Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

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vanWarmerdam
Joined: Sun Jul 19, 2009 4:13 pm

Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#626 Post by vanWarmerdam » Sun Aug 02, 2009 5:02 am

Zack Snyder illustrated perfectly why the movie failed in a behind the scenes bit:
"And then you have your dialog, blah blah blah. And then you throw a punch at his face, kick the other guy and throw him over your shoulder and shoot the third guy."
He wasn't dealing with the emotions, and the subtext that exists in the comic. He was only interested with copying the graphic novel, and that creates other problems. The slow motion stuff just to replicate a piece from the comics is annoying when its overdone (and that happens a lot in three hours) and sometimes doesn't work because the audience doesn't understand it.
So we have a movie that regular people don't really understand (because a lot is left out) and the fanboys don't like because, again, a lot of things have been left out. Perhaps Terry Gilliam's take on this would be better.

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colinr0380
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#627 Post by colinr0380 » Sat Aug 22, 2009 11:51 am

A couple of points before I begin the post proper:

1. What is it about Zak Snyder and the way that his films peak with their prologue and title sequences?

2. With that flower in the gun barrel being immediately shot out during the opening montage, I’m afraid I couldn’t think of anything other than that Simpsons episode where Homer does the same thing and ends up with the flower being shot into his head!

3. Really terrible old age prosthetics (Nixon’s nose as he turned his head from side to side during his big war room speech was far more distracting than anything Dr Manhattan was waving around, and I’m just glad I wasn’t watching in 3D) that almost make me pine for Dustin Hoffman in Little Big Man.

4. With this, Southland Tales (and Donnie Darko) and Inglourious Basterds, perhaps we should add to that 'Motifs that characterise the 2000s' thread the move from fake virtual reality worlds through 'ignorance is bliss' fantasy films now to creating and dealing with alternate histories in preference to properly engaging with the real thing in any meaningful way. I'm still ambivalent about whether this is a good or bad thing - it probably depends on the individual film.

Now to begin:

I watched the theatrical version of the film on DVD last night. I should mention straight out that I’ve never read Watchmen, so I had the strange experience of not being sure of whether the film was intended to be comic or serious in intent. There were some fascinating elements to the film but it was difficult to disentangle them from the overt head-slapping obviousness of certain other elements (lets just say I didn't have a Hallelujah moment). So I’m left interested in certain aspects but not sure how much to attribute the ‘good parts’ to the film itself and how much to the source material.

I think on looking through the thread I would particularly agree with Cde. and his “embalmed” comments. There is no sense of life to these characters, let alone in the broadly painted society beyond them. Even the costumes have more of a gaudy personality than ever displayed by their wearers. It’s all posture that seems to be being consciously undermined by the film. Take all of the ‘revelations’ of the film, revealing with great fanfare things that were obvious about an hour and a half earlier through implication (the drug capsuled assassin, and the “Luke, I am your father”-esque moments in particular). Along with the uncovering and recovering of the identity of Rorschach I wondered if there was a satirical intent there to make these aspects so non-mysterious in order to comment on their obvious archetypal function in the plot. Of course there will be a betrayal, an unveiling, a revelation, a twist – these characters need such things to give meaning and a greater sense of destiny to their lives!

A big problem I had with the film is the sense of editing displayed. Not just the use of slow motion but the idea that with a graphic novel the reader themselves creates their own editing pattern by the pace at which they read. Even if you slavishly recreate the look of a graphic novel, you are still going to have to edit those scenes together in a way that might crucially affect the feeling of the story. I’ve not read many graphic novels at all but with those I have I often find myself lingering longer over a panel to give it more weight, or rushing through particular scenes to create a certain mood that I can sense expected from me by the art. In this film it seems as if every single iconic moment is being treated and lingered on as such and it is the process of going from one ‘panel image’ of the comic to another in which Snyder stumbles (I think I lost count of the number of times that ‘start on a couple of characters in medium close up and then zoom backwards until they are specks inside an enormous vista’ shot occurred). He elongates everything, so that the crucially important aspects are given the same weight as the flippant, comic or unimportant aspects that would probably have been far more effectively treated in a succinct manner. It also flattens the tone of the film out so that there is no sense of mounting excitement or threat, or even that we are witnessing anything particularly important – take the final fifteen minutes of the film which felt like it had continued on at the same leisurely pace for about three scenes after the proper ending where the brakes should have been applied. Instead it trundles merrily on until someone notices the overrun and decides to turn the projector off.

