watching movies one cup at a time

I feel like I’ve grown up with the Watchmen. I read the entire series in high school and immediately loved it. I enjoyed the rich characters, the harsh realities, the bleak outlook, and the compelling artwork. I loved how Dave Gibbons panels mirrored eachother as they moved into the next scene. And I loved how Alan Moore’s many tangled storylines all came together in the end to a satisfying, albeit horrific ending.

There has been talk of a Watchmen movie ever since the first Batman film made boatloads of cash. I was among those who thought it would be near impossible to condense such a rich and detailed story into 2 hours. So when it became clear that finally, after 20+ years, someone was actually going to make a go of it, I did get excited. And everything leading up to the release pointed to good things. The trailer was great, the costumes looked legit, it was all coming together.

So now that I’ve seen the actual movie, did it deliver? For the most part, yes, it did deliver an exceptional movie that is above and beyond just about anything else out there. But it is not without it’s flaws and I think this strikes at the heart of the contradictions between the comic book crowd and the movie-going public.

Hollywood loves a trend. They’ll sell water to fish if it’s a proven formula that has worked in the recent past. Everyone talks about the big box office of Spiderman which has paved the way for dozens of superhero flicks that haven’t quite measured up to the Spiderman levels that got them greenlit in the first place. For every successful Iron Man, there is a Daredevil or Punisher that did not do so well. And while Watchmen is pleasing the comic book crowd, the movie-going public is not flocking to it in the droves it needs to sustain the pressure its high budget demands.

Why is that? Is it a bad movie? Is it not faithful to the book everyone loves? No, it’s not a bad movie. And it is faithful to the book that a relatively small number of people love, a book most people never even heard of before this movie. But it’s so faithful that it seems to forget it’s a movie and spends too much time worrying about if it’s comic book. Movies and comic stories work at different speeds, different pacing, different levels. What can play out in comic panels for 10 pages can feel like an eternity on screen. And the fast-paced, shotgun-blast editing of today’s action films could never translate to the frozen moments in time on paper. Two very different approaches to story telling. Not right or wrong, just different to fit the media and the audience expectation.

So while I was watching Watchmen, part of me was dazzled by the brilliant techniques used by the filmmakers to recreate as much as possible the graphic novel I had read in my youth, another part of me was never able to cross over to believing I was watching real characters in a real place. It never reached the reality that the comic book was so great at evoking in print. Even though the film was all live and in person, it never felt like more than a 2-dimensional cartoon. And that is why I feel the larger movie-going audience is not buying in to the movie the same way that the comic book crowd is. It’s just too off in its own fantasy world for a non-comic book reader to really grab on to.

Now having said that, I do think the film is extremely intense and very well done. I enjoyed it a lot. But at the same time I do understand why it’s not for everyone. Definitely worth seeing.

More reviews you might be interested in:

• The Dark Knight
• Iron Man