Watchmen. Because I care.

07/03/09

Okay, the most important thing: comfy cinema.

I am in any case a huge fan of comfy cinemas. There is very little I hate more in day-to-day life than going to a cinema where hideous lumbar pain becomes an issue just after the credits and continues to distract until my entire body goes numb at the start of the third act. In this case it is particularly important because this is not a short movie, and because the occasional vision of shattered tibia poking out of someone’s body is going to cause you to slosh around a bit.

Also, pee first. Although, if you positively have to pee, just do it. This is not a movie where you will suddenly miss a vital clue and get confused.

I’m not going to review this in a grown-up way. I’m just going to tell you stuff. I don’t review because I’m not good at it and the process messes with my head while I’m watching a movie or reading a book or whatever. It transforms the experience, which makes what I write about what I’m reviewing meaningless.

[And please note that when I say I'm not going to review this movie in a grown-up way, that does not mean that this post is suitable for children. The movie's a film for adults. We're going to be talking grown-up stuff. Okay?]

The Good:

The opening credits, Watchmen sneaked into core moments of US history.

Rorschach’s mask.

Doctor Manhattan.

The soundtrack.

Adrian Veidt.

The look of the thing.

The Bad:

Stiff supersuits. Remember when Michael Keaton did Batman and could barely move? Yeah.

Doctor Manhattan’s penis. It’s a respectable penis. It never behaves badly or does anything overtly to alarm you, but it moves in this weirdly hypnotic, predictable way. Either it’s a computer-generated penis and the penis-simulation algorithm is not good, or Billy Cudrup has a penis which swings and bounces in exactly the same way each time. Although I suppose possibly they just cut and pasted a single take of Billy Cudrup’s penis onto every nude sequence. Maybe it’s even deliberate. All I can say is that any movie which features a giant and self-replicating naked man seen full frontal, the penis is going to be a focus of attention, however briefly, and this penis, while in no way a bad penis for itself, is a penis which appear to have very little in the way of expressive range.

Oh, boy, was that discussion longer than I intended when I started typing.

The violence. I don’t usually object to on-screen violence – although I do have a continuing fury about the fact that we’re okay with showing fractured tibia but we get grinchy and horrified about sex – but this was distracting and grue-y without being cool (see also point one: stiff super-suits). It looked kinda video-game, too. But I’m a fight-scene fusspot. I love Le Bossu. I love Jackie Chan. I even love the amazing (almost Chaplin-ish) sequences in The Transporter. This didn’t do it for me. Sorry.

The Kinda Weird:

The group hug at the end. (You’ll know when you see it.)

The absence of the squid. Seriously? Squid makes more sense. Squid scarier. Squid also a new visual. I want my goddam squid. And I honestly went in there thinking the squid thing was a complete waste of time and energy. Yeesh. Who knew?

The moderately hot sex. A bit hot, a bit weird, and rather more of it than I was expecting. Of which I think I approve, in that it least maintains a sense of balance regarding sex and violence. Although to be at the same level as the violence they’d have had to be copulating on the Oval Office desk, with feathers, and a trained yogic dance male/female/other sex troupe.

The pacing. Is weird.

The Verdict:

Dude, honestly. I have absolutely no idea. It’s a thing. Much has been said about it, much more will be said. I was not appalled. I think it was too long and somehow didn’t hit the mark. On the other hand it was not a crushing horrible waste of life either. Maybe Moore was right. Because I would love to see what they could have done adapting that story for eleven hours of TV or cutting it for two hours of cinema tops.

Memories:

Adrian Veidt’s assassination.

Doc Manhattan’s boy parts.

That woman’s leg.

The quasi-ironic sex.

Thinking – as I did when I read the novel – this is Rorschach’s story, because in some weird way it’s between him and Doctor Manhattan and Adrian Veidt. Doc’s god, Adrian’s… something… and Rorschach is the weird little looney who won’t quit. He’s human where the other two ain’t. It has to be. And yet, it’s not.