The fight scenes especially are most uninterestingly and monotonously edited – I agree with previous comments that it is ridiculous that ostensibly normal people in superhero costumes can perform bone breaking manoeuvres as needed, but the most surprising thing about the action was how perfunctory and half-heartedly tacked on it felt, a punch and a foe crumples to the floor, lying motionless. There’s no humanity to any of these characters (heroes or villains), no sense that they may be being hurt - the big example of this of course is the arms being sawn off of a henchman, which is obviously used as a comic, gory moment, but would have had a far more disturbing effect if the guy had writhed around limbless for longer after being pushed out of the way rather than crumpling to the floor instantly (and untroublingly) dead. I think that is just one of many damning moments that show the lack of interest in characters once they’ve served their narrative, and most importantly aesthetic, purpose. And that of course plays into the lack of feeling for the huddled masses in general, a real flaw when the ending involves a sequence of mass destruction.

It leaves me feeling that the film is only interested in the ‘decision makers’, everyone else is unimportant, or used and discarded without further thought. Something that would seem to undermine Ozymandias’s empathy and deep feeling for all those he kills for ‘peace’, if it did not feel the linkage was one unintended by the film itself.

This would also seem to affect the ‘characterised characters’ as well. Again not being familiar with the graphic novel I am just talking about the film here. If there was a message to be taken away from the film it seemed that it was that you shouldn’t take anything that happens too much to heart – whether that is simply taking comments personally or being traumatised by an attempted rape. Sensitivity produces maniacs: people with personality disorders, who have violent outbursts, have drink problems or delusions of grandeur etc. It is telling that the characters left standing and untraumatised at the end of the film are those who have a brief flash of emotion (at finding out they were the product of a rape, or losing a good friend) but are soon over such matters and back to business as usual.

I find Nite Owl particularly interesting since he is a totally ineffectual character, and maybe a comment on ‘woolly pacifists’. In the frequent edits to his slightly concerned reactions whenever Rorschach or whoever is torturing someone for information, or retribution, or revenge, he seems to exemplify the idea of someone who is disgusted by violence, but at the same time doesn’t actually step in to do anything to stop the brutality going on (interestingly similar to that early scene with the Comedian and Dr Manhattan), because he knows it is somehow necessary for them to fulfil their goal. While all the characters who are driven by their urges get destroyed by them, it is telling that the second Nite Owl and Silk Spectre II remain ‘pure’ by their lack of engagement with real pain, danger and suffering. But then that's the younger generation for you I suppose!

In its emotional detachment from all the characters the film itself feels as if it is told by Dr Manhattan. It feigns understanding and interest in the human condition to reach closure, but ultimately sees all the effort to cause or prevent Armageddon as rather pointless.

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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#628 Post by flyonthewall2983 » Fri Jan 15, 2010 2:08 am

A shot in the dark, but has anyone seen the recently released "ultimate version" of this? And how is it compared to the theatrical, barring spoilers.

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dx23
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#629 Post by dx23 » Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:01 am

It seems that DC comics and Warner wants to piss more Alan Moore fans (as well as Alan Moore himself) as they may be planning Watchmen 2.

HarryLong
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#630 Post by HarryLong » Fri Feb 05, 2010 1:19 pm

I don't suppose it could star CGI Beatles & then I could avoid two ghastly prospective movies at the same time?

Yeah, I didn't think so...

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dx23
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#631 Post by dx23 » Wed Oct 24, 2012 8:26 pm

The Ultimate Cut of Watchmen is being re-released on November 13 and it includes a hardcover copy of the graphic novel. WBshop.com currently has the set for pre-order at $45.99.


