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.