I’ve always been vocal about my love of Alan Moore’s work. And I’ve maintained that at least so far, none of his books have been done justice when adapted. My gripes with V for Vendetta are chronicled at length in one of my earlier articles {
link} and my thoughts on the Watchmen adaptation are pretty similar.
Being the only comic to make it to Times’ list of the 100 greatest novels should give anyone who hasn’t read the book an idea of how influential this book has really been. The term ‘revolutionary’ is extremely overused today, but in every sense of the word; Moore and Gibbon’s book is just that. It necessitated the need for a new term to christen the medium. ‘Comic book’ became ‘Graphic novel’. And Watchmen is majorly attributed to being the reason for that change. The phrase used to describe Watchmen has consistently been ‘..It deconstructs the Superhero Genre’. And really, there isn’t a better way to describe it.
I wanted to love Zack Snyder’s adaptation of Watchmen. I really did. I really enjoyed Snyder’s work leading up to it (300, Dawn of the Dead); I also felt Man of Steel was one of the strongest superhero films in the last 5 years. For all intents and purposes I’ve always been on team Snyder. But I can’t honestly say that I enjoyed Watchmen at all. And that’s not even because of Snyder’s lack of trying.
Snyder was so vocal about how much he loves Moore’s book, and I remember one of his interviews where he mentioned that maybe someday Moore would pop in the DVD and say ‘..that wasn’t too bad’. I feel like Snyder’s dedication to the source may have made him too close to it. In the sense that being slavishly faithful may have caused him to lose a sense of objectivity.
Would any of you be content with Age of Ultron being a mediocre, or even a ‘merely good’ film? Looking back at films like Matrix Reloaded and revolutions, or even the second Star Wars trilogy, a significant part of the criticism associated with them was because they simply weren’t as great as their predecessors. That’s not to say they were all bad films, but the anticipation and the talent involved suggested that they could have been much better.
The Anti Superhero.
The Book questions the motives behind the superhero. As I mentioned in my article on V for Vendetta, Watchmen too questions the mental stability of someone who puts on a mask and goes out to fight crime every night.
It questions the motives of vigilantes; motives that range from a need for attention, being borderline delusional, altruism, and even a sense of the greater good.
It questions the implications of actually dealing with superpowers if you are given them, and how it impacts your daily existence. And the answers to these questions are usually not pleasant.
Watchmen systematically drains the sense of escapism associated with superheroes, and replaces it with concepts of metaphysics and non linear time. It explores concepts like existentialism and mid life crises, extremely bold for any comic based on the genre. The bottom-line really is about how completely useless the superheroes are when it comes down to really saving the world.
A Novel Experience
Let’s be honest, the book never had the most intricate of plots, it was unapologetically character driven. The scale of the story and the number of characters involved in it is massive. The issues end with a few pages laden with just text which provide more background and insight into the world of watchmen. It chronicles the lives of many fringe characters that only merit a passing mention in the film. The panels alternate between so many different narratives
1. Introduces us to totally new characters, goes in detail into each of their back stories, and gives each of them a satisfactory conclusion in terms of a character arc.
2. Multiple timelines(Minutemen, back stories etc)
3. Dr. Manhattan existing in different times simultaneously,
4. Back and forth between Tales of the Black Freighter, and the book’s actual story progression.
That’s a lot to fit into 12 issues. The art and multiple timelines do a great job of masking the thin plot in the book, not to mention the Black Freighter arc. Each of these elements has a reason for being included, by the time you get to the last panel, it all makes sense and justifies its inclusion.
All these points make Watchmen a complex, rich, and hugely rewarding experience to read. Each panel is filled with so much detail that it feels like Dave Gibbons and colorist John Higgins really imbibed a sense of ‘a picture’s worth a 1000 words’ to each panel. They add greatly to the experience of the story itself. Alternating between the timelines, and still maintaining a sense of coherence to it all. The actual plan is only revealed in the last issue, at which point all the characters realize that they’re just late for Ozymandias’ party.
It’s not nearly as rewarding watching these events unfold on screen. The movie had a very detached approach. It almost felt like it was playing out through the eyes of Dr. Manhattan. I never really felt connected with the characters or the events taking place. The visual style and costumes came across as anachronistic more than a few times.
