Watchmen

"We in this country, in this generation, are by destiny, rather than choice, the watchmen on the walls of world freedom."
John F. Kennedy (from the speech he intended to give in Dallas the day of his assassination, as quoted by Alan Moore in the graphic novel "Watchmen").


Adaptations are a tricky business. Whenever a film maker undertakes adapting an existing work, he is working to please 2 audiences: those who are familiar with the source material and want to see everything faithfully reproduced for the screen and those who are NOT familiar with the work yet want to see a good film if not a faithful cinematic adaptation. Hollywood in general has taken note, and their wholesale bastardization of books, a practice that had its inception during the early studio days, has given way to an effort to please the fans of the source materials. Of course, because so much more can go into a book than the average 2 hour movie (stemming from a 130 page screenplay), usually some things have to be sacrificed for the big screen. Witness Warner Brothers' handling of the "Harry Potter" series. There is a LOT missing from the adaptations, but whereas Chris Columbus' first two films were the most faithful, they also tended to be the most boring. It was only when Alphonso Cuaron, Mike Newell, and David Yates took the reins of the franchise that the Potter series rose above the written word and became wonderful cinematic adaptations. Of course we were missing Hermione's whole Society for the Promotion of Elf Welfare subplot...but did we really miss it? In fact, the most successful, up until now, adaptation of a beloved work has been Peter Jackson's "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Long thought to be unfilmable, Jackson took pains to satisfy the legions of fans reared on the written adventures of the Baggins family. Of course, he, too, took liberty with the story, but the excision of Tom Bombadill and the barrow wight actually helped the story move along. Film makers thus are forced to walk a very narrow line in terms of being faithful to the written word but not a slave to it to the point where the word shackles the film maker and removes his own creative energy from the work.

Of course, the rules are different when film makers adapt graphic novels. Here, the creators of the works in question have already provided the blueprint and storyboard of the film through the creation of panels of art holding the words of the script. The best of these adaptations embrace the vision of the creator by framing shots as depicted within the comic panels. The creativity for the film maker lies not in recreating a classic but in interpreting such scenes in a new medium. Robert Rodriguez successfully accomplished this with his adaptation of Frank Miller's "Sin City" and Zack Snyder did the same with his adaptation of Miller's "300." Both of these works, however, were below the radar of most comics readers. Only the die hards really knew of them before the movies came out, but this is not the case for all graphic novels. Some graphic novels have rabid followings of legions of fans, akin to the fans of the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings series. To them, the creator's written words are gospel and the artist's panels are the only true visualization of the story. How could a director possibly satisfy this exacting group of people?

Now, before I get into my review of "Watchmen," let me share with you my own personal history with the story. The year was 1986. I was 15 years old and had been collecting comics for about two years. I had already started getting Frank Miller's groundbreaking miniseries "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" and, to this day, the original issues are in a special place in my collection. Another series caught my eye that year. The cover of the first issue was intriguing...a smiley face amidst what looked like blood.


I purchased the first issue and I was hooked...a story that started with the murder of a old super hero...one created just for the miniseries. Over the course of the next year, I was introduced to further pieces of the story, but nothing I had read in the previous 10 months prepared me for the climax of the story in issues 11 and 12. I was stunned. I was surprised. I am talking "The Usual Suspects" and "Se7en" levels of shock and surprise. I never even saw it coming. It stunned me and excited me. What a great WORK OF ART. Every year, I revisited "Watchmen" and re-read the story. Ever year, something new...some nuance or subtle symbolism that ran through the series-that had earlier escaped my notice would jump off the page and leave me with the same feeling as I had when I had first completed the miniseries. I still get that feeling every year when I read the complete work-it is THAT GOOD.

But how could something this creative...this amazing...this CINEMATIC in storytelling-so full of subtle nuance and compelling overlapping plotlines-be brought to the screen in any manner that would be even SORT of faithful to the source material. Word of an adaptation soon started circling after the success of Tim Burton's (now dated) adaptation of "Batman" in 1989. Sam Hamm was commissioned to write a script with Terry Gilliam attached to direct. Of course, this version, and many others like it, fell by the wayside. "Watchmen" writer Alan Moore went on record as saying that the graphic novel was unfilmable..that the whole reason of telling the story in the graphic novel format was because it could NOT be told via the medium of film. The times were also wrong for a film of this somber and adult material. After all, people wanted to see Jack Nicholson as the Joker and Michelle Pfieffer as Catwoman. This was before the highs of "Batman Begins", "X-Men", "The Dark Knight", "Spider-Man 2," and "Iron Man." This was before the lows of "Batman and Robin" and "Ghost Rider." So what changed everything?

The success of the adaptations of adult graphic novels such as "Sin City" and "300." In one fell swoop, these films caused Hollywood to sit up and take notice that faithful adaptations of adult graphic novels COULD be profitable. More importantly, the powers-that-be recognized that they did not have to "dumb down" the works for the mass audience. With the success of "300" behind him, Snyder made no secret that he wanted his next project to be "Watchmen." He even went so far as to include a single frame of a shot of Rorschach in a late trailer for "300."

