Watchmen (Filmed Large)

Who Watches The Watchmen? - We Do!

It sure snuck up on us, but the release of 'Watchmen' came and went and with a gush of marketing I found myself in the theatre watching this adaptation of the famous Graphic Novel. It's been a while since I've read the damn thing,but I did give a copy to my brother this last Christmas, just so he could rest his brain from his arduous research job, and get briefed on what this movie was going to be about.

I'm a little surprised that there was less of a run up than there has been. Consider the colossally long run up for 'Quantum of Solace' as well as the new 'Star Trek' which is meant to arrive some time in May. It sure feels like this one crept up on us all, like a skulking stalker. Or Rorschach himself.

What's Good About It

The good news is, that the film looks just about what I thought I remembered of the book. I'll be digging out an old copy soon to get my head back into it and reflect on the movie, but as movies go, it stands alone nicely.

As adaptations go, it seemed very faithful to the book and there were many a shot that was framed exactly as I had remembered it. That counts as good, I guess, in a world where you sometimes think the director hasn't even read the script properly.

The film's action sequences are heavily stylised, and brutal as well. It's a lot less mannered than 300, Zack Snyder's previous excursion into violence on screen, but it's still very mannered compared to say, a Dirty Harry movie or even any Die Hard movie. In this instance, the less-mannered-than-300, actually counts as 'good'.

The casting is also good. Apart from Billy Cruddup who plays Dr. Manhattan, I wasn't really distracted by a face that carried a previous role into the film. Billy Craddup will forever be 'Russell Hammond', Lead guitarist for Stillwater to me.All the same, iIt's a brave way to cast a big movie like this, but you can see why they would do it; and I do applaud the bravery. It's a a very good call.

The exception to the casting strategy was Malin Akerman whose Laurie Jupiter was pretty weak. She's a pretty thing with some nice moves in the combat bits, but her acting is less than compelling. I actually wanted her to die so they could bring somebody else on, knowing that wasn't the story.

What's Bad About It

Which ever way you dice it, a film this close to the source is going to live and die by the source.In a sense the writer, director and producer yield their creative veto and vision to the original man, Alan Moore, which may not be quite the right thing to do. All the things that are not quite right in the film can be traced back to the concept and therefore the book. It's like having a very high degree of execution on a not so good idea. While it's not quite bronzing a turd, it's a little like gilding a McDonalds Hamburger.

The film has high ambitions and maybe I'm wrong and it will be remembered as a cinema classic, but I constantly felt a nagging disagreement with the framework of the story. A lot of the Nixon story was plain awful and almost incomprehensible except as pastiche. What the film gained in restaging certain scenes, including the Kennedy Assassination carried out by The Comedian, were then undercut by the need to have Nixon as a kind of political villain. More on that in a moment.

The other problem with the film is the narrative where it jumps back and forth with voice over to patch the gaps. It's not quite Citizen Kane, but then citizen Kane actually makes sense even if you turn down the sound. This thing has no chance. I watched it with a non-native English speaker who had no familiarity with the story, and they had absolute zero understanding of what was going on. The devices that worked in the graphic novel are not working on screen.

Are We Here Kicking Around Richard Nixon Again?


A Parallel universe dystopia where Nixon is still president and Kissinger is still his sidekick could only be a product of the 1980s. If I may say so bluntly, in the years since 1986, we've seen the Reaganite Iran-Contra affair; the George Bush I presidency which gave us Panama and The Gulf War I; The Clinton Administration with Operation Restore Hope in Somalia, the Bosnian conflict with its bloodshed culminating with the Kosovo air strikes, the Iraq sanction situation with Desert Fox; The George W Bush administration which let 9/11 happen as well as the War Against Terror, and the Global Financial crisis. And that's just the short list. In a sense Reagan's USA alone turned out to be much worse than the imagined USA still under Nixon.

If the worst political problem was Nixon staying on until 1985, it seems almost acceptable. I'm not repatriating him, I'm saying the subsequent Presidents have all proven to be just as problematic as Nixon himself. I guess Moore admonition that we shouldn't trust any of these bastards holds true. Yet, to see Nixon as the guy we're kicking around seemed way too tame.

Kubrick's War Room

Related to the issue above is the war room in which the movie Nixon presides over his generals and Secretary of State Henry Kissingger. The war room in this film is a lift of the War Room in 'Dr. Strangelove'. It simply does not exist, and it never did. It was one of those beautiful Kubrick creations that was so compelling Ronald Reagan asked to see it the moment he was inaugurated as President.

To see it reproduced in this film seemed less an homage and more as plain lack of design. If they did it unknowingly, then they're lazy bums. If they did it knowingly, they forewent an opportunity to make a truly lasting work of cinema. It's actually a bad moment in the otherwise good execution of this film.

The Nuclear Anxiety

One of the things this film did bring back was the nuclear anxiety of Mutually Assured Destruction. If you're too young to remember, then let me just say it was a particular kind of neurosis. I don't know how many times my nightmares in my teens were filled with mushroom clouds and a wavefront of hot radiation spreading out from the clouds speeding towards me, back in the 1980s. If you knew about it, you couldn't sleep right knowing the people in charge of the red hot button to start it all were people like Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev.

While its true we've backed off significantly from the 5minutes to midnight on the nuclear armageddon clock, just how much that has alleviated the anxiety was unknown to me until I saw the nightmare sequence. We've come a long way, thanks to Glasnost, the Berlin Wall coming down, and the rise of jihadism instead. Yes, we may still go to war with Nuclear Iran, but I have a demented backdoor thing in my mind that says it probably won't go to Mutually Assured Destruction in which case those who would die in a nuclear holocaust will be elsewhere on the planet. It's insane but strangely comforting - but it's how I feel today. You can tell I lived through the nuclear anxiety.

Remembering 1985

It's like 'Back To The Future', to go back to any 1985, but here we are watching an alternative 1985. Where were you in October 1985 might define greatly how you see this film today. In October 1985, I was doing my exams, but also falling deeply in love. :)