Monday, March 09, 2009

The Watchmen

Yeah, so I read this book and it took me about twice as long as it takes me to read a 300 page book. Material too heavy? No. Material not interesting enough? No. I loved the damn thing. Life distracting you from your reading? No. I live in a foreign country, and I have about 2 friends here. One of whom I live with.

It's just because I am a visual retard. It was my first graphic novel, and I am not much of a comic book reader, so the pictures where interesting and distracting. Instead of flowing nicely into the big picture, I had to micro analyze each box then revisit to grasp the overall picture. So, yes, a book that is 75% pictures took me f-o-r-e-v-e-r to see/read.

But the movie! Today! In the IMAX theater! Woot!

UPDATE and spoiler alert

The Watchmen was definitely an enjoyable viewing. There were a couple of scenes that blew me away, ie// the comedian getting pounded, but it fell short of my expectations. Not a big surprise. They stayed true to the book for the most part, but they sucked all the urgency and desperation out of the world. And in some parts, they stayed true to the book, but on film it just seemed silly. The quickness of the characters' decisions and the general lack of depth in all the main characters, except the Comedian, sucked the meat out of the mission. In my opinion, they focused way too much on the love triangle, but managed to only skim the part about humanity being important and worth saving in the eyes of the masked heroes.

I think Rorschach was well cast, but I hate how they handled his death. He was so weak at his demise. Wrong, wrong, wrong. His mask was awesome. The moving blots were a nice touch. I think he is such an interesting character, it would have been nice to see more of his story revealed, but I understand why they couldn't include it.

What I did enjoy was the new ending. I think it was really clever and kept the spirit of the ending in the book. Although in the book, I do like how he rounds up all the most famous artists and has them create the monstrosity and then kills them all. But, I was bummed that they left out the part where Veidt asks Dr. Manhattan if he did the right thing in the end, and Dr. Manhattan replies that nothing ever ends. They pushed it onto the Silk Spector taking about what John would say, which I thought was totally undercut the books' view on humanity.

Overall, I think they bit off a little more than they could chew. But it was good enough to be interesting to talk about after the show. I would, however, definitely recommend reading the book before seeing the film. I really don't know how I would feel about it if I had never read the book.

5 comments:

Itchy 日本 said...

Wanna slow to the speed of a sponge migration? Try:

"Maus" http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/mauscomp.html

or

"Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on earth" http://www.randomhouse.com/pantheon/graphicnovels/corrigan.html

otis said...

The first time you read Watchmen, you have two choices: go slow like you did, or rip through it and then immediately start over and read it all again.

Rorschach is one of my favorite literary creations.

Alliya said...

I agree I totally dig Rorschach. I think they did an excellent job of casting him, but I hated how they took off his mask and made him whimper at the end of the movie.

otis said...

Yeah. He should have died angry.

Todd said...

Vicki and I are taking a class on how to use comics and graphic novels in the classroom. It's actually part of USF's TESL program.

Anyway, we had a long discussion about Watchmen last week. It centered on a really bad review of the book by Keith Law of ESPN. He ripped it apart and said he had no use for any graphic novels. We came to the conclusion that he ran into the same difficulty and frustration high school students experience when they try to read and comprehend a book they don't want to read, like Hamlet or Great Gatsby. And like a whiny adolescent, he decided "this book sucks!"

Watchmen is cool. Glad you read and watched. I still dream of still, blue wangs.