Watchmen

OPENING: 03/06/2009

STUDIO: Warner Bros.

TRAILER: Trailer

ACCOMPLICES: Official Site

The Charge
Who watches the Watchmen?

Opening Statement
They said it couldn’t be done. They said it was unfilmable. They said it was impossible, a project doomed to development hell, a property too complex to translate to the silver screen. Now, after countless changes of direction, writers, directors, studios and lawsuits, Alan Moore’s seminal graphic novel has been made into a film—and it is everything fans of the original material could have hoped for… for better and for worse.

Facts of the Case
In an alternate 1985, the United States teeters on the brink of nuclear war, locked in a never-ending conflict with the Soviets. The police investigate the murder of Edward Blake (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), a former superhero named The Comedian who, after the government outlawed all superheroes in the seventies, worked with the CIA for black operations. His identity is known to no one, except for his old superhero friends in the Watchmen, who have long since retired and gone civilian, each coping with retirement in different fashion. Well, except for one.

Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) is an unflinching sociopath who refuses to hang up the mask. He prowls the streets at night, a felon, hunting the unjust. His pursuit of justice is merciless, uncompromising, and he deduces that someone is gunning for ex-superheroes. He tries to rouse support from his old teammates, but no one seems particularly concerned. The nuclear deterrent science experiment-gone-awry Dr. Manhattan (Billy Crudup) works for the US government and his growing omnipotence draws him further away from the concerns of humanity—including those of his girlfriend, Silk Spectre II (Malin Akerman). Adrian Veidt (Matthew Goode) revealed his secret identity to the world and used his success to become a wealthy and influential businessman. Night Owl II (Patrick Wilson) lives a civilian life, his crime fighting apparatus lay dormant and dusty in the basement, and he struggles with his own inadequacies. None believe Rorschach’s claims… until an attempt is made on Veidt’s life and Rorschach is framed for murder.

As the world teeters closer to nuclear war, America’s deterrent against nuclear holocaust suffers a crisis of faith. Dr. Manhattan departs the Earth, leaving the world undefended. Silk Spectre finds a new friend in Night Owl, and both secretly admit they miss the old life. Donning the costumes again, they set out to rescue their teammate from prison and unravel a complex plot of deception and betrayal—one that will have catastrophic consequences for a world slipping ever closer into World War III and total annihilation.

The Evidence
Staggeringly faithful to its source material, Watchmen is as close to a perfect adaptation as fans of Alan Moore’s comic could have ever hoped to see. Let’s just get that right out of the way now. When you consider the number of hands this project has traveled through over its two decade journey through development hell, the fact that director Zack Snyder (300) has been able to produce something this accurate, faithful and true to the spirit of the original material is nothing short of a miracle. This film is a triumph of intertextuality, a sublime erosion between the barriers that separate the art form of the graphic novel and the comic book, a meticulous adaptation of a source material that defies every attempt to be quantified and reproduced. Based on these merits alone, Watchmen is a fantastic achievement. Indeed, it may very well be the most faithful and literal adaptation of a comic book ever put to film.

Watchmen is exactly what fans have been hoping, nay praying for; a film uncompromisingly respectful to its source material as its primary goal, regardless of any narrative pitfalls or conceptual curiosities that fail to make the transition from page to screen. Die hard fans will note some trims have been made here and there (spoiler alert: no squid) but these are minor detours at best; the heart of the film remains intact, the moral ambiguity and complex superhero archetypal destruction, the alien detachment of Dr. Manhattan, the Cold War nuclear war paranoia, the brutal objectivist fury of Rorschach, the superheroes getting off by their own adrenaline and making mad passionate love in a flying vehicle—every element of the film fans feared would be truncated by Hollywood has emerged intact, trimmed only for content to make the film clock in under three hours. In many ways, Watchmen is unbelievable: a $100 million love letter to fan boys and girls the world over during a time of economic recession. Who would have ever imagined such a thing coming to fruition so bright and so beautiful?

