Watchmen, briefly

[owlectomy]

I would say it's about a B minus, overall?



(1) My off-the-cuff thought on reading the graphic novel is that the news vendor, and the guy reading the comic book, are the emotional center of the story. If you take that out... you take out the only thing propping up the story against cynicism, against nihilistic despair. You can't do that by happying up the ending with Dan and Laurie, because... it feels very bitter and hollow for them to get a happy ending; there's no happy in the subtext, just a sense of anxious horror. Which is absolutely appropriate, don't get me wrong. But the graphic novel says to me, "Whenever we try to assume we know what's good for other people, whenever we arrogate control of their lives to ourselves, whenever we set ourselves up over other people, we take a step not towards heroism but towards villainy, even if we want to pretend that our intensions are good. The only way we can relate is as one human being to another human being -- with compassion. With humanity. With tenderness. Even if you're going to die in about two seconds." Whereas the movie just says to me, "Hey, look! The marginally sane ones made it out okay!"

(2) I really enjoyed Kill Bill. I really enjoyed Kill Bill 2. Call me squeamish about violence if you like, but I learned very soon to look down when it got to the violent parts. You can debate whether they worked in the context of the movie; I think they made the violence fetishistic in an extraordinarily icky way; but even if it was the right choice objectively, it squicked the hell out of me.

(3) I did find the opening credit sequence very effective, including "The Times They Are A'Changing." But -- look, I love Leonard Cohen as much as anybody, really I do -- "Hallelujah" during the sex scene was The Wrong Choice. Wrongity wrong wrong wrong. Let's just put a moratorium on that song and every single cover version, shall we? Rufus Wainwright, I love you too, but we gotta stop this.

(4) Why would you change something as Iconic as That Line? Just to prove that you could? I mean, what?

(5) I didn't feel as if any of the thematic weight of the graphic novel made it through. I thought that I could enjoy it just as a highlights reel of some of the cool visual moments of the graphic novel, as I can do with an objectively bad movie like "The Golden Compass," but I'm not sure if it does work for me even on that level.

I... don't think I'm as negative as I seem about it, actually. But I think it's missing a few vital organs.

Comments

[cesario.livejournal.com]

This was pretty much exactly the way I felt about it, especially wrt point (1).