Monday, July 27, 2009
Watchmen: An Exercise in Aging
Old because this was one of the few films I've seen where I thought to myself, "Yeesh, this is pretty violent." There seems to be some sort of dramatic licence to be extra graphic when the source material is, well, a graphic novel. Sin City was like this, as to was 300 (directed by Zach Snyder, who was also responsible for Watchmen). One scene involved one of the "heroes" take a cleaver and repeatedly split open the head of some scumbag who murdered a child. Another scene involved an inmate getting his arms decapitated via chainsaw. These scenes were much too gratuitous and didn't add anything much to the point of the story. I guess the fact the camera would zoom in and let the camera linger somewhat during these scenes was what made it worse than other violent movies. In any case, I didn't have much of an appetite for it.
The premise of Watchmen taking place during an altered history, where the Vietnam war was won, Nixon getting himself elected multiple times, and of course the presence of masked heroes, make for an interesting story. But the narrative doesn't flow in a very comprehensible manner. And this is where I felt stupid: Too often it goes back and forth to present day 1985 to the anywhere during 40s, 50s, 60s or 70s, and I had a very hard time keeping track. The back story of two of the characters, the murdered Comedian and the often naked blue neon Dr. Manhattan, are well detailed, but too many of the other main characters are not (not that they really could otherwise we'd have an eight hour movie). And their afflictions, costumes and mannerisms are very distracting when you have no idea where they're coming from. For instance, one of the Watchmen, Rorschach, wears a mask with roving ink blots. Why? And why do those blots move around like that in the first place? Do they give him super powers or something? No explanation is given. Then you have The Comedian, who tried to rape one of his fellow Watchmen back in the 40s, and is given a free pass to remain with the group. Why? And why am I supposed to feel bad for this scumbag while the whole setup for this film is his murder investigation, when he's also shown shooting innocent hippies and is even shown as the second gunman in the JFK assassination? To me he just got what he deserved.
Anyway, there's a love story, flashbacks, a midget trying to get at Rorschach for some reason while in prison, a well-groomed blonde villain with 10 minutes of screen time that (spoiler ahead!) is responsible for the entire three hours of movie for reasons I couldn't explain to you, and that blue Neon guy hanging out in Mars because his feelings got hurt. Too many things I just wasn't interested in. Someone explained to me I might enjoy it more if I read the novel, but really, a movie should work on its own merits and not require any pre-reading to enjoy it.
Which also goes back to another reason why this film made me feel old: Because I also feel somewhat grumpy in telling you how I feel about this movie, too.
# posted by SBP : 4:40 PM
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