Zach Synder's film version of the graphic novel that could. Now I've not read the book so I'm only going off the film here (also bear mind that only graphic novels I've ever read that I consider to be actually really good and just like proper books are Neil Gaiman's Sandman series)
Now Watchmen is a film that takes it's time to get anywhere, two hours and forty three minutes of it's time to be exact. I don't have an issue with long films if they are good enough to sustain the running time, Watchmen isn't quite there. During the film it often feels like the film is about to launch into top gear and really start rattling along, only it never really does. Everytime it threatens to it eases back off again.
For example the prison break is at first appears to make a seas change in the pace of the film, only for it to slow right back down again. It's never quite gripping enough to make you forget the time is passing.
In terms of what it has to say, well, there is nothing really new here that I haven't see before. Basically heroes aren't all perfect people, sometimes you have to sacrifice for the greater good and mankind is essentially douchey with touches of being occasionally great. Also big blue man parts attract the ladies. Ok, the man parts bit might be new.
I'm told the book was the first to break a lot of this ground when first printed, but as I've said I've not read it and go only from the film which arrives with the message and themes about ten minutes too late to the party and there's already a whole bunch of moody 'complicated' guys hanging around looking cool in the corner.
Two people stand out performance wise, Malin Akerman for being a bit ropey as Silk Spectre II and Jackie Earle Hayley for being the best thing in the film as Rorschach. In fact I think the film would have worked much better if Synder had been brave enough to move away from the source material a little and front & centered Rorschach.
Seriously it could have been a dark thrilling investigative thriller with him at the middle of it, instead what have a film that wanders off on tangents a couple of times and as such the pace suffers.
Sadly the best sequence of the film is the opening title sequence craftily riffing off a number of famous pop culture images to timeline the story so far in this alternate world with costumed vigilantes are a real thing. After this it is a bit by the numbers really, only a moment with the men's toilets during the prison break comes close to matching the imagination and sly wit at play here.
So we have a solid effort here and it does show a bit more range for Synder after '300' but it's not overly memorable and at times it is actually cringe worthy (the softcore interlude for example) but it does show that another 'unfilmable' book is perfectly filmable just not that interesting as a film.
1 comment:
I can confirm that the film is fairly good at replicating Alan Moore's work, in that it's very interesting and cleverly structured, and totally impossible to have an emotional reaction to. I've mentioned before that Moore is to comics what Kubrick is to films (though I like Moore far more), in that in both cases their work looks like what an incredibly intelligent and complex machine would generate in an effort to try and approximate actual art.
Having said all that, Watchmen is comparable to Sandman in terms of sheer quality (both are in my top 5 comics). It helps a lot to be able to step away from it between chapters. I'd also point out that attempting to compare graphic novels to "actual books" is a mistake, and part of why comics are so often held in low esteem. They are different art forms, and need to be viewed as such.
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