure there was one--I've read enough comics that I've thought were pretty clever that I feel pretty sure that this one, this super-hero comic, must have something in it that's really special because I've heard enough nice things about it to believe that it must be pretty special.

But you know what?  After we watched this, the people who had read it asked me, and they asked the other woman with us, if we wanted to read the comic after watching the movie.  I just said "no, not really."  The other woman?

"Not a fucking chance!"

-Nina Stone, 2009

Comments

[revD]

I managed forty minutes. Up to Rorschach's little bit of gorehound splatterama with the cleaver. At which point I left. Laughing. Because it was hands-down the most boring, po-faced attempt at Serious Comics On Screen I could have hoped for.

This is the second film where Snyder's decided "What this rape scene needs is more fetishized punching!" Actually, wait, that's not true-- there was no rape in Miller's original '300'. (Surprised? I was.) Snyder et al. decided having the queen raped would sell as motivation for that crazy suicidal 'dying for the glory of Sparta' jazz, so, you know, just throw some queen rape on there.

Not that I'm saying Snyder's a cheap genre hack exploitation filmmaker or anything, but he was a little hot to flash a lesbian hate crime in the title cards, don't you think? A scene which Alan Moore, that old fool, thought more horrific for not putting on a plate and serving up with extra cranberries.

Anyway, you nailed it. WATCHMEN: aloof, inconsistent, and in love with Totally Metal Aftereffects. Boring as a docudrama about a Florida retiree (played by Sir Anthony Hopkins) licking his way through a stamp collection. Seriously, there were only seven other people in the theatre tonight. Not exactly Opening Weekend Action, WB!

[Kenny]

The comic is so good because it's all about subtlety. For example, Nixon's presidency is slowly revealed as coming about because Nixon:
- had the Comedian kill JFK
- used Dr. Manhattan to end Vietnam by nuking the Hell out of it (still allowing him to firebomb Cambodia)
- establish America's nuclear dominance, thus achieving Regan like popularity

The ending was completely different, too, because it was as much a result of the characters naturally interacting as it was the plot.

The book is everything we could want from a comic. It is quite literally the perfect use of the comic medium to tell a story. I knew this movie was going to suck as soon as I read some producer or marketing person say "the reason people love the comic is because of all the sex and violence." (Or something to that effect. It was on Deadline Hollywood Daily.)

[Paul DeBenedetto]

The real craziness is all the nerds who refuse to let it be bad. Newsarama did a poll where on a scale of 1-10 something like 70% of the votes were in the 7-10 range. I mean I get it, I suppose. If you rally for something so hard and then finally get it you so badly want it to be good that you trick yourself into thinking it was. But there's this idea amongst fanboys that those viewers who saw the film's flaws are somehow "nitpicking" and that's almost depressingly delusional.

[Matthew J. Brady]

See, it all depends on what you wanted the film to be (me, I would like it to not exist at all). An adaptation that changes things in order to transfer the story to film in ways that make use of the medium while keeping themes, characters, etc. intact? That would be preferable, but many fans would then nitpick the hell out of any changes. Instead, Snyder went with Sin City route, trying to basically make the comic move onscreen, which is just stupid, since why bother? I don't like audiobooks because I don't like having a book read to me, so why do I want to have somebody hold the comic up in front of me and read the words out loud? But that seems to be the defense, that it's as close to the book as possible when you're making a blockbuster film, so why complain? But if noting how "awesome" something is is your main form of engagement with a work of art, then complaints about depth, and acting, and theme, and lack of rich intertextuality sound like pointy-headed dweebs whining about boring stuff. Why can't we just glory in the blood and guts and explosions along with them? I wouldn't expect any less from mainstream comics fans; these are the people who have no problem with the direction the medium has gone in after Watchmen came out, who celebrate the misinterpreted "adult" themes whose inclusion in superhero comics critics lament.

Myself, I've said it before, but whatever happens with the movie, the book still exists. I can read that with full realization that it's a great work of comics literature, and the fact that a poor adaptation exists doesn't make it any less so.

