Episode IV - Hope This Works

Welcome to Got Me A Movie. I'm almost positive that the Internet doesn't have any sites dedicated to motion pictures. I seek to rectify this. Within this blog you will find previews of movies, reviews of movies and if I can keep my laptop cool enough, uploaded images from movies.



I think it's worth noting that I have absolutely no major connections within the industry, so you can rest assured that everthing you read here is utterly uninformed. That is my guarantee to you.







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Saturday 19 June 2010

Round Table Review: Watchmen

Welcome to Got Me A Movie's first Round Table review (a concept shamelessly stolen from other, better sites).

In the coming months I hope to invite a myriad of intelligent, witty and attractive guest contributors to the site to discuss and review some of the big upcoming summer releases. Expect Iron Man 2, certainly expect Toy Story 3, don't hold your breath for Eclipse.

We've decided to start with last years most anticipated (alright, second most anticipated) release: Watchmen.



Note: We welcome Dan Nicholls for our first review. We've decided to review the Director's Cut of Watchmen rather than the Theatrical or "Ultimate" cut. Zack Snyder has stated that this is his preferred version. He has a point, this cut gives the film a stronger narrative, fleshes characters out and vastly improves some of the pacing issues from the Theatrical Cut. If you haven't seen the Director's Cut yet Devin Faraci at CHUD.com posted a comprehensive breakdown of the additional scenes which can be found here.


Mike: Zack Snyder famously said that the reason he agreed to direct Watchmen was because he felt that it was imperative that a fan of the novel adapt it stating, "it ought to be someone who knows and loves the material. And if I didn't do it, someone else would." Brave move considering he received death threats for remaking Romero's Dawn of the Dead. He was right on the money though, Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' epic graphic novel is so dense and so layered that only a long time fan could hope to strike any kind of balance to do it justice. Watchmen was considered by many to be completely unfilmable, so the question is did Snyder succeed? Was he able to balance the numerous elements of the novel and does it work as a stand alone piece?

DAN: If nothing else, Snyder proved that Watchmen is filmable. There were so many sequences that he so spectacularly got right (the opening, the titles, the Dr. Manhattan sequence). The only question is whether or not anyone else could produce the glue that Snyder couldn't, the glue that would hold all of those great sequences together. As a huge fan of WATCHMEN, I loved watching some of the sequences being so brilliantly realised yet I was so crushingly disappointed when the film ended with such a poor third act and the big mish-mash of characters back stories became somewhat unimportant. It devolved into everything Watchmen has always been about deconstructing and in many ways, mocking. I think Snyder proved that it CAN be filmed but he isn't the guy to produce the version of this novel that will be remembered. Instead, he'll be remembered for taking a great first shot at it.

Mike: I think Snyder put himself in a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" position, stay too faithful to the material and it's slavish, stray too far and you're taking liberties. The thing is, as everyone knows, to transfer anything across mediums a certain amount of adaptation is required. Just because the book works so well, doesn't mean that simply shooting a live action version will be perfect. Changes need to be made and I think Snyder, for the most part, judged it well. However there are times when his obvious enthusiasm impairs that judgement. I remember loving the film when I first saw it but later realising that most of that excitement came from simply seeing these characters that I love on screen and at times it seems that that was Snyder's focus too. You can almost imagine a checklist of fan favourite moments and easter eggs that HAD to make it in. When you focus on those details it's easy to lose sight of the bigger picture, which is why when the film needed to resolve the central plot the engine stalls. Having said that I do feel that the lacklustre climax only stings so much because of how well everything else worked. To be honest that's an understatement, the first two thirds of Watchmen are sublime.

Dan: I couldn't agree more about that. It's amazing how the memory of tasting something so bitter can overpower those serene moments. Part of me wonders what kind of film would have come from Watchmen if it didn't have the fan following. Would the alleviated pressure have made it better? Would the studio (Warner Bros) have been so willing to support such a project? Maybe the next filmic incarnation of the story will answer those questions for me? One thing keeps coming back up with me though. Surely the huge support of Dave Gibbons should have been a little love letter to Alan Moore to watch the film? I really wonder if he did avoid any viewing or trailer? It's not his baby as he imagined it (he always said it was 'unfilmable') but then, he has always been one of the more intelligent writers out there, understanding that a different medium brings different requirements/qualities. As you touched on, Snyder judged that adaptation process well. Proof of that is in the Dr. Manhattan origin story sequence. Little things are different but the same feeling of lonliness through godliness is there. It would be a hell of a thing to miss out on for Moore. It could even help certain aspects of his writing. I've always said that a piece of bad feedback on your work is infinitely more valuable than someone saying 'oh, that was great'.

