I watched the Watchmen.
Mar. 7th, 2009 10:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
loopychewAnd it had its hits and misses.
The action was well directed if maybe a little too over-gory for my tastes--I heard someone say something along the lines of how the gang fight was originally Laurie and Dan rediscovering their love of vigilantism and how it had pretty much turned into nothing but Another Action Scene, and agree with that particular case. Acting was probably subpar, but I wasn't expecting much from this. Billy Crudup does a notable job of being dispassionate yet caring as Dr. Manhattan, and of course Jackie Earle Haley is now on my To Watch list (as I've not seen Little Children yet).
Carla Gugino in old person makeup looked awful. I kind of wish they used two separate actresses.
The Rorschach scenes they kept were pure genius, and I think the greatest moments in the movie--the one that played on the strengths of all involved and kept a lot of the weaknesses at bay--were Rorschach's imprisonment and subsequent breakout, particularly from "I'm not locked up in here with you, you are locked up in here with me" on. Big Figure and the subsequent pwnage of him and his goons were spot on, although I kind of miss the intimations that Big Figure was drowned in the toilet bowl, rather than beaten to a bloody pulp.
As for the ending...I had no problems with the way the ending changed, as I realized. My problem was with some of the material that got omitted that weakened the ending considerably, and would have even if they had kept the original disaster. Talking with my friend Emmanuel after the film, I told him, "even if you read about the differences in the ending on Wikipedia, you would think to yourself, 'oh, that isn't much of a change'. But it is." I didn't want to spoil for him the way the actual GN resolved itself, because really, how am I going to explain it?
No, the alternative Final Solution worked out nicely, as![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
twoflower argues in his review. Even the culling of Tales of the Black Freighter probably worked in favor of the film, particularly seeing as it was going on three hours as was. However, because of this, we're missing the human element in all this.
For those of you who've only watched the movie, there are entire subplots cut out in which we see the End is Nigh picketer picking up his daily newspaper, and the small dramas that play out around the customers of the newsstand. We get a little bit about the picketer guy (not much, admittedly), the newsstand owner, the guy who runs the cab company across the street, the kid through whom we experience the Tales of the Black Freighter, and a woman who's having troubles with her girlfriend.
There are also scenes involving Rorschach's therapist and all the self-examination he goes through after, at one point, Rorschach completely deconstructs the man's inner nature, before explaining his own backstory. Some domestic scenes in which his wife and him are having a falling-out because of his compulsion to help others, and such. They also took out a scene explaining how Walter Kovacs first started donning Rorschach's mask, which is tied into the Watchmen universe's Kitty Genovese. Take the time, read up on it if you haven't. The truth about the murder wasn't important; the popular view on it is. The theme behind the motivations behind the major players in the game--we do it because humanity itself won't--becomes pretty evident. This is the line of thinking that drives Ozymandias to his Final Solution, this is why Rorshach still dons his mask long after they've been outlawed.
Towards the end, as Nite Owl and Rorschach are on their way to Ozymantarctica, we have the climactic showdown intercut with a fight breaking out in the middle of the street in New York--one of the newsstand regulars has snapped, and is now wailing on someone else. It has attracted attention on the street--some of the newsstand regulars, the guy running the cab company and his brother, the shrink out with his wife--all these bystanders watching the spectacle.
Except, as the battle in Ozymantarctica rages on, we realize that these people aren't just bystanding or rubbernecking, they're actually struggling to stop the fight. And as they as a collective manage to prevent second-degree murder, the clock strikes thirty-five minutes to midnight.
What you witness, before the twelve pages of dead bodies, is Ozymandias and Rorschach being proven wrong about humanity.
This is the real tragedy: Ozymandias doesn't get to witness that the people he felt needed saving had found the potential to save themselves in such a desparate hour. Maybe he would have felt that there wasn't enough time, which is possible, seeing as the doomsday clock was less than a minute to midnight. But it was there.
I understand that putting in all this is impossible to do in a theatrical cut of a film (particularly one that was already running close to three hours) and I hope they manage not to only put in all of Tales of the Black Freighter into the director's cut, but also this one crucial, climactic scene. Ideally, the way I would have cut a scene along these lines, would have been to include a fairly prominent New York time clock running close to midnight somewhere in the background of the Ozymantarctica fight scene, somewhere where people will notice its inevitable journey to the new day, intercut with the people breaking apart the street fight. At about three to midnight on the NY clock, Adrian explains what happened in his final plan, and then--as in the comic book, we see a clock hit 11:25, and chaos ensue.
In conclusion, Malin Akerman is hot. Oh, and go watch it--whether or not it was worth it, in this case, is something that is really, REALLY the viewer's call, but you'll be talking about it a long time afterward, guaranteed.
