Long-winded on “Watchmen”

Watchmen’s dark refrain is that “It’s all a big joke.” I think they’re talking about life, the world, existence, etc. But I’ll tell you what the real joke was: giving us all free 20oz. Coca-Colas at 10:00 in the morning then sitting us down for a two-hours-and-forty-minutes movie that you don’t want to take your eyes off of.

Real funny, you clowns.

Kidding aside, I was lucky enough to see “Watchmen” a day early and for free, thanks to some folks at work. I was definitely planning on seeing it anyway, so now I can take that $12 and spend it on something nice, like fancy cheese, or an ironic belt buckle.

After enjoying a book so immensely, there’s never a question, for me, about seeing the movie. Even if I’m completely sure there’s no way I won’t be disappointed (see: Everything is Illuminated), I will still see it—in theaters—if only so that I can mount my literary high horse and berate it.

The problem with writing about these films is that I no longer end up writing about the film; I end up writing about the adaptation. Which I’ll do once again. I have very strong opinions concerning adaptations, the gist of them being that movies adapted from complicated, cerebral, or non-linear works should, at most, be “inspired” by the original. Any attempt at re-creation in those cases usually has a result of desecration. It’s people-pleasing at its most lethal.

I can understand the director Zach Snyder’s choice to follow Watchmen almost panel-by-panel. If he hadn’t, he would’ve had fanboy feces all over his doorknobs every day for the next eight months. Divergence from an iconic work with such frothingly devoted fans is more than just risky—it’s masochistic. So, just as I would, he played it safe.

The result, while a decent and entertaining movie, will not (and should not) achieve the same kind of shelf-life and iconic status that its storyboard namesake has—nor the iconic status that C. Nolan’s Batman movies enjoy. I heard a few of my colleagues comparing “Watchmen” to “Dark Knight.” I don’t think that’s fair. The people behind “The Dark Knight” didn’t face the same sort of pressures. It was based on a character, not on a book, so the director and the writers had much more freedom to create in their own medium without fearing for their lives and porches.

Reviewer after reviewer has been saying that the opening-credits sequence is the best part of the film. My theory is that this is because they are all older than me. The theme of the credits is Costumed Heroes Throughout the 20th Century. So there’s costumed heroes taking Marilyn’s place in Andy Warhol prints, knocking off JFK, landing on the moon, etc. It’s probably more interesting for the older crowd, who was actually around for that stuff. My earliest memory of a national event is when the Pistons won the Championship in ‘89.

Personally, I enjoyed the visuals most. The image of Dr. Manhattan striding through the Vietnam fields and disintegrating people was awe-inspiring, the murder of the Comedian was strangely beautiful, and the Mars scene was a spectacle superior to anything in any other comic book movie.

Trumping all, though, unfortunately, was a sense of obscuring gratuitousness. It’s almost unfair to say, since the book could also probably be called “gratuitous,” but looking at cartoon panels of a man having his arms sawn off or a hatchet entering a man’s skull is different than watching it unfold in front of you in live-action. As a rule, the “Watchmen” cameras are not shy. They linger, maybe to their detriment, every time. Another form of gratuity lay in the unsubtle and seemingly aimless symbolism: the “Obsolete Models” sign hanging in the car lot from which Night Owl and Laurie Jupiter emerge,  or the way Rorschach’s splattered body made a Rorschach blot on the snow.

It’s difficult to say the film “tried too hard,” because ”trying too hard” is inevitable when working with material this lofty–well–lofty in some circles. It wants so bad to be iconic. You can tell by the music they chose: ultra-well-known anthems from a few generations ago (some of them odd…99 Luftballoons? What?). But it won’t make it, as pretty as it looks and as profound as its themes may be.  Alan Moore had a case when he claimed Watchmen was not meant for this medium. The dialogue sounds funny spoken aloud. The novel’s ironic self-consciousness is gone. Its subtlety is gone. And there are too many distractions.

Mr. Snyder made a valiant effort and did a respectable job, but, unlike its source material, it can be forgotten.

The Animated Ones

Unfortunately, I was proven right by the Oscars last Sunday. As I mentioned in the post below, when making one’s picks, it’s better to have not seen the movies. The one live-action short that I didn’t like won the little gold man last Sunday, and I wanted to throw my cupcake at the TV.

In the other “small-potatoes” categories, Best Animated Short and Best Documentary Short (categories in which I hadn’t seen any of the nominees), my picks of “Smile Pinki” and “La Maison de petits cubes” both won. I’d picked them because I liked their names, mostly. The whole phenomenon makes me want to shove a spoon in my eye.

But I’m glad I didn’t, because then I never would have gotten to see the animated shorts. It was the best $12 I’ve spent since I upgraded to boxer briefs.

Not only was I impressed by the quality and diversity of the art involved in making these films, but also by how funny some of them were. France’s “Oktapodi,” for example, had me laughing for about three minutes straight, and “Oktapodi” was three minutes long.

Once, a few years ago, my friend Sharon “Turbo” Marquart told me a French joke whose punch line “No arms, no chocolate!” When I looked at her with a Pomeranian blankness, she explained that “it’s really funny in French.” I took her word for it. She has a great sense of humor. Watching these animated shorts, though, there was no need to take anyone’s “word for it” about how funny they were: None of the five nominees had even one line of dialogue.

The obvious upside, then, is that they translate really well. I don’t have to speak Russian to appreciate “Lavatory – Lovestory” exactly as much as a Russian guy might. They’re truly global, and I love that.

I’ll rank these too, but they were all really damn good.

1. La Maison de petits cubes: This was the least funny, but the most interesting and imaginative. And old man lives in a land where the water level keeps rising slowly, as it has for many years, and he must build new floors on his home whenever it starts to flood. When he drops his pipe, he must rent some scuba gear and retrieve it, and we see him remembering his life, stage by stage, as he goes down through the levels.

2. Oktapodi: An extremely short, action-packed love story of two octopi, one of whom is nabbed from the tank by a spiteful truck driver. An incredible, slapstick chase scene ensues.

3. Presto: A Pixar joint about an egotistical magician in battle with his sly, carrot-starved rabbit. Bugs Bunny would be proud.

4. This Way Up: An extremely well made and wildly inappropriate story of two casket bearers having a really bad day after a boulder crushes their hearse. This may have been closer to the top of my list if it weren’t for a Dumboesque scene of macabre song & dance that didn’t seem to fit.

5. Lavatory – Lovestory: A lonely public lavatory attendant finds flowers in her coin jar, but has no idea who has given them to her. Its beauty lies in its simplicity. Like Justin Timberlake lyrics.