The episodic approach in the books was essential in delving into the characters and the entire constumed hero mythology. Each issue went in detail regarding a new character, and progressed the plot as well. Condensing that episodic approach into one 2hour 45 minute film doesn’t work the same way. The timeline jumps seem confusing, and character arcs very rushed. The multiple voiceovers didn’t help either.
Nuance
I’m a sucker for a good character study. It’s not surprise then that movie like Heat, Social Network and Fight Club rank high on my list (I believe TDK to be significantly inspired by Mann’s Heat). And that’s one of my primary gripes with Watchmen.
For me, Moore’s book is one of the greatest character studies. I always felt the plot was secondary to the characters. It was about taking these scarred, beaten down, and even fractured characters that the world considers it saviors, and lifting the mask off of their faces (both literally and figuratively).
Snyder’s never been one for subtlety. It just isn’t his strong suit. The book was filled with nuances the film overlooked at many turns:
To give you an example: consider the irony of Dr. Manhattan's origin. Jon heads back into the intrinsic field generator to get his watch, his timekeeper. The resulting accident ends up making time irrelevant to him. There are several such scenes in the book.
My first jolt in the film came practically seconds into the film. The book never looked at anyone besides Dr. Manhattan as really being a superhero in the real sense of the word. The rest were just normal people doing extraordinary things. Watching Comedian get tossed around the apartment like ragdoll a get up made him feel superhuman. It immediately distanced me from the point of the book.
Rorschach’s opening monologue is a simply staggering piece of writing, and reading it in the book immediately grabs you by the nads and sets you up for the ride. It feels almost comical with the awful music in the background in the movie.
Comedian’s murder in the book did a great job of setting it up for a whodunit. Reading the panels, you find yourself asking questions like ‘Why?’ and ‘who?’. The movie just made me ask ‘how?’; how does he keep getting back up after these throw downs?
The panel in the book where Nite Owl can’t get it on with Silk Spectre pretty much represents what the whole book was about: A superhero that can’t even get it up. Its one panel that really epitomized everything Moore and Gibbons were trying to say in the book for me. The film made it seem more like Nite Owl having his ego hurt by it. It became about his masculinity. The irony of the scene was lost.
They both seemed to get off by beating up a bunch of thugs. The Alley scene in the book was about self-defense. I never got the feeling they enjoyed being in the fight. The film made no bones about the fact that the scene was a throwback to their early crime fighting days. A ‘still got it’ tribute, if you will.
And the violence kept on coming in the film. In terms of the action, Snyder seemed to just pick up where he left off with 300. The book barely had any panels of real action in it. Yes, it was suggested, and yes, it needs to be notched up in the film, but Snyder’s characters seemed to really enjoy putting a beating on everyone. The prison rescue scene looked like the hammer scene from Oldboy got married to 300. It felt more like a superhero movie having an identity crisis rather than a commentary on the genre.
In ‘deconstructing’ the superhero, Moore and Gibbons approach to the characters was grounded in realism. The exchanges and aspirations came across as human compared to most other works. They used that sense of reality to serve their purrpose while examining these characters. Using ultra violence and extremely stylized actions scene in the film constantly work fundamentally against that approach, as it made the characters seem more than human.
And the music! What were they thinking? Extremely overused, extremely populist, and completely unnecessary. It’s good to know that though all the events in the film take place in an alternate reality the music in said reality has not been affected.
The authors did such a marvelous job of giving Snyder and Co. some of the most original narratives, and they couldn’t even be bothered to at least induce some original music to the proceedings! Why couldn’t they at least try to come up with some music they felt might be inspired by the reality or the situations in the film? Practically EVERYTHING else was laid out for them on a platter.
I love Dylan and Simon and Garfunkel as much as the next guy, but they really missed the mark most of the time. Having sex to Hallelujah did a damn fine job of making me lose all hope from the film.
I can also pretty much guarantee that someone who hasn’t read the book will be scratching their heads trying to make sense of the opening monologue. I had a hard time putting all the pieces together. The previous costumed hero mythology was barely explored for a majority in the film, why not just simplify it and trim the fat to tell a more focused story?
