THASWASSUP: What Price Watchmen? by DJ DAPS1
March 6th, 2009 | 10 Comments »
What Price Watchmen?
Guest contribution by DJ DAPS1 (thaswassup.wordpress.com)
It’s amazing how fast time flies when you’re anticipating a comic book based movie such as Watchmen. Newer fans have been waiting since the trailer debuted before last year’s blockbuster, The Dark Knight, but there is a drooling populous of fanboys/fangirls who have been waiting for this movie since the idea spawned (no Todd McFarlane) in the late 80’s/early 90’s. Lots has happened in the comic book world since Watchmen wrapped up its 12-issue, year-long run: Superman passed away only to be reborn, Jack Kirby passed away in real life, Kane broke Batman’s back, Image comics kicked the industry in the nuts, and gimmicky covers from 92-96 practically killed the entire industry as a whole.
After taking a hiatus from comics for more than a decade, I got back into the culture after reading the 2006 Civil War storyline. Gravitating more towards newer story arcs and revisiting my own collection, I managed to pick up all 12 issues of Watchmen at a comic book store in Eugene, Oregon while on the NW Massline Tour. It proved to be a solid social/political/financial investment…and bragging right pieces for the short box (just being real!). Jumping into Watchmen after taking such a long break from comics was strange, only because Alan Moore’s dense material requires more than one read.
Watchmen has gone on to inspire 99.9% of all comic book writers – as well as some Hollywood/TV screenwriters – while challenging the style, delivery and technique in which comic book stories are told. Alan Moore is currently detached from his movie projects, frustrated with an industry that cares more about product than substance.
So what’s the product? Watchmen, directed by 300’s Zack Snyder, almost clocks in at three hours. Most of what Moore wrote translates well onto the big screen, but because each page of the original comic is important to the bigger aspects of the story, there’s soul lacking in scenes that consolidate one whole chapter of the book in less than 10 minutes.
Chapter Four, entitled “Watchmaker”, is an example of this. Arguably the best written chapter of the entire book, Dr. Manhattan narrates his origin through an old photograph. I got very excited when this part of the movie came on, but was disappointed when it went as fast as it came. This describes the entire movie. I will give the benefit of the doubt to Snyder as I can imagine how difficult it must be to fit everything in. Most of what was written in the book about the Minutemen of the 1940’s was summarized during the opening credits.
Watchmen’s director of photography Larry Fong is a beast (no Hank McCoy). With 300 and LOST under his belt, Fong frames the Watchmen environment with a steady eye for detail. Slow-motion captures are tasteful, top-down angles are abundant, and close-ups of Rorschach best show Kovacs’ creepiness.
The reality of violence portrayed in Watchmen is heightened in the film. Easier to swallow in the book, audiences will find themselves looking away at Rorschach’s skill of getting his point across. The scenes of the Comedian beating up on women made me feel uncomfortable, even when I was expecting it. Shooting a pregnant Vietnamese woman? That’s sick…and racist!
Fans will also notice the screenplay is missing an adaptation of Tales of the Black Freighter; which acts as a binding agent between character development and story transitions, and Under the Hood, Hollis Mason’s autobiography about how the old school Minutemen used to kick it superhero style. Fans also need not worry, as these stories will be released as the film’s addendum on DVD in a couple weeks.
Read the graphic novel first. This is the best way to understand what the excitement is and why the movie is an important marker in comic book movie history. I was thoroughly entertained, trusting that Snyder would pay attention to the written and artistic detail as he did with 300. Hundreds of comic book movies will come out after this one, but none will tip its hat more to true comic book fans like Watchmen.
- Visit DJ DAPS1’s blog at thaswassup.wordpress.com
- Art of the Cartoon’s Watchmen review
- DAPS1 and Art of the Cartoon spotted at Seattle P-I blog (2nd photo, behind Rorschach)
what other comics have you been reading lately?
March 7th, 2009 at 3:37 pmI was a little bit more than disturbed by the violence against women, the rape and the murder of a lesbian couple and of Vietnamese villagers, especially considering the background comments that these people deserved to die.
This director is another person like Mel Gibson who represents people of color, women and anyone else who is not part of the dominant culture as the “enemy” and feeds into the United State’s ability to say that their violence against our people is a “necessary evil”, it happened in 300 and is done once again with this film, The Watchmen.
This is something people need to keep an eye on, especially considering the spike in hate crimes that happen during recessions. Remember Vincent Chin, Remember the repatriation of Mexicans during the depression, all that started with the media setting us up as scapegoats.
