It’s Monday Morning and Watchmen’s estimated weekend gross is $55,655,000 ($83.2 mil world wide), a good-old strong opening. Not the second coming, but a solid opening nonetheless. Granted, yours truly spent a lot of this weekend attempting to sleep off the head cold that is now plaguing me, but I’m guessing that if you have as many comic-book geek friends as I do, or at least movie-geek friends, you saw Watchmen’s word of mouth get hurt by those closest to you. You might have even contributed to it yourself if you, like me, came out of the theater acting like my friend Kate:
“here’s my impression of zach snyder ‘hey hey hey. okay okay. let’s cut ALL of the psychiatrist scenes and storyline with rorschach and instead elongate a three and half minute sex scene so we can have a fire-cum joke. because, you know, that’s the real moral heart of the watchmen novels. sex. and neon color grit. and slow mo.’”
That’s about one “okay” and two “hey”s too many, but I think you get it. There was one damn “Hallelujah” music cue/sex scene/orgasm joke that probably gave Alan Moore unexplained kidney pain all weekend.
After roping in 4.5 million for midnight screenings, some predicted that Watchmen would march to a weekend over 70 million dollars, but Zack Snyder’s almost-loyal adaptation fell 24% from 25.2 million opening weekend, and didn’t get back up.
You know what killed it? The fact that when people asked me how Watchmen was, my reaction went something like: “It’s visually stunning, but there’s this one music cue…” Since we’ve been lucky enough to see how a movie in a contemporary setting treats real superheros, I know that Watchmen was trying for my Dark Knight reaction: “Things have changed.“But things haven’t changed.
When I saw Watchmen this weekend with a crowd full of people (you have to wait for a full-crowd showing, those are the best a movie will ever perform), I couldn’t help but Marvel at the special effects, the fight scenes, the look of the whole piece. Which, in reality, hurt the expectations for what this movie was supposed to become.
The graphic novel was the first time many readers discovered a world where superheros were treated as three dimensional characters. It was 12 issues of awesomeness in the 80s, and we fork it over to Zack Snyder in the 00s and expect him to make it equal awesomeness? And he could have done it, too, if Iron Man was the only superhero movie that came out last year. The Dark Knight, which ran the trailer for Watchmen that started all the hype, was the transition for film that Watchmen was for comics: a large, populist switch to realistic stories of superheroes.
But where Chistopher Nolan had twenty years of serious comics to pull his cops-and-clowns narrative from, Zack Snyder was locked into one choice: you make the damn Watchmen book how it is, regardless if it’s 20 years old, or the fanboys will bury your movie.
So the man made the comic book exactly how it was, or as close as he could, and that doomed him to a mediocre-at-best opening. Watchmen, the film, is technically beautiful, but flat everywhere else because it’s a straight adaptation of a genre-changing piece of material that we were ready to accept last fall.
For example, let’s say that someone decided to make the very first 3D movie all over again, but this time, using digitally-projected Real D. That movie is going to suck, because it’s going to be a bunch of playing to the camera, sticking things towards the audience, spit takes, and REALLY REALLY OBVIOUS 3D gags. Watchmen is exactly like that. We got a superhero movie that treated superheros as real people, but we got it delivered with the grammar of an old-fashioned superhero movie. The fire cum joke, the elongated action scenes, the thematic cuts: they all obey the language of a superhero film. The Dark Knight obeyed the laguage of a crime drama, and Iron Man showed us what flashy superhero movies could look like while Watchmen was just hanging out there like a big blue penis, totally obvious and expected.
Alan Moor was wrong, Watchmen is filmable, but when people ask when cinema caught up with the whole “real superhero” idea, I’m saying that we were prepped by Unbreakable and delivered on a mass scale by The Dark Knight. All Watchmen really contributed to the greater film history is another visually-stunning notch in Snyder’s belt. If Zach can deliver something visually restrained with character-based plot next, he might be deserving of that “visionary” title he’s given himself.
Not enough opinionating for you? Reader Jay sent in his Watchmen review, which is far more postive than what I just wrote.
That, after the cut…
I saw Watchmen on Friday night, like many of you, and all I can say is “Wow”. Wow at Zack Snyder for keeping this as close to the graphic novel as possible in a 2 hours and 43 mins movie. Wow at whole cast, especially Jackie Earle Haley for his performance as Rorschach. And Wow at the hard work the whole crew did behind the camera, who designed the costumes, the sets and especially to everyone that had a hand on the background props, whether it is a simple newspaper article or a whole pile of “Under the Hood” books.
