I saw Watchmen!
Mar. 8th, 2009 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraOverall: it was awesome. So incredibly well done, and now whenever somebody takes a book or comic and totally fucks up the movie and claims they "had to" because the original just wouldn't work as a movie, we can all point to Watchmen as proof that, in fact, these things *can* be done right if you actually *want* to.
Having said that, I will inevitably now talk about differences from the comic instead of listing things they got spot-on. ::grin:: Three differences jumped out at me immediately - one which disappointed me, one I loved, and one which I'm still thinking about.
The disappointment: one of my favorite scenes in the book is when Nite Owl and Silk Spectre (as opposed to Dan and Laurie, earlier) have just had sex, and Laurie asks him explicitly whether the costumes make it good, and they talk about that some, and Laurie is clearly gearing up for a second round, and Dan is all, "Let's spring Rorschach!" and there's this great beat panel and Laurie says "What?". It's hilarious, and I just really wanted to hear "did the costumes make it good" in the movie.
The thing I loved: getting rid of the whole complicated "aliens" thing with the artists and the psychics and whatnot. Yes, I think it's interesting in the book, the idea of deliberately designing this thing, and gives us a whole other set of connections, but I thought it was a brilliant and elegant simplification. Veidt doesn't need to design a creepy alien menace from scratch, *there totally already is one*.
The thing I'm not sure about: the rewriting of the last scenes with Veidt in Antarctica. Specifically, taking out Jon's final conversation with Adrian, and giving Dan the last word with him instead. It's a really powerful scene in the book, with Adrian asking Jon for approval and Jon saying "nothing ever ends" and leaving. Adrian looking over his shoulder, his certainty finally jarred. Dan's line - he says something like "you haven't saved humanity, you've deformed it"? It's interesting, but it's definitely a different frame for the question, maybe makes the whole theme something else. And it just didn't have the same impact for me as Jon's original line. Although - also interesting, to give the final line versus Veidt to the man instead of the superman. I want to see the movie again and think about what I think that means for how it invites the audience to judge Veidt.
The other relevant thing I realized, thinking about this, is that the movie really undersells the awfulness of Veidt's action. Because we haven't spent nearly as much time with the minor New York characters, we don't really have the sense of any of them as people with their own stories who are now being murdered. And we don't spend any time walking through the carnage, which is such a key key part of the comic - those six full-page panels, crowded with detail, bodies beyond our wildest imaginings. In the movie, Jon and Laurie look at *rubble*, but it's all grey, no bodies, none of the lurid reds and yellows of the comic. Which maybe slants things too much towards "Veidt did the right thing"? But then, if they did show us bodies, maybe that would be so "real" on live-action film, as opposed to in a comic, that we couldn't even consider the possibility that Veidt did the right thing? (I think it would have been very possible to trigger a Veidt/9-11 terrorists association, which I think they (wisely) managed to avoid.)
So, yeah. Those were the things that jumped out at me. (And then there was the really funny moment on the subway later when I was like, wait a minute, they never killed Hollis! and Chaos was all "yes, indeed". Early on I had been paying attention to the dates, because I knew he died on Halloween, and then I totally lost track of the dates and got all caught up in what was happening onscreen and forgot all about that part.)
Having said that, I will inevitably now talk about differences from the comic instead of listing things they got spot-on. ::grin:: Three differences jumped out at me immediately - one which disappointed me, one I loved, and one which I'm still thinking about.
The disappointment: one of my favorite scenes in the book is when Nite Owl and Silk Spectre (as opposed to Dan and Laurie, earlier) have just had sex, and Laurie asks him explicitly whether the costumes make it good, and they talk about that some, and Laurie is clearly gearing up for a second round, and Dan is all, "Let's spring Rorschach!" and there's this great beat panel and Laurie says "What?". It's hilarious, and I just really wanted to hear "did the costumes make it good" in the movie.
The thing I loved: getting rid of the whole complicated "aliens" thing with the artists and the psychics and whatnot. Yes, I think it's interesting in the book, the idea of deliberately designing this thing, and gives us a whole other set of connections, but I thought it was a brilliant and elegant simplification. Veidt doesn't need to design a creepy alien menace from scratch, *there totally already is one*.
The thing I'm not sure about: the rewriting of the last scenes with Veidt in Antarctica. Specifically, taking out Jon's final conversation with Adrian, and giving Dan the last word with him instead. It's a really powerful scene in the book, with Adrian asking Jon for approval and Jon saying "nothing ever ends" and leaving. Adrian looking over his shoulder, his certainty finally jarred. Dan's line - he says something like "you haven't saved humanity, you've deformed it"? It's interesting, but it's definitely a different frame for the question, maybe makes the whole theme something else. And it just didn't have the same impact for me as Jon's original line. Although - also interesting, to give the final line versus Veidt to the man instead of the superman. I want to see the movie again and think about what I think that means for how it invites the audience to judge Veidt.
The other relevant thing I realized, thinking about this, is that the movie really undersells the awfulness of Veidt's action. Because we haven't spent nearly as much time with the minor New York characters, we don't really have the sense of any of them as people with their own stories who are now being murdered. And we don't spend any time walking through the carnage, which is such a key key part of the comic - those six full-page panels, crowded with detail, bodies beyond our wildest imaginings. In the movie, Jon and Laurie look at *rubble*, but it's all grey, no bodies, none of the lurid reds and yellows of the comic. Which maybe slants things too much towards "Veidt did the right thing"? But then, if they did show us bodies, maybe that would be so "real" on live-action film, as opposed to in a comic, that we couldn't even consider the possibility that Veidt did the right thing? (I think it would have been very possible to trigger a Veidt/9-11 terrorists association, which I think they (wisely) managed to avoid.)
So, yeah. Those were the things that jumped out at me. (And then there was the really funny moment on the subway later when I was like, wait a minute, they never killed Hollis! and Chaos was all "yes, indeed". Early on I had been paying attention to the dates, because I knew he died on Halloween, and then I totally lost track of the dates and got all caught up in what was happening onscreen and forgot all about that part.)
