Guest blogger: Watchmen Movie Review
Substituting for Angel Jimenez, today’s guest blogger actual was unsolicited. Occasional baseball.dailyskew.com poster Stat Head (also Stats Head) took it upon himself to review the much anticipated Watchmen movie. Considering that this movie didn’t even come out yet, and there are no Watchmen movie torrents, I have no idea how so many people saw this movie yet, and were able to give their reviews…Anyway, without further ado, here’s Stat Head’s Watchmen review:
See, the first thing that’s wrong with this movie is that before you can even give your opinion you have to quantify it, i.e. you have to say “I think Alan Moore’s Watchmen graphic novel is better than the Bible” or “I’ve never been a big fan of comic books” or “I have never ever heard of Watchmen”. So right there..right there, you know it’s gonna be a bad movie because it’s all about expectations.
No here’s the root of the problem- pretend you never even heard of Watchmen. You see the trailer, it looks like a cool dark super-hero movie with a bunch of characters that you’ve never heard of. I mean, you’ve heard of Spider-Man, X-Men, Batman, and Superman, but you see these guys- WITH NO BACKSTORY- and we are supposed to care about them?
A lot of people don’t know this, but Watchmen was 12 issues back in 1985/1986. It was hundreds of pages, and creative geniuses Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons said that their comic books were UNFILMABLE because of the complexity and because of the medium. Well, they were RIGHT, which is why Alan Moore’s name is not on the silver screen- he knows this movie is CRAP and people will HATE it.
I mean think about it- Average Joe Movie Goer never read Watchmen- he may have saw the smiley face with blood in Borders, but’s that’s it. Average Joe Movie Goer already saw Sin City and Dark Knight Returns; Watchmen movie seems derivative now. And if he’s expecting a funny Fantastic Four- forget about it. Maybe you’ve all heard how The Spirit bombed. Well, Watchmen has already bombed and it’s not even out yet. Watchmen sucks. Watchmen is overrated. Watchmen is the first flop of 2009.
Why? They cut out the Black Freighter scenes, and the background articles that occured in-between issues in the graphic novel. Those background articles explained the alternate earth, the history of the Minutemen, the origins of the superheroes, and their motivations. Although the movie is still an almost scene-by-scene copy of the comic book (although the ending is different), Average Joe Movie Goer just sees these characters as powerless with guaduy costumes.
I mean the whole thing would be CAMPY like Ben Stiller’s Mystery Men, except it’s too violent, sexy, and dark. All the super-heroes are cliched, third-rate, and irrelevant. They are just a bunch of guys- WITH NO SUPER POWERS.
The special effects suck toad, too.
The style was overdone, too melodramatic…and very 1985′ish (and I was born in 1990). I didn’t get the message, whatever it was!!
I mean the comic book geeks (I hate them) will not like this movie because details were left out. An regular people will have NO idea what’s going on or CARE? So what the point? I mean after I saw it, I was like, so..that’s IT? Ugh…ouch! This is supposed to be ART? This is supposed to be the greatest comic book of all TIME?
Soundtrack: Nat King Cole, Simon & Garfunkel, Hendrix, Dylan–UGH…OLD GUYS! WTF???
On a scale of 1-10, I give it a 3.
[Editor's note: Full disclosure: in our e-mail correspondence, Stat Head said that he started reading comics in 1998, and liked "old issues" of Youngblood, Spawn, and New Warriors, and that he never "got through" the Watchmen graphic novel in 2004 and "skipped to the end". I also got him to admit something good about the movie: he said the best part was Rorschach's prison scene. I *will* be seeing this movie, and give my own review.]
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I mean think about it- Average Joe Movie Goer never read Kung Fu Panda- he may have saw the Furious Five on a Happy Meal, but’s that’s it. Average Joe Movie Goer already saw Bruce Lee and Madagascar; Kung Fu Panda movie seems derivative now.
I mean think about it- Average Joe Movie Goer never read The Matrix – he may have saw the movie posters with Keanu wearing a black trenchcoat, but’s that’s it. Average Joe Movie Goer already saw Johnny Mneumonic and Virtuosity; The Matrix movie seems derivative now.
