JOHN watches the watchmen, that's who.

[theweaselking]

So, saw that comic book movie.

Overall verdict: Okay. The changes from the comic were almost all good, the bad things were almost all things that didn't get changed enough.

Summary:

Good changes: No pirate comics, no Stupid Space Squid[1], no requirements that we accept magic as perfectly normal and believable[2] in a "real world but with one small change", no pages and pages and pages of wasted screen time on characters who worked on paper where you have the time and who are completely extraneous to the *actual* story. One unfortunate casualty of this: Hollis Mason, who could have been left in needing only about another minute of screen time, but that's okay. SIGNIFICANT improvements in storytelling and suspense-building. Dreiberg actually acts almost human at the end, unlike the comic.

Bad changes: They really needed to leave Veidt's line in about how he would have just caught the bullet if the assassin had shot at him first. Having Rorschach mention that Veidt's bragged about wanting to try that wasn't quite the same. Also, why was Ozymandias gay? Was there a point to making him gay? Did that ADD anything, that I just missed?

Changes that weren't made, but should have been: The dialog. Oh god, the original dialog is painful, and they *kept* a lot of it exactly. For Rorschach? This works. It's workable. For Manhattan? Sure, he's not supposed to sound human. For the other characters, though? Yikes. In a lot of places you can *tell* which lines are from the comic and which are written fresh, because they feel completely different. As well, I hated the *acting* on both Silk Spectres. They weren't given a lot of work with, but neither was anyone else, and everyone else at least felt like they were really trying.

So, yeah. Thumbs in the middle: As a movie, it was okay-to-good. As an adaptation of a comic book, it was well-done, but sacrificed too much to stay close to the source material when the changes would have greatly improved the fit into the new medium.

[1]: The Stupid Space Squid was moronic, and a threat solely affecting New York City uniting the entire world into a single peaceful government wasn't believable in *1985*, let alone after we've seen that it doesn't work in the real world. Uniting the world against a common enemy who attacked everyone? Much less stupid.

[2]: Moore, you may have noticed, does this a lot. V? Uses magic to kill people in the first book. Ozymandias? Doesn't do a *single* non-superhuman thing in the comic, and takes apart psychics to get the building blocks of the Stupid Space Squid. The detective in From Hell? Uses magic to find killers. And all of these are supposed to be the real world. Given Moore's statements in interviews and the like, this stems from the fact that Alan Moore is COMPLETELY INSANE and he BELIEVES IN PSYCHICS AND MAGIC IN THE REAL WORLD. So of course they exist factually in the books he writes that are set in the real world.

Comments

[andrewducker]

There's another 7 minutes with Hollis that will be in the director's cut, but were taken out to bring the movie in at 2:30-ish.

Ozymandius was gay? I don't remember that bit.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Ozymandias was reasonably subtly but entirely consistenly tagged gay.

* His symbol - the logo, on the top of the building, on the front of his uniform - is an inverted pink (or purple) equilateral triangle. When the elevator is about to open to reveal his assassin (delivering flowers!) we get a close-up shot of the down-arrow of the elevator lighting up - an inverted pink triangle. Our next shot is Ozymandias again. The man is SURROUNDED by pink trangles, all the time.

* His mannerisms are effete and elegant. He wears ruffled pink shirts. He's shown taking a very great deal of care with his wardrobe, which is extensive, and his appearance, which is always perfectly groomed. These are often code, in film, for "gay".

* Once Dreiberg cracks the secret files on the secret disk, the folder list appears. There's a folder on his Dr Manhattan work, a folder on the Mysterious Pyramid Corporation... and a folder labelled "boys".

* The director's last movie (given a shout-out right at the start, with the Comedian's front door, TWICE!) was 300. In which the villains are villainous because they are... effete homosexuals. Unlike those clean-living pussy-loving Spartans. Really. That's partly Frank Miller's fault, but the way they worked Ozymandias makes me wonder how much of a hand Snyder had in it.

