Watchmen

(Movie Review)

There's been so much written about this movie already, I'm not sure where to start.

Well, first of all, in reply to all the fanboy whining perhaps I should start at the basics (at the risk of being patronizing).

I believe that in the world of artistic endeavors, there should be no sacred cows. Great art is created by removing all the limits, and allowing the artists to try and fail on their own. Great art is created by attempting the impossible, and being willing to risk falling flat on your face.
The world never suffered because someone created a work of art that failed. But it might suffer if we create restrictions on what can and can't be attempted.
No one needs to feel threatened by this movie. You'll still have the original comic book. The movie won't take anything away from the comic, nor will one bad film adaptation spoil re-reading it for you.
And if you think the film could have been done better, there's nothing to prevent someone from giving it another try with a remake in 20 years.

But of course all of that is not to ignore the simple fact that when you do attempt the impossible, 99.9% of the time you fail. Nor should you be spared taking your lumps when you do fall flat on your face. And this movie, in many regards, falls flat on its face.

"Watchmen" is a difficult story to adapt for a movie. Like "Lord of the Rings" and "Harry Potter", it has a rabid fan base which demands the film adaptation stay loyal to the original comic book. But the original comic book series does not lend itself to a movie.
A normal Hollywood movie usually builds up in tension until you reach a big climax at the end. For that matter, a lot of novels do as well. But a comic book is a story told in installments. A comic book is a series of small climaxes and mini-cliff hangers designed to keep the reader coming back for the next issue.
It's also not uncommon, as in "Watchmen" to have several different sub-plots going, as each character has their own character thread.

The first 40 minutes of "Watchmen", I was really loving it. The second 40 minutes I thought to myself, "strange, I wonder when this movie is going to pick up". The final 40 minutes I was beginning to feel a little bit bored.

And I had actually read the original graphic novel, so I should have known what to expect. But when you sit down for a nice long movie, your brain switches into "movie mode" and you subconsciously expect more climatic action.

The second problem is one that is dealt with by many movie adaptations of books. Namely, because of the time restrictions on the movie, they are able to do little more than just skim the surface of the original story.
Part of what made Alan Moore's original comic book so appealing is that although his story made use of brand new superheros, he built in a backstory that went all the way back to the 1930s and 40s. The superheroes in the main storyline were the second generation heroes. The "B" storyline (all in flashbacks) told what had happened to the first generation of superheroes.

This is hinted at in the movie, but it never gets fully fleshed out as in the book. So you never get the opportunity to finally immerse yourself in the new superhero mythology Alan Moore creates out of wholecloth.

And when you remove all those layers from the story, all you're left with is this plot about the dangers of nuclear war. Which may be a really deep commentary on modern society, or it may be just using nuclear weapons as an easy way to sound deep (as in hundreds of B-grade cold war era science fiction stories).

There are, however, a number of things that the movie does get right.

The script, for example, does a pretty good job of striping the storyline down to its essentials, while still keeping the punches in. A lesser director might have been tempted to cut out parts like shooting the pregnant woman in Vietnam, or "God exists, and he is an American", or the scenes in the war room when Kissinger, Nixon, and Halderman decide that losing the entire East Coast is an acceptable loss in exchange for winning a nuclear war against the Soviet Union.
(Although personally I would have cut out all the gore myself. I think you can make your point without grossing the audience out. But that's just me, I'm a bit squeamish.)

The big problem with this movie is (not to get too technical) the bad acting and the bad directing. Oh yeah, and the bad editing.

There's a lot of juicy material in this script, but the actors aren't quite up to it, and most of the material is under-acted.
The directing is also a bit off. I'm no expert myself, but I thought the slow motion thing was overdone. Not only was there was too much slow motion going on in general, but exactly the scenes where the adrenaline should have been up and the action should have been moving faster, the director chose to slow things down.
Conversely, there are a few scenes that I thought got rushed through so the audience didn't realize the significance of them. I wouldn't necessarily have used slow motion here (I'm not a big slo-mo fan) but there were a couple places where the camera could have lingered for a while longer and let the significance set in without rushing off to the next scene.
In summary, I would have slowed down where the director speeded up, and speeded up where he slowed down.

