Column:
Who would want to watch the 'Watchmen'?
The director tried too hard to stay true to the comic book.
Published March 12, 2009
Pity the poor "Watchmen." A week ago, Zack Snyder's 2 hour and 40 minute behemoth was supposed to be America's next surefire, brainy blockbuster. The Hollywood hype-machine was in a full-court press, while high school students and fanboys alike lined up for midnight screenings.
Then people saw it. The inevitable bad word-of-mouth spread like wildfire, and now only six days later it's been christened a flop.
How did it all happen so fast? Because "Watchmen" is unforgivably terrible. It is not a sometimes brilliant but flawed movie, nor will it end up a misunderstood classic. No -- it's a hot, steaming pile of garbage that makes the "Spider-Man" trilogy look like "Hamlet" in comparison.
Where to start critiquing? Embarrassing dialogue and delivery, limp action, pedestrian computer-generated imagery and enough delusions of grandeur to make "The Dark Knight" look humble would all be a good starting point. But let's begin with Snyder's crippling reverence to his source material.
Alan Moore's book by the same name boasts pretentious, cockamamie dialogue and faux-heady themes that probably work a lot better on the page in a much larger, epic context. But on the big screen, they just make him sound like a brat. Lines such as "I hate it when John teleports me," "I should've had that abortion," and "You are such an asshole" -- at the climatic scene -- would all seem preposterous in a Lifetime movie, let alone in Hollywood's $120 million hope. Snyder's complete unwillingness to tinker with the novel's language to make it less absurd and grating puts his film behind the eight ball from the outset.
Of course, dialogue has never been comic book movies's strong suit. No one expects Toby Maguire to channel Marlon Brando when he is pulling a spider mask over his face. Mystifyingly, this is all "Watchmen" cares about, though. Nearly two hours of Snyder's marathon are spent with the heroes in constant conversation. They go from reminiscing about their surprisingly boring pasts to stretching to the point of bursting to sound philosophical. It certainly doesn't help that every time Dr. Manhattan (the glowing blue penis dude) speaks, it sounds like a MasterCard commercial.
But not even these faults would be fatal if anything happened in between the barbs and the melodrama. All that action and rumored graphic violence -- it's less compelling than "Taken." People will probably also be disappointed to find out the movie's grand, brilliant villain is more Dr. Evil than The Joker.
Even "Watchmen's" much-vaunted visuals are ordinary. They feel less alive than fellow graphic novel adaptation "Sin City" and look less expensive than last year's computer-generated imagery blockbuster, "The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Blue man dude often looks as if he's lost inside a video game's cut screen.
Ultimately, the movie's opening weekend failed to set the box office records it was supposed to, but Snyder's movie is historic in at least one regard: few films have ever strained as hard for significance and achieved none.