Mike: I think pressure from the fans certainly had a lot to do with the end result, but I think that if Watchmen wasn't as wildly popular as it is the film would have been churned out years ago, to it's detriment. The film was languishing in Development Hell for over twenty years. Certainly a desire to please the core fanbase was partly to blame for the delay but I honestly believe that Fox just had no idea how to get it off the ground. Part of the reason I champion this film so much is because of how awful some of the previous attempts to adapt the book were, the most infamous being Sam Hamm's face meltingly terrible script. If Watchmen had just been some obscure comic from the eighties it would have been cobbled together and we'd be enjoying Adrian trying to travel back in time and Rorshach hissing like a cat. To their eternal credit Warner Bros. didn't seem content to just greenlight the film on the back of the Watchmen brand, but to try and assemble a team that could do it justice. That's part of the reason I think Moore was being a tad unfair publicly denouncing the film everytime it was mentioned. I understand where he's coming from, (nobody has been screwed over by Hollywood more than him) but if he had given it a chance or even taken Dave Gibbons' word for it he would have seen that the project was moving in a far better direction. I would love to know what kind of correspondence he and Gibbons had. I wonder if Gibbons tried to push it on him or whether he just knew him enough to leave well enough alone. It's a great shame because, say what you want about the film, it "gets" the book and Snyder understands what so many before didn't; that Watchmen is not about Superheroes at all, it's about uncertainty, fear and above all else characters. For proof, look no further than the fantastic cast Snyder assembled.

Dan: So I guess we can say that the intense fandom had both good and bad effects on the film. That said, it was up to Snyder to jettison things he felt were wrong and he did so. It takes a very brave person to change the ending to such a loved property. As we touched on before, the worst part of the film is the moment that Synder takes the reigns on the story to attach his own take on the ending. Would the squid have worked? I think so. It would have been hammy but surely that's the point? It's a commentary on pop culture and how we're lead by it to believe so many idiotic things. For the most part (two thirds in fact!) Synder proves that he "gets" the book and the proof is in the film-making. Though I would still love to see what Directors such as Aronofsky would have done with the material. Half of the past approaches have been fundamentally flawed and, minus character names, could probably be made with under a different title! You're right though, Snyder's choices for his actors are the biggest sign that he understood Watchmen and the performances given (minus Malin "i got this part because no one else would get their kit off!" Ackermans performance!) are second to none. My favourites you ask? The oh-so perfectly cast Billy Crudup (Dr. Manhattan), Jackie Earle Haley (Rorschach), Jeffrey Dean Morgan (The Comedian) and Patrick Wilson (Night Owl II). These guys pulled off dialogue and character beats that other actors would have floundered with (case in point, Malin Ackerman). They so completely and utterly owned the characters they were playing in a way that is usually reserved for 'Method Actors'. Had these guys been 'Method', the set of Watchmen would have been a war zone! Jeffrey Dean Morgan put humanity behind such a violent character that many of his actions had me understanding his logic for doing them (craziness aside!). Snyder and Morgan created a Comedian that is, in my eyes, richer than Moore's. That may anger some people to hear me say that but it is true and it should be applauded. Crudup's Dr. Manhattan did the same thing in many ways, putting a kind humanity behind that neutral, unnervingly calm persona. I think this could actually be argued of all the actors/characters I called out (Crudup, Haley, Morgan and Wilson) - they all added a new depth to their characters that made us understand them a little better than their comic...sorry, graphic novel counterparts.

Mike: I'm glad you singled out Cudrup's performance there because I think the technical achievement of realising Dr. Manhatten on screen often overshadowed the work he did. It's an astonishing portrayal of an almost impossible character. Dr. Manahatten, once a man now a near omnipotant being who no longer perceives time in a linear fashion all the while losing the last shreds of his humanity. How on earth do you play that? The decision to play him with a quiet reflectiveness surprised and delighted me, he found the necessary middle ground. Not a man, but not a booming voiced all powerful deity. The effect is, for lack of a better word, creepy, which is exactly as it should be. Coupled with the incredible effects work it's a dazzling thing to watch. But as much as I loved Cudrup the stand out performance for me was Patrick Wilson as Dan Dreiberg. Although narration in Watchmen came courtesy of ol' squidgey face, I always thought that it was Dan with whom the audience was meant to identify with and respond to. He is a spectator caught up in events beyond his control. He is the most human character, weak, self doubting yet with something just beneath the surface. Wilson strikes this perfectly, he plays Dan as the ultimate underdog, a guy who borders on pathetic but you love nonetheless. You're quite right Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Jackie Earle Haley give career making performances as The Comedian and Rorschach, but they are "showy" roles. They are about rage and violence, whereas Dan is about something deeper. Wilson brings the pathos to the film, just as Dan brought it to the book.There is, ahem, a noticeable exclusion to your rundown of characters, which I think takes us quite nicely to the climax of the film. Take it away.