As for the editing: there are some good songs in this movie, but none of them ever really seem to match the scene they're in, and feel pasted overtop.

The ending, even in the graphic novel, was designed to be somewhat anti-climatic, but it didn't have to be as completely wet as it was in the movie. With some more dramatic acting the movie could have hammered home the significance of what had happened a little bit more. As it was, all the actors just gave complete non-reactions to what should have been a very shocking moment.
However, I'm inclined to agree with Time Magazine's review of "Watchmen" (link here). For all the wrong notes and missed opportunities, there are some good moments in this movie. And those few moments alone probably make it worth sitting through the whole movie.
For example I found myself actually being touched by Dr. Manhattan's story as he sat on Mars and mourned his lost loves.

Since the release of more Nixon tapes a few years ago, and the revelation that Nixon had wanted to use nuclear bombs on North Vietnam, the scenes with Nixon and his advisers calmly planning nuclear war as if they're at a chess game now seem even more believable than when this comic was first written.

Nuclear weapons are perhaps an easy target for prententious science fiction writers. And, what's more, it's social relevancy is somewhat dated. The original comic was written in the mid 80s during the height of the cold war, but with the collapse of the Soviet Union very few of us stay up at night worrying about nuclear war between two super-powers. Instead, it seems far more likely these days that global warming and an environmental apocolypse will be how we destroy the world instead.

Most of us have the idea (which we've absorbed from the media and the education system) that although nuclear weapons have frightening capabilities, our leaders in Washington are wise enough never to use them. But if you actually examine the historical record, it's frightening how many times we've come close to nuclear war over the past 60 years. In the Hiroshima museum, there is a list of all the times since World War II the US government considered using nuclear weapons, and it's pretty shocking: everything from China going communist to the Suez Canal Crisis. (Unfortunately I can't find that list on line, but the wikipedia article on nuclear Warfare gives a number of near misses).

The Cuban missile crisis, cliche though it is, is undoubtably the stupidest moment in human history. Contrary to what you learn in schools, this was not a case of a rational US President standing up to the irrational Soviet Union, but a deadly game of brinksmanship on both sides.
The Russians had already agreed to remove the missiles in Cuba if the US would remove their missiles in Turkey first (which were just as close to the Soviets as the Cuban missiles were to us). Kennedy wanted the Soviets to remove their missiles first, so that he didn't look like he was giving into the Soviets, and would agree to remove the missiles in Cuba only afterwards.
How close did this stupid game come to destroying the whole world? With newly released information, we now know that it came even closer than we thought. Check out this video here to see how the world came to only one countermanded order away from complete destruction.

One more example before I drop the subject: go to PBS website and watch the documentary on Robert Oppenheimer (link here). One hydrogen bomb by itself (more powerful than the atom bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) would be enough to entirely wipe out New York City. The nuclear fall out from that same one hydrogen bomb would take out the entire East coast.
How many of these weapons would you think any sane society would need? Well, the U.S. government has stockpiled 70,000 hydrogen bombs.

And lest we forget, just a few short years ago Bush and Cheney were re-asserting the right of the US government to a nuclear first strike against a potentially hostile country.

...Sorry, I'm getting a little side tracked here.
I believe the concerns about nuclear weapons are still valid. And I think the nuclear war scenario that played out in "Watchmen" is, unfortunately, entirely realistic. But whether we need films like "Watchmen" to dramatize it for us, or if the reality is horrible enough on the face of it, is an open question. You'd probably learn a lot more by watching the 50 minute PBS documentary than by sitting through the 2 hours plus of "Watchmen".

Updated October, 2009
Initially I watched this movie off of an illegal internet copy. Upon renting the actual DVD several months later, my first thoughts are unchanged.
The script does a very good job of taking a very convoluted story with several character arcs, and bringing it down to movie length while still keeping in all the punches.
But in most of the scenes, the rhythm is off. The actors move too quickly, or they don't move quickly enough.
The few scenes where they get it right though are absolutely brilliant.

Link of the Day
Rogue States
and Ten Things You Can Do to Oppose the War in Afghanistan
and Glenn Beck and the mystery of the White House fascists.

Watchmen: Movie Review (Scripted)