The Brownie:

Actually we had sticky toffee pudding, and it was awesome. Although I wished at the time that they would serve ice cream with it.

5 Comments to “Watchmen. Because I care.”

Foz Meadows said on March 8th, 2009:

Oh God, the swinging blue penis. It was like some kind of weird scene-dictating metronome. Everytime Doc was on in the buff, part of me kept thinking, ‘Will they slide cut here to avoid it? How are they going to balance this? Whoops, there it is! Oh, look, the camera is at the bottom of a flight of stairs he’s walking down – bet there’ll be a strategic cut soon, because nothing defeats the dignity of the moment more than a man walking penis-first into a basement!’ And so on.

Look, fair’s fair, I’m the kind of person who can’t help but giggle privately at full-frontal male nudity because, let’s face it, there are few things as undignified as full-frontal male nudity, no matter what the porn industry would dearly like to believe. As my husband put it as we walkeed home from the cinema, it was probably a good thing that Dr Manhattan didn’t have to run anywhere. And although on one level I salute that minor adherence to canon: dude, seriously. They’re called pants.

Also, Rorschach’s mask pissed me off. Don’t know why. Actually, yes I do – it’s because if Hugo Weaving can Goddam- well get his emoting on behind a Guy Faulks mask, so could thi guy. And his voice was awesome; he could’ve carried it off. So the moving blotches just…rankled. But the soundtrack I largely liked. Apart from Ride of the Valkyires.

(Heh. Captcha wants me to type Sav Clarence. Makes me think of a poorly-labelled wine.)
jambuku said on March 10th, 2009:

Having grown up in the 80′s and now being allergic to most efforts to revive said decade, one of the best, worst, wierdest and most disturbing elements was… well… the 80′s.
The stiff and distracting suits? Defnately that. Yet also oddly harmonious with the time – if that is even possible.

There was a swinging blue penis?
Kali said on March 10th, 2009:

I am with you; I’m crap at reviewing movies.

My overall reaction was pretty much: “Meh.”

It didn’t suck, it didn’t rock, but it was much better than it could have been. I was expecting an atrocity but instead got a paper cut.

Those still hurt, y’know.
Phloop said on March 11th, 2009:

Being the type of fanatical comicbook geek that shudders whenever I hear about some on-screen adaptation, I went into Watchmen with fear and anticipation that threatened to rip my head apart. I walked out numb, shivering, speechless. My girlfriend (may she have the greatest reward possible in the afterlife for coming to see a comicbook movie with me) asked me if i was happy with it.
For a movie deemed in the late eighties as unfilmable, for a graphic novel that is The Illiad to Spiderman’s “Heat Magazine”, for a superhero film without any supervillains… yes. I am in awe of Mr Snyder. After seeing what he could do with Watchmen I would trust him with my open-heart surgery if there was a comic about the procedure.

And Dr Manhattan was FANTASTIC! The sad tinge in his voice, the honest-to-god misunderstanding of how “normal” people think and the gentle movements (even when vaporizing my favourite character) gave life to a character i always thought was a little bland. I even thought it was refreshing to see some male genitals on the silver screen for once. We get bombarded with tits and ass all the time and only soccermoms complain. It was fun feeling the cinema get uncomfortable everytime the blue mamba appeared.

Watchmen was never going to be a summer blockbuster or Oscar winning stuff. It was a trip to see, sometimes hard to watch because of the subject matter (the near-rape made me feel ill) , but that struggle made the film beautiful.
And if you didn’t like it now, just think about this: Dr Manhatten was originally going to be played by Ahnold Governator…*shudder*

Best line:
“I helped myself to some of your beans…”
Nick Harkaway said on March 12th, 2009:

Phloop – I’m just really, genuinely glad you had such an amazing time. I’m also really envious. I (obviously) had a sort of okay time. I wanted to be blown away, I was afraid I was going to hate every waking second, and neither of them happened.