The action was well directed if maybe a little too over-gory for my tastes--I heard someone say something along the lines of how the gang fight was originally Laurie and Dan rediscovering their love of vigilantism and how it had pretty much turned into nothing but Another Action Scene, and agree with that particular case. Acting was probably subpar, but I wasn't expecting much from this. Billy Crudup does a notable job of being dispassionate yet caring as Dr. Manhattan, and of course Jackie Earle Haley is now on my To Watch list (as I've not seen Little Children yet).
Carla Gugino in old person makeup looked awful. I kind of wish they used two separate actresses.
The Rorschach scenes they kept were pure genius, and I think the greatest moments in the movie--the one that played on the strengths of all involved and kept a lot of the weaknesses at bay--were Rorschach's imprisonment and subsequent breakout, particularly from "I'm not locked up in here with you, you are locked up in here with me" on. Big Figure and the subsequent pwnage of him and his goons were spot on, although I kind of miss the intimations that Big Figure was drowned in the toilet bowl, rather than beaten to a bloody pulp.
As for the ending...I had no problems with the way the ending changed, as I realized. My problem was with some of the material that got omitted that weakened the ending considerably, and would have even if they had kept the original disaster. Talking with my friend Emmanuel after the film, I told him, "even if you read about the differences in the ending on Wikipedia, you would think to yourself, 'oh, that isn't much of a change'. But it is." I didn't want to spoil for him the way the actual GN resolved itself, because really, how am I going to explain it?
No, the alternative Final Solution worked out nicely, as
twoflower argues in his review. Even the culling of Tales of the Black Freighter probably worked in favor of the film, particularly seeing as it was going on three hours as was. However, because of this, we're missing the human element in all this.For those of you who've only watched the movie, there are entire subplots cut out in which we see the End is Nigh picketer picking up his daily newspaper, and the small dramas that play out around the customers of the newsstand. We get a little bit about the picketer guy (not much, admittedly), the newsstand owner, the guy who runs the cab company across the street, the kid through whom we experience the Tales of the Black Freighter, and a woman who's having troubles with her girlfriend.
There are also scenes involving Rorschach's therapist and all the self-examination he goes through after, at one point, Rorschach completely deconstructs the man's inner nature, before explaining his own backstory. Some domestic scenes in which his wife and him are having a falling-out because of his compulsion to help others, and such. They also took out a scene explaining how Walter Kovacs first started donning Rorschach's mask, which is tied into the Watchmen universe's Kitty Genovese. Take the time, read up on it if you haven't. The truth about the murder wasn't important; the popular view on it is. The theme behind the motivations behind the major players in the game--we do it because humanity itself won't--becomes pretty evident. This is the line of thinking that drives Ozymandias to his Final Solution, this is why Rorshach still dons his mask long after they've been outlawed.
Towards the end, as Nite Owl and Rorschach are on their way to Ozymantarctica, we have the climactic showdown intercut with a fight breaking out in the middle of the street in New York--one of the newsstand regulars has snapped, and is now wailing on someone else. It has attracted attention on the street--some of the newsstand regulars, the guy running the cab company and his brother, the shrink out with his wife--all these bystanders watching the spectacle.
Except, as the battle in Ozymantarctica rages on, we realize that these people aren't just bystanding or rubbernecking, they're actually struggling to stop the fight. And as they as a collective manage to prevent second-degree murder, the clock strikes thirty-five minutes to midnight.
What you witness, before the twelve pages of dead bodies, is Ozymandias and Rorschach being proven wrong about humanity.
This is the real tragedy: Ozymandias doesn't get to witness that the people he felt needed saving had found the potential to save themselves in such a desparate hour. Maybe he would have felt that there wasn't enough time, which is possible, seeing as the doomsday clock was less than a minute to midnight. But it was there.
I understand that putting in all this is impossible to do in a theatrical cut of a film (particularly one that was already running close to three hours) and I hope they manage not to only put in all of Tales of the Black Freighter into the director's cut, but also this one crucial, climactic scene. Ideally, the way I would have cut a scene along these lines, would have been to include a fairly prominent New York time clock running close to midnight somewhere in the background of the Ozymantarctica fight scene, somewhere where people will notice its inevitable journey to the new day, intercut with the people breaking apart the street fight. At about three to midnight on the NY clock, Adrian explains what happened in his final plan, and then--as in the comic book, we see a clock hit 11:25, and chaos ensue.
In conclusion, Malin Akerman is hot. Oh, and go watch it--whether or not it was worth it, in this case, is something that is really, REALLY the viewer's call, but you'll be talking about it a long time afterward, guaranteed.
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no subject
Date: 2009-03-13 08:40 am (UTC)But what I wanted to say since you mention it a couple of times, just in case you haven't seen it, together with the movie they released a DVD entitled Tales of the Black Freighter. As I said, I'm not familiar with all the background, just wanted to make sure that you are aware of it.