And yet, despite the almost laser precision in which Watchmen lives up to its hype, in which it creates a world many thought would be impossible to reproduce in any other medium besides the comic book page, the film is not perfect. So meticulous in its vision to remain one hundred percent faithful to its source, Watchmen takes an almost reverential view of the graphic novel that it eschews any attempt to rein in its own mad vision of a dystopic world run amuck. In keeping the fans happy, something gets damaged, something inexpressible and indefinable, the subtle life and magic of cinema that makes films worth seeing. Translated to film, Watchmen feels lanky, overdrawn and ponderous if examined on its own merits. Had this not been a hallowed text, a holy Alan Moore Holy Grail of comics, but a simple script handed in by a Hollywood screenwriter, there is almost zero chance of Watchmen being made in this current incarnation. No director in the world would touch this project without making some serious alterations to the film: cutting out a good hour of its runtime, changing key plot points, altering its direction dramatically. I am glad it did get made this way, but one must acknowledge that some things simply get lost in translation.

Call it a conundrum of cinema; a perfectly executed film in style and form emulating its source material that will struggles to engage and capture new audiences as a motion picture. Everything that needed to be perfect in bringing the property to the big screen is perfect; the casting, the design, the direction, the plot points, the dystopic tone, all intact—but take somebody off the street who has never seen the comic before, sit them down in front of Watchemen, and watch their face contort in confusion. What translates so well to the comic book medium somehow fails to make the same impact on the big screen—but not for lack of trying. Zack Snyder takes extreme pride in how visually similar his film is to Dave Gibbon’s original artwork, and in this regard, there can be no complaint; many sequences are near shot-for-shot recreations, as if the original comic became the storyboard for the film itself.

Challenging technical elements, like Rorschach’s shifting inkblot mask and Dr. Manhattan’s eerie blue detached naked body hovering through the air are superbly executed. Art direction, costume design, special effects, all perfect. Snyder films his action sequences in exquisite slow motion, similar to battle choreography in 300, and while it may run against the grain to the comic itself, it is so well executed we hardly care. There is more satisfaction in watching Night Owl systematically bust up unnamed thugs in a two-minute sequence than Batman ever delivered in the entirety of The Dark Knight. The casting is perfect— Jackie Earle Haley is a terrorizing figure as the short, ugly and uncompromising Rorschach, Malin Akerman is stunningly beautiful as Silk Spectre II, Billy Crudup is ethereal and detached as Dr. Manhattan, Patrick Wilson is dweebish as a civilian gone soft and strikingly intimidating as Night Owl II. The only casting that feels slightly so-so is Matthew Goode as Ozymandias; he is a bit too effeminate and nebbish compared to his comic counterpart.

For fans, this is as perfect of an adaptation as they come on the surface, but it cannot be helped that the film lacks the emotional gravitas of the graphic novel. We must remember that Watchmen is twenty years old, a product of Cold War paranoia and comic book deconstruction that at the time was revolutionary and groundbreaking—a product of another generation of thinking. At the screening I attended of Watchmen, I was but one of a handful of attendees older than the source material itself. Think about that for a minute: can this new generation of internet-savvy teenagers be appreciate the subtleties of the Cold War and nuclear terror as anything other than a kitsch alternate reality, where Richard Nixon runs unopposed in election after election? In the eighties, this was terrifying stuff; today, it seems Lilliputian. But I am glad they lost the squid. Trust me—the new ending is better. It makes more sense.

How the uninitiated will interpret this film is the biggest area of pitfall for Watchmen, because there is so much subtlety to character development and plot that go unmentioned in the film—subtlety that gets filled in by the brain of the audience familiar with the text—that an unbiased opinion may be impossible. If you loved the comic, you will absolutely love Watchmen and its pure, fanatical devotion to the heart and soul of the source material. I am grateful and thankful that Zach Snyder made the film that he made, if only to prove to the world that yes, it can be done, the impossible project can be made possible. Alan Moore may have written off all association to the project, having been burned too often by Hollywood and lackluster adaptations of his work, but this might be the first film that does his material the justice it deserves.