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bainbridgezu
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#633 Post by bainbridgezu » Mon Mar 03, 2014 4:22 pm

Last edited by bainbridgezu on Tue Mar 04, 2014 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Forrest Taft
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#634 Post by Forrest Taft » Mon Mar 03, 2014 4:27 pm

I like his claim that the movie is a satire…up there with my fave Zack Snyder quote when he, after being compared to David Lean, said that "the similarities are inevitable".

Movie-Brat
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#635 Post by Movie-Brat » Mon Mar 03, 2014 5:02 pm

Not a very good choice of words to use.


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domino harvey
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#637 Post by domino harvey » Thu May 09, 2019 10:52 am

Discussion of the Watchmen TV series moved here

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colinr0380
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Re: Watchmen (Zack Snyder, 2009)

#638 Post by colinr0380 » Sun Jul 04, 2021 7:52 am

It was interesting rewatching the Watchmen film last night and looking back on it from where Zack Snyder went after this with his take on the DC Universe. Its like he did the (relatively) more concise and coherent take on the superhero film before he did the much more muddled and grandiose multi-film spanning retread, and maybe this shows that he was more suited for the deeply cynical and borderline depressive Alan Moore world than he was for the DC one.

Lots of elements seem to have flowed over. The big one is probably Dr Manhattan becoming Superman, carrying over the moral quandaries of a figure being just too powerful for the world in which they inhabit (as also seen in, although just in the fantasy sequences, of Sucker Punch) and not really giving a damn about the 'little people' being sacrificed in events of mass destruction. Turning 'superhumans' into 'inhumans', above and beyond doing anything more than musing solipsistically about their place in the universe.

The tormented Ben Affleck Batman figure has its Watchmen equivalent in the rather damaged and flawed 'golden age' heroes, now aging and unable to keep the masks from slipping. I guess that makes the supporting cast of superheroes such as Flash and Wonder Woman the Teflon-coated equivalent of the 'expressing concerns over war crimes by having a vaguely furrowed brow but otherwise accepting the damage as necessary' younger generation of Watchmen superheroes, operating at a further degree of removal from 'actual feeling'.

Even the Martha Kent figure in the DC films has its equivalent in the Watchmen film of the perennially drunk Miss Jupiter/First Silk Spectre character, the mother of our Lois Lane equivalent!

I wonder what may have happened if the order was reversed and Watchmen had come out after all of the DC movies? Would it have been received positively Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood-style as a distillation of themes from the director's previous work suddenly cohering into a singular statement? The way that Alan Moore was presenting his darkly cynical take on classic superheroes as a capstone to the genre? Instead it feels rather that those ideas ironically got watered back down into the ur-franchises which spawned them, though doing damage to the original franchises in the process by the way in which some of the material (particularly the lack of empathy for the 'common man') ended up grating more when applied to characters like Superman and Batman.

Anyway this rewatch did raise Watchmen up in my estimations a bit, although the wall to wall obvious music-drops and hokey montage scenes still come across more as sarcastic (or blackly comic) than heartfelt! And the structure is still rather frustrating as a viewer in the way that we get the entire story in montage form during the opening credits (which is kind of doing what the opening credits of Gus Vant Sant's To Die For or the opening of The Andromeda Strain did, in the way that it presents a contextless montage of all the events that the rest of the movie will be spending the majority of its running time unpacking) and then for at least 90 minutes spends time privileging the perspective of one character after the other and getting a dive into their specific backstories. Still having not read the original graphic novel, I wonder if this was also the way that Alan Moore structured things, spending one issue on one character whilst pushing the main storyline in the present a little further?

I don't think the structure is entirely bad and of course it allows for the best sequence of the film to have a full uninterrupted five minutes playing from the Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi score before leaving that character behind for another, but it does feel as if the film is having to do an extremely long rev up through all of these characters (changing gear with each one) to reach its full momentum only by the final act. Which can feel as if in the various transitions that everything slackens off a bit only to have to begin building all over again.

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