Years ago, I argued that any eventual Watchmen movie would be full of suck, because I didn’t imagine that a major studio would be willing to finance it as a period piece, and the story only makes sense during the cold war.
Obviously, I was wrong: the upcoming Watchmen movie is going to be a period piece, as it should be. And from what I’ve seen, the production design is beautiful.
Nonetheless, it’s not going to be as good as the comic. And it’s not going to be faithful, no matter how slavishly it reproduces the original comic book’s plot. ((Which can’t be all that slavish because, let’s face it, they don’t have 10 hours to work with.))
First of all, judging from the preview, the movie is flashy. Look at how beautiful the lighting is! Oh, cool, she fell down through the flaming roof and glared at the camera! And another shot I’ve seen (I don’t think it’s in this preview) uses that neat-looking effect from Matrix, where time is slowed down and then suddenly speeds up during action scenes. How dated will that look 10 years from now?
Watchmen the comic was deliberately drawn in an old-fashioned, nine-panel grid with flat coloring. No elements jumped out of panels, and although the comic is full of striking visuals, the drawing style is extremely sedate for a superhero comic. Stylistically, Watchmen the comic rejected most of the then-current trends of superhero drawing. The movie, on the other hand, looks like every other superhero movie that’s come out in the last few years.
Watchmen, the comic, was effectively a meta-comic. It was a comic about comics.
Moore and Gibbons designed Watchmen to showcase the unique qualities of the comics medium and to highlight its particular strengths. In a 1986 interview, Moore said, “What I’d like to explore is the areas that comics succeed in where no other media is capable of operating”, and emphasized this by stressing the differences between comics and film. Moore said that Watchmen was designed to be read “four or five times,” with some links and allusions only becoming apparent to the reader after several readings. Gibbons described the series as “a comic about comics”.
So what is the movie about? It’s not a movie about comics, because it can’t be; it has no panels, no word balloons. But it’s not about movies, either. Mainly, from what I’ve seen, it’s about a bunch of fans who loved the comic and want to make a Watchmen movie.
The story of Watchmen is a melodramatic plot with better-than-average plotting and characterization for a superhero comic; what made it outstanding was how it was told. The statico rhythm of the nine-panel grid, held to so rigorously that even a single double-sized panel felt momentous. The ever-growing pile of repeating visuals and background details, possible to appreciate because in comics, the reader can take all the time they want to examine a panel. The layout effects that simply could never be done in another medium (most famously, the entire chapter in which the layouts were mirror images of each other — so the last page of the chapter was the first page reversed, the second-to-last was the second page reversed, and so on). The comic book that a character in Watchmen was reading — and which the readers eventually saw all of, a few panels or pages at a time, spread out over the entire comic.
Don’t get me wrong: I’ll see, discuss (obviously) and probably enjoy the movie. But I’ll probably enjoy it because it’s effectively a well-done, high-budget piece of fan art. I’ll “ooh” and “ah” all the pretty sets they’ve built, and the scenes they’ve recreated. But Watchmen can’t work as well as movie as it did as comics, because Watchmen is comics. A Watchmen movie is a self-contradiction. And if there is, someday, a superhero movie which does for the form what Watchmen did for superhero comics, it won’t be an adaptation of anything.
Hearing fans enthuse about the Watchmen movie, I suspect they’re hoping for legitimization. This’ll show the world that comics are a real art form! And that superheroes can be real art! Well, I say: screw that. Comics are an art form. Superhero comics can be good. ((Although usually, not.)) And we can move past this tedious desire to have our tastes given a gold star by Entertainment Weekly. Can’t we?
No, I’m hoping the movie is good and doesn’t go all suck like the punisher movie. You’re right about the visuals. But I never really cared about that. I liked how gritty and *human* all the characters were, warts, farts and all. But different strokes for different folks. You want to fanboy on how the movie can never be true to the source material go right ahead.
“Watchman” can never be truly adapted to film in much the same way that “House of Leaves” can never be adapted to film – many comics are effectively a storyboard, so they work well as film. Watchmen isn’t a storyboard, so it doesn’t work as film.
So, then, you’re not so excited you could pee?
Amp, that’s the best articulation of the comic’s strengths and weaknesses that I’ve ever read.
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Thank you for your insightful analysis of the upcoming Watchmen adaptation with regard to its original source material. I agree with your point that the film’s slavish reproduction of the graphic novel will not necessarily translate into a quality film. Much of the enthusiasm for the film spawns from its apparent frame-by-frame adherence, rather than the possibility for it to achieve for films what the original Watchmen did for comic books, that is to comment upon and deconstruct the medium from which it comes. You say “it’s not going to be as good as the comic.” While I agree that the adaptation will probably not be as groundbreaking to the medium of film as the comic was to its medium, I do believe that it has the potential to be innovative in the ever-expanding genre of superhero films. Several things I have seen and heard about the film seems to be deliberately reflecting on superhero films of the past. For instance, the changes made to both costumes of Nite Owl and Ozymandias for the film bring to mind the flambuoyant rubber costumes from Joel Schumacher’s Batman films. Indeed, Ozymandias’ suit actually sports those infamous nipples… Given the notoriety of Schumacher’s series, one can only assume that Zack Snyder is intentionally exploiting this style in a symbolic way and not attempting to replicate it based on any sort of “cool” factor. A big reason I think Watchmen is employing intelligent pastiche instead of empty reflexivity is based on the music used in the trailer. The song is Smashing Pumpkin’s “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning,” written for the soundtrack to Schumacher’s Batman & Robin. Snyder admitted at Comic Con 2008 to choosing the song ironically based on its “lineage.” These touches give me hope that the movie “looks like every other superhero movie that’s come out in the last few years” on purpose. Perhaps one reason to admire the film is because it deviates from the aesthetic of the original graphic novel. Rather than subvert the visual style of existing superhero movies, as its comic predecessor did, maybe the film is subverting the source material itself by exploiting those formal techniques to achieve a different end. Either that, or Zack Snyder is simply trying to make a movie that looks cool, which may very well be the case judging by his slick previous effort 300. Still, I would rather give Watchmen the benefit of the doubt until I see it.
That’s really interesting, Cam, especially about the source material for the song. Maybe the Watchmen movie will be good — I’d love to be proven wrong on this one. But I remain pessimistic.