Watching Watchmen - by Philip

I just got back from seeing "Watchmen" with a few friends, and I'm sorry to say that it wasn't nearly as good as I thought it would be. I might have gone into it with excessive expectations because the trailers were so damn cool and our local movie reviewer gave it the highest rating possible. I was also looking forward to seeing a superhero movie that didn't feature a unidimensional morally upright defender of humanity who really has no chance of failing in his mission. The superheroes in this story are mostly very human, with the accompanying frailties and prejudices, which is so nice to see in this genre. Unfortunately, this movie forgot about one thing - the story.



If you are already a big fan of the original Watchmen comic series, then you will probably love this movie. I had never read any of the comics and didn't know anything about the storyline, so I spent most of my time wondering when the story was going to start. It's always difficult to adapt a story to the screen that already has a passionate fan base, but this script suffers from the most basic adaptation mistake - it tries to remain so true to original story that it sacrifices a cohesive plot line. This is like taking an excellent radio show and making a TV series out of it that just features a bunch of people standing around a microphone reading their lines. If you're not going to write a script that is structured for the screen, then your movie is not going to work.

In addition to the adaptation problems, this movie also suffers from its ensemble cast. There are so many major characters in this movie with so many things going on that it's difficult to follow the plot. "The Big Chill" did a pretty good job of this, but I can't remember another movie since 1983 that has pulled off an ensemble cast well. It is extremely rare for a movie to work well if it doesn't have a strong protagonist and antagonist, and this movie has neither. Without those two main characters battling against each other, there can't be a story line that the audience can really get behind. In this movie, we almost never know what anyone is trying to accomplish and who is trying to prevent that from happening, and that is the essence of practically every critically successful movie ever made.



On a good note, Jackie Earle Haley is amazing as Rorschach. If you have any inclination at all to go see this movie, he alone is reason enough to do so. It's not often that an audience really roots for a masochistic psychopath, but the audience at the IMAX Theater in San Francisco's Metreon Center cheered every move he made. (BTW, if someone had dropped a bomb on the theater where I was watching this movie, it would have decimated the nation's IT capacity. Total geekfest, present company included.) How many times have you seen a movie where a superhero walks into a bathroom to kill someone and his two superhero friends just wait outside rolling their eyes while the audience roars with laughter? "That's just Rorschach being Rorschach!" The characters were well conceptualized and the portrayals were mostly pretty good, though some were pretty stilted and wooden. I actually found the Night Owl to be fairly annoying, outside of a couple of good scenes.

The bottom line is that, if you are a Watchmen fan or just want to see some spectacular visuals, then you should probably go see this movie on the big screen. If not, then you might as well wait for the DVD, which will undoubtedly have a huge amount of bonus material. Nota bene - Be prepared to spend about 20% of this movie looking at a big blue schlong since it turns out that Dr. Manhattan isn't shy about doing full frontal. You've been warned.

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