Books Worth Reading

Cover of Watchmen

Warning: There be many, many spoilers ahead! Read at your own risk.

Filming Watchmen is no easy task. First, it is a beloved graphic novel with a lot of fans — get it wrong and get crucified. Second, the story is dark and challenging, and it turns all of the superhero tropes inside out. Viewers expecting a feel-good popcorn movie a la Spiderman or Batman are going to be disappointed. Despite these challenges, Watchmen the film is a highly successful adaptation. By staying ultra-faithful to its source material, the film may risk alienating the second audience, but without compromising itself.

That being said, I think viewers of Watchmen will benefit from having read the book first. The story challenges all sorts of assumptions; having some idea of what to expect going in is helpful, I think. It lets you appreciate the stunning visuals and the pains that the film took to be true to the characters and themes Alan Moore created.

One thing that makes Watchmen rise above the superhero comic genre is its attention to characterization. Each “superhero” is essentially a human being, with very human flaws and limitations. The graphic novel takes pains to bring each of the Watchmen to life by providing a complete back story for each of the characters and being careful to show how murky each character’s motivations is. Nothing is black and white in Watchmen, as in real life. The film remains true to this vision, taking the time to flesh out each character’s history and making them look and behave like real people. Casting actors who support this vision, rather than stars whose personalities might overwhelm it, was also a wise decision. The actors who play Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan and Dan, in particular, fully became those characters, down to the details of their looks and mannerisms.

The story and themes of Watchmen are also complex, not at all easy to convey even in a 3-hour movie. The film depicts a dystopian New York that is dirty, gloomy, rainy, gray. The colors are muted, accents only. The film does not flinch from violence or nudity when needed to support the story. (This film is certainly not intended for children.) All of this conveys the sense of humanity on the brink, unable to save ourselves from ourselves. We require intervention — from a superhero, from a god — just to ensure our survival. What does that say for us watching, who cannot count on such intervention? The moral ambiguities presented are challenging, and the audience leaves Watchmen feeling disturbed, depressed, wondering whether the sunny and colorful New York being rebuilt at the end was the best resolution after all, despite it having come at the expense of truth, justice and, indeed, the American way.

Every superhero truism is turned on its head in Watchmen. Rorschach, the character who most represents the superhero ideals of fighting for justice “even in the face of Armageddon” is a psychopathic vigilante. Dr. Manhattan, the Superman who is supposed to watch over us all like a benevolent god, has lost touch with humanity to the point of questioning whether life is even worth saving. The villain, Veidt, explains his master plan only after he has executed it, and ends up saving humanity from itself. On seeing the results, the other superheroes can only agree that the ends justify the means, and he gets away with it. The brilliant touch is that we, the audience, also feel complicit; we find ourselves rooting for justice not to be served in the end.

Some fans will, of course, be bothered by the one major deviation from the source material. Veidt makes Dr. Manhattan look responsible for the destruction of New York and the other cities, rather than the Cthulhu-like monster that Veidt had genetically engineered. I think this was the right call. While in the book, the monster — supposedly an alien from another dimension — makes all sorts of allusions to the Lovecraftian tradition and horror comics, it would have been exceedingly difficult to film, and the same allusions would not have come through. Done wrong, the monster might have looked silly or ridiculous, breaking the suspension of disbelief. The new ending, though tidy, is also easier to grasp in the space allotted and does not throw the viewer out of the story.

Finally, I want to mention some of my favorite sequences. The opening sequence manages to convey in very little time and with no dialogue the full back story of an alternate history in which superheroes do exist. Dr. Manhattan raising his glass contraption out of the Martian landscape adroitly echoes the scene in Superman when he builds his Fortress of Solitude. Rorschach’s mask was creepily effective, and the final rorschach print created by his blood after Dr. Manhattan disintegrates him was affecting. I also loved the song choices and how the music was almost overwhelming at times, which greatly contributed to the mood of the movie.

As adaptations go, I couldn’t find much fault with Watchmen. Just as I want to read Watchmen again, I want to see the film again. I am sure there are further nuances to explore.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Worth Reading: Watchmen (readmorebooks.wordpress.com)
• ‘Watchmen’: What the movie did better (pfunn.com)
• ‘Watchmen’: A Tale of Two Movies (space.com)
• Review: Watchmen Film Straddles Line Between Loyalty, Heresy (wired.com)
• Watching Watchmen (chicagoist.com)
• Watchmen – Movie Review – The Extremes Of Humanity As Norms (areyouscreening.com)
• Mike Ragogna: Watchmen: Who’s Watching The Watchmen? (huffingtonpost.com)
• A comic book neophyte’s guide to Watchmen (nationalpost.com)
• A Watchmen Cartoon Fanboys Will Love. Wait, I Mean Hate. Yeah, Hate. (gizmodo.com.au)
• Filming the unfilmable ‘Watchmen’ (cnn.com)