The Watchmen

So the audience hated it. Seeing as it got only one star from a number of movie sites, the Telus site not least amongst them, I wasn’t surprised. Cries of “This is crap” and “This makes no sense” and “Fuck this, I can see his cock” echoed across the theatre behind me as I sat there quietly enjoying the film. Its a good movie and a surprisingly faithful adaptation of the graphic novel, and therin lay it’s downfall as a mass media film.

I’d estimate that of the crowded Sunday 10:30pm screening, that fewer than 10% of them had ever read the graphic novel, or even heard of the author Alan Moore (who’s name is conspicuously absent from the opening credits on request of the reclusive author). Add the fact, that in it’s predictably horrible way, the hollywood marketing machine – which to the intelligent observer appears to consist entirely of illiterate buffoons who never actually watch films – had heavily marketed this as a superhero story – which it most emphatically is NOT. I suppose that because masked heros are the vechicle by which a story of human hubris are told, and lacking any other clearly identifiable market segment, the marketing morons pushed it the only way they knew how. Have I ever mentioned how horribly I detest marketing folk. I think Bill Hicks on the subject said it far better than I ever could, and I’d refer the interested reader to his monolouge on the subject.

So what we have is an incredibly dark, gritty, violent and intricate story, rich with symbolism and satire done in a classic film noir style, and then pushed on an unsuspecting public who were expecting the next fucking spiderman or superman film. If that isn’t a recipe for box office disaster, I don’t know what is. Sadly, Zack Snyder neglected to put in a big steaming pile of stupid and obvious, and stuck to reproducing the graphic novel faithfully, rather than creating some sort of hideous Michael Bay special effects abortion.

Unfortunately the general public want sqeaky clean superheros, mindlessly evil wrongdoers and cartoon violence. The last thing they are prepared for is any blurring of the lines between good and evil, any sort of grapic depiction of the results of extreme violence, or a plot that can’t be summed up by alpha male beats up freak. The bottom line is that this film is going to alienate just about 90% of it’s audience, because despite the fact that for the reasons mentioned above, it makes a poor “movie”, those same reasons make it an excellent film.

So it you like your cartoon heros to have as much depth as a cookie sheet, can only see the world in black and white, haven’t read the graphic novel, don’t know who Alan Moore is, or have some sort of giant irony blinkers on… Well… you are going to hate this movie.

If, like me, you’re a fan of Film Noir, or happen to be well read in modern and post modern literature such as graphic novels (NOT COMIC BOOKS), or even have a fucking clue, you’ll probably really enjoy the film. It’s a tremendous piece of work. Be warned though, it’s long in places, and some of the acting from time to time gets a little wooden. I’d be rather suprised to learn that Matthew Goode even read the graphic novel to be frank. He’d a talented actor, but some of his scenes were pretty… well.. awful… truth be told. Jackie Earl Haley is great as Rorschach, and Patrick Wilson does an amazing job capturing the character of Dreiberg.

Unfortunately I fear that this film is going to have a lot of trouble in a day and age where the audience expectations of a film mean that the Jonas Brothers 3D concert and Paul Blart, Mall Cop top the box office charts, which is really too bad, because this film is a jewel in so many ways.

I suppose that it’s a bit too much to expect a public that lives on a diet of “reality tv” to enjoy literature, even when it’s made into a movie and full of exploding things. *sigh*