It is exceedingly challenging to separate the graphic novel and the film into didactic elements and give them praise and criticism on their own merits. I keep trying to put myself into the head space of someone totally unfamiliar with the source material, and I keep failing, like running full force into a brick wall expecting to pass through it unharmed. Perhaps the reason Watchmen was considered an unfilmable property was not the technical challenges of constructing a Cold War alternate reality, of nuclear blue men who can deconstruct the world with their hands, of a surly costumed vigilante with a shifting mask, but simply that if anyone was brave enough or daring enough to make a film that would satisfy the fans and remain true to the source material, the end result would be… complicated. Watchmen is everything fans wanted it to be, but we’ll have to wait and see how the world accepts its dystopic vision.

Closing Statement
Flawed but unflinchingly and unapologetically faithful to Alan Moore and David Gibbons’ seminal work, one cannot help but admire the sheer chutzpah in Watchmen for its own Rorschach-esque refusal to bow to compromise. It is a beautiful conundrum; a faithful adaptation of a property considered unfilmable. Without a doubt, this is the movie fans have been waiting for, capturing every element of the source material in near-perfect detail—so much so that the film lives up to its own promise of being a property that defies cinematic adaptation. It occasionally sabotages its own cinematic integrity for authenticity, but fans wouldn’t have it any other way.

The Verdict
It is easy to admire and love Watchmen as a faithful adaptation of a fantastic creative work; it is slightly more challenging to love Watchmen the film for its own merits. A beautiful cinematic conundrum, Watchmen fulfills its glorious, imperfect destiny.

8/10

Approximately nine months ago, my wife brought up an interesting proposal: “Why Don’t We Go to San Diego for Comic Con?” This was without virtually any prompting on my part; I had no horse in the race, so to speak. I’m not that big of a comic book fan, but we were looking for something to do. So why not go, right? And if you’re going to go, go in style; I booked a room at the newly opened Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, which seemed like a pretty cool status symbol. Aside from an experience at the franchise’s New York restaurant years ago, I did forget that the Hard Rock plays music. All the time. But, compared to other places, it was rock music. The merchandise shop played Black Flag in there, so booyah bitches!

Anyway, the film lineup was pretty good, and I’ll be sharing those here after the jump of the films I managed to sit in on. I’m sure the webs have the footage somewhere, so feel free to search on your own time. On with the opinions!

The Day The Earth Stood Still: Fox was the first to the show, and Keanu Reeves (The Matrix), Jennifer Connelly (A Beautiful Mind) and Scott Derrickson (The Exorcism of Emily Rose) came out to pimp the remake of the 1951 classic to be released in December. It was discussed, sometimes at great length, with a couple of shots from the film, and an extended trailer. No, we didn’t get to see Gort, but WETA is doing the work on him now, and things are still very close to the vest. Aside from Connelly being VERY much out of place, barely talking, I’d come in fresh to this, and personally am still wondering why it’s being remade to begin with.

Max Payne: Mark Wahlberg (The Departed), Mila Kunis (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), Chris Bridges (a.k.a., the artist formerly known as Ludacris) and John Moore (The Omen) discuss the film which is coming out in October. Wahlberg clearly had fun and played up to the crowd, and everyone talked about how fun it was to do it, meaning how cool it was to fire weapons all day. Moore talked about their own little version of “bullet time” that was employed for the film. Aside from an extended trailer cut to a live version of Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love,” this was a bit of a yawner.

Wolverine: Ole Wolverine himself Hugh Jackman came onstage as an unannounced surprise to throngs of delirious hysterics. After shaking the hand of Len Wein, the creator of the comic book icon, Jackman was happy to finally actually be onstage, as he’d apparently missed the X-Men presentations that occurred in previous Cons.  I’m going to rattle off the cast here; Ryan Reynolds (The Nines) as Deadpool, Liev Schreiber (The Sum of All Fears) as Sabretooth, Tim Riggins from Friday Night Lights as Gambit, to name a few who appear in the trailer. And it’s loaded with action too, which doesn’t hurt. Definitely the one people will be looking forward to in ‘09, unless the GI Joe teaser comes strong.

