Watchmen: Chapter I (2024)

November 20, 2024 6:45 PM

In an alternate universe New York 1985, a CIA-sponsored former superhero is murdered by an unknown assassin, setting in motion an investigation into his death that unfolds against the spectre of looming global nuclear annihilation.
posted by kittens for breakfast (5 comments total)

Going into this film, I knew two things: (1) this will not be the last adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, and (2) there will never be a perfect adaptation of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen. I watched it. And if you think I learned a third thing, you are mistaken.

The ambitions here are more modest than those of Zack Snyder's 2009 film, and so it's perhaps not a surprise that this film does a better job of hitting what it's aiming at. But what it's trying to be is not much more than a motion comic. I don't especially need actors to read the dialogue of Watchmen out loud to me while I look at the pictures. And to be honest, those readings are often a little on the nose: the Rorschach in my head is more monotone, less Batman, even a little shy and sensitive-sounding when we see him at the Crimebusters meeting, before the horrible incident with the dogs; the Comedian in my head is a little more Danny McBride and swaggering; Dan sounds a lot less like Arthur from The Tick. A LOT LESS. I could go on.

I won't, though, because the real problem with the movie is that -- like the earlier version -- it tries to be faithful to a fault, and doesn't fully lean into the possibilities of its new medium. We dip in and out of various characters' voice-over narration in a way that works in a comic but in a film seems choppy, weird, and unfocused. The film isn't experimental-seeming enough to make its various narrators work; it ends up just seeming like it doesn't know who or what it's supposed to be about. (In addition, the narration, as beautifully written as it is, is almost completely unnecessary; there is very little here we could not glean ourselves, and especially in the Rorschach scenes, it feels like we're getting a different and worse experience than we would get without the endless gravel-voiced yammering.) I think a major problem here is that it is a film at all, even a film in two parts; maybe a miniseries, with contained episodes, could have handled the drifting focus better. Far be it from me to say, but I think twelve approximately 30-minute episodes might...well, that's just crazy, who would watch that, right?
posted by kittens for breakfast at 7:12 PM on November 20 [3 favorites]

This animated movie is literally just the comic book with the exact same art copied over, but the figures in the panels move. Pro: It's as good as the comic book (unlike the Snyder film). Con: What's the point?
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 1:54 AM on November 21

Pro: It's as good as the comic book.

Respectfully, I find this nigh-impossible to believe. I can certainly believe it is identical (or near-identical) plot-wise, but there's no way that this mercenary retelling of a story explicitly crafted as a comic book, that comments on the medium itself as much as anything else, and is deeply woven with symbols, both in script and artwork, could be as good as the original. I mean, the text endpieces in each issue alone!

For my money, the only good Watchmen adaptation was the HBO show. And probably because smart people wanted to play in that world but also had their own vision of a new story to tell.
posted by joelhunt at 6:21 AM on November 21 [9 favorites]

I have extremely mixed feelings about the HBO show, which feels more than anything like a season of American Horror Story to me: an assortment of tones and textures that sometimes match and often don't, individual scenes and set pieces that kick ass but add up to less than the sum of their parts, an ending that's kind of a fucking mess. Only I generally like AHS better, because Ryan Murphy is obsessed with sex and true crime and history, and Damon Lindelhof is obsessed with...Jesus, I guess. Plus, as a sequel to Watchmen, it feels like it was created by someone who either didn't really understand the book or had an axe to grind against it; his character assassination of Veidt really sucks and is logically inconsistent with the novel, because if Veidt is actually just a vain dumbass with a slight genius for building things, the central plot of the novel would be unworkable. (I suspect Lindelhof's lame version of Veidt stems from his extremely guessable password, which, fair.) Basically, I would like almost everything about the show better if it were not a sequel to Watchmen; perhaps someone at HBO might have suggested altering the characters slightly so that it was an original world instead, and...anyway this is me talking crazy again.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:14 PM on November 21 [1 favorite]

Basically, I would like almost everything about the show better if it were not a sequel to Watchmen; perhaps someone at HBO might have suggested altering the characters slightly so that it was an original world instead, and...anyway this is me talking crazy again.

This would have also created a magnificent synergy with the original comics, where Moore wasn't allowed to use the Charlton characters as he originally intended, and instead had to "alter them slightly so it was an original world".
posted by joelhunt at 6:31 AM on November 22 [2 favorites]