slice of koh

I spent the past few days revisiting Alan Moore’s graphic novel, Watchmen.  The last time I read the novel was when I was a freshman in high school.  Back then I definitely did not understand the moral and political references made in the graphic novel.  Ten years later, I now understand more how seminal this novel was for the medium and for American literature.  It must have been very difficult for Zack Snyder to somehow fit 12 issues worth of rich and deep content into a theatrical release.  Actually, the movie itself bordered almost too long clocking in at 2 hours 45 minutes.  By the end of the movie, I did feel a little bit cheated as some important elements of the plot have been left such as The Black Freighter (to be released as a separate animated film) and the Rohrschach’s therapy sessions while in prison.  

Overall, Watchmen was not a terrible movie,  but it did not blow me away either.  The characters were casted well except for Veidt, and the special effects were incredible to watch.  Zack Snyder did a great job adapting 300 into a movie and remained almost 95% true to the source material.  Watchmen is much different from 300 due to the variety of characters and their development intertwined with the  historical context and major plot.  Personally, I thought it was impossible to fit the sheet amount of content into a movie, and the resulting movie clocking in at almost 3 hours is proof to that.  

The good:

1) Cast of characters except Adrian Veidt.  All the actors and actresses except for Adrian Veidt for the six main roles were casted very well and true to the source material.  Dr. Manhattan, Dreiberg (Nite Owl II), Rohrschach, Laurie Jupiter (Silk Spectre II), and the Comedian were almost spitting images of their graphic novel entities.   Jackie Earle Haley’s portrayal of Rohrschach was astounding.  It was exactly how deranged, violent, yet uncompromising Rohrschach was in the novel.   The casting of Matthew Goode as Adrian Veidt was interesting because his stature was not something I’d imagine.  

2) Waiting all this did allow technology to give us some eye-popping special effects.   Dr. Manhattan’s exile on Mars, Archimedes, and Rohrschach’s amorphous mask were fascinating to watch.  Waiting almost20 years for the movie was probably a blessing in disguise.  I don’t know how Dr. Manhattan could be portrayed in the movie without the assistance of digital animation and computer graphics.  One could imagine someone just being painted in blue ink or dressing up in a blue skinny suit.

The bad:

1) Watchmen is too rich and complex that a Hollywood adaptation would have been doomed to the start.  The social and political commentary intertwined with character development subplots in the backdrop of a main overarching conspiracy.  In 2 hours and 45 minutes, Zack Snyder does manage to fit the main storyline with some character development sprinkled in.  The movie did downplay a lot of the social and political commentary and changed the ending to simplify the story.  Richard Nixon looked like a buffoon, and the Cold War seems like a joke.  I cringed when I heard Ride of the Valkyries when Dr. Manhattan was in Vietnam.  

2) Some characters were just underdeveloped. Related to my first point, there were a lot of characters to develop while the main storyline was happening.  Although the first 15 minutes of the movie was a clever way to introduce the graphic novel’s history annd beginnings, anyone who has not read Watchmen would probably be lost and confused as they would miss some of key points about certain superheroes’ of the past and their relations with the current cast of superheroes.

Verdict: If you have read Watchmen, then the movie is worth watching on a rainy day weekend afternoon.  If you have not the graphic novel, read that first before watching the movie.  You will understand and appreciate the complexity of the storyline much better.