I think I can fairly consistently state my case here that we're supposed to assume that, among the other perversions of nature Veidt surrounds himself with (his obviously superhuman physical augmentation, his genetically engineered pets, etc) he also enjoys a good deep dicking. It's not blatant - he doesn't kiss Blake or stare at the Omnipotent Schlong - but I kept noticing it, over and over and over again. Too much for it to be accidental.

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

He's gay in the same way that Dumbledore was. It isn't in the text, but the actor and director decided that Rorschach's suspicion that Adrian was gay was insightful instead of hateful anti-liberal crap, and played him that way and put "clues" in the movie. Also, he's German now and his gave his fortune away because he suspected that his parents stole it from the Jews.

So the novel interestingly leaves it to the readers to debate if Adrian saved the world, but the movie makes sure that you don't sympathize with him by making him a gay Nazi.

(Disclaimer: didn't see the movie, if I do it would only out of a desire to see Dollar Bill on screen. I don't need Zack Snyder to read comic books to me, nor do I need him to point out that Stupid Space Squid is stupid.)

[itlandm.livejournal.com]

I read that Moore has put a curse on the movie.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Probably. His name appears *nowhere* in the credits - his artist gets a co-creator credit, but he gets nothing, at his own insistence. He also doesn't get royalties for it - his share goes to the artist. Again, at his own insistence.

Alan Moore *hates* all of the movies of his work, and currently insists that
A) nothing he works on in the future will ever be for hire. He will maintain all rights to all of his future work.
B) he will never, ever sell the adaptation rights to any of his work, to any format, ever again.

[drjon.livejournal.com]

You'd be right.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_jeremiad/]

Blue penis!

[kierthos.livejournal.com]

*nod* From the "Things I never thought I would say during the Watchmen movie" files:

"So, uh.... Dr. Manhattan is circumsized. Who knew?"

[drjon.livejournal.com]

Veidt's not portrayed as gay. He *is* portrayed as effete and "other" (no doubt to enhance the forshadowing of him as the villain), so I'm not surprised people are thinking he's gay, though.

Goode has been quoted as saying "he's possibly homosexual... I think that's part of the image that [Ozymandias] perpetuates himself. He's more asexual than anything else."

As I've said elsewhere, I think making Veidt the villain was a dumb idea. It screws with one of the essential groundbreaking elements of the story.

[snakey.livejournal.com]

"I'm not homophobic, he's really asexual!" Fail tactic is fail.

[skington.livejournal.com]

Wait, what? Veidt an outright bad guy? But the whole point is that he's well-intentioned, doing this for all the right reasons, and the only "good guy" who refuses to go along with his solution is the rabid fascist Rorschach. No matter how morally appalling Veidt's solution might have been (which is the point of the Tales of the Black Freighter comics).

[chrisrw109.livejournal.com]

But in the book... Veidt is a villain.

His intentions? Theoretically good.

The execution of those intentions? Horrifically bad on both the small and large scales. There are many many places were Veidt could choose a non-lethal means of insuring his secret is kept or events go his way.

Every single time he chooses blood.

[caerlas.livejournal.com]

I think it's possible that the filmmaker may be trying to suggest that he's bisexual. After all, in the scene where he's watching the monitors to see Nightowl and Rorschach approaching, one of the screens had what appeared to be porn involving a woman being shown.

[gilmoure.livejournal.com]

Omnipotent Schlong is almost as good as Ubiquitous Blue Cock.

There has to be at least 3 bands out there working up new names off of this.

[pope-guilty.livejournal.com]

Who does V kill with magic?

[torrain.livejournal.com]

Prospero's guards, on the train. There's some commentary from the cops about how it looks like someone shoved their fingers right into the guards' ribcages and charred or electrocuted them.

(I have always taken this to be one of the bits that Moore acknowledges as his not really knowing where he was going with the character early in the series, and says in the introduction that he is letting stand despite the temptation to clean up the work to make it consistent.)

