Watchmen

SPOILERS FOLLOW.

Hitler is wrong.

There's no getting around the denseness of the 'Watchmen' graphic novel: it utilized not only conventional comic book storytelling, but also, reports, journals, extracts and interviews. Its 12 issues assembled a large cast of characters each with their own backstory and hangers-on, covered a timeline of over 50 years of an alternate history of earth, used flashbacks, various narrators, dealt with BIG issues, had equal parts full-on action and quiet character moments... It is in my opinion the greatest comic book you'll ever read.

So I was utterly amazed at what was put on the screen. Watchmen the movie is a fantastic example of taking a work from one medium and translating it into another. Yes, Watchmen the film is not, nor can not ever be, 'Watchmen' the most lauded comic book of all time. It's got a few hours to tell the story as a film. But even if 'Watchmen' had been adapted as a 12 part TV series, as some rabid fanboy in some backwater of the net frothed that is should have been, would it really be any better? I don't think so. Yes, more minutiae might have been thrown up on the screen, more subplots could have been told, more characters given more time. Basically there could have been more, more, more from the original medium translated with equal weighting to the new medium, which is most important when making an adaption, don't you know?

But why restrict this fictional series to 12 episodes just because the comic has 12 issues. Let's have 18 (because its 12 + 1/2 of 12, an equation I pulled from the same ass that 12 comes from) and devote an episode to 'The Black Freighter' subplot, an episode to the denizens of the ill-fated New York street corner, an episode to Hollis Mason's 'Under the Hood', an episode to the island where the squid was made... Hmmm, maybe we'd better up that episode count to 24, because that's 12 x 2, and thus the adaption can maintain authenticity by claiming some nebulous numerical connection to original.

Or here's a thought. How about devoting the screen time to putting as much as possible from the graphic novel up on to that aforementioned screen, in a way that best utilizes the medium of film. And that is the triumph of Watchmen. So much of the denseness of the graphic novel is packed into the movie's 160 minutes by adapting it to film. Two examples are the many voice overs which for once aren't annoying but purposeful, and the tableaux that in a well-used few seconds hint at unexplored story avenues. These don't distract from the main storyline of the film, but add a depth to the cinematic world. For the astute viewer coming to the story for the first time they provide a verisimilitude to a fantasy world that I haven't seen since the Lord of the Rings movies, and for the veteran readers of 'Watchman' they show that it's mostly all there if you take the trouble to look. Just open your eyes and ears to Watchmen and you'll see that Zach Snyder gets 'Watchmen' real good.

But there's no squid! Well, yes, that's right. There is no squid. Get over it. As many others around the net have already said, in the context of the movie, it works. I found it to be an elegant solution to streamline the story while keeping the same result. And after all though 'Watchmen' is a great work of art, it's not without it's faults. For me the squid was one of them. It's a plot point that really doesn't bear looking at too much. Over looking is more what's required. That dead squid is going to be the most rigorously tested genetic material on the planet. How long would the deception really hold up that its not of Earth origin? But rather than trying to strengthen the case for Watchmen's Dr. Manhattan frame-up by weakening the case for 'Watchmen''s squid frame-up, I'll instead say that the Dr. Manhattan frame-up is at least as weak or as strong (your pick) a plotting as an other dimensional squid. YMMV.

And kudos for the sex and violence. I haven't had to worry about being turned away from a movie for being underage for quite some time, so I never took any notice of Watchmen's rating. This meant that I was pleasantly surprised by the retention of the comic's sex and violence. If you're not into seeing bodies blown up, limbs broken, a meat cleaver in the head nor consenting (and non-consenting) adults doing what they do, then you'd best close your eyes. Quite often. But I was glad that Watchmen retained that visceral aspect, when I expect conventional marketing wisdom would dictate that a lower rating opens the film to a wider audience, and thus bigger profits. Die Hard 4.0 certainly thought so, and it did very good box office indeed. However to me it was just another way that Watchmen tried to be as faithful as it could to the source material.

In case you think I was left in total awe of Watchmen I'll mention two points I didn't think worked well. The first was the delivery of one of my favorite lines of all time, "I did it 35 minutes ago." It just didn't have the gravitas I'd always imagined in my head. The second, again with Ozymandias, was the bullet catching. It was weakly foreshadowed, and then seemed rushed, muddled, or just not framed right (too close up?). I don't know what exactly, so I'd better stop crying about it. So there you go, some complaints.

I gave Watchmen 9 out 10 on the IMDB. It might well have got 10 if "I did it 35 minutes ago" had had better delivery.