Coming back to Fight Club, it’s been in the news recently for talk of its sequel which was just announced. Even so many years after the book, and film, no one seems to be able treat the two as distinct independent entities. Both are so closely connected with each other. That for me is the mark of a great adaptation; a movie that compliments and respects the source, and yet provides a new perspective to it.
And comics being an inherently visual medium; adding an extra dimension to an adaptation becomes almost essential. What purpose did the film really serve, other than being mostly a motion comic companion to the book itself?
The Characters
The story goes that Watchmen was to be based on characters DC bought from Charlton Comics. But the story would have rendered them useless for future use, so Moore and Gibbons came up with Original characters.
The inspirations for these characters and their motivations are drawn from comic lore, but I’m going to highlights my thoughts on each of them.
Lauri Juspeczyk/ Silk Spectre 2
"My mother, she eroded my adolescence, chipping me into the shape she'd have been if she hadn't had me. She pushed me into adventuring, fussing over my career, trying to live her life through me."
Silk Spectre 2 is the femme fatale in the mix. Someone who looks as amazing as she does, but could still kick ass all the way to Sunday (or maybe Doomsday).
Lauri is arguably the thread that ties all the characters together. Her involvement with Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl are important in driving the plot forward.
Her Kryptonite is her relationship with her mother Sally Jupiter, the original Silk Spectre. The conflict showcases a rarely (if ever) seen aspect of mother daughter friction against a costumed hero background.
Having two generations of costumed heroes lends well to the idea of the mid life crisis for Sally. Along with the other Minutemen, it gives insight into the life after crime fighting; and it’s not nearly as glorious as The Dark Knight Returns would have you believe.
Malin Akerman’s portrayal of Silk Spectre was one of the weakest links in the film. She never seemed to grasp the character’s confidence, and seemed out of place for a majority of her screen time.
And then there’s her costume! What were they thinking? I couldn’t get myself to believe it was the 80s every time she appeared in that latex outfit.
Walter Kovacs/ Rorschach
"This city is afraid of me...I have seen its true face. The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout "Save us!"... and I'll look down and whisper "No."
Rorschach is the outdated, conventional, ‘everything’s black and white’ vigilante. In a story filled with grays, Rorschach’s view on good and evil absolutes simply had no place, and his fate pretty much summed up the authors’ thoughts on the conventional hero.
In many ways Rorschach represented everything Watchmen wasn’t, and that’s what made him stand out. The interesting thing about Rorschach for me was that instead of making him the conventional hero, Moore and Gibbons decided to flesh him out as the Anti Hero archetype, and then journey through the entire story mostly through his perspective, and really give the readers the notion of how small a pawn the anti hero archetype is in the story.
Having said that, Rorschach is arguably the most fleshed character of the lot. The detailing and thought behind his origins, his mask, and psychology are beyond sublime. The scene where he’s interpreting the psychiatry flash cards/ inkblots is one of the more iconic ones in comic book lore. Circling back to his opening monologue,
Rorshach is able to personify the filth of the people around him better than most would. It’s ironic that he’s probably the least articulate of the lot.
There are various Easter eggs involving Rorschach across the book. He can be seen in the corner of several panels holding the ‘End is nigh’ placard. We don’t see him without his mask for the first half of the story, and while reading the book it felt like Moore was retreading the V path, but once his mask come off, it’s a whole different ball game. It’s no surprise therefore that Rorschach has found a place as one of the most iconic characters in comic history.
Given the timeline of Snyder’s film, audiences who weren’t even exposed much to Anti hero archetypes in superhero films in 2009 can’t be expected to understand the purpose of having a character like Rorschach at the center of the entire story. This one was pretty much exclusively for the fan boy community.
Jackie Earl Haley did an absolutely masterful job bringing him to life in the film, and was easily the standout performance of the ensemble.
Daniel Dreiberg/ Nite Owl 2.
Holy poor adaptation Batman!
Nite Owl to me represents what Batman would become in a real world scenario. He wouldn’t age well, probably have a constant fear of the future, and eventually have to realize that his entire mission was pointless.