Dan: We seem to agree on the performances in every way except I think that Morgan deserves more credit than you give him. The Comedian is a showy role for sure, but Morgan manages to take it beyond what it originally was. Rorschach/Haley is just the graphic novel Rorschach on screen but with Morgan there is definitely something more going on. In general though, we both left out that one person we'll now come to discussing. Drum roll please...Matthew Goode and his portrayal of Ozymandias/Adrian Veidt. Goode actually does just fine with what he's given, it's what he is given that is the problem. Anyone who has read the graphic novel (and really, anyone who saw the film) will notice that Veidt is the only character that doesn't have his own 'origins' segment, so to speak. In the novel, that segment comes just as he explains his masterplan to his workers before mercilessly killing them. He insists his plan is for the greater good (though that plan is different in the film, it meets the same outcome). After fending off the heroes that inevitably come to stop him, he chillingly states "all you failed to do was stop me saving the world". By this point, we understand Veidts motivations, harsh though they may be. The importance to that understanding lays in his origin segment. By leaving it out of the film, the whole plan seems to come from nowhere and the motivations of Veidt have to be explained in a way that only serves to render us confused and treated as 'dumb moviegoers' when the rest of the film treated us so well! What I don't understand though is why Snyder chose to do this when there is a glaringly obvious place to put Veidts origin. The war room scenes hardly fit at all and regularly jarred me out of the film. But, and you may call me crazy, if the smartest people in office couldn't come up with a solution to their problems, don't you think that they may have called the 'smartest man on the planet'? Veidt could have been injected into those war room scenes giving advice to the big shot advisors, and when questioned, could have told them why the hell they should listen to him. In case my point isn't coming across, that 'you should listen to me because...' could have simply been his origin and thus, the film would flow nicely. However, Veidt ends up being the one character that suffers in both the theatrical and directors cut versions of the film, simply because he's not given any back story. Half of his brilliance is very hastily mumbled away in telling a reporter what he and his company does (all whilst Snyder strangely chose to show us Dan playing with figurines) and the relevant half is left out of the film completely!

Mike: I couldn't agree more. Goode isn't really the problem, he brings the required arrogance (although perhaps not enough of the Tom Cruise charm Adrian had in book) but he is given a woefully underwritten character and until the end barely registers as a cameo. Whether this was to try and help preserve the twist or simply disinterest on the part of Snyder is unclear but it renders Adrian, and by proxy the climax, very dull. The ending as presented in the book is nightmarish. In the wake of an unthinkable atrocity our heroes are put in an impossible position: If they talk the world will resume its race toward destruction, if they keep quiet there is a chance the World may be saved but the villain will get away with genocide (a villain who the reader understands psychologically and who is making a worrying amount of sense). In the film that connection with Adrian is lost and he becomes just another villain, almost an afterthought. Even the attack itself is oddly neutered. Snyder made a very violent film; limbs are severed and bones snapped, so when we are shown the aftermath of the attack (presented in the book as four splash pages of death and destruction) as a CGI hole in the ground the effect just isn't nearly shocking enough to lend the climax the required gravitas. The war room scenes are utterly hideous and you're quite right, adding Adrian would kill two birds with one stone, it gives his character purpose and displays how influential he is.

But again, this misstep only stands out because of what came before it. It's a important to step back and look at the film as a whole. Snyder created a visually stunning adaptation of a beloved book. It doesn't touch Moore and Gibbons' original work but it comes close enough. Watchmen is a flawed triumph, one that delivers in so many ways but stumbles slightly come the end. Twenty years is a long time in Hollywood, but I think it was worth the wait.

4 comments:

Dan The Media Man said...

Had a great time writing this with you Mike and look forward to doing our next one. Any suggestions what it should be?

Unknown said...

Stumbled across this through Dan's facebook. Cool site. Honest opinions. How does it work though? Do you guys pick a movie you want to review and, well, review it? Not to sound like a 70-year old at his grandchild's 18th birthday party bending the ear of the tacky disc jockey but...do you do requests? Is it weekly, monthly or whenever you guys have time?
Paul Jay

Dan The Media Man said...

It's a hobby so it's done when we have the time. Mike writes reviews much more often but the round-table thing is new.

I'm sure we'd review a requested film? What do you have in mind? Currently, only 'new' movies are done. We started discussing this round table when we watched the Directors cut when it came out so it was new then!

I think the next roundtable will be Toy Story 3.

Mike said...

It was a blast Dan, Good work. Paul, nice to hear from you, thanks for the feedback. Im sure we could do requests, it is very much a hobby so it wouldn't be the speediest of reviews. Did you have anything in mind?

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