Watchmen, Or, in English, Total Sh*t

The Good...

The Bad...

...And The Ugly.

In my last post I spoke of my undying love for the graphic novel Watchmen, written by Alan Moore and illustrated by Dave Gibbons. That undying love continues, but it is now forever bittersweet because of the movie that could have been.

I saw Watchmen on Sunday in IMAX (it was sold out on Friday), and was near trembling with excitement when the yellow-tinted studios came up on the big screen. Finally, I thought, technology has caught up to Watchmen and they can finally make Dr. Manhattan (aka big floating blue guy) look realistic. I also was hopeful for the cast, as I have long respected Patrick Wilson, Matthew Goode, Billy Crudup and Jackie Earle Haley. But alas, it was not to be.

For approximately the first 45 minutes of the 2 hours and 48 minute movie I enjoyed myself in varying ranges from Awesome to Pretty Cool. After 45 minutes the director Zack Snyder's (300) techniques of slow motion and cliched song choices caught up with me and I began to exit from the haze of oblivion. For example, the opening sequence with Jeffrey Dean Morgan as the Comedian being killed, set to the tunes of Nat King Cole's "Unforgettable" felt almost perfect and loyal to the book. The slow motion fighting sequences seemed to make the most sense then, because of both the song choice and the ability for the audience to gaze at one of the most important character's apartment as he is being killed to look for clues.

However, once I realized that every single fight and/or sex scene would have slow motion in it, I became quite bored. By overusing the slow motion Zack Snyder made all the action sequences almost commonplace with one another instead of making each one different and unique.

I can't pinpoint exactly when I started disliking the movie, but I can tell you the point where I lost all hope and just wanted to cry out of frustration because they were ruining it, and it was painfully obvious. Well, two points in the movie really. When Nite Owl (Patrick Wilson) and Silk Spectre (Malin Akerman) are going to rescue Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) from prison, Silk Spectre lands on the roof in a duck pose, with her hands out stretched behind her, gazing up at Archie, the Nite Owl's flying owl hovercraft. I rolled my eyes so hard I immediately got a headache. The second point was again with Nite Owl and Silk Spectre, when they decide to return to superhero-dom and put on their suits to see if anyone needs rescuing. The whole point of Watchmen is not to bask in superhero glory a la Spiderman or Superman and see good guys rescue people and punish bad guys; rather, it's about how deeply messed up people would be if they actually attempted to rescue humanity- intense psychological profiles made the graphic novel come alive, not Nite Owl and Silk Spectre rescuing people from a burning building. Furthermore, the movie gave the characters superhero qualities that they did not have in the book. For example, Rorschach had the ability to leap approximately 20-ish feet into the air in the movie while in the book he is just a "normal" crazy guy. Perhaps they were trying to appeal to the largest audience, but if they were going to do that then they should have focused on making a totally different movie and not ruining a geek classic.

I should also mention that Malin Akerman does not know how to act her way out of a latex catsuit. Her performance, or lack thereof, was even more forced than Kirsten Dunst in the Spiderman trilogy.

After I saw the film I became obsessed with recasting Watchmen with a realistic yet still dream cast. I felt the most successful characters in the movie were Silk Spectre 1 (Carla Gugino- she is Silk Spectre's mother), Rorschach and the Comedian- they played their parts perfectly without being over-the-top or bad actors, and I can't imagine anyone else playing those roles as well as they did. So let's start with the worst:

Malin Akerman as Silk Spectre II: Man, she really cannot act. I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry when she was onscreen because I felt sorry for her and yet she was just so bad I almost couldn't watch. She couldn't have been less convincing as her character or more annoying. In the book, Silk Spectre is at times annoying because she is basically a kept woman for the most powerful man on the planet in order to keep him from detaching completely from humanity- which is quite a lot of pressure to put on one's shoulders, so you understand her personality quirks. Here, they gloss over that in seemingly two sentences and she comes off as a man-crazed selfish whiner. My dream casting for her would be Jennifer Garner. Yes, she's been in Elektra, but save for that she has the toughness, vulnerability and naturally great looks and body that would be perfect for Silk Spectre.

Patrick Wilson as Nite Owl was a huge disappointment for me. I thought he was the perfect casting, but unfortunately he took a character who is stuck in the past and vulnerable to any sort of change or confidence and took it to the extreme of a whiny sourpuss. He was downright pitiful in some scenes, and in no way is he like that in le book. My dream casting for him would be Jake Gyllenhaal- he looks the part and I think he could be vulnerable without being a whiner, a huge advantage over Patrick.

Matthew Goode as Ozymandias, the world's smartest man, was wrong from the voice to the eyebrow wigs to the Ozy nipples. Matthew is a lean and very attractive gentleman, and Ozy is supposed to be a pretty big guy- not like the Comedian, but certainly as built as Dr. Manhattan or Nite Owl, and Ozy wasn't. His performance seemed to be detached in a way that he was in a different movie from everyone else- his affected voice seemed more suited for Shakespeare instead of Watchmen. My dream casting for him would be Aaron Eckhart, who is built, has a voice made for command, and (important) is naturally blonde. I could buy him as the world's smartest man who works in conjunction with Dr. Manhattan, while Matthew seemed more suited as a prep school smartypants.

And finally, Dr. Manhattan, as played by Billy "Douchebag" Crudup (Full disclosure: I've barely been able to watch him on film since he left his 7 months pregnant girlfriend Mary-Louise Parker for Claire Danes several years ago. That being said, I still thought he could pull it off). The worst part about Dr. Manhattan wasn't necessarily his fault- in almost every scene the CGI wizards gave him a huge dangling penis that was both distracting and unnecessary. In the book he shows it maybe twice, and it's not a huge deal, while on film they forego his usual underpants in favor of a cheap distraction. The worst part of his performance was Billy's voice, which was way too high and unconvincing for a nuclear-powered superhuman. The natural choice for me would be Jon Hamm, who not only has the voice but he looks like he could have been a nuclear physicist from that time period while Billy looks like a goofy eared sidekick.

Oh, Watchmen. I felt so incredibly depressed when it was over. I had spent the last 45 minutes of the film trying to look away because I knew it was a lost cause and I had a huge headache. If only the writers, director and actors had actually gave a sh*t, or just scrapped the project altogether, this disaster could have been saved or at least swept away. Fun fact: this is what my post would have looked like if "The Dark Knight" had sucked.