Watchmen

[Margalis]

I don't think it's wrong to point out that nearly every person I've talked to or seen on the internet who didn't read the book first came away with the same impression.

A lot of people who did read the book first claim others are missing the point but when everyone misses the point then the point wasn't made very well.

I suppose if you go in knowing they're just human, that's all you see.

Why would the average movie-goer go into a superhero movie thinking they're just humans?

[NowhereMan]

In fairness I don't think most people believe Batman has superpowers but that's also because the movie, the first one certainly, made it quite clear he's just a kick ass guy. Watchmen made it worse in terms of communicating that they're normal people by beefing up pretty much every fight scene. The attempted mugging becomes Night Owl and Silk Spectre taking down half of the Triads in the city for no really apparent reason and in the prison scene they just stomp anyone who even comes close to them and barely seem to break a sweat. Toning that stuff down a bit i.e. not kicking grown men clear across the room, would have made that point a lot better. Hell throw in some more comments from the angry protesters about them just being schmucks in masks.

[Velorath]

Why would the average movie-goer go into a superhero movie thinking they're just humans?

Because Batman and Iron Man were two huge blockbuster superhero movies that came out last Summer, and both of those characters are just human?  That and Dr. Manhatten's origin in the movie seemed to me to show fairly explicitly that he was the first and only superpowered character.  "The superman exists, and he is American".

[Margalis]

Read reviews from people who aren't familiar with the source material.

[Velorath]

Feel free to link me a few if you have any handy.

[Margalis]

Just go to IMDB.com. I don't mean reviews from professional reviewers, I meen reviews from Joe Average guy. There is a pretty large split between glowing and awful reviews and it seems to come down mostly to who had read the comic already.

Also skip the first few pages, they're typically from people who saw the film at some festival in advance and are breathless fans / movie insider wanna-bes.

The revierws are full of people who totally missed the point. One of the largest complaints is that the "heroes" are actually not heroic. Some people get that they don't have powers and some people don't but none of them seem to understand *why* the heroes are not actually heroes. It just came off as fucked-up writing. And the people who realize the Watchmen have no powers often complain that they were still performing superhuman feats.

The only people who see this movie and enjoy it are people who like to look at large blue penis for two hours and condone rape. One of the "heroes" actually rapes another "hero", the same guy blows out the brains of the woman who is carrying his baby, and you get to see the chewed up leg of a 6 year old girl who was kidnapped raped and murdered. The plot is almost nonexistent and the guy who plays Nixon looks retarded. Whoever gave the "go-ahead" on this movie should be shot.

Or here is another:

You see that not all superheroes are always good, but some kill for the greater good, especially, Rorschach who maliciously uses a meat cleaver to kill a child killer.

Really? The point is that they kill for the greater good?

A third, these are all on the same page by the way:

I am still not really clear on what the superpowers of the mysterious Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) and innate good guy Nite Owl II (Patrick Wilson)up to now
...
Overall, it was a good enough introduction to the ultra-violent world of the Watchmen for the uninitiated. But this movie is not really for everybody. The younger male demographic is definitely the target audience, despite the overt frontal exposures of Mr. Manhattan. As far as graphic novels go, I still prefer "Sin City" and "300". I have to confess that the violence content of "Watchmen" went a bit beyond my comfort limit.

Instead of a condemnation of ultraviolence people are seeing it as a celebration.

The movie is basically about it being justifiable to slaughter MILLIONS of innocent people based off of fear of an event that MIGHT happen. Imagine if someone had actually done what the movie does considering how we know the Cold War turned out. It is the style of thinking this movie promotes that allows us to morally justify genocide.

Very next review:

This is one of the worst movies I've ever seen. Absolutely no plot. Well, a parody of plot exists, but it is such a messed up theory that it is repulsing

There was no followable plot. There was no action. You don't care about any of the characters in it. The movie is filled with a lot of details that have no connection to the story. There is gratuitous violence that has no purpose and does nothing to help support what the director is trying to get across. On top of that, the movie is similar to a vast chasm of boring.

Now part of the problem is that people were expecting a typical super-hero movie but then again the movie was largely billed that way so I'm not sure you can blame them.

Finally a review by someone who is familiar with the source that I think nails it:

While "Watchmen" is a humanist story about the various aspects of human soul, Zack Snyder is an expert on gore, style, visuals ("Sin City") and raising the testosterone of viewers to illegal levels ("300″). He is not, however, someone who can give a soul to comics heroes.