I mean think about it- Average Joe Movie Goer never read Star Wars – he may have saw Luke Skywalker holding up a lightsaber at Crossbay Theatres, but’s that’s it. Average Joe Movie Goer already saw Logan’s Run and Star Trek TV show; Star Wars movie seems derivative now.
saw it at IMAX with the kids..very disappointed. this is NOT a family movie
doesnt suprise me that watchmen sux…it was an overrated comic book anyway.
killing joke was better.
MEANHILE, Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li gets a 0% RT rating, and Damian doesn’t post about it. I wonder why?
Are you serious?
I can’t post about every movie in the world, ya know.
Chun Li’s movie is probably 17-20 years late [yes, time flies]in the making (I’m sure I would have watched it back then, and it would have made a lot of money).
I don’t know what else to say about Kristen Kruek playing Chun Li in a generic crime syndicate movie in 2009.
Chun Li- the character- will always rule in my book.
I loved they way they bridged different generations throughout Watchmen, both with props (like the floppy discs) and with music
IMO the new ending ruined an otherwise great movie. There was no need for horror-movie violence (why couldn’t they just slit the guy’s throat instead of sawing off his arms?) and no need for a semi-pornographic sex scene, but otherwise the movie was going really well up until the end. Overall, I thought that the casting, acting, fight scenes, and visual look of the movie were all great. I was thrilled that they took a significant portion of the lines directly from the book.
Ditching the monster, however, was a deal breaker. The monster is intrinsic to the story, and cannot be removed without cutting the heart out of Watchmen . The monster has a function in the story similar to the terrifying portrait that Dorian Gray keeps under lock and key so that no one can see it. The terrifying and inhuman ugliness of the monster is in sharp contrast to Veidt’s perfect looks and physique, the point being that Veidt’s handsome exterior masks a warped and twisted soul, a man who views himself as “beyond” good and evil (in the sense that Nietzsche writes about) and is therefore capable of genocide. The monster gives the book an element of visceral horror that the new movie ending simply does not capture. Just like the unnamed character in “The Black Freighter,” Veidt has become what he fears most. As the character in “Black Freighter” kills his own wife, so too Veidt has killed millions who looked to him as a hero, as someone who would protect them. Without the monster, Veidt himself seems less monstrous, and that changes his character drastically.
Also, even if none of that were true, the new ending does not make sense. The Russians (and everyone else) would blame the Americans for not keeping better tabs on Manhattan’s psychological health. They would not extend an olive branch of peace to Nixon; they would want Nixon’s head for being so irresponsible with his living weapon (just like we would be would be angry at the Russians if they did not guard their nuclear stockpile carefully and some terrorists stole a Russian warhead and detonated it in NYC).
Ironically, the new ending is more dated than the original ending, because in the movie Veidt’s goal is simply to end the Cold War (an 80s goal), but in the book his goal is to end war as such (a timeless goal). He wants to give every person in the world a reason to see each other as united in a common humanity, rather than viewing each other along political and ethnic lines. The monster accomplishes this (at least temporarily), because everyone feels threatened by what seems to be an alien invasion, and the whole world bands together as humans rather than as capitalists and socialists. The “Doctor Manhattan blows up a few cities” ending does not accomplish the same goal, because although Manhattan is superhuman he is a product of the Earth. If you wanted to, you could go to his hometown and see the bedroom he grew up in as a kid. He would certainly be perceived as a threat, but not as something completely alien and horrific.
Further, what point is there in the Russians and Americans joining forces against Manhattan? What exactly do they expect to do to him? The guy could vaporize everyone on Earth in a matter of hours, and no matter what they attack him with he could either re-constitute himself or teleport out of harm’s way (he’d see it coming because of his precognition, and he would not be fooled by the tachyon trick twice). If they put together some kind of ultimate weapon and sent it in a rocket to Mars, he’d either turn the rocket into marshmallow or teleport to Venus before the rocket arrived. The US and USSR against Manhattan is like Bambi vs. Godzilla. In the case of the monster, however, it is simple logic that if the “alien” is dead that any subsequent aliens can be killed. Hence it makes sense for the US and USSR to unite against “aliens,” but it makes no sense for them to unite against Doctor Manhattan. At least against the “aliens” they’d have a fighting chance.