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 (1 comment 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