Watching the Watchmen

I'm back from my lengthy hiatus, and while I usually make a policy of not drawing any attention to long periods of time spent without blogging, I enjoy using the word 'hiatus' so much that I'm prepared to make that sacrifice. I wonder why more people don't realize that their ideals are worthless when confronted by reality in all its dirty splendor. Certain ideals, of course, I'm simply not prepared to give up, as Rorschach puts it, "No. Not even in the face of Armageddon. Never compromise.".
I watched the Watchmen movie. I can't say that I was disappointed, but that may be because I set my expectations pretty low. The movie follows the book fairly closely, aside from a few changes to make the story somewhat more believable for a moviegoing audience, but in its closeness to the book, while it was a boon for its many devotees (myself included), it may have constructed its own undoing. I think the best way to explain it is to go with Alan Moore's view, the story was in part designed to demonstrate what a graphic novel could do that neither traditional literature nor film could accomplish. He considered the work unfilmable, and I think he was right. As I watched I was struck by how many times, as a certain scene was happening, I would think to myself, "this is frame by frame the same as the comic, but gee I wish I was reading the comic right now because it did it so much better.". That isn't to say it wasn't a good movie, it wasn't half bad, but I wouldn't recommend ever watching it unless you've given the book a fair shake first. Of course that brings me to the fact that I wouldn't actually recommend it at all. One thing that made the transfer particularly poorly was any of the graphic content. The director, Zack Snyder of 300, unfortunately is of the opinion that the best part of comics is sex and violence. In Watchmen there were some scenes of both graphic violence and some nudity (one of the superheroes, Dr. Manhattan, appears naked in most of his scenes), but while these were treated quite well in the book, taking a back seat to the plot and not at all dealt with provocatively, their transfer to film was heavily accentuated. For that reason alone, especially considering its pervasiveness, I wouldn't recommend the film to anyone. But rest assured, you wont miss anything that the comic doesn't do better anyways (although the soundtrack sounded like somebody raided my music library, which was pretty enjoyable).

Pipe Smoking Professor