Okay now, admittedly, I'm a child of the 80s cold war and am part of the generation that received the comic novel "Watchmen" as a revolutionary leap forward in the depth and drama conveyed through the comic medium. So it was with mad abondon that I ran to theaters to see Zach Snyders adaptation. Yes, I realize with that mad abondon, I'd forgotten everything he'd previously done to "300" or "Dawn of the Dead", but then he did have that Morrissey thing so it's probably safe to assume a fondness for vegetarianism and sodomy. Its with this history the producers, who really should have known better, decided that Snyder was the right person to take on the insurmountable task of the "unmakeable" Watchmen.
The intro does a respectable job setting up the alternative 80s world of the main story. This is done through a series of what appear to be still photographs until you realize there's some slow motion effect that gives the whole thing a very modern feel. Aside from a shit brown backdrop, glowing-bright primary colors come dangerously close to a four year olds crayon colored glitter extravaganza helping to develop an oddly Art Deco world of depraved republicanism gone horribly wrong.
Now I could go on and on about the timeline and how it felt more jerked around than a handjob by a 900 pound gorilla, or the deadpan performances that made Julia Roberts look like Sir Lawrence Fucking Olivier. But for christs sake, you know it's an awful sign when Max Headroom shows up as an aging, cancer patient, tights wearing supervillan and out emotes the starring cast.
It's wasn't the acting, or editing, or the big blue danglies that bothered me about Watchmen, in fact all those bits were pretty good. The problem was what it wasn't. The movie version was not the "republican vision of the world gone wrong" that it should have been, and it wasn't the ironic human drama of conservative values versus humanity and redemption that it could have been. It's like if Picasso had a palette of paints and a mass of coke laden naked hookers writhing on a bed in front of his canvas, and instead decided to paint a bowl of cherries. The best parts of the novel which exemplified the irony of conservative utopia versus the real life problems of the people living in it were all cut, or barely given a slight nod on their way to the cutting room floor. The secondary story which ironically foreshadowed the eventual conclusion of the novel was entirely cut, even though it made up half the story and centered around evil pirates! Yes, let me just say that again, to counter a world in which costumed vigilantes ruled the streets, the characters of this world read about Pirates. Yet somehow not a single pirate made it into the final cut. This is not to whine about how the book was sooooo much better than the movie, but if the book was willing to slurp out every ounce of fluid, the movie was barely a lick and a tickle.
Unfortunately by the end of the movie, the extra 24 minutes of film you were supposed to have seen in the theatrical release don't matter except maybe as a big "fuck you" to the nobs who tell directors what they are and aren't allowed to put on the big screen for the sake of pandering to their nobbish audiences in order to maximize the ticket sales of a movie who's only real interest is to the aging bloated almost 40 something readers of comic books who may have actually read the book back when it was still culturally relevant, or even worse, still think it is. That's about 3 people at last count. No, the real problem is that you miss out entirely on what made the novel so special to begin with. Yes, by paring down the novel, Snyder managed to take what was a deep and compelling story and made it almost impossible to care.
The intricate interplay between idealism and reality, between human and sublime, and between cynical nihilism and hope for humanity to overcome even during the deepest political quagmire through heart and spirit - all lost! Instead, all you're left with is a bunch of crazy people playing dress up chasing after a blue glowing schlong -who's apparently too ashamed to be naked and wears some flying V underwear that looks like it was designed by whoever made the clothes for the people of "Dune"- while too distracted by the "crazy russians" to know that their real enemy was among them the whole time. Wait, even that makes it sound more interesting than it was.
What it really needed was the shock the book gave you when you realized the crazy antagonist was breeding a giant psyonic octopi that would explode and take humanity along with it in a screaming brain hemorrhaging mess. But instead all you get is a nuclear explosion which came across with all the power of a wet fart, and did nothing to convey the true depth of crazy that had taken hold of the mad genius antagonist. It's like the writers - who had so many good ideas and compelling plot points earlier on - had just given up at this point, thrown up in a bag, and used the spewage as inspiration of how to end it all. Its disheartening to think the director decided to bow down the the producer nobs because the idea of exploding psyonic octopi was too challenging for the middle american nobs. Apparently he's lost faith in his audience. The same audience who had gotten over the idea that crazy people running around in their underwear and tights is a viable form of entertainment and bought the bloody tickets already anyway - but somehow they just can't be trusted to accept the shocking leap that helped make the novel interesting through to the end.
All in all, it could have been worse. Which puts it somewhere on the scale between getting a rub and tug from a Scandinavian hand model, or having a feather shoved up your ass by a bearded fat man in a leopard costume.
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