My Review of Watchmen by B.C. Holmes, age 42

[bcholmes]

I wrote this to a friend of mine. We were both comics readers in the mid-eighties when Watchmen was coming out, so we were both reading it.

I had mixed feelings about it. On one level, I was engaged throughout the whole film, and really enjoyed seeing some of the scenes from the comic come to life. I also really liked the music (99 Red Balloons) and nifty little 1985 details (3.5" floopies! And the Ridley Scott Apple ad running on Veidt's wall of televisions!). Rorschach was great -- perfectly cast, perfectly executed (the oomph with which he delivers the "do it!" line in Antarctica was pretty amazing).

There were also little moments that made me go, "oh, wow." There's a flashback to Jon's life -- it's just one panel in the comics about how the morality of his actions escapes him. In the movie, we watch him blow people up and then we sit there in the scene for a few extra seconds watching the blood drip off of the ceiling. I loved the little scenes like that.

But, ultimately, I felt like the pacing was all over the place. Jon's monologue on Mars slowed the film down too much for my tastes. And there were all of these moments that felt like they were written to punctuate an ending (because they were written that way), but then the story would just keeping going on. And the final ending was way too rushed.

Ozymandias' back story coming when it did seemed like it advertised Ozymandias' role as the story's villain. (But, on the plus side, they managed to shoot Iaccoca in the head).

Mostly, I think Veidt didn't really gel as a character; I think if we'd had his full story-line, we might have more understanding of the character. And without that understanding, I think that asking to understand his plot feels like whiplash.

Laurie's story really gets short shrift (and I wasn't a big fan of the latex costume), although the Comedians delivery of "his... y'know... his old friend's daughter" was perfect). And because we don't get to know any of the minor characters -- the newspaper agent, the lesbian couple, the psychologist and his wife -- then when New York explodes, only minor, faceless people die. So, in some ways, the film allows us to feel like what Veidt did was kinda okay. Certainly not worth getting too upset about. And that's pretty creepy.

I think there's a lot of stuff in the graphic novel about how, in a really important way, the superhero genre is a really fascist model. And I get the strong feeling from the movie that Zack Snyder is kinda okay with that. That creeps me out a bit.

So, ultimately, I don't think it really worked as a movie. I certainly felt a certain amount of fangirl squee watching key elements of the story enacted. But the only times I felt like I was watching something interestingly cinematic were in the original scenes -- the attack on the Comedian at the beginning, for example. I think it fails to be an interesting movie -- that sometimes the experience of saying "here's a story I love -- and it moves!" seems to compensate for that, but that it doesn't do much other than what I expect.

Comments

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

I think a lot of the problems with pacing were a direct result of how closely it stayed true to the original comic book. It moved more like written material than a visual media. Having said that, I didn't find the pacing bothered me at all. Some of the violence did. I had to look away more than once.

The ending bothered me. Not only do we not know anything about the people who died, afterward there are no shots of the aftereffects of the blast. No people crying over losing loved ones, no gory scenes of bodies being pulled from wreckage. In contrast to the violence of some of the fight scenes their deaths aren't even touched upon. Instead we get shots of reconstruction sites with Veldt's name on them and posters of Russian and American hands shaking; everybody all happy now. It really seemed to push the idea that Veldt had done a good thing and that left a bad taste in my mouth.

[laura-seabrook.livejournal.com]

Certainly after 9/11 we now know that such events have severe emotional repercussions. I did my own comment (http://www.webcomicsnation.com/lauraseabrook/yab9-11s/series.php) on that (incorporating Watchmen) a while ago. I think what would happen is that people would find someone to blame, and start picking fights based on that. The film suggested that Dr Manhattan would suffice for that. In an LJ community someone suggested that because he was a USA operative, that the USA would be picked as a scapegoat.

But in any case, you're right about how anonymous the carnage is. This is the most common criticism I've heard about the ending - that we know absolutely nothing about the victims. The novel of course carefully sets up a scenario so that the psych, comic book reader, newsagent, police and others are all taken out in one blow. Just like "From Hell", we know something about the victims, more than just a number anyway.

I have always wanted a miniseries of Watchmen rather than a film. It would have followed the pattern of the novel better and allowed more back story.