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My friend Deepak saw that I looked like a dog anticipating a long walk while on line for Watchmen last night. I told him that I had never been so excited to see a movie. Hurm, he said. Wasn’t I setting expectations too high? Not at all. The simple fact of the film’s improbable existence — cue Jon’s meditation on humanity to Laurie on Mars — meets them. Imagine finding El Dorado. Exploring through it would be fascinating. But would it really match the revelation of discovering, finally, that it actually exists?
Watchmen is a great film. It’s a nearly-three-hour movie of narrative economy. A legendarily unfilmable epic, the most innovative in the history of comic books, is presented mostly faithfully, making Zach Snyder’s digressions, subversions and recastings impressively impactful. The metatextual aspects of the story survive and are amplified — most impressively, the sheer fact of being a film allows for a deeper commentary on pop culture and cultural memory than comic books, a marginal storytelling medium, can offer.
What I’m going to do first is explore three elements of the film that are false moves or missed opportunities — or may be. In at least one case I’m not so sure. Naturally, don’t read further if you don’t want any spoilers. Like one of the SWAT team says to his comrade as they prepare to bring in Rorschach (it’s not in the film, don’t worry): here be tygers.
1. Adrian. He’s icy and menacing throughout the whole film, rather than detached and outwardly gentle, which diminishes the impact of the big reveal. (Of course, it heightens the irony of his condescension to Dan, "I’m not a comic-book villain.") My friend Dana, who hasn’t read the graphic novel comic book (no euphemisms! even in the face of Armageddon!), identified him as the Baddie from the start. Making him and not Captain Metropolis the leader of the Crimebusters/Watchmen team in the 60s makes him appear to be ruthless. It’s not obvious that Adrian really does want to save the world — and perhaps Zach Snyder decided he doesn’t; he wants to rule it. Hence the Tears for Fears "Everybody Wants To Rule The World" background music in his meeting with Lee Iacocca (noticed by Attackerlady); the absence of his line, referencing the achievements of Alexander The Great, "…ruling without barbarism!"; and the presence of Veidt Construction cranes in the craters of New York. That would make for a more coherent portrayal of Adrian. But also a far less interesting one.
2. Laurie. I truly can’t decide if this is a mistake or a clever inversion of gender roles on-screen. The film doesn’t present Laurie Juspeczyk. It presents Laurie Jupiter. By getting rid of the refusal to de-ethnicize her name — you know, and adopt a secret identity? — Snyder gets rid of a lot of Laurie’s anger at her mother, with the exception of an early scene where Sally Jupiter is drunk and they have minor fight over Eddie Blake’s memory. In short, Laurie is the most functional character in the film, where in the comic, she’s one of its most broken. Laurie Juspeczyk resents her mother, is desperate for a father, and is unable to function as a normal human being. Laurie Jupiter is extremely hot and kicks the shit out of a bunch of criminals. It sucks for her when she finds out who her dad is.
But is that a necessary deviation that’s actually in keeping with the spirit of Watchmen? There aren’t any fucking superheroines in movies. The Wonder Woman project went straight to DVD. Women in supporting roles in superhero movies are passive characters, waiting to be hurt by men and then saved by them.Moore and Gibbons’ Watchmen complicated every aspect of superheroes. Maybe Snyder needed to decomplicate Laurie in order to complicate a broader cultural point about women in genre movies. I can’t make up my mind; help.
3. Rorschach. The portrayal of Rorschach is excellent. He’s terrifying and sociopathic and chillingly compelling for his twisted integrity. There is no character like him. And if you know Brian from Catharsis/Requiem/From The Depths, you’ll be disturbed by how much Rorschach’s voice literally sounds like Brian’s.
But Rorschach’s fascism is out of the film. Yes, he makes a number of derisive references to the liberal effeteness of other characters. But ask: why is Rorschach so invested in resolving the death of the Comedian? In the film, he tells Dan, "an attack on one is an attack on all!" But Rorschach hasn’t believed anything like that since the night he was reborn after the child-murderer case. Indeed, the mask-killer-theory presents a self-preservation impulse. But the real reason Rorschach cares about the Comedian is he admires the Comedian. Or, rather, he admires what he thinks the Comedian stands for — not Eddie Blake’s actual nihilism, but the perceived willingness to kill for the greater principle ("…men like my father and President Truman…"). Remember, Rorschach sees only what he insists he ought to see, "free to scrawl own design on morally blank world." His politics are a function of his broader vision of a world in which brutality keeps justice narrowly off the precipice of total collapse. The drop-off of his journal at the New Frontiersman office doesn’t make sense in the movie.
