Watchmen movie

"We do not need more literalists of the imagination" -- Margaret Atwood.

I rather enjoyed it, although it was rather pointless.  As I expected, it took a multi-dimensional novel that significantly advanced the graphic novel form and produced a conventional film structure, so don't expect to see it on any film studies courses.  As with most adaptations of books, it had to trim various side-stories to fit into the time available, but it did keep the main story quite faithfully.  Possibly it was slightly too faithful, as the pacing was a little slow in the early part  of the film.  But overall, it was good.  The ending was better than the original; it made more sense within the story and required less of a deus ex machina.

Whenever someone adapts a book for the screen, there is always the question of "why?".  Doesbecoming a film somehow validate the novel, as if film is a more important art form?  Are our imaginations so lacking that we need someone to show us the story in moving images?  Is the intent to encourage people to read the original ?  Or is the aim to use a strong story to make a good film in its own right?  Surely the last reason is the only valid one.  On those terms, I'd say that although I enjoyed the film, I'm unlikely to watch it again, whereas I'm more likely to re-read the novel.

(I've already posted about the out-of-place stylised violence, so I won't repeat that criticism).

As an aside, I was surprised how much the cold war setting affected me, with the constant threat of nuclear annihilation.  This was very effective in reminding me of how life felt for many of us then.

An alternate approach to making the film would have been to try and reflect some of the narrative techniques of the novel into cinematic equivalents.  I'm particularly thinking of the way that the novel often shows one scene while overlaying the sound from another.  For example, the story's one true mutant superhero does not see the passage of time as a linear flow but instead sees the past, present and future simultaneously.  That seems tailor-made for some splt-screen work, with all of the scenes presented at once in repeating loops, with the soundtrack following his consciousness as it concentrates on one passage or another.   The split screens could even be overlayed or moved about.  (They could even be drawn with a border reminiscent of a comic strip, for added knowingness).  This might have made a more interesting film, although probably a less commercially successful one.

That said, my favourite parts of the movie were the scenes on Mars, where the alienated superhero first looks at his life, then creates a wonderful bizarre flying artefact, then argues with his ex-girlfriend about whether he should intervene to stop a nuclear holocaust.  The CGI effects were wonderful and far better than my imagination.  Some things the movie makers can do better.