[Amy]

Thank you for reviewing this movie! We completely hated it, but felt fortunate that we used free passes to get in and didn't actually encourage this kind of movie-making by paying to get in. I was distracted not only by Silk Spectre's acting chops (or lack thereof), but by her make-up! Could someone grab the girl some chap-stick and show her how to use lip liner? I won't go into what I thought of the story because I think my head would explode from all the inconsistencies and assumptions. I'm actually just glad it's over - the sex scene alone made me think about going celibate.

[seth hurley]

Watchmen is to film what Chinese Democracy is to music.

A long, near mythic history of production that could never, no matter how forgiving the fan, live up to expectations or engage the most casual new comer.

[Zebtron A. Rama]

Interesting review. I really don't know what the hell I would of thought of it if I hadn't read the comic. I admit, I loved the damn thing though. It was fun to see the scenes I enjoyed so much come to life outside of my head. It's strange, I've read so many fantastic reviews from cats (respectable ones at that) that downright loathed the movie that I'm constantly re-examining my experience. I can't be one of these "nerds" people keep referring to can I?
I almost chose not to see it. Alan Moore had all but convinced me that this movie was the devil. My wife convinced me to loosen up and just check it out. Shit, it was a rainy day anyhoo. So I did, and I loved it.
Here's my theory. (so sorry to dump this on you Nina, yer review just resonated) I never seperated the book from the film. Almost like it was a supplemental artifact. I mean it was almost exactly like the comic 90% of the time. The story never had to be there, I already had it in my head (this applies to much of the problems you address). The movie was just icing on the cake. You see, Snyder (the director) did have one thing going for him...my imagination. I could tear the living shit outta the thing, but I unclinched my ass-hole and just thought (or didn't think really) of it, not as a film, but something more akin to a special bonus presentation of the book.
And I'm glad.

[Chris Mautner]

This is the first movie review ever to reference my Facebook page. It will in all likelihood be the only one ever. I feel very honored.

Great review to a rather bad movie.

[Cole Moore Odell]

It's a small thing, but Nixon was President from January 20, 1969 to August 9, 1974, so I really wouldn't call him a 60s president.

The Nixon scenes were particularly awful in Watchmen, with insanely bad, throw-you-right-out-of-the-movie makeup and staging that drew attention to just how much this wasn't Dr. Strangelove. The swinging bathroom door in the prison sequence also drew attention to how much the movie wasn't Hitchcock's Rope. Why would Snyder intentionally draw such comparisons with master filmmakers? He has to know he can't possibly come out well.

It's too bad that this film has done to you what fans of the book have feared, in making you at least marginally less likely to read the original. It really is a worthwhile, rewarding book by a great writer and artist firing on all cylinders--even if, as Tom Spurgeon has said, it might not even be in the top 5 things that came out in 1986, let alone best comics of all time territory.

[NoahB]

I think it's one of the best comics of all time. I hope you get to read it sometime, Nina, just so you can really appreciate how truly heinous the treatment of Silk Spectre in the movie is.

So yeah... on the one hand, I think my knowledge of the comic added breadth and depth to my disdain for the movie. But, on the other hand, your approach -- without preconceptions -- showed me things to hate in the film that I hadn't even really considered. (For instance, I didn't need to hear Ozymandias...because I knew all the dialogue.) So yeah...whose hate is more pure? More nuanced? More lasting? Or should we just celebrate the diversity of hatred; a kind of PC, multiculty rainbow of loathing?

[markus]

thanks for your brutally honest review!!! i managed to find it while searching for other reviews that aren't promoting how great the movie is. i still can't completely say that i hated the movie, but the parts that do make me want to hate it have been worded so eloquently above in the review. i'm really getting bored with the "matrix" type of fight scenes where they speed things up and slow them down and have ridiculous amounts of destruction in the background. it was cool ten years ago when it wasn't in every movie, but now its just a cheap trick easily done on the home computer.