Hrm.
So yeah, Watchmen.
I can’t decide if it would be better to walk into this without having read the comic or being a big fat fan of the comic. I am in the latter camp.
As I expected, Zack Snyder, the anti-auteur as fanboy extraordinaire, turned out to be the proper man for the job. Though the action is somewhat amped-up and buffed-out — presumably in part to keep the intended audience’s attention span in thrall and in part because Snyder just likes the ol’ ultraviolence — the film stays remarkably faithful to the comic, both in terms of incidence and in terms of tone/theme, while still functioning as a cinematic apparatus. It’s still fairly impressive to me that Snyder used his red-meat 300 street cred to craft a near-three-hour film comprised mostly of people talking.
The only change that really bothered me: The dampening of the “Nothing ever really ends” line.
Gonna tow the party line vis-a-vis the weak performances of Malin Akerman and Matthew Goode, though at least one of my buds thinks Akerman’s youthful vulnerability makes the character more sympathetic and Goode’s acting isn’t as much of an issue as the fact that Snyder & the screenwriters seem to want to keep Ozymandias offscreen unless he absolutely has to be there. The extra muscle weight on Dan Dreiberg is, as I foresaw, not a problem in the slightest — even with the bulk, he’s still a middle-aged loser. How did I know this would be a non-issue? Because he’s played by Patrick fucking Wilson, people.
The music cues are a bit obvious (and the sex scene is hopelessly goofy, though I think Snyder to his credit plays it with a lopsided grin), but the one that I think provides the key to the film is the punked-up cover of “Desolation Row” over the closing credits. I said it about the Dawn of the Dead redux, and it’s even more true here: Snyder is, in essence, a cinematic punk-rock-cover artist. This film of Watchmen isn’t the comic book, it’s not as good as the comic book, it never could be. But it finds its own rhythm — brasher, more cluttered and less elegant but undeniably alive — while staying true to the spirit of the original.
FYC Muriels, 2009: Jackie Earle Haley.
