Who watches The Watchmen? Me.

March 4, 2:24 PMSalt Lake City Movie ExaminerBryan Young

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The Watchmen

I was fortunate enough to catch an advanced screening of The Watchmen on Monday and have decided to try hard to put my thoughts down here on The Examiner.

It's been two days since I've seen the movie and I still can't decide if I liked the film or hated it.  It's certainly Zack Snyder's best film (not very hard to do) and it's cetainly the best adaptation of Alan Moore's work to see the silver screen (again, not very hard to do), but does it work?

I’m trying so hard to not be the guy who’s like, “The book was better.” But that is obvious. There’s no way the movie could have been better than the book. And there were moments in the movie that were utterly brilliant. The opening with The Comedian, the business on Mars, the prison sequences, the death of Rorschach, etc… But other times I was thinking to myself, “I’d rather be reading the book.”

I mean, there were a couple of times where shivers ran up my spine and other times when I was overcome by emotion and my ears were filled with tears.  But there were other times where I felt like what they did and what happened in the comic book, although they had the same result, got to that point differently and it didn't keep the gravitas of the book.

I enjoyed this film. But it felt like it lacked the poignance and greatness of the graphic novel. Again, I’m trying to separate the book from the movie, but it was baggage that I brought with me from the book that helped prop the film up for me. I think the use of music was fantastic, the production and art design was great, the attention to detail was astounding. But there were weak links. Malin Akerman (Laurie Jupiter/Silk Spectre II) was stunning to look at but was a terrible actress (and trying to give her Dr. Manhattans best lines about endings in the end was perhaps the biggest misstep in the adaptation), Nixon wasn’t the best (seriously, we all just got done watching Frank Langella and this guy just didn't have it), and they tried a little too hard to wink at me for having read the book.  Repeatedly.

And then it comes to the ending. (There are spoilers from here on out.)  The ending in the film is different than the ending in the book.  And I'm sure every review you read of the film will make mention of the replacement of the Cthulhu like squid creatures with devices that replicate Dr. Manhattan's power, making it look like he was responsible.  This is not the change to the ending that bothered me.  The change that bothered me was the tone of the ending.  In the book, Dr. Manhattan (played pitch perfectly by Billy Crudup) is grim-toned about Ozymandias' plan to unite Earth.  He explains that it won't change things forever and that nothing ever ends, that his efforts were futile for anything but the short term.  In the film, Manhattan seems almost happy about the way things turned out, and glad that's going to be exiled from the galaxy.  But when they had Laurie repeat these lines, in a different context, they didn't have the same meaning.  This felt like a white-washed, Hollywood sort of ending designed to make things happier.

The only character they got the ending right for was Rorschach (portrayed by Jackie Earle Haley in the best performance in the film) and that moment was one of three that watered my eyes. 

And though they got the ending right for Rorschach, his journal is another matter.  In the graphic novel, much to do is made about a conservative gossip rag called The New Frontiersman.  Throughout the book, you're able to read copies of this paper and feel it's influence in the world of Watchmen.  When the Watchmen make their pact to keep Ozymandias' plan secret for the benefit of mankind, Rorschach simply can't abide and has to go tell someone.  And, at the end of the book, after we've heard Dr. Manhattan explain that this can't last forever and Rorschach, because he didn't compromise even in the face of Armageddon, mailed a copy of his journal to this scandalous paper.  As the issue progressed, his journal became buried under a pile of other crank mail.  Would they ever get to it or see it?

The ending of the film offers that answer for you and provides the voice-over to prove it in a scene that is also the first appearance of The New Frontiersman in the film.

So, in the end, the ambiguity and the gravitas of the ending is skewed toward the happy and definite.

In my final analysis, the film was pretty good.  It wasn't great, certainly not anywhere near as good as the book.  It was simply okay. 

And the last thing I'm left scratching my head about is whether or not I would have liked it more if I'd never read the book.  But when I think of a situation where'd I'd never have read Watchmen, it's an experience I'd never want to have.