Magic, no; inhuman, yes.

[opaqueplanet.livejournal.com]

Especially strange that they made Oz gay, considering it was Hooded Justice and Captain Metropolis that had a "special relationship", and Silhouette was a Known Lesbian. Three characters they could have fagged out and been true to the source material, and they pick one of the breeders. Disrespectful to the book AND nous fées.

[athelind.livejournal.com]

Oh, Silhouette wasn't even KINDA closeted in the movie.

I should point out that there's nothing in the graphic novel to suggest that Veidt was STRAIGHT, either. I kinda think that "asexual" pegs him.

[chrisrw109.livejournal.com]

Overall I really enjoyed the movie as an adaptation. If I didn't have a pre-built love of the book I'd probably have had some issues with it.

There were some things that they moved around in terms of giving dialog to different characters.. sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I think the execution of the ending clunked a little bit at portions.

But overall they did a good job.

I've heard people complain about the cuts... but the movie is almost three hours long as it is... we can't meet the newstand boy, the lesbian couple etc. They gave us the Doc, they killed the doc.. there you go.

The portrayal of Rorshach was almost pitch-perfect.

Here's an interesting question for you....

In all my readings of the book, my take on the Rorshach / Jon scene has always been that Roshach is angry at Jon for not stopping Adrian, upset at the devestation to 'his' city, and knows he can't beat Jon.. but also can't give in.

I've kind of revisited that opinion in a little bit.. and maybe it's just seeing it on screen rather than on page... I think a little bit of that, might just be Rorshach being pissed at himself. He failed to save the city, he failed to stop Veidt, he was thoroughly and completely beaten, Veidt proved that he's operating on a level where only Jon can really compete with him.. and most of all... Veidt seems to be proven correct. Rorschach's crazy.. but he's not stupid.. at some level he has to know Veidt is right... can he be a little bit pissed at himself, understanding there's no give in him.. and there's no way for him to live in that 'semi-shiny' new world?

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

I saw Walter's last stand, he takes off the mask and begs Manhatten to stop Rorschach from going back and destroying any good that had come from the whole business.

It's like paying a hooker for housecleaning

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIhHema5PNg

[telarus.livejournal.com]

May I quote you?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Hey, go right ahead.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

If you really, really liked the comic book, see it in the theatre.

I'd be tempted to rent it rather than see it again.

[fengi.livejournal.com]

I'd disagree with your assessment of Moore. He is a distinctly non-literal, a postmodern fantasy writer whose sometimes pretentious ideas of theme and formalism are more important than plot logic. Which is an argument for dropping the squid from the movie version.

He's certainly not a realist arguing magic exists: "...I don't think that it is the purpose of fiction to actually dictate a political/moral reality. I feel really uneasy about that. I think that's why I introduced a lot of the moral ambiguities into "V for Vendetta" in the first place..."Watchmen" did make it fashionable to show grimly the consequences of violence, which I suppose initially was a good thing because it's better that people know that violence results in terrible injury and pain and suffering...[but] a lot of these modern comics...show greater violence...for prurient reasons, not trying to show the emotional depth and complexity of the characters."

Moore's magical "beliefs" seem to follow Victorian philosophical occultists who believed pranks and mysterious put-ons were a means to enlightenment. Saying he worships a snake god who is a "complete hoax" might also be purely fucking with the interviewer.

Also the policeman didn't use magic in From Hell - that was the movie. In the book a fake psychic accuses the killer mostly as a grudge. The mystic touches in the book seem to be there as metaphors for the Ripper's historical context and the deep rooted rituals of misogyny and elite power, plus an how a killer who is the subject of conspiracy theories is himself a conspiracy theorist.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it in a while, but didn't he send squids to New York and Moscow, making it a worldwide threat?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Without looking it up because that would be too much like work:

I'm pretty sure you're wrong.