His relationship with Hollis Mason/Nite Owl 1 provides great insight into his character. His love affair with Silk Spectre 2 is dealt with masterfully in the book. The dream sequence where the both of them strip each other into and out of their costumes is another pivotal scene in the book. One that was pretty laughable when it was adapted to film.
Nite Owls commentary is rooted in being a take on all superheroes that rely heavily on technology and gadgets to get the job done. When it came down to it, finding answers became about old school interrogation techniques with Rorschach by his side. And all the technology couldn’t help him stop Ozymandias
I don’t quite remember the dynamic in the book between Nite Owl and Comedian being played up. Maybe that’s just the authors way of saying that Batman and Joker are irrelevant compared to Superman and Lex Luthor? Maybe I’m reading too deep into the symbolism, who knows?
Eddie Blake/ Comedian
Once you realize what a joke everything is, being the Comedian is the only thing that makes sense.
By far my favourite character in the book, the Comedian seems to have every quality one wouldn’t want a costumed hero (see vigilante) to have. He’s the one who ‘gets it’. He sees through the veil of the world.
It almost feels like Moore and Gibbons did everything possible to make him completely despicable, with redeeming qualities being few and far between. Comedian for me was Moore’s take on the clown prince; the Joker. And what a take he is! (I never read anything featuring the Peacemaker so I can’t comment on that inspiration)
In the book, Comedian was the only one you would call some pretty explicit names if asked to describe in one adjective. He describes the world as a sadistic joke; one that only he understands. He comes across as amoral, nihilistic and cynical, qualities we regularly associate with Joker.
Blake never truly believes that the group is going to help anyone. He gets that they are doing it out of their own selfish reasons. He sees through it. He only comes across as truly shaken up when he finds out about Ozy’s plan in the book. That is what shatters his entire belief system, and he can’t cope with it. It makes him realize his tipping point.
Comedian was one of the more realized in the film of all the characters. While I don’t quite remember how he came across Ozy’s scheme in the film, which warranted his death, I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan did a great job of making him just as unlikeable, but insightful at the same time.
Jon Osterman/ Dr Manhattan.
"In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon."
Dr. Manhattan to me came across as Moore’s commentary on Superman. For someone who has the ability to pretty much end the world at his whim, his distance and overall inability to identify with humanity over ‘time’ made him indifferent to it, rather than driving him to be a benign overlord.
Which I feel was what Moore probably thought of Superman. How can an alien empathize so much with such a self destructive race to want to be its greatest hope?
For all the criticism labeled against Superman for being too vanilla as a character and being incorruptible and unyielding in his mission to save humanity, Dr. Manhattan represents the dark side of that spectrum. His inability to perceive time linearly made one of the best narrative structures in Moore’s book.
And to his credit, Snyder did his best to adapt that in the film. But it’s almost impossible to generate the same sense of wonder with this notion on film, as Moore and Gibbons achieved in the book. Unfortunately in the film his arc came across as mechanical as clockwork. I never felt the same wonder. He’s an enigma in the books, but someone so detached doesn’t work nearly as well on film.
Dr. Manhatan is one of the main reasons the book is considered unfilmable, and for those of you that have read the book will probably see the merit in the argument.
Adrien Veidt/ Ozymandias
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Ozymandias was inspired by Alexander the Great. He represents the cutting edge of human pioneering ability; a living example of the ability of the human brain if pushed to its brink. To me, it’s a reminder of Lex Luthor in many ways. Maybe writers started incorporating elements of Ozymandias into Luthor after Watchmen, or maybe these motivations were used for Luthor before, I’m not totally familiar with the timeline on that, but it adds a very interesting dimension between Ozy and Dr. Manhattan.
In Watchmen, the Luthor wins. He shows his Superman up and defeats him. And it’s not by brute force either. It’s cold, calculated and logical. Snyder’s film does a more absolute job of doing this than the book. But if you wish to consider the parallels, it makes for a very interesting take on one of the greatest comic book dynamics in history.
My biggest gripe with Ozymandias in the film was Matthew Goode. He just didn’t exude the same persona that Ozy did in the book. Ozymandias is the guy that beat Dr. Manhattan. He designed and unleashed an unparalleled and irreversible ploy on the entire world. He changed the course of history and the political scenarios forever. That’s the kind of person he is. He needs to strike the vierers as such. Unfortunately Goode just didn’t have the goods.
