Watchmen

Much like 300, Watchmen is Zack Snyder's faithful take on one of a comic book icon's original stories; in this case, the most celebrated and influential graphic novel of the last 25 years. Obvious comparisons aside though, despite sharing some similar flaws, it's a more involved and interesting story, and he does a pretty solid job telling it. The movie is far from a perfect adaptation, although it's pretty legitimate to say that a lot of the reasons for that stem from the very nature of the comic itself. It's simply not structured like a film. It was originally released as a series of twelve issues, and several of them focus on a single character's background instead of really advancing the central plot forward. A truer translation would have been a miniseries instead of a theatrical release. But there's probably no way you get them to do that with a large enough budget to really pull off the story, and a compromise like this is the best we can really hope for. The script probably could have used a bit of tweaking to account for the different way a movie would flow, but except for a few segments to explain character that almost completely halt momentum, it worked out.

There are a few things that can be blamed on less than amazing filmmaking, though. It's clear from his comic work and Dawn of the Dead that Snyder does not have an ounce of subtlety in his being. The comic certainly didn't shy away from violence, being fairly grisly in places, but there's a difference between a panel showing something and a film lingering on it for several seconds. The fights are far crazier, and while I thought the choreography was actually pretty good and don't mind the speed ramping effect nearly as much as a lot of people, it was a big feeling of cognitive dissonance to see the heroes kicking people across rooms when the whole point of the story seemed to be about the fact that (except for Dr. Manhattan) these were just normal people who fought crime in costume for a living. I didn't mind a slight increase in vulgarity, but one of the sex scenes was really over the top too, not aided by the absurd choice in music. It wasn't the only occurrence of this either, with a lot of the choices either being too obvious or just seeming out of place with what was happening. I would have preferred an original score most of the time.

Not that the movie was all bad. I thought the entire relationship between the second Nite Owl and Silk Spectre was pretty laughable, and Veidt was pretty horribly miscast, but other than that the main cast did solid work despite there not being a big name among them, and in places excellent. Jackie Earle Haley's performance as Rorschach was 100% spot on, and just like in the comic, he easily stood out as the best character. It was very interesting to see the audience react more and more favorably to him as his actions become more and more psychotic. The Comedian also worked very well, and Carla Gugino was nice to see again even though most of the time she was covered in crappy "old person" makeup. There were a few other issues with makeup actually, especially the film's version of Richard Nixon, which was too comically out of place to take any of his scenes seriously. The changed ending actually seemed to work better within the existing plot and definitely would go over with a normal audience better, so I didn't mind that change terribly. All the little changes, missteps, and successes added up to a very long and divisive film, one that in general I liked but wasn't completely satisfied with. Still, an interesting experiment.