7 June 2009
Watchmen (2009)
If you’re holding out for something to a be a complete train wreck (think Quartermain’s fatherly scene on the poop deck with the spry Tom Sawyer), does its defiance on that level deem it a success? And while I revere Watchmen, it must be pointed out that some of its line-to-line writing (in the case of comics, dialogue mostly) is godawful, and to have it lifted so religiously from the originating text was, to my surprise, a source of some of the disappointment for me. Can something be too faithful to its source?
And in the case of Watchmen, it’s a revelation that it doesn’t seem to miss the point. Alex Tse and David Hayter do seem like they understand the philosophy, there’s just a(n unavoidable) distillation that flattens some of the philosophy into pretty laughable angst. And beyond the bizarre music choices and the shiny veneer and the hilariously amateurish line readings of Malie Akerman. And the ending is a good enough compromise between the killer Squid. Though there’s something a little too easy about the whole world not developing intense anti-American sentiment in the face of having its major cities ruined by the superhuman wrecking ball of the land of the Free and, in turn, not uniting against the Nixon-led nation.
