Watchmen Fail
Mar. 24th, 2009 08:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
henry_the_cowWatchmen, the graphic novel, challenges the assumptions made in many superhero comics. The characters are a group of masked crimefighters without any magic powers; just people who thought it a good idea to respond to the use of masks and costumes that criminal gangs used to hide their identity by donning costumes of their own. The novel asks, who might do such a thing? The answer is not flattering, neither to the characters themselves nor (we are invited to infer) to people who read superhero comics.
(There is much more to the novel than this conceit, but it is a core aspect of the book. I am ignoring the presence of the single mutant superhero, whose actions are contrasted with those of the ordinary humans).
Watchmen, the movie, starts with a fight between two of the characters. Punches send them flying across the room and crashing into walls. One character's head is smashed against a marble counter, smashing the stone and leaving the character merely shaken. It is comic-book fare.
In this, it fails in two ways: reproduction and intent. First, it ignores the nature of the characters, giving them unfeasible physical prowess. This goes against the nature of the characters in the novel and in the non-action parts of the movie. The story does contain violent acts, but they are all performed by otherwise ordinary people - which makes the acts more gruesome and their imact of the audince more effective. Second, it ignores the role of the novel in challenging its genre. The movie could in turn have addressed the fetishisation of violence in Hollywood blockbusters, but it prefers to wrap itself in that self-same power worship.
This second point is most noticeable in the character of Rorshach. In the novel, he is clearly a paranoid sociopath with no humanity left; he has literally become the persona implied by his mask - which he calls his "face". But American movies have given us so many lone killers, acting to attack everything they believe is wrong (under the pretence of defending what they see as right), that Rorshach is presented as someone with whom we can idenitfy. In a key scene, he is shown killing a criminal in a state of righteous shock, that we are invited to empathise with, rather than transforming into a cold and calculating psychopath as in the novel.
Despite the movie's general reverence for its source material, in this aspect it has failed. Violent vigilantes are not admirable, whatever they wear and no matter how many marvellous gadgets they have. That is the central point of Watchmen the novel and is lost by Watchmen the movie.
(There is much more to the novel than this conceit, but it is a core aspect of the book. I am ignoring the presence of the single mutant superhero, whose actions are contrasted with those of the ordinary humans).
Watchmen, the movie, starts with a fight between two of the characters. Punches send them flying across the room and crashing into walls. One character's head is smashed against a marble counter, smashing the stone and leaving the character merely shaken. It is comic-book fare.
In this, it fails in two ways: reproduction and intent. First, it ignores the nature of the characters, giving them unfeasible physical prowess. This goes against the nature of the characters in the novel and in the non-action parts of the movie. The story does contain violent acts, but they are all performed by otherwise ordinary people - which makes the acts more gruesome and their imact of the audince more effective. Second, it ignores the role of the novel in challenging its genre. The movie could in turn have addressed the fetishisation of violence in Hollywood blockbusters, but it prefers to wrap itself in that self-same power worship.
This second point is most noticeable in the character of Rorshach. In the novel, he is clearly a paranoid sociopath with no humanity left; he has literally become the persona implied by his mask - which he calls his "face". But American movies have given us so many lone killers, acting to attack everything they believe is wrong (under the pretence of defending what they see as right), that Rorshach is presented as someone with whom we can idenitfy. In a key scene, he is shown killing a criminal in a state of righteous shock, that we are invited to empathise with, rather than transforming into a cold and calculating psychopath as in the novel.
Despite the movie's general reverence for its source material, in this aspect it has failed. Violent vigilantes are not admirable, whatever they wear and no matter how many marvellous gadgets they have. That is the central point of Watchmen the novel and is lost by Watchmen the movie.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 11:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-25 03:05 am (UTC)the first group of people want standard crowd pleasing hollywood fair, the sort of thing that audience's find easy to like and brings in the bucks that keep movie studios going. The second group want as i have said a perfect replication of the book, no matter how difficult or traumatising the questions it raises, moviews should be about raising the human spirit, about art and exploring the complexities of the human soul. If the film doesn't make money , it doesn't matter that's what Iron man 3 is for... of course if the movie never makes any money then the director will never work again what a legacy to leave
I know i am being a bit black and white but honestly it's mostly what i have been hearing - comic book and literature fans panning watchman the movie for not being the book, and the wider public reviews panning it for not being like Iron man.
getting any movie out the door was damm near impossible, to get a film with the sort of budget that this had, to be anything like the book, i.e. to ignore the pressure to be Iron man 15, is amazing. Watchman the graphic novel is amzing so is watchmen the movie - they are just not the same tale!
no subject
Date: 2009-03-26 08:49 pm (UTC)I have more to say about the faithfulness of adaptations, but that deserves a separate post.