The Watchmen
The Watchmen was only the second graphic novel that I ever read. It was complex but accessible, visually engaging and consistent, and it featured fully developed characters. Though I never liked how the story ended, I always thought that it was worthy of all the praise it has received.
Just last Friday I saw the film adaptation. When I first heard about this project, I was apprehensive. Not because I believed that The Watchmen was not film-able, I’m not that ardent a fan. Rather, I doubted the director, Zach Snyder. His previous film, 300, was flashy and nothing more. The Watchmen had to be the opposite. It’s super heroes weren’t necessarily heroic in the classic sense. And there was substance behind the costumes, something that Frank Miller’s works have never possessed, and probably will never possess. So I approached the film with low expectations.
My final assessment? I think that the film works as an adaptation, but not necessarily as a film. What does this mean? The film is almost exactly the same as the graphic novel. The dialog matches the text bubbles, the cinematography matches the drawings in the book, and nearly every scene is included with the exact same pacing and order. Of course, some things had to be left out – the parallel pirate story and the novel excerpts especially – but on the whole, the movie is simply a moving version of the graphic novel.
While this probably will satisfy most fans, this makes for a somewhat heavy film. The plodding nature of the graphic novel works in that medium, but it doesn’t work so much on film. Movies have the ability to be visceral in a way print cannot be. Furthermore, when images that were originally still start moving, the nature of a scene changes. Violence is a good example. A single image of animated gore is tolerable, but an entire scene of it with real actors as opposed to hand drawings magnifies the gore and makes it feel suddenly inappropriate for the story. So much of the story isn’t violent, but when these moments appeared on screen, they distracted rather than enhanced the reason for their inclusion.
I think that it is clear that Zach Snyder didn’t know what to do with this movie. He was afraid of ruining the “greatest graphic novel of all time,” but he knew that he had to satisfy the general audience. In the end, fan pressure kept this film from becoming a potentially great movie. Because I had read the graphic novel before hand, and had liked it, I left the theater entertained and somewhat satisfied. But my sister, a week later, hated the movie. So what does this say? Great adaptation, not so great film.
