{"id":234,"date":"2009-04-05T17:34:06","date_gmt":"2009-04-05T16:34:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scriptsurgeon.co.uk\/blog\/?p=60"},"modified":"2009-04-05T17:34:06","modified_gmt":"2009-04-05T16:34:06","slug":"review-of-watchmen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/2009\/04\/05\/review-of-watchmen\/","title":{"rendered":"Review of Watchmen"},"content":{"rendered":"

I thought I\u2019d break from my musings on screenwriting and storytelling and give you a review of Watchmen <\/em>from the point of view of someone who is familiar with the original graphic novel, but is neither an insane proselytizing zealot, nor someone who regards still pictures plus dialogue as beneath him (whereas moving pictures plus dialogue is high art).<\/p>\n

This review is basically spoiler-free, but if you want to know nothing about the movie before you see it, then read this \u2013 and any review \u2013 when you get back from the cinema.<\/p>\n

In 1985, Watchmen was an extraordinary achievement from writer Alan Moore, artist Dave Gibbons and comics company DC who let them tell this story. The premise was very simple: what would America look like today if in the 1940s, maverick crime-fighters actually had started running around in spandex tights, instead of this merely being depicted in what were fairly simplistic comic books for children? From this basic premise, Moore and Gibbons spun a tale which not only included its own roster of memorable \u201csuper\u201d heroes (almost none of them has superpowers, only fancy costumes and tenacity) but which added to that mix a glowing blue godlike man, a terrifying form of detente, a pirate tale-within-a-tale and of course an gigantic alien psychic squid.<\/p>\n

The comic was a sensation, and in the wake of the success of Tim Burton\u2019s Batman<\/em>, a movie was swiftly mooted. But it\u2019s taken 25 years and a revolving door of directors and screenwriters before Zack Snyder\u2019s movie version has finally made it to our screens, basically fairly faithfully, with some easy-to-swallow compressions and elisions, some minor updates and the substitution of the original\u2019s most outr\u00e9 (and tentacled) element with something rather more mundane in conception, but equally devastating in effect.<\/p>\n

But the world has also changed in the last 25 years. In some ways, this is immensely to Watchmen<\/em>\u2019s benefit. Can you imagine how hokey a 1987 version of Dr Manhattan would have looked, perhaps played by Charlie Sheen, slathered with blue make-up and covered with hand-drawn rotoscoped sparkles? We had a lucky escape there.<\/p>\n

But superhero movies have also changed. It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 to say that directors like Zach Snyder use the original comic as a storyboard, and here it\u2019s clearly untrue in the strictest sense, since one of the comic\u2019s most notable features is that almost every page is divided into nine tall-and-skinny frames, none of which would be suitable storyboard illustrations for a 2.35:1 widescreen movie. But while the individual compositions may have vanished, it\u2019s impossible to watch the movie and then read the book without each reflecting the other very strongly. Snyder takes his lead from Gibbons again and again and again, in terms of pacing, angles, lighting and even the expressions and hairstyles of the actors.<\/p>\n

However, Snyder adds to this his own CGI environments and impossible tracking shots, speed ramps, fast cutting and explicit gore. The Watchmen<\/em> of the comic are highly realistic and grounded compared to other comic-book heroes of the day \u2013 but the crimefighters depicted in Snyder\u2019s film are every bit as preternaturally fast, sturdy, hyperaware and impervious to pain as the most ludicrous of their modern day cinematic brethren. And so this is the second change which the twenty-five year gap has wrought \u2013 we know what comic book movies are supposed to look like now. After the twin false starts of Superman<\/em> and Batman<\/em>, an established cinematic style has been established for this kind of movie \u2013 never mind that Watchmen<\/em> was never intended to be this kind of movie!<\/p>\n

And this lack of real-world grounding is added to by the fact that this is now a period piece. This, the third gift of the quarter century gap, is the one that neither Snyder nor Gibbons nor Moore could really do anything about. When the comic was published, Moore was writing about an alternate now, but the movie is a period piece<\/span> set 25 years in the past. So everyone looks weird, because they\u2019re wearing old fashioned clothes and hairstyles, and even those don\u2019t look quite right because it\u2019s an alternate 1985 of course, and so it\u2019s much less of a jolt when people start putting on costumes. The sporadically funny, but ultimately badly flawed Mystery Men<\/em> actually does a better job of showing you what putting on a costume and fighting crime would actually mean today.<\/p>\n

This stylisation in design, costume, lighting, camera and so on is all just part-and-parcel of the comic book movie of course, putting off mainstream critics like The Observer\u2019s Jason Solomons, who took one look at the trailer and made Xan Brooks go and see it for him. It\u2019s interesting to note how stiff and CGI-ish Dr Manhattan looks compared to the different ages of Benjamin Button. If anything, replacing Billy Crudup with an entirely computer-generated character is an easier challenge than affixing a CGI puppet Brad Pitt head on to the shoulders of a clutch of differently-sized stand-in bodies \u2013 but Benjamin Button<\/em> can\u2019t afford a second of less than total photorealism, whereas nothing in Watchmen <\/em>looks remotely real to begin with.<\/p>\n

So \u2013 the opportunity to make a real Watchmen<\/em> for a new audience has gone, but what does Snyder\u2019s film leave us with? Well, actually quite a lot. Once I gave up any expectations that I\u2019d be seeing anything remotely resembling the real world, or anyone who remotely resembled a real person, and gave myself over to the movie, I quickly got caught up in it. I deliberately didn\u2019t reread the comic until after seeing the movie again, and while I recalled the rough outline of the story, much of the detail I failed to remember. And it is a very faithful retelling of the tale, which is where it really succeeds. All the actors, but particularly Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley, work hard to chisel out their own little pieces of humanity from inside the whirling, kinetic visuals, and Alan Moore\u2019s story, darting nimbly back-and-forward in time, never abandons its narrative drive, and delivers the viewer to its shocking yet inevitable conclusion.<\/p>\n

Moore, by now playing the mad genius role to the demented hilt, has had his name taken off the movie, leaving the bizarre credit \u201cBased on the comic book co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons\u201d, which is an intense pity. Because to the extent that Watchmen<\/em> works, and for all my carping, that\u2019s a great extent, it\u2019s largely due to his controlled imagination, expert storytelling and crisp dialogue, which has been lifted almost wholesale for the movie version. Whether or not you\u2019ve read or intend to read Watchmen<\/em> in comic form, if you like the movie, tip your hat to Alan Moore.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

If you want me or one of the other\u00a0Script Surgeons\u00a0to read your script and send you a detailed report on what works and what doesn’t then we are currently offering this service for just \u00a350 with a guaranteed seven-day turnaround.\u00a0<\/strong>Send your script in today.<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I thought I\u2019d break from my musings on screenwriting and storytelling and give you a review of Watchmen from the point of view of someone who is familiar with the original graphic novel, but is neither an insane proselytizing zealot, nor someone who regards still pictures plus dialogue as beneath him (whereas moving pictures plus dialogue is high art).<\/p>\n

This review is basically spoiler-free, but if you want to know nothing about the movie before you see it, then read this \u2013 and any review \u2013 when you get back from the cinema.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[25],"tags":[31,32,64,82,95,97],"class_list":["post-234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-at-the-cinema","tag-alan-moore","tag-batman","tag-mystery-men","tag-superman","tag-watchmen","tag-zack-snyder"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5JY5l-3M","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=234"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/234\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tomsalinsky.co.uk\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}