Watchmen

Watchmen is getting reviewed and dissected all over the internet, and that volume of chatter on a topic normally puts me off, because I'm stil under the delusion that I can somehow accomplish something original, but I'm a fan of the graphic novel and having just seen it last night I have some bile to spray. So here tis.

It was, frankly, shocking. The first work to take comics seriously as an art form, and to force non-comics lovers to take them seriously as well, the first graphic novel to have deep fully realised characters with motivations, peccadilloes and multiple dimensions, had been translated as a cheesy tossed off gore-porn spectacular, which to a non-fan must seem like an 80 minute movie crammed into 3 hours. I spent the whole movie wincing at the titters of the audience, wanting to stand up and shout to the cinema at large, "No! You don't understand! The graphic novel isn't like this! It's actually an elegant, eloquent work of art! You can't take this seriously!!"

The acting was shocking, the script clumsy and although many scenes from the comic were faithfully recreated, the lack of vision in realising the live action was enough to have me questioning whether the original was any good at all.

How could the beautiful, graceful, textured graphic novel be transformed into something so goofy and cheesy that punk snotnose fourteen year olds are giggling at it? I wouldn't have liked that movie even if it hadn't apparently deliberately desecrated something I loved in the process of its birth.

Watching this film had the effect of both lionising the original to fans and pushing it out of reach of a lot of people who will now think of Watchmen as cheesy and childish. It made me realise that one of the novel's greatest achievements was its pacing, the way it doles out its exposition and expands its universe in novel and never boring ways. It's something that pops into your mind when you see the approach someone else has taken to telling the story, which largely amounts to having the characters shout it at the camera, in dialogue so well crafted that you know they thought about it for almost as long as it took to say the lines.

Something that was previously regarded as the most significant work in a particular medium is now being mocked by both elites and masses because it was smashed into a medium that everyone knew it didn't fit, for the sake of making a little extra money out of something already wildly profitable. A LOT of people will never read Watchmen because of this abortion. It's an act of vandalism.

Before the film, a lot of people hadn't heard of Watchmen - in fact, just about everyone I mention it to hasn't heard of it, although those of us who like to spend time discussing pop culture might not get that. Now, however, Watchmen is unlikely to be mentioned in my life for a long time without being followed by "Oh, you mean that movie? That was shit!"

Some fans are already looking forward to the director's cut, which they think might be more coherent and less insulting. However, isn't a superior director's cut something normally associated with talented directors, not people the studios like because they'll do whatever they're told without letting any sort of auterial vision or sense that they're anything more than technicians employed by a commercial enterprise? Nothing in Zack Snyder's previous work suggests that he is such a director.

Fuck this movie. Clearly hundreds of hours were spent on the CGI while the acting seems to have been the first take of amateurish actors, poorly directed.

The only suitable punishment for this movie would be for Zack Snyder to be contractually obliged to appear at every comics and sci fi convention in the industralised world for the next year, where he must do Q&A with fans for at least an hour.

Also, the first Watchmen fan to see him at each convention should rush up to him, and scream "FIRST!!" wetly in the face.

Then flick him in the balls.

UPDATE: Worst of all, the movie was an insult to the legacy of this masterwork!