Who watches the Watchmen? I do!
Mar. 6th, 2009 10:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
robotech_masterJust got back from "watching the Watchmen". And it was good. In fact, it may very well have been one of the best comic book movies ever made.
Brief remarks that I personally don't think are spoilery, but if you don't want to risk it, don't go beneath the cut.
You don't turn a 12-issue comic book into a 3-hour movie without doing some abridgement. And indeed, a number of minor subplots and one major subplot were cut (though I expect at least some of the minor ones to return with the extra footage on the DVD). But on the other hand, the biggest problem that the 12-issue Watchmen comic book/graphic novel had was its uneven pacing due to some of those very subplots. The end result of removing them is to strip the plot to its barest essentials. As a result, the movie is so deftly paced that it feels less like a three-hour movie than many two-hour movies do.
The movie is violent. Very, very violent. Buckets-of-blood violent, going to what you expect the limits of violence in an R-rated film are and then some. I wonder whether they had to cut anything to get the R, and if so how much. But in keeping with the gritty nature of the comic, it really works.
The music was awesome. A lot of old standards that were chosen not just for their sound but for the symbolism of the songs themselves. (Even some of the instrumental pieces have symbolism if you know anything about their original source. Though I actually found that a bit distracting at one point in the film—I was distracted from a scene that was supposed to be dramatic because my head was going, "Wait, isn't that from (SOURCE)?")
(I'm tempted to remark on some of the cute nostalgic elements worked into the story that weren't there in the comic (given that the comic was written at the actual period so there was nothing to be nostalgic about, unlike the movie which is made as a (pseudo-)period piece). But to get specific would be to spoil too much. But I will say that given how that "Nostalgia" perfume was one of the oft-recurring symbols in the comic book, the presence of the elements is a sort of thematic adaptation or homage in and of itself.)
Purists might be upset at one of the changes to the story necessitated by removing the major subplot. But on the whole, taking into account the way the film medium is different from the comic medium and in some cases what worked great in comics would look totally silly on the screen: I think it worked, and preserved much the same narrative purpose that the version of events in the comic book did. And as a result, I think I may like the movie even more than I did the comic.
Now, to sleep.
Brief remarks that I personally don't think are spoilery, but if you don't want to risk it, don't go beneath the cut.
You don't turn a 12-issue comic book into a 3-hour movie without doing some abridgement. And indeed, a number of minor subplots and one major subplot were cut (though I expect at least some of the minor ones to return with the extra footage on the DVD). But on the other hand, the biggest problem that the 12-issue Watchmen comic book/graphic novel had was its uneven pacing due to some of those very subplots. The end result of removing them is to strip the plot to its barest essentials. As a result, the movie is so deftly paced that it feels less like a three-hour movie than many two-hour movies do.
The movie is violent. Very, very violent. Buckets-of-blood violent, going to what you expect the limits of violence in an R-rated film are and then some. I wonder whether they had to cut anything to get the R, and if so how much. But in keeping with the gritty nature of the comic, it really works.
The music was awesome. A lot of old standards that were chosen not just for their sound but for the symbolism of the songs themselves. (Even some of the instrumental pieces have symbolism if you know anything about their original source. Though I actually found that a bit distracting at one point in the film—I was distracted from a scene that was supposed to be dramatic because my head was going, "Wait, isn't that from (SOURCE)?")
(I'm tempted to remark on some of the cute nostalgic elements worked into the story that weren't there in the comic (given that the comic was written at the actual period so there was nothing to be nostalgic about, unlike the movie which is made as a (pseudo-)period piece). But to get specific would be to spoil too much. But I will say that given how that "Nostalgia" perfume was one of the oft-recurring symbols in the comic book, the presence of the elements is a sort of thematic adaptation or homage in and of itself.)
Purists might be upset at one of the changes to the story necessitated by removing the major subplot. But on the whole, taking into account the way the film medium is different from the comic medium and in some cases what worked great in comics would look totally silly on the screen: I think it worked, and preserved much the same narrative purpose that the version of events in the comic book did. And as a result, I think I may like the movie even more than I did the comic.
Now, to sleep.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2009-03-07 04:55 am (UTC)