Pick the Right One to Watch

Since last Friday, every single time I’ve sat down at my computer somebody has wanted to chat about Watchmen.  I’m not complaining– I like that people value my opinion.  Makes me feel like I might have the elusive gift of generally accepted “good taste”. 

The long and short of it is, for me, Zack Snyder leaves nothing but an awful taste in my mouth.  I despised his 300 adaptation, and his latest effort does little more for me– it is at best a failing grade.  I’m reminded of the difference between The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers when viewing the Alan Moore / Dave Gibbons adaptation.  Fellowship was a brilliant film, perfectly capturing the emotion, character motivation, and subtle nuances of the book upon which it was based.  You’ll never hear me complain about Tom Bombadil, a lack of mythical swords, or… well, damn near anything when it comes to the extended cut of the first movie.  The second?  Balls.  Utter trash that misinterprets the source material in all the most painful ways.

Watchmen is strikingly similar in its failures.  Blue porn penises and absent squids (save dumb “wink-wink” easter eggs) aren’t the problem with this adaptation– it is the lack of anything subtle or intriguing being left intact.  Lines are twisted and put in the wrong mouths removing character’s charm.  Two of the best examples of this mark-missing come alongside sex scenes.  When the second Silk Spectre, Laurie, is getting the four-armed treatment from Doctor Manhattan, there’s a tone shift from the original “I thought you would like this” defense brought up by the superman to “I thought you liked this”.  Later on, when Laurie first attempts to make love to the second Nite Owl, the scene doesn’t end with cuddling or reassurances about overcoming impotency, but instead what seems like a weak premature ejaculation joke due to poor cutting.  Sure, these are small hairs being split, but it’s the small strokes that matter.  In both these cases, we see the sexualization of characters (arguably the most important piece of the narrative puzzle) being twisted and made more broad.  Laurie’s a sex freak and Dan’s a horny teenager in the film in opposition to the idea of them as complex characters.  For me, the largest causality in the film is Adrian Veidt; not only is actor Matthew Goode’s performance cringe-inducing, but we get none of the character’s endearing strokes at the film’s climax.  No flashing smiles, no admitting he was unsure about being able to catch a bullet, and no final inquiry to Doctor Manhattan as to whether his master plan was “right”.  What’s most sad is, from a screenwriting point, they did a good job adapting many of the book’s long monologues into more digestible pieces of dialog, while ruining the book’s one-liners.  Beyond this, I understand and support altering the ending “Doomsday” mechanism because of the subplots needed to reach that end would have taken precious time, however, when you remove every “normal” person from the source material, you must be even more rigorous in ensuring the characters are human.  There is no humanity in the Watchmen film, and as such I can’t understand how someone coming into the feature cold could enjoy it.

Mentioning “cold” and “humanity” brings me around to a treat I was finally exposed to this past week (and lucky enough to catch in a theater, even though it has just hit DVD)– the Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In.  Slow-paced by choosing tip-toeing through themes, the flick is a damned masterpiece.  I like a rock’em sock’em vampire movie as much as the next fellow, but there was something downright magical about this brooding work which places as twelve-year-old boy in close proximity to a “young” (at least in appearance) vampire towards whom he develop feelings.  While I’ve never read the source book, it is still plain to see that the material was adapted in a manner that told a story without beating the audience over the head via sensationalized details.  There was action, humor, and horror while the backstory and ending both left plenty to the imagination and my fellow viewers and me wanting more.  If you’re looking for some meat to hold you over until the summer movie blitz, I highly recommend it.