To be fair, the bullet stopping did feel over the top in the book too. Maybe it was Moore’s way of showing readers what Ozy was about, but it did feel like a misstep, to me anyway.
Black Freighter
Tales of the Black Freighter feels unnecessary for the most part. It just seems like a superfluous sub plot, and a rather indulgent way for Moore to turn the genre on its head. It’s only at the end that you tie it to Ozymandias. The Black Freighter story reflects on the horror that Ozymandias committed, and suggests that he actually realizes and sees the implications of his actions. It’s a true reflection of him.
It doesn’t hurt that it served a dual purpose either. People wouldn’t care for superhero comics in a world with real superheroes. Moore’s and Gibbon’s reason for including the story is best put in their own words:
“…they probably wouldn't be at all interested in superhero comics”
While its exists in the super cut of the film, and as a standalone animated short, not having it in the theatrical cut robbed the film of one of the great allegorical takes on the plot proceedings. I doubt they really had a choice on the matter though; it would have lengthened the run time considerably. But it’s hard to argue that its absence didn’t affect the final product if you’ve read the book.
Here’s the thing; when you look at Watchmen as a complete 12 issue work, the Black Freighter goes a long way in explaining the purpose of the book itself. It plays an important part being in being a commentary on the genre. The simple thought that in a world where superheroes exist, superhero comics wouldn’t, pretty much sums up the purpose of what we regard as the ‘conventional comic book’ itself: Too be escapist. To suspend the reader’s belief and transport them to another world one issue at a time. As such, the Black Freighter does a brilliant job of summarizing the purpose of a comic. The fact that taken on its own, it still comes across are one of the finer comics by itself just reflects more on the quality of the endeavor called Watchmen.
You can argue that as such, it made sense to remove it from the theatrical cut, since it doesn’t do anything to advance the plot. And I agree. But Watchmen is about so much more than just advancing the plot. There’s so much to take in.
The End.
The movies end, while just as logical, and far more filmable, and far less lofty than the book’s, somehow shortchanged me. If Dr. Manhattan was America’s nuclear deterrent that backfired, wouldn’t it give Russia more arsenal to blame America for it?
And does Dr. Manhatan turning ‘evil’ really have as far reaching political, and game changing implications as…I don’t know…..let’s say…. A GIANT ALIEN TELEPORTING SQUID (or whatever the technical term is)
As far out as the book’s ending was, it almost felt like a satire on how far out and ludicrous comic books had gotten over the years, and Moore used it to reflect back on how just one such event would change the course of history irreversibly. The film’s ending validated the Keene Act (The act banning vigilantism in the book) in my opinion, and the world could have just moved on as is from there, stating the Act itself. The Keene act formed a vertebral part in the Watchmen mythology, it had so much history associated with it, and the film’s end didn’t seem to respect that for me.
“How else could they have gone about it?” you may ask. Here’s the thing; when Terry Gillian was attached to direct he and his writers had this idea of an ending as far out as the book’s itself, and I believe it would have really packed a knockout punch in a film version, maybe even make Alan Moore proud. Excerpts below:
"What he did was he told the story as-is, but instead of the whole notion of the intergalactic thing which was too hard and too silly, what he did was he maintained that the existence of Doctor Manhattan had changed the whole balance of the world economy, the world political structure. He felt that THAT character really altered the way reality had been. He had the Ozymandias character convince, essentially, the Doctor Manhattan character to go back and stop himself from being created, so there never would be a Doctor Manhattan character. He was the only character with real supernatural powers, he went back and prevented himself from being turned into Doctor Manhattan, and in the vortex that was created after that occurred these characters from “Watchmen” only became characters in a comic book."
As I said, Watchmen came across more as a Superhero movie with an identity crisis, rather than as a film that would deconstruct the genre. The stakes were huge, and Watchmen was supposed to play its part in being a rhetoric on Superhero films. Viewed as that, it was a massive disappointment, since in failing to achieve that goal; it really didn’t serve any purpose.