March 7th, 2009 at 11:22 pmtomas, i haven’t seen the movie yet, but in the book, the violence against women is portrayed as a critique of hyper-militarism…. as nonsensical and unnecessary violence approved by a right wing society.
March 8th, 2009 at 7:42 amWhy the watchwomyn ain’t got no masks?
March 8th, 2009 at 2:36 pm[...] Geo (of Blue Scholars) has a great guest review of the film up on his blog. Besides being one of the hardest working emcees in the rap game, Geo also manages to review almost a film a day on his blog (although the Watchmen review is from someone else). [...]
March 9th, 2009 at 8:59 amTomas: Thanks for your comment. We most definitely gotta be critical with ALL media, especially since even “political” folks tend to let film politics slide as long as it’s entertaining. But gotta agree with Edjop that the violence in Watchmen, and pretty much the whole “Superhero” myth, was being criticized and satirized in the story. That was certainly the case with the graphic novel, penned by Alan Moore, an Anarchist who was very vocal about his anti-imperialist politics. I haven’t seen the film version yet, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Zack Snyder lost some of the satire in translation. Maybe satire just doesn’t work anymore with such a fine line between satire and satirized these days. Or perhaps satire means different things to different people (see New Yorker Obama cover). Anyway – satire. That’s my point. It’s getting to be a tiresome defense, but I gotta pull it out for this one.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:28 amI haven’t been reading much new shit – the last series I got into was 100 Bullets. I recently started re-reading Preacher. And I’m slowly getting through a DVD of X-Men/Uncanny X-Men #1-350 in PDF format.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:31 amI have been going back and forth deciding if I want to share my opinion of the movie or not. Well share it via my review blog. Reasons not to a) I didnt read the graphic novel. b) no knowledge of Watchmen before this movie. Reasons TO write one: a)HUGE superhero fan b) have enough background in other comics to GET the movie c) found out my brother was WAY into Watchmen his last few years of his life.
SO I will ruminate on it a bit more for my own blog – but for this…
I loved it in all its sick, violent and twisted mess. Parts seemed perfectly comic corny then would immediately make you go “DAMN he went THERE”. I love being shocked in movies, and this movie was constantly shocking. The fight scenes, fresh. However the best fight scene in the movie was the 1st one. From someone (*cough RA cough) who hated the movie “The best part of the movie was the first 15 minutes”. THe graphics were amazing – if I were told they had to create a clock on Mars I would have laughed at the thought. But they nailed it.
My ONLY complaint. The rating. We are cool parents, take our kid to MOST rated R movies. This should have been NC-17. The sex scenes were borderline soft porn (or as RA called it NERD PORN) and WAY too many blue dicks for me man!
March 9th, 2009 at 3:18 pmGEO:
I think you got something there with the satire geneology. Satire is something many of us engage as artists, particularly as performance artists…I think the difference is that when we do satire (i.e. groups like Culture Clash, Teatro Campesino, Chicano Secret Service, ChUSMA, Guerrilla Teatro, etc.), when we do satire, it is clear that it is satire, to the extent that things are highly exaggerated. When corporate film-makers do satire, I think it’s something completely different and onto it’s own, after all, the making of the film is based on generating profit, not on telling the counternarrative that may have been part of the original comic series.
RE BLOG:
I was checking out this really well done book on drug war cinema, (i.e. Scarface, Delta Force 2, Deep Cover, etc): DRUG WARS: The Political Economy of Narcotics (2004) by Curtis Marez. In it, Marez makes a convincing argument that many of these movies and the Drug war that they garner legitimacy to, also function as a way to dehumanize those of us who are seen as extras, what others have termed the “precarious life” of the subaltern, the people. The people that die in these movies, whose characters are not developed and no one seems to care that they died, whether peasants in a rice or coca field, or the grunt mercenary armies who are blown away by Tony Montana. He also critiques the paternalism of brown people who have to be saved by the white hero like in Delta Force 2 because they can’t fend for themselves and where the murder of these precarious people propels the plot of the film forward.
Marez does much more by linking the content of these films to ongoing media wars to justify the drug war, I am certain that films like The Watchmen and The Dark Knight, corporate films, are also pushing forward an agenda justifying the war on “terror”. The components of surviellance, mass killing of brown people, violence against women, and the rampant undertone of homophobia and heterosexism are all part of that.
March 10th, 2009 at 12:00 pmcant wait to see it. good- and properly nerdified- review, daptone.
March 12th, 2009 at 2:36 am