Watchmen - Trailer

What can I say about the upcoming big screen adaptation of Watchmen, the first fifteen minutes of which screened at New York Comic Con this weekend? It looks like one helluva gorgeous, intense ride. Alan Moore’s late 1980s graphic novel centered on a bleak world not so different from our own, where superheroes have been deemed illegal at a time when society could really use them. Few superhero stories ever endeavored to make the sort of profound brushstrokes Moore and illustrator Dave Gibbons made with Watchmen; rather than developing a lavish escapist premise, they managed to arrive at a surrealist portrait of contemporary problems. The Watchmen world suffers as much from standard evildoers as it does from the twilight of the Cold War and President Richard Nixon — yes, in this universe, he’s somehow managed to get elected for a third term.

About Nixon: We see the guy during the very first opening minutes of the movie, blabbering on at a press conference about the Soviet threat. When Watchmen first hit stands, it presented a nightmarish alternative reality, but the new Watchmen goes back to the eighties to provide an alternative history, and it’s a little disorienting. Media chatter swirls through the soundtrack in the first scene, while the Comedian (a character played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan whose murder will establish the main plot thread of the story), looking weary and middle aged in his secluded high rise apartment, glares at the tube. The creepy familiarity gets creepier moments later, when we see Pat Buchanan on a talk show. But it’s Nixon who really got my goat: The actor (a fellow named Robert Wisden) is no Dan Hedaya or Frank Langella. He plays Nixon as a cartoon-like mockery of the character not too dissimilar from the disembodied head of Nixon often featured in Futurama. It’s hard not to view the performance as a darkly tinted Saturday Night Live skit. While I can’t say I didn’t dig the strangeness of it, I do fear director Zack Snyder has downgraded the cultural references that give Watchmen its distinctive identity from a place of eerie familiarity to a less impressive level of playful satire. I never saw Watchmen as satire, and worry that such an added ingredient might overwhelm the grittier aspects of the story.

But of course I’m going to worry. Millions of Watchmen fans will worry — it means we care about the property. During a Q&A with Gibbons after the preview screening, fans freaked out about a slight change to the ending, which apparently does away with the giant squid element in place of something subtler. Fair enough, but don’t expect Watchmen to be a particularly subtle film. If anything, it seems that Snyder has really ramped up the ultraviolence, punctuating the harsher moments with more graphic revelations. The Comedian has an extraordinarily speedy fist fight with his anonymous murderer in the opening scene, something that remained merely implied in the graphic novel. Later, rogue hero Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) imprisoned for practicing his antics, pours scalding hot oil on a threatening prison mate before dropping his classic line in frightening monotone (”I’m not locked in here with you. You’re locked in here with me”). In the book, the depth of pain Rorschach brings to the burnt man remains implied, but Snyder gives us a full-on, detailed shot of the damage as it happens. I wonder if this cutaway helps realize the potential of the scene, or merely serves to flaunt the movie’s grimy aura to the nth degree.

Despite these curious additions, I’m also nervous about Watchmen from the other side of the fence. Script-wise and visually, it appears almost obscenely loyal to the source material. When the Comedian goes flying out the glass window of his apartment, Snyder slows down the frame so that you can practically see the panels in photographic terms. This approach suggests Snyder (who took a similar live action comic book approach with his last feature, 300) aimed less for making a new work than for freshening up an old one. Either way, Gibbons, fielding questions after the screening, seemed pleased. (Moore, as he always does, refused to be associated with the project.) “It’s the kind of movie I saw in my head — but crystallized,” Gibbons said. “It’s amazing how faithful Zack has been.”

And it makes me wonder: Does faithfulness always yield a healthy product? The movie’s opening minutes feature a frenetic pace, clearly the result of Snyder’s passionate, well-meaning attempts to include so many details from the book. He has reportedly fought with Warner Brothers to keep his nearly three-hour cut. Great, but the Watchmen book doesn’t move like that. It’s a busy story, but a patient one. It’s quite possible that Watchmen the movie, clearly a beautiful accomplishment in atmospheric storytelling, loses patience in the shuffle.

***

Watchmen wasn’t the only highly anticipated adaptation at the Con. Ridiculously prolific Japanese filmmaker Takashi Miike (above, wearing his trademark glasses) made the unorthodox decision to have the world premiere of his new feature, Yatterman, at the convention. (It actually screened at the Directors Guild of America on 57th Street.) Based on the utterly confounding Japanese animated series of the late 1970s, Yatterman focuses on a high energy team of superheroes attempting to stop their villainous counterparts from tracking down a mythological object called the Skull Stone. Whatever. I didn’t watch the show, so I can’t bring nostalgia to the table, even though it obviously plays a big role in the appeal of the live action movie. At a panel discussion on Friday, Miike said he really enjoyed the way the show mixed risqué humor with hyperbolic action. From what I saw of the movie, that much is preserved. A jarring, CG-heavy action sequence opens the movie, and Miike carries that sense of forward motion throughout the feature. However, since the action takes on an exaggerated tone, Miike’s ability to combine slapstick with colorful visuals takes on a delightful energy. Check out the trailer here.

Miike makes a lot of movies, something like three or four per year. But even if he aims for quantity over quality, there’s no denying his skill at elevating low culture to a place of complex film language. In particular, his horror films are typically smart, dense creative endeavors. Yatterman looks like it does something remarkably clever with a relatively simplistic property. So it was especially enticing to hear Miike tell the Con audience that he would love to make a live action version of the animated series Afro Samurai. My colleague John Lichman tells me that Samuel L. Jackson, the hilariously appropriate source of the samurai’s funky delivery, has a contractual agreement where only he can star in a live action Afro Samurai movie. Bring it on, guys. Maybe the world at large doesn’t need it, but the Con audience showed oodles enthusiasm, so what more incentive do you need? As I said before, this is a universe with its own set of rules.

Check back soon for notes on the next Terminator movie and Pixar’s upcoming Up.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 9th, 2009 at 11:21 am and is filed under Eric, New York Comic Con 09, Reviews, Trailers, Filmmakers!, Look! New!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.