Zack did everything he could, but it just isn't his kind of movie. Despite the "comixie" appearance, "Watchmen" should be done by a director who excels in moving the audience, not one who excels in exciting them. Instead of Zack Snyder, Sam Raimi or Bryan Singer, this movie should've been directed by Todd Solondz or Darren Aronofsky.

Edit: I've read through about 12 pages of IMDB user reviews and I've yet to find a single review by a non-fan who got even a hint of what the comic is about. It seems that to nearly everyone either it was cool because the heroes were violent or it was repulsive because the heroes were violent.

Edit2: It amazes me how many of the IMDB reviews come from people who have read the comic. Probably 80%+. Damn the internet is full of nerds!

Edit3: Someone who seemed to grasp the point but took issue with the execution:

But worse it doesn't just try to be gratuitous violence married with the most vulgar and cliché adolescent pornography---the sickening part is that it comports itself as a profound reflection on mankind. As if all that was done was justified by some shoddy mythological and not even arcane historical references and inane attempt at a discussion on Deism. The most trenchantly ironic part of the film is its attempt to critique the violence and repulsive aspects of human nature but then perpetuates it by tainting the minds of anyone who watched with its filth.

[Merusk]

Public opinion is shown by the 2nd week's reciepts.  Race to Witch mountain beat it with a 25m take, Watchmen did 18m, or 1/3 of last week's take.

[lamaros]

Eh, watched this.

It's like umm... a music video with unsubtle philosphical and political commentary. I found it enjoyable on the whole, but some of the crap was over the top and too explicit and simplistic for me. All of this shit has been done before, and done better. Doing it with comic characters and evocative music tracks doesn't change this.

And I didn't feel that they were super heroes in any real way, more like the batman thing. Apart from the whole glowing god...

Still, I found it much more watchable than Sin City.

[HaemishM]

Having never read the comic, I admit to coming to the conclusion that they were all superhumans (if not super heroes). I just figured they were all generic MA/SR scrappers or something. It is never made clear that they are normal in any way, shape or form.

True, the movie amped up their prowess a great deal. But I think neither the book nor the movie tries to make out that these people are NORMAL. In fact, it says just the opposite: all the capes are sociopaths, sycophants, deviants and fetishists. Hell, in the book, Nite-Owl is actually impotent until he puts on the costume (the sex scene on the couch doesn't really make that clear). I'm assuming the movie made them all a little more super-humany in the violence because: 1) it looks better on film and 2) to make a subtle point that these fuckers aren't normal.

[sidereal]

I think the having-read-comic faction is trying too hard to shoehorn it.

There is absolutely no question that they had superhuman strength, and espeically Ozy had superhuman speed.  The opening scene has The Comedian punching through a fucking brick wall.  I didn't go in 'expecting' superhuman strength.  I really didn't know what to expect powers-wise.  But the opening scene communicated superhuman strength to me in no uncertain terms.  It wasn't an accident, the director went out of his way to render it.  It's fine to not like it, but there's no question it was intentional.  Catching a bullet because he's a ninja?  Come on.  The bullet hardly penetrated his skin.  That's not training.

[gryeyes]

To be fair bullet catching occurs in the comic as well. Most of the "superhuman" stuff is also in the comic. The comic just makes it clear that those abilities are not due to them being superhumans while the movie intentionally does not.

[Rasix]

the movie intentionally does not.

Why are you so fixated on this?  They had to make cuts;  the movie was already almost 3 hours long.  Are you saying they edited the movie specifically to give the impression that they had super powers?

[sidereal]

the movie intentionally does not.

Why are you so fixated on this?  They had to make cuts;  the movie was already almost 3 hours long.  Are you saying they edited the movie specifically to give the impression that they had super powers?

Why do you say 'impression'?

The characters in the movie had superpowers.  Maybe they don't in the comic, but if not then the movie departed.  Because the characters in the movie had superpowers.  I watched them exhibiting superpowers for three hours.  Superpowers: they had them.

