Who Watches The Watchmen?

Pausing only briefly to note my inability to avoid an obvious title, let us say, “Well, I do, now that it’s out on DVD” (though admittedly, in the UK, only thus far in a “Ha-ha, buy it again at Christmas with the extra footage and all the Black Freighter stuff edited in, you hopeless suckers” version. Boo.)

Anyway. (And, spoilers. And, a certain amount of comic-geekiness. Look away now if you haven’t (especially) read the comics.)

As I sat down to watch the UK single-disc edition (as usual, Alan Moore didn’t want to be associated with the film version so the credits rather grandly say it’s based on “the graphic novel co-created and illustrated by Dave Gibbons”) I made a bet with myself that Leonard Cohen’s marvelous song “First We Take Manhattan” would appear on the soundtrack. Happily, I collected from myself, even though I had to wait long enough into the closing credits that I’d almost given up...Indeed, the soundtrack (well, mostly: the use of Cohen’s “Hallelujah” over the sex scene, is, I’d aver (and by no means originally) a bit heavy handed and misjudged) is one of the best things about this in many ways brilliant film, even without Elvis Costello’s “Absent Friends” over The Comedian’s funeral...

Prologue

Not the least astounding thing about this film is the quite extraordinary open letter David Hayter (who, with Alex Tse, is one of the two credited screenwriters) wrote after the first reviews were in, which I somehow feel compelled to state I only came across after I’d seen the film. Addressed to the “fanboys and fangirls” it says, inter alia:

All this time, you’ve been waiting for a director who was going to hit you in the face with this story. To just crack you in the jaw, and then bend you over the pool table with this story.

[...]

Trust me. You'll come back, eventually. Just like Sally.

Jesus H. Christ. (On a bike.) [And then some.] This goes straight into my Top 2 of Times When Authors Really Should Have Kept Quiet, along with Anne Rice’s absurd rant on Amazon.com after the publication of Blood Canticle. (Sorry, I really can’t be arsed to check if the full thing is still there...)

The Film

Before continuing, it’s only fair to say that Hayter apologized, saying, for example:

First off, let me apologize for my metaphor. I am certainly not advocating violence against women of any kind. My sole intent was to reference one of the most complex, controversial and interesting issues in the story...

But, not a good start, is it?

Talking of which, why make a film of something so quintessentially a comic in the first place? It seems mad, although Zack Snyder, director of comics-adaptation 300, surely one of the maddest films ever made, was surely the man for the job if it’s going to be done, and often, most especially in the credits sequence set to Dylan’s “The Times They Are a Changing”, this is quite brilliant, and almost absurdly faithful.

If anything, though, this (in many ways utterly admirable) faithfulness (often it seems as if he’s literally shooting the comic panels) serves to highlight the things you miss (in particular the lack of the Black Freighter stuff (see “boo” above) perhaps make Veidt a more generic-obscurely-motivated bad guy than was the case in the comics) and to make you obsessively compare the film version to the comics. (And, parenthetically, to note just how much more violent faithfully transposed fights from comics panels seem in a live action format...)

For example, the transposition of Dr Manhattan’s remark that, “A live body and a dead body contain the same number of particles, structurally there’s no difference” from Chapter I of the comic (during his conversation with Rorschach at the Rockefeller Military Research Centre) to his TV interview (Chapter III of the comic), so the subject of the statement is no longer The Comedian but rather (amongst others), Wally Weaver, perhaps make the character seem self-obsessed and, well, a git, rather than simply distant; as does the film’s version of his redemption on Mars, which here comes without Laurie’s remark in the comics that if she’s a “thermodynamic miracle” then so is the birth every human being on earth, an addition which Dr Manhattan admits is the whole point. (On the other hand, the loss of Laurie’s rather just to be sure line: “Did the costumes make it good?” from Chapter VII doesn’t seem to matter...) [Christ, I seem to be taking issue with Alan Moore’s writing with this last one. I certainly don’t mean to: he’s one of the few people I’d seriously think of applying the word “genius” to. Heigh ho.]

Epilogue

As for the ending, initially I preferred the edgy, paranoid ending for Dan and Laurie of the comic, but the more I think about it, the less decided I’ve become...

I don’t know, I’ll make my mind up after the proper edition comes out, I think.

[Oh, what a cop out! :-)]

Oh, and despite the rather C. Bale Batman-esque gravelly voice stuff, Jackie Earle Haley is brilliant as Rorschach...