Of course, the fanboys were nervous. Alan Moore refused to support the film in any way, but Snyder was able to enlist artist Dave Gibbons for help in creating the world of "Watchmen." When the first trailer came out, the fanboys (myself included) howled with glee, for we saw that Snyder had gone so far as to PERFECTLY TRANSLATE several scenes direct from the comics page onto the big screen. Still, the graphic novel was massive. How could Snyder possibly hope to create a faithful adaptation of such a dense work? What would be cut? Would the material cut include some of the most important aspects in search of a shorter run time?

Now, I was excited for the film, to the point where the minute that tickets went on sale for opening night at the Navy Pier IMAX, I purchased tickets for myself and a few other people...in JANUARY. As the time grew closer for the film's release, I started seeing 2 types of reviews-overwhelmingly positive and scathingly negative, with little few and far between. I also noticed something else...those who wrote the positive reviews "got" it. They were either fans of the source material or were sophisticated enough to follow the convoluted story, one that, to my understanding, never pandered to its audience or spoon fed it any exposition. The negative critics...well, I knew what to expect when reading their opinion of this "comic book" movie. I have a feeling that they were walking into the theater expecting to see "X-Men" or some other such nonsense. These are the people who did NOT get it. They did not want to get it. They saw Snyder's work as gratuitous in terms of the sex and violence depicted in a superhero movie. They missed the point that the film is NOT a superhero film. They also missed the point that Snyder did not create the controversial scenes in the film-he merely faithfully adapted them for a new medium.

Having now seen "Watchmen" in IMAX, all I am left with is a sense of awe. With the exception of an atrocious soundtrack (except for Dylan's "The Times They Are A'Changing" played over the opening credits), the entire film was a visual smorgasbord for this "Watchmen" fan. Repeatedly, I found myself smiling with glee as the images on the screen perfectly recreated the panels that are so ingrained in my memory. I saw an incredible performance by Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. I saw an amazing "acting" job by Billy Crudup as Dr. Manhattan. All of the performances were spot on, and the effects were well done as well. And people will NEVER see Jeffrey Dean Morgan (the beloved Denny Duquette from "Grey's Anatomy") in the same light again. He inhabited the skin of the morally corrupt Comedian, whose brutal murder begins the film.

So what is the film about? Ostensibly, the film is about a "hero killer", someone slowly taking out masked adventurers. But to what end? Along the way, we learn of the pasts of some of the heroes. We see them struggle with every day problems in realistic ways. We see "what could have been" if the American dream came true. We see the ugliest side of human nature and how that can drive even the most noblest of men to madness. This film provides an unflinching look into the human psyche, and it shrouds it within the garb of a "comic movie." Of course, there were some changes from the book, most notably the endgame. However, Snyder successfully retained the key elements of the story and blended them together to the point where this fanboy was shaking his head in incredulity by the end of the film. How did he do it?

Now, a warning. This film is NOT for everyone. It is VIOLENT. Extremely violent. Painfully violent. In spite of that, it works BECAUSE it feels real. This is not a Spider-Man film where the violence has no consequence. Here, the audience feels every punch and sees the realistic results.

This is a film about morally ambiguous costumed adventurers.-what I believe represent such adventurers if they existed in the real world. The film also creates a snapshot of the world in 1985. I remember the Cold War and the U.S.S.R. and the daily threat of nuclear war. Much as the graphic novel demands new visits every year, so too, I think, will this film. I cannot wait for the fully loaded ultimate blu-ray to be released in the fall (a lesser version is being released in the spring). Bravo, Zack Snyder. You filmed the unfilmable. Thank you for being faithful.

What an amazing experience.

Update: for a wonderful article on the source graphic novel click here.

My Review of Speed Racer, or, WHERE THE HECK IS THE MACH 5???

Whenever filmmakers adopt properties famous in other media (comics, cartoons) into live action films, they are pretty much caught in the devil's alternative. Should they attempt to be faithful to the source material, thereby ensuring that the built-in audience of fans of the property in the alternate media will be satisfied, but run the risk of alienating viewers who may be less familiar with the source material? Should they jettison some aspects of the varied history of said pop culture property, keeping the essentials intact and make a story faithful to the underlying ideas of the property? Or should the filmmakers be COMPLETELY faithful to the point of serving the underlying source material to the point where, in their zeal to perfectly replicate the environments and "feel" of the source material, they sacrifice story and forget about what really made the source material special in the first place?

Unfortunately, Speed Racer falls into the latter trap, and IMAX could not save it. I went to see the movie with Eddie, my brother, and another pair of friends at the IMAX. Of the people who were there, I can attest that only my brother and I were well versed in the history and story background of Speed Racer. We knew what the film SHOULD be about, and perhaps this made us much harsher critics than we should be. From the blindingly colorful spectacle of the first race until the predictable finale, I was most impressed with how the Wachowski brothers had painstakingly recreated the world of a colorful anime program through their generous use of green screen-based CGI. The colors just seemed to pop from the oversized screen of the IMAX and overwhelm the senses. It was our world-but not. The special effects and music were perfectly matched to the story of Speed Racer, so the story should be slam dunk solid right?