[Samwise]

I don't remember the comic outright stating that people didn't have any sort of extraordinary abilities; they just weren't on the scale of your standard Marvel comics types.  Ozymandias seemed to be, if not exactly superhuman as the term would be used in most comics, extremely "gifted", both physically and mentally.  The Comedian at his prime could kick Ozy's ass without even having had any sort of formal training, which means he himself was a natural-born badass of similar caliber.  There was also Moloch, with his weird pointy ears and unexplained past as a "magician".  And Ozy mentioned offhandedly that the squid thing had been constructed using the brain of a psychic, so clearly supernatural abilities other than Manhattan's are known (if not commonplace) in the Watchmen universe.

[Velorath]

the movie intentionally does not.

Why are you so fixated on this?  They had to make cuts;  the movie was already almost 3 hours long.  Are you saying they edited the movie specifically to give the impression that they had super powers?

Why do you say 'impression'?

The characters in the movie had superpowers.  Maybe they don't in the comic, but if not then the movie departed.  Because the characters in the movie had superpowers.  I watched them exhibiting superpowers for three hours.  Superpowers: they had them.

Uh no, they didn't.  They didn't have superpowers any more so than the characters in 300 (or characters in about a million action movies for that matter).  BTW I don't think that's brick the Comedian is punching through.  Ozy is borderline, but his abilities are explained as being due to his intelligence and training, so as unbelievable as it might be, he isn't actually superpowered.

[Teleku]

Margalis, I think the problem is people and not the movie.  Reading those quoted reviews above, I'm feeling fairly comfortable in saying that if the majority of them had been writing a review about the comic and not the movie, they would be almost word for word the same.  Those reviewers don't have a problem with the movie, they have a problem with the entire plot and concept of Watchmen in general.  "This comic condones Genocide!" is what you'd  be getting.  The biggest problem with the movie is that it brought the story from its hidden comic book crowd niche to the mainstream masses, who just can't handle the god damn plot.

[sidereal]

Jesus Christ.  If you define the ability to catch a bullet without having it go more than half an inch into your hand or the ability to jump from the third story of a building and land on the concrete sidewalk without skipping a beat as 'not superpowers' then yes they didn't have superpowers.  But you haven't proven anything, you're just playing semantic games. 

[Velorath]

Jesus Christ.  If you define the ability to catch a bullet without having it go more than half an inch into your hand or the ability to jump from the third story of a building and land on the concrete sidewalk without skipping a beat as 'not superpowers' then yes they didn't have superpowers.  But you haven't proven anything, you're just playing semantic games. 

I was unaware I needed to prove to you a simple fact about the story.  That's just how it is.  I recall a few unbelievable scenes in Iron Man also, but that didn't mean Tony Stark was being portrayed as having superpowers.

Edit:  Also, Hollis states pretty early on that the costumed hero trend got started as a reaction to gangs wearing masks when robbing banks and such.  It didn't have anything to do with superpowers.

[Abagadro]

That part actually made it more confusing for me.  The original group seemed like goofballs who dressed up but the second group did in fact exhibit extraordinary abilities.

[UnSub]

The original group were goofballs, much like the Golden Age characters.

By the time the 'modern' age rolled around, things were a lot more serious and people had better training.

I'm also bemused in a film with an actual post-human character in Dr Manhattan that people are getting hung up on a man being able to punch through a wall or not. It makes no difference. They are still powerless in the face of worldwide Armageddon.

[Tale]

Edit2: It amazes me how many of the IMDB reviews come from people who have read the comic. Probably 80%+. Damn the internet is full of nerds!

Non-nerds don't spend the time to register or rate or discuss. Everything on the internet is decided by nerds.

[NowhereMan]

In terms of them having powers, they do some stuff that is beyond what you'd expect a human being to be able to do but the  you don't expect a normal human being to survive being hurled a few miles inside a fridge by a nuclear blast. People are willing to accept that Indiana Jones doesn't have superpowers but you put that person in a costume you need to make some effort to show that they don't have abilities. Stuff like them getting stunned after being punched in the face would help. Hell I just reread the prison break scene, Nite Owl and Silk Spectre knock out two prisoners they catch by surprise and escape with Rorschach. In the movie they handle a hallway filled with kung fu guys all out to get them and kick most of them clear across the room with nary a bruise to be seen.

It is not a fucking shock most people come out of this movie thinking they are super-people and being even more confused about the movie than otherwise because up until the last part they have been sitting through a fairly normal superhero movie. Then suddenly one of the good guys turns out the be the bad guy, global holocaust and Rorschach blows up. The end, everyone's better off. Hell the whole point of the comic was an exploration of themes and ideas that were integral to comics, not only are they not quite as amazingly revolutionary today but if you really don't think or know much about comics that's really not going to be in anyway apparent.

[Hoax]

I know three people who have seen it, all have read a comic before, none are comic fans past their teen years.  The smartest of the 3 enjoyed the film, wanted to talk more about how much Batman sucked afterward then Watchmen but said he thought it was good if a little heavy handed and that it was disorienting to leave the theater after 3 hours.  The other two saw it and one instantly wanted me to let him borrow the book, because he thought it was cool but had no idea wtf was going on and felt like he for sure meant the point of the story.  The third didn't really care much about it one way or another, this is typical for him.

The bottom line is, the superpower debate is fucking retarded.  Even if you think that everyone is Batman, which they effectively are, Manhattan is still Superman/Silver Surfer/Thor or whatever godlike hero you want to think of.  That is not what is making Watchmen into a confusing unfun movie.  Shit I read the book and I didn't once think about omg he's making them have too much power, they did all that shit in the book and honestly the part about how much Ozy trains?  Was boring as fuck in the book and completely a waste of time.  They are all varying levels of batman, don't care, move along.

The problem with the movie is, nobody is really sure what the point of it all was.  You just can't fit that much into a movie, even a really fucking long one.  So none of the themes really stick with anyone when they leave the theater.  You get the idea that nuclear war and/or a godlike being renders regular masks obsolete.  You get the idea that they are all fucked up in the head.  You get the idea that everyday man is a monster. etc etc but without reading the book you'd be hard pressed to see what the fuss is about.  Instead it comes off as a very pretty stylistic half telling of a scatterbrained story.  Which I still say is a goddamn triumph because I was certain this film would fail so hard.

[naum]

The problem with the movie is, nobody is really sure what the point of it all was.  You just can't fit that much into a movie, even a really fucking long one.  So none of the themes really stick with anyone when they leave the theater.  You get the idea that nuclear war and/or a godlike being renders regular masks obsolete.  You get the idea that they are all fucked up in the head.  You get the idea that everyday man is a monster. etc etc but without reading the book you'd be hard pressed to see what the fuss is about.  Instead it comes off as a very pretty stylistic half telling of a scatterbrained story.  Which I still say is a goddamn triumph because I was certain this film would fail so hard.

Maybe wizard-man was right that it was an unfilmable story…



Picture cropped from an article on Neil Gaiman's blog…

[lamaros]

Instead it comes off as a very pretty stylistic half telling of a scatterbrained story.

Pretty good summary, imo. Though you forgot to mention it was long.

[WindupAtheist]

Because Batman and Iron Man were two huge blockbuster superhero movies that came out last Summer, and both of those characters are just human?

Batman has been around for 70 years and is thoroughly ingrained into the public consciouness. Iron Man has been around for 46 years and while not nearly as much of a cultural icon as Batman, has been a very popular mainstream comic book character for generations. Not only that, but the Iron Man movie was explicitly an origin story which showed how the protagonist went from an average person to being a superhero, while Dark Knight was the sequel to one. That's an entirely different proposition from anything related to Watchmen.

If you're going to dub a character a "superhero" and they're NOT supposed to have powers, then you need to go out of your way to make that known.

[NowhereMan]

It's more they needed to go out of their way to show that they weren't 'superheroes' but just heroes.

On the other hand as has been stated this probably wasn't the biggest thing that people didn't get about the film. People who walked away thinking that the film portrayed Ozymandias as the shock-twist good guy of the story are far more an issue, albeit one that probably wouldn't be nearly as easy to solve in terms of film storytelling.

[Margalis]

They didn't have superpowers any more so than the characters in 300 (or characters in about a million action movies for that matter).

Comparing Watchmen to the slow-mo-to-fast-mo violence porn homoerotic escapism of 300 says a lot.

The comic book is not an action comic book, comparisons to action movies should be well off base.

[Velorath]

They didn't have superpowers any more so than the characters in 300 (or characters in about a million action movies for that matter).

Comparing Watchmen to the slow-mo-to-fast-mo violence porn homoerotic escapism of 300 says a lot.

Yes, it says "this is the particular style this director likes to use in the action scenes of his comic book ataptations".

[Margalis]

Edit: Meh, whatever, enjoy your 300 Redux. Not worth arguing over.

Edit 2: If anyone listens to either the Filmspotting or Scene Unseen podcasts (both great though very different film podcasts) hey bring up a lot of these points as well.

[gryeyes]

Why are you so fixated on this?  They had to make cuts;  the movie was already almost 3 hours long.  Are you saying they edited the movie specifically to give the impression that they had super powers?

I don't mean it in a disparaging manner. Its just very obvious they are trying to portray them as having superpowers. The way the fight scenes are choreographed the speeded up and bullet time sequences. And i believe its only directly stated they are normal humans during a flashback scene which i can completely understand why its not included. But its clear the director is trying to frame them as superheroes. In my opinion its very obvious that is the intent.

I can understand why the choice was made and enjoyed watching the film. Most if not all of the heroics are directly from the comic. Its that the counterpoint that justifies those abilities as being exceptional but still those of men is not included.

[Daztur]

For what its worth I never had read the comics and I was able to understand pretty easily that none of them were intended to have any super powers besides the type normally present in action movies. Thought it was pretty damn astounding that they made a movie that good with the source material (have been reading through the Watchmen comics since I saw the movie.  The comics, while excellent, is so non-linear in its story telling that it must have been hellaciously-difficult to adapt. In a lot of cases I thought that the movie, while it had some pacing issues, improved a lot of specifics scenes in the comics. For example Rorschach's line about "I'm not trapped in here with you, you're trapped in here with me" was delivered off-camera in the comics which was damn near criminal for such a classic line :)

[Hoax]

Instead it comes off as a very pretty stylistic half telling of a scatterbrained story.

Pretty good summary, imo. Though you forgot to mention it was long.

Yeah, really long, I felt woozy when I got up and left the theater.  Thank god I don't smoke anymore, would have been torture.

[HaemishM]

I'm going to agree with Hoax that whether they did or did not have superpowers is a pretty irrelevant discussion. Nothing the non-powered characters did should stand out from other "superhero" movies or even action movie set pieces. The bullet catcthing thing is about as far as one could take the whole "they have superpowers" discussion. It's irrelevant because in the scheme of the movie, none of their abilities, not even Ozy's bullet-catching meant shit against either Dr. Manhatten (the real ubermensch) or nuclear holocaust.

Moore deliberately wrote the story to be ambiguous in a lot of ways. It was the ultimate superhero fan tweaker story. You're supposed to come away from the theater unsettled about these supposed heroes. They aren't goodie two-shoes people who gift-wrap muggers for the police, they break limbs, they kill motherfuckers, they BURN POLICEMEN'S FACES OFF WITH HOMEMADE FLAMETHROWERS. The most normal and "everyman" type of character in the thing, Nite-Owl, has a fucking HOVERSHIP in his basement, for fuck's sake. These aren't normal people and the viewer should feel ultimately uneasy about cheering for or empathizing with any of them when they leave the theater. It's one of those movies/stories that's meant to make you reconsider your views on this sort of story. That's why I predicted (and it appears rightly so) that the second week returns would drop significantly - word of mouth will have a lot of people with little intellectual curiousity feeling let down. It's not unfilmable, it's just that most movie audiences are completely unwilling to accept a movie that doesn't wrap everything up in neat little bows.

[naum]

Moore deliberately wrote the story to be ambiguous in a lot of ways. It was the ultimate superhero fan tweaker story. You're supposed to come away from the theater unsettled about these supposed heroes. They aren't goodie two-shoes people who gift-wrap muggers for the police, they break limbs, they kill motherfuckers, they BURN POLICEMEN'S FACES OFF WITH HOMEMADE FLAMETHROWERS. The most normal and "everyman" type of character in the thing, Nite-Owl, has a fucking HOVERSHIP in his basement, for fuck's sake. These aren't normal people and the viewer should feel ultimately uneasy about cheering for or empathizing with any of them when they leave the theater. It's one of those movies/stories that's meant to make you reconsider your views on this sort of story. That's why I predicted (and it appears rightly so) that the second week returns would drop significantly - word of mouth will have a lot of people with little intellectual curiousity feeling let down. It's not unfilmable, it's just that most movie audiences are completely unwilling to accept a movie that doesn't wrap everything up in neat little bows.

/agree

But producer could have opted for a different strategy (what exactly, I don't know for sure…) to fill in that theme instead of the focus on the Matrix-like battle scenes…

…my copy of the book is lent out… …wish to read again, as I was in bookstore over weekend and glanced through…

…which is why I thought it a good movie, but not a great movie.