Yes, if you didn’t guess already, I’m a Watchmen fan and it started, obviously, with the graphic novel. To say that I’m a long time fan, would be a lie. When Watchmen was first released, I was 3 years old… at that time I was probably more preocupied by my HotWheels cars than wars and politics. 23 years later, I’m still preocupied by my wheels, although bigger and gasoline-powered now, but with a world where everyday news seems to be filled with violence and corruption… it’s not too hard to related to what Alan Moore was writing about. So, whether you’re simply a “daily news” watcher or an avid believer that mankind has already doomed itself, Watchmen will probably get you thinking. What would the world really be if we had masked people running around and beating up guys? What would be the consequences of such world? Would you kill a large number of people to save an even larger number? And… What if there really was a neon blue naked guy with god-like powers floating around? All these questions will get your head going after reading the graphic novel… and the same can be said after watching the movie.
Watchmen is one of the rare exception where the movie follows almost frame-by-frame the many pages of the source material. Not only the narrations, whether it is Rorschach’s or Dr.Manhattan’s, are, for most parts, directly taken from the book but so is the dialogue. I was literally lip-syncing Rorschach’s parts in the theater at some point… and not only for parts that I saw online beforehand but also for most of his scenes that I saw for the first time that night. So, did Zack Snyder deliver what he said he would… YES. Although we’ll have to wait for the Director’s cut for what I consider the real version of this film, he said that he was doing the graphic novel on screen and that’s what I saw in theater that night. Is it a good thing? For someone, like me, who has been already familiarized with the source material for a while or even if you only read it once… it’s a great ride. You’ll be flipping the mental pages in your mind as the movie goes. For people who aren’t already familiar with Watchmen, they might get disappointed. Not because this movie isn’t beautifully made and acted, but mainly because most of the marketing that was done for the movie was mostly based on action scenes.
Some of you might call Watchmen “campy”. Yes, you could probably say that about the movie, especially if you’re like Michael Bay and need at least an explosion every 20 seconds… but Watchmen ISN’T supposed to be action oriented. The graphic novel wasn’t action packed either, so it’s only natural that the movie follows the same pace that the source material has. Watchmen is known for its intense character background that was so well written by Moore and complemented by Dave Gibbons’ graphic talents back in ‘86, so, as a director, Snyder just couldn’t (and probably didn’t want to) butcher the excellent character development that its original creators had already established. And for that, I thank you Mister Snyder!
As for the acting, I have only good words for the entire cast. Jeffrey Dean Morgan showed how bad-ass he can be (and bad-ass he is!) as The Comedian, and that, without condoning his character’s acts, manages to get some empathy from public even though his role was a tough one to play. And yes, we got the joke too. Malin Akerman and Carla Gugino, the main female cast, are simply stunning and great on screen, together or seperately, as respectively Silk Spectre II and I. Patrick Wilson’s “chubby-but-built” Dan Dreiberg, aka Nite Owl II, is the same sweet, charming, and sometimes funny, guy that is found in the novel. Matthew Goode showed that it’s not easy to be the smartest man on the planet as Ozymandias (and no… the accent didn’t bother me personally!) and Billy Crudup showed us that all those hours of getting treated as a lighting instrument while being dressed in a sophisticated pyjama covered with hundreds of tiny LEDs and sitting on the mo-cap chair for his role as Dr.Manhattan really paid up! But my hat goes off to Jackie Earle Haley for his dead-on performance as Rorschach. THE VOICE. YES! THE VOICE! Hearing his narration of the journal or a simple “hurm.” will certaintely put a huge smile on your fanboy face and give you a couple of chills. “Human-bean juice” anyone? Mr. Haley, you definitely showed us, guys of a certain height (okay… us, short guys), that a man doesn’t need to be tall to be great! Now… where can I get myself an actual working Rorschach mask?
Alright, I don’t want to spoil the movie too much and I don’t want to go to much in describing the story because it’s simple: the book is the film, so go pick it up if you didn’t already! By now, you probably know that Snyder changed the ending of the movie. Is it better? Is it worst? My answer would be: “Squid aside, it’s basically the same”. Purists will probably throw stones at me, but coming from a fan, trust me, I got the same questions and feelings that came to me when I got to the end of the book… Would I do what [X] did if I was given the same choices? I’m still asking myself thoses questions as I’m writing this…
In conclusion, is Watchmen a definite “you have see it!” movie? YES! But only if you go see it without thinking you’re about to see an action flick. Do I recommend reading the graphic novel beforehand? DEFINITELY! Why? You’ll simply enjoy the first great movie of the year more, after enjoying one of the best graphic novel of all time. My only complaint about the film is… that I have to wait 6 monthes to get my 220 minutes copy of the Director’s cut!
I give Watchmen 4 “hurm.” out of 5… I’ll need to see Snyder’s final cut to give it more!
My next stop… I’m taking the gloves off and claws out on X-Men Origins: Wolverine after its release. Will FOX butcher my favorite Marvel character of all-time…? Answer on May 1st.
Jay (WeaponXQc)
