Watchmen has always been a weird project/phenomenon to me. I remember the first time I read the book when the first trade graphic novel came out. Even though I was an avid comic collector back in those days I somehow missed the single issue. And a lot of the folks that I hung around with in college never really mentioned it, then all of a sudden the collected trade paper back comes out and it builds a life of it’s own. A friend of mine was up for an editorship position at my old college newspaper and my former editor asked my friend, “Who said, The Comedian is Dead?” My friend was up for the Arts Editor job, drew a complete blank, this despite the fact that his parents are huge in the Comic Book Industry. We all just looked at him like he was out of his mind, how could he not know the answer to this question? That’s how ingrained the Watchmen book became in the “comic book” culture, however “small” it was at the time. It was only mainstream in the sense that businessmen came in and thought every number 1 issue of a comic could become the next $200,000 Superman book. Don’t get me started on how main stream media and wall street speculators basically destroyed the industry for several years.
Comics became more about marketing hype and gimmicks, than story or its fans. Watchmen was one of the few “true” stories that embraced the medium at the time. Years later it was actually required reading in some college literature programs. Which is a first for any comic book. The Dark Knight Returns didn’t reach that status until years later. So I fully appreciate the masterpiece that, the mad genius, Alan Moore created. Many people started calling the book unfilmable, which is something I never understood. Sure Alan Moore is an arrogant ass (rightfully so), but I never felt like there was anything about the book that made it “unfilmable,” yeah the subject matter is tough and what to do about the book’s ending would be difficult, but unfilmable, no.
Despite all of this, the book has always left me a bit cold and I never really connected with it like I felt I should. To this day I’m always shocked when I find someone who hasn’t read it and always say, “You have to read this book.” It’s a novel that totally changes your perception of what comics can be. The Dark Knight Returns moves me and connects with me on an emotional level, while Watchmen is a mental, if not a bit hollow connection.
The movie made me feel the same way. Like, I can recognize the brilliance of it, or actually brilliance is a really strong hyperbole, 300 Director Zack Snyder movie isn’t brilliant, it’s just really good, he nailed it. The problem is, it’s almost a word for word, shot for shot translation of the book, or a Cliff’s note version. He got rid of a lot of the book’s tangents like Hollis’ Behind the Mask book excerpts and the newsstand guy and the kid reading the story about the pirate (which I’ve never understood the point of). Unfortunately, he spends too much time on showing us Nixon giving speeches and preparing for war, I understand that those scenes added context to the global threat but it just felt a bit forced. Continue reading MOVIE REVIEWS: Holy Blueballs, Watchmen is brilliant but cold. Michelle’s Review →
