Watchmen the Movie: Indicative of What?

So, I wasn't one of the first people to read Watchmen back in the late 80's or early 90's who ranted and raved about its particularities from the very beginning. In fact, I only read it earlier this year. But you can bet, I made SURE to read it before I even thought about going to a movie that Alan Moore (once again) wanted nothing to do with.

I don't want to make this a long winded critique that goes back and forth a thousand times but I will say this: Snyder has created beautiful images, just like he's done in the past and throughout his commercial career. Many of them are faithful to the graphic novel. The obvious problem one might say is that too many of these images ring hollow, but this isn't necessarily an issue of casting. In my opinion the film was actually exceptionally cast. ALL except for Ozymandias: Which was by far the greatest mis-match one could've mustered for the World's Smartest Man who also happens to be exceptionally strong. Adrien Viedt in this film comes across as the thin, wiry nerdy brat next door whose parents bought him all the cool expensive toys his whole life, and that's about it. And when he reveals his master plot, after the downfall, he stands in his disheveled Karnak looking defeated, which was never what Viedt would have done.

I have two qualms with the film that I feel very serious about. And I don't even need to mention the unfortunate exclusion of the Tales of the Black Freighter and the Frontiersman Newspaper Stand. The two most single disturbing features about Watchmen (to me) are this, and the first is somewhat unavoidable but contributes to my point about the second:

1) In the graphic novel, all of the violence and sex that takes place is largely at a distance or off screen throughout the entire story UNTIL the end, when there is a graphic display of carnage from the fallout, and you see pages of up close bodies spread in blood and debris. But before this, not even the exposition of Rorshach involved as much carnage as one might believe (especially if they had only seen the film). The scene where he butchers the child-molester saying "You put dogs down" - in the comic is actually very different. He handcuffs the man to the furnace, pours kerosene all over, and HANDS the man the butcher knife saying "I wouldnt try cutting through the chains. Not enough time." And tosses a match and walks out. Now TELL ME why the hell THAT wasn't the scene they included in the film. So much more class, and way more layered than the gratuitous head-butchering which never happened. This is my point, a Watchmen Blockbuster couldn't avoid cheapening itself and falling prey to the kinds of sex and violence that are expected to explicitly pop out at us in every scene. But this is what was so great about the comic, is it continually defied our expectations whereas in the film, we are paid off exactly in each instance we would expect. Cheapening every instinct.

2) I promised not to rant, but this is simply the most irresponsible cop-out I have ever seen in an adaptation to screen. In the novel, Viedt is able to successfully use Doc Manhattan to accidentally transport a Giant Alien Creature into the Heart of New York city, thus creating an "Alien Other" to end the Cold War and Bridge the USSR and USA and rest of the world in solidarity to stand up against this "Unknown" and Unearthly Enemy. So, to have (and SPOILER BEWARE: if you haven't already seen the film and don't want to know what they changed) Doc Manhattan be blamed on the international scale for Nuclear Bombs going off all over the globe, with no Alien Other makes absolutely no sense. Remember: "The Superman exists, and he is American." So how would the world recognize peace with the United States when they have known forever that we've been flaunting a Super-Human Weapon who has NOW admittedly (via-viedt) destroyed the world. It makes no sense. But the parallels to our times are scarily pertinent. America claims to have the answers, but they come in the forms of destruction, and our greatest fantasy is that people will ultimately accept our solution to Humanity's problems, namely false pretext for "freedom and democracy" in the form of war.

What is so great about the REAL Watchmen, is it was a direct insidious opposition to this systemic idea of Fascism Walking. The film, merely bastardizes this, whilst keeping enough of it in tact to try to please the die-hards, and capture the miniscule attention span of those who never heard of Watchmen, by turning into the Popcorn / Cotton Candy for the Spectacle that it (and Alan Moore) stood against so defiantly.

Am I happy that Snyder took the bullet and made the film? No. No. No. ONLY in the sense that it provides a timely metaphor to our hollow state of affairs: All glitz - no glamour.


Watchmen from atfilmweb on Vimeo.