(But perhaps that just sets up Watchmen 2, in which Godfrey and Seymour combat Veidt’s charnel-house utopia through the power of the press, or at least until the free availability of information renders the New Frontiersman’s business model unsustainable and the paper has to shutter.)
At the theater in which I saw the movie, there was a curious outburst during the prison-cafeteria scene in which Rorschach scalds his attacker with hot cooking fat. A huge cheer bursted out as he delivers the line, "What none of you understand is that I’m not locked in here with you — you’re locked in here with me!" Why? Did the audience just like the bad-assed-ness of the scene? Or did they identify with Rorschach’s embrace of brutality, justified after the fact as self-defense? Free to scrawl own design on morally blank world…
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Thanks for the thoughtful response, Spencer…but please, no Watchmen 2…I’m horrified enough that they’ve done a bad job with this one…
As for your comments on Laurie – my guess is that you’re right…Laurie Jupiter (to me) is one of the weakest characters in the novel because of her reliance on men. I haven’t seen the film, but your description sounds like something I’d be comfortable with.
I’m going to respectfully disagree with Mortimer and come down on the side of “mistake.” Laurie’s character was ill-done by Snyder, to the detriment of the film. Laurie Juspeczyk was a substantially more complex and interesting character. Approaching middle age herself, her estrangement from Osterman was mutual rather than one-sided: she was hitting the same age where the unaging Dr. Manhattan had dumped his first girlfriend for her, and she obviously knew it. Her revelation about her parentage was something she figured out on her own, rather than having it served to her on a platter by Manhattan. Snyder casually dropped all that subtext out, and compounded the problem by casting an actress a decade too young (and, let us gently say, perhaps not up to the same standard as most of the rest of the cast) for the part.
Or to put it another way: “Watchmen” the movie failed the Bechdel test spectacularly. “Watchmen” the comic did not. Regression on that point is never a good sign.
Haven’t seen it, but I did read the original at my college buddy’s weird garden-shack apartment in Berkeley in the late 1980s, and my wife bought the re-reissue when it came out a little while back, so I have been close to the material for a long time.
From what I can see of it (HBO preview, this and other reviews), Snyder did a pretty good take on the book for Blockbuster Hollywood, but missed most of what makes Moore’s work interesting (and who in film doesn’t? ‘V’ disappointed as well). Casting someone as Veidt who didn’t have bland good looks and a nice physique was a category error. Casting someone as Laurie who was a little too hot wasn’t a problem, but amputating her character probably was (again, haven’t seen it yet). But not making Rorschach a monster? That’s the worst. What I love about the book is that it makes you respect and at times *like* Rorschach despite it. Sticking his own cigarette in a bully’s eye? Genius. In the film, I believe, that detail is gone.
As for the crowd response to the cooking fat, that shocks me not at all. You are supposed to like Rorschach while you hate him, and his bad-assed-ness and overkill are part and parcel of that. Like sticking his own cigarette back into a bully’s eye? Genius. In the film, I believe, that detail is gone.
(er, sorry, that was supposed to be “the Bechdel test“)
For the most part, I really enjoyed it — but I’m finding it hard to evaluate on its own merits, and not to focus on every little thing that diverged from the comic or didn’t play out the way it has in my head for 23 years.
That said, it was mostly great but the one performance that struck a false note with me was Matthew Goode’s Ozymandias. There was no nuance or wit to the character, and he couldn’t have been more plainly telegraphed as the “bad guy”. The other characters may have been lacking some of the depth they had in the novel, but Veidt seemed “out of character” altogether – malevolent, less cerebral.
Any other problems I had with the pic (yeesh, the makeup!) are just quibbles.
Ok, one simple question. I was reading someplace and the reviewer stated this movie was as innovative as 2001: A Space Odyssey. Is it really?
My theater reacted similarly to the boiling-fat scene.
I’ve lost my copy of the graphic novel and can’t remember if the original also had Laurie jumping on Dan within five minutes of learning he had a pile.
“The metatextual aspects of the story survive and are amplified — most impressively, the sheer fact of being a film allows for a deeper commentary on pop culture and cultural memory than comic books, a marginal storytelling medium, can offer.”
That’s very interesting. I’ll see it sometime this weekend, but that alone gives me some hope, yet also reinforces the dread.
Or did they identify with Rorschach’s embrace of brutality
Even in the original comic, fans almost invariably admired and identified with Rorscach, despite (because of?) his fascist mindset, so the audience reaction didn’t shock me at all.
In my opinion, Watchman is a very clever book with a number of problems. One of them is the character of Laurie Juspeczyk. In general, Alan Moore has never handled women characters well, and from what I read (on wikipedia and elsewhere) he added Laurie’s character almost as an afterthought.
The other heroes are based on Charleton comics characters, and Moore clearly put a lot of thought into them. Manhatten is Captain Atom, Rorschach is the Question (and/or the more extreme Ditko’s Dr.A), night owl is the blue beetle, and Ozymandias is “Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt”.
Laurie Juspeczyk, however, is not based on anybody, and Moore has stated that he added her simply because he wanted a female character.
The thing is, since Watchmen is supposed to be a commentary on comics, anything done poorly can simply be chaulked up to commentary. So, for example; I thought the giant squid was really stupid and came out of nowhere (and yes, I know you see foreshadowing of it in the comic). However, some people have said that the giant squid is part of the commentary, as the evil plans hatched by comic book bad-guys never make any sense, and should not work. That this nonsensical plan appears (temporarily) to “work” is supposedly part of the commentary. I disagree. Sometimes stupid is just stupid.
I pretty much feel the same way about the Laurie Juspeczyk character. I didn’t find her the least bit believable or interesting in the comic. Fine, I get that Moore wanted a “broken” character. Why did it have to be the only woman hero? Each of the heroes are supposed to represent a different take on superhero-style morality. I can see what the morality is in all the male heroes. I can’t tell what it is supposed to be for Laurie, and I suspect it isn’t there.
In general, Alan Moore has never handled women characters well
Are you serious? I’d say very much the opposite — that’s one of his trademarks.
First off, I agree about the Ozymandius in the movie version. He was too easy to peg as the bad guy, now that you mention it (I’d read the book a few times over the years before seeing the movie). Not saying the actor gave a bad performance, just that it wasn’t the *right* performance, and not scripted/directed the right way.
I couldn’t disagree more that the “giant squid” is a bad idea. It had to be something freaky and alien and unexpected for humanity to unite against it. I understand why the movie went in a different direction, since they saved a lot of time without having to set up the monster, but if a few cities exploded and Dr Manhattan was blamed I would give even oddds that the other countries of the world blamed the US and accused them of attacking their own city to cover it up. Like in “Fail Safe”.
Do you really think Laurie Jupiter, who doesn’t burn someone alive or kill millions of people or gun down the woman carrying her child is “one of the most broken” in the story? In both versions I thought of her as someone who had been through some rough times but was still young enough to rise above them, and someone who was pushed into a life she didn’t choose for herself but which she still kind of liked anyway. After all, if there isn’t much difference between Laurie and Silk Spectre, it’s because she was raised from birth to be Silk Spectre. If anything, being pushed into superherodom by a parent is a big difference from everyone else who put on a mask because of a need for revenge or because society wouldn’t accept their homosexuality or whatever. If I had to guess, they left out so much of her backstory because it didn’t kick ass as much as those of the other characters (too much talking, not enough butt-kicking) rather than being a comment on women in movies.
“In the film, I believe, that detail is gone.”
It is–he bites off the bully’s ear instead. I guess we can’t show kids smoking, but going Mike Tyson on someone is okay.
Trust me: it was the general bad-assed-ness of the scene. I clapped, my g/f clapped and everyone I knew clapped. Rorschach was a short redheaded basket-case about to get shanked, and then all of a sudden, he wasn’t. It wasn’t the oil; it was the line after the oil.
I don’t disagree with the general gist of things here, but it is worth pointing out that X-Men series is a big exception to the notion that there are no superhero women in film, even with the weak characterization of Storm.
(I suppose I could also point to Halle Berry’s other superhero role, but, um, let’s not.)
I suppose that was overstated. But Storm isn’t much of a developed character in the series, is she? More egregiously, neither in Jean, and she’s one of the most important X-Men there is.