(no subject)

[f4f3]

Ok, I've seen the Watchmen movie twice now, so I must have something to say about it.
Mostly that something is "Hmm."
Not "Hrmm", but "hmm".

Lots to like.

The soundtrack, the look of the film, the casting are all pretty much spot on. Some of them could have been a little older (most of the leads should be in their 40's in 1985), but all were competent at least.

I think that there are some strange storytelling choices - Night Owl seems to have had his role beefed up a little, the sort of thing you usually see when the star is being protected. But his little tantrum at the end is just silly. Not in the book, and not adding to the film. There are some silly plot points - they change Night Owl for Rorshach in the initial meeting with Adrian, which, as well as having less impact, and detracting from Rorshach's quest angle, introduces a silly line about only Night Owl and Ozymandias knowing each other's identity, which makes no sense at all. I wonder how much of that stuff is in to compensate the actor from having to play an impotency scene?
unblinkered  pointed out that Laurie has had a boob job for the final scene - which is a pity, since she had a normal body in the nude scenes, something not ofter seen in Hollywood. 
As I said, the look of the film is fine, but again, not totally thought through - we have airships, but no electric cars. Granted, airships can be CGI'ed in much more easily than a city full of cars, but it undercuts the changes having a Superman in the world would make.
These are relatively minor points, though, especially when so much else works well.
Overall, though, I think the movie fails because it doesn't engage us with the characters. It doesn't engage us with the characters because, apart from Rorshach, none of them have much of a character. Alan Moore was very much aware of the dangers of trying to hang a story with any emotional depth on 2-dimensional characters. He regards "The Killing Joke" (his take on Batman and the Joker) as a failure for that reason.
Watchmen works as a graphic novel because the characters are allowed to have depth beyond their costumes, twenty or thirty years of history. As one example, in the comic Dan Drieburg gets three pages of text reproducing an article about ornithology, mythology, and the psychology of fear. In the movie he gets to describe a riot as "heavy".
This is a common enough problem with adaptions, in that they can never capture 3 or 4 hundred pages of prose in 120 minutes, but in a mainstream movie this is minimised by the assumptions we canmake from our actual experience of that type of character, or from previous fictional representations - a small town kid in the city, an amnesiac spy, even a call-centre wallah from Bombay. For most movie goers there is no established experience of what a superhero does when he isn't punching people. And, even in 2 hours and 45 minutes, that depth cannot be manufactured.

So, while I really, really enjoyed Watchmen, it didn't engage me emotionally. Laurie's scene at the end of the movie with her mother, which, after 300 pages, came off as touching and redemptive, came across as pure Hollywood schmalz (not helped by the script tinkering with Moore's original dialogue).

Still, the movie kept 1,000 or so Glasgow punters in their seats this afternoon, and that's something I wouldn't have bet on.

Comments

[munchkinstein.livejournal.com]

That generally matches my feelings. A good film that kept a cinema quiet and interested for two and a half hours. And a very faithful and valiant attempt to film something that is far too dense to get across in that time. But by no means perfect.
But I feel most of the flaws (if you can call them that) are to do with the format of cinema rather than anything.
Looking forward to the DVD though which should fill in some of the gaps. Although I doubt it will perk up Ozymandias any sadly.

[f4f3.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm looking forward to the DVD too - for one thing, I started spotting smileys on my second viewing.