As a side note; what was particularly interesting about the Fox presentation was that a lot, and I mean A LOT of people got in early so they could be ready for Summit Pictures’ presentation of Twilight. Everyone around my wife and I was there in their “Team Edward” and “Team Jacob” shirts, whatever that means, but unfortunately I was called away for other events. I’m told though that the Twilight footage was essentially an extended version of the second trailer with the climatic ballet room sequence, and everyone ate it up. As they should I suppose. But I thought it was a little funny that the Fox gang seemed to trot out their products to hordes of Twilight fans, without knowing what they were getting into. Back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Watchmen: Try as I might to stay away from the masses, I snuck in for a second, where Zack Snyder (300) and the cast were discussing the film. Aside from an extended trailer, more shots of the heroes were shown which really illustrated Snyder’s vision and faithfulness to the source material, and since this is being released in March, expect some more mad money on a Snyder production.

The Spirit: Frank Miller (Sin City) might be an influential comic book figure, but he needs to lay off the liquor or something. At times he seemed to ramble, and cast members Samuel L. Jackson (Pulp Fiction) and Jaime King (Blow) seemed to notice. Still though, the footage that was shown of the film looks good, done visually much in the same way that Sin City was. While there’s humor, there are also a couple of required action sequences that look impressive as well. A concern I have a little with this film is that it might not seem to possess the spark of similar comic book films that possess a similar visual style, but I hope I’m proved wrong in this because at least from what I saw, The Spirit could potentially be a good film.

Zack and Miri Make a Porno: Showed up a little late to the game on this one, as I was drinking with some of the cast of ABC Family’s Samurai Girl, which appears to be a Buffy-ish show, except without some of the wit and wisdom. But I will say this about Kevin Smith, he’s got some fans in the biz, for sure, and now in this film, he’s got a couple members of the Judd Apatow stock company in Seth Rogen (Knocked Up) and Justin Long (Accepted) together in this film that looks pretty funny. Bonus points for Long’s, er, “moment” with Brandon Routh. Yes, that Brandon Routh, from Superman Returns. Aside from listening to Rogen’s kind of funny Ian McKellen joke and Jason Mewes looking very impressive all cleaned up from addiction, Zack and Miri comes out in October hopefully, and should be worth the hubbub, even if they might have to change the title.

Terminator Salvation: You know, Christian Bale and Bryce Dallas Howard(?) aside, McG seems to carry himself as a bit of a pompous arse. Why exactly would we want to see a film about a battle with first-generation terminator robots? Why would Arnold Schwarzenegger even consider appearing in this? Ugh. To be fair, McG (Charlie’s Angels) likes paying homage to the previous three films, even including attendees who dressed like Robert Patrick and Linda Hamilton from T2 on stage with him, along with an Asian kid whose Arnold accent seemed to venture into Walken-esque territory. He showed an extended teaser of sorts, without any CG shots in it, and the results? Meh. I counted nods to The Road Warrior and The Great Escape in there, along with something that looked visually a little like Charlie’s Angels, right now to the hot chick almost taking her top off. I’ve got to say I liked the teaser in front of Dark Knight more than I did this stuff, and unlike some of the buzz so far, am concerned that this “reboot” might nuke the franchise from orbit.

Pineapple Express: Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sneak into the preview screenings that apparently were going on in town, and the footage that Judd Apatow (40 Year Old Virgin), Rogen and gang brought seemed a little to be desired. It seemed like they basically brought stuff from the website or something. One of the scenes came from the Superbad DVD. But come on, you know what this film is going to be about, you’re either going to go see it or you’re not. Oh, and Green Hornet is still on the track of getting made, so yay to that.

Well, that’s the short story on the film side. A quick note on things to come, expect a review of Tropic Thunder in the very near future, along with TV Verdict thoughts from the Heroes and Lost panels, including some teasing of Heroes 3^rd season, as the opener was aired in its entirely exclusively for the Comic Con folks. Until next time, get the funk out your minds and into your hearts people!

Video is up at Empire, and embedded below the jump.

I’m just impressed because it looks a lot less crappy than I expected it to. I never thought I’d see the day where I was looking forward to a Watchmen movie adaptation.

Update: Empire pulled the clip after getting their knuckles rapped, but Gizmodo came to the rescue. Check it out in all its glory here, in much better quality than the Youtube version.

(via AICN)