Unfortunately, this was not the case. The film, which clocks in at close to 2.5 hours, was overlong by at least 30 minutes (maybe more). In their zeal to include so much from Speed's vast history and in their quest to cram every bit of CGI into every frame, the Wachowski's forgot about basic story pacing and dialogue. There were many painful moments where I felt as if I were listening to the stilted dialogue from the Star Wars prequels (yes, Emile Hirsch even sounded, at moments, like Hayden Christiansen-but even WORSE). It was as if someone were off screen showing Hirsch the cue cards for him to read. With the exception of John Goodman's Pops Racer, every single actor in the film really let me down. Remember what I said in my review of Iron Man that any filmmaker who tries to adapt something need not change everything about the property in order to make it a success? I was really struck by how Favreau had adhered to the Iron Man mythos without having to "Hollywoodize" it. Speed Racer had the opposite problem-TOO MUCH verisimilitude. The story should have been tighter and need not have included so many expository scenes that did nothing to establish character motivations, plot, etc.
The true impact of how the Wachowskis "just didn't get" came to me two hours after leaving the theater. I went to the suburbs to test drive some cars with my brother (a fitting denouement to a day that began with Speed Racer). While staring at an Aston Martin DB9 and thinking of how Aston Martins had become synonymous with Bond, the most glaring issue in the entire film clarified itself, and I realized that the film missed the mark completely with me.

THE MACH 5 WAS NOT FRONT AND CENTER!!!!!



Any true Speed Racer fan would tell you that the star of the original source anime and manga was not any of the human (or simian, for that matter) characters. It was the Mach 5-the coolest car ever in the history of animation (yes, this includes the various incarnations of the Batmobile-funny how I always come back to that). During the first 1/2 of the film, the Mach 5 is a non-entity, a cool "almost makeout" car for Speed that seemed to be there solely because it had the requisite trunk space for Spritle and Chim-Chim's famous stowaways. When Inspector Detector and his team of scientists got their hands on the Mach 5 prior to Speed's rally race, my interest in the movie, which had been waning, was quickly piqued, and the film had me again, The rally scenes with the Mach 5 were great, as they allowed the Mach 5 a showcase for its amazing gadgetry. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a big tease. The rally was short, and more time was spent on a lame mass kung-fu scene than on the race itself, Just as quickly as it arrived, the Mach 5 receded into the background. For the grand finale race, Pops announced "but you don't have a car." I felt like screaming from the seats "YOU HAVE THE FREAKING MACH 5, YOU FAT FOOL! THE COOLEST CAR IN THE HISTORY OF CARTOONS! USE IT! USE IT, I SAY!" Unfortunately, Pops built the completely lame Mach 6, and I was denied again. The Mach 5 never made another appearance in the film. The omission of the true star of the Speed Racer series, the Mach 5, was what made the film a loser in my eyes. I mean, IT IS IN THE FREAKING THEME SONG for the cartoon, as illustrated by these 2 lines from the opening theme song:

He's gaining on you so you'd better look alive
He's busy revvin' up the powerful MACH 5 (emphasis)

Heck...Mach 6 doesn't even RHYME with "alive", now does it? Oh well. So the first turkey of the summer is here, and as they did with the final 2 Matrix films, the Wachowski brothers completely snowed me with cool trailers. I can now understand Eddie's aversion to trailers. Much has also been made of this film as being the perfect family film. Well, if your perfect family film experience includes viewing a man being pummeled by mob heavies, profanity, an attempt to feed a man to a tank of piranha as he screams in defiance, the loss of a finger to said piranhas by another man, and an obscene gesture by young Spritle, then this IS a family film. Otherwise, keep your kids away from this movie.

One final note. There were some major annoyances provided by a school class that was here no doubt on the dime of Chicago taxpayers. As with most school trips, there appeared to be one chaperon for every 40 kids, and the kids could not sit still for any appreciable amount of time. That in itself would not be so bad, but when most of the children are constantly moving back and forth in front of me and my friends during the film itself, and where the space between the seats in the IMAX is not generous by any stretch of the imagination, and where the kids could be poster children for America's childhood obesity epidemic..well, you get my point. I thought that they distracted from my enjoyment of the film, but I cannot blame them. The film had enough faults in it such that the kids may have distracted me from noticing even more things wrong.

All I can say is thank God for Iron Man. I might have to see Iron Man again just to wipe out the experience of Speed Racer. As much as I was hoping for a sequel to Iron Man, I am hoping that Warner Brothers will let Speed Racer rest in Cartoon Network heaven.

Movie Review: Iron Man

Every time a comic book hero's stories are translated for the big screen, the powers-that-be in Hollywood figure that their control over the film grants them license to make whole sale changes in the characters, story, and even the costumes. Superman's film costume lacked the distinctiveness of its comic book counterpart and the malevolence of the comