Some thoughts on WATCHMEN

I posted a basic, by-the-numbers sort of review of WATCHMEN over at my Movie Man blog, but I thought I'd let my geek flag fly over here and just ramble on about some impressions of the movie.

Spoilers aplenty, of course...

1. First of all, I liked it a lot. Like most comic book fans, I've been waiting for this one for years (hell, decades), and I had pretty much assumed it was never going to really happen. To have it in theaters -- and to have it so close to the actual comic book -- is almost enough as it is. To have it actually be good (and yes, I thought it was pretty damn good) is a bonus, really.

2. I have no idea how someone with no previous exposure to the story will feel about it. I've probably read WATCHMEN more than any other work in my life (comics or otherwise), and I know that thing backward and forward. For me, sitting there in the theater, half the fun was seeing how certain beloved scenes would play out. As the movie went on (and on -- it's long, but I'm not complaining) I grew more and more amazed at just how much of the book Snyder and Co. managed to actually get into the movie. But it was complex, both plot and structure-wise. That's why I wonder if someone who didn't already know the story would understand the movie.

3. That opening credits sequence has been praised by virtually everyone, and for good reason. It sums up the offbeat history of this world with wit, charm and style, and throws in some great visual jokes along the way (Silhouette and the nurse re-enacting the famous VJ Day photo, the Silk Spectre's retirement dinner mimicking the Last Supper).

4. I also like the way the movie starts at the very beginning, with the corporate logos simple black on white, pulling out -- way out -- to the smiley face badge. Nice touch, and the later shot of the badge in the bloody gutter pulling way back was a dead-on recreation of the cover and page one of the first issue.


5. Jackie Earle Haley made a pretty great Rorschach, didn't he? I was looking forward to the scene of his arrest outside Moloch's apartment, partly because it was such a powerful moment in the comic, with him screaming "Give me back my face!" It did not disappoint onscreen. Same with his telling the prisoners "You're locked up in here with me" and the entire jail cell sequence. (Except for the change of the line from "Your fingers. My perspective" to "Your fingers. My pleasure." That sounds goofy, and it doesn't even really make sense.)

6. The follow-up to that scene, with Rorschach going into the bathroom (to kill Big Figure) while Dan and Laurie wait outside actually worked better than in the comic. That lack of dialogue (replaced by awkward shuffling of feer) and the swinging door showing flashes of what was happening inside -- something you couldn't do as well in a comic -- was staged perfectly. That being said, Dan and Laurie's fights in the prison hallways were way overdone. They seemed like heroes -- hell, superheroes -- at the top of their game, not former heroes gone to seed. Same for the fight in the alley earlier in the film. In the comic, there are fewer punks, and it works a lot better. (Nice to see they were Knottops, though.)

8. I expected to see Nixon (can't libel the dead, after all) and Kissinger, but seeing Lee Iacocca -- and seeing him (a) as part of a dark cabal trying to pressure Ozymandias and (b) seeing him get shot in the head -- was mighty surprising. Not that I mind (it's a movie, after all), but what's the legality of that sort of thing? (Speak of Ozymandias, you know who would've been perfect as him? A young Robert Redford.)

9. Man, Carla Gugino was born to wear that Silk Spectre outfit, wasn't she? Of all the characters in the movie, she probably looked the least like her Dave Gibbons-drawn inspiration, but who's going to complain?

10. Seeing Nite Owl's garage, with its layers of dust and pieces of superhero debris all over the place was a kick. I especially liked how everytime Archie took off, stuff got blown all over the workshop.

11. I've never seen Jeffrey Dean Morgan or that stupid doctor show he plays a ghost on, but he made a great Comedian. Nasty, funny and lost, sometimes all at once.

12. The Dr. Manhattan elements were handled especially well, and I was glad to see the fractured flashback structure maintained for his origin sequence. Some shots -- like Jenny Slater staring up at the reborn Manhattan -- were right out of the book. And the condensing of his outburst on the talk show to lead to the jump to Mars was a good story choice. (Glad to see they kept the smiley face on Mars, too.)

13. There was some nerdish online debate about the ending, and the lack of the giant squid. I actually thought the movie ending worked as well as the original, tying Dr. Manhattan into the climax more directly. Adding the squid might've been one weird element too many in a movie already full of them. (And the movie does give a nod to the squid -- as glimpsed in an early scene, Veidt's project has the acronym S.Q.U.I.D.)

That's it for now -- though I might post more in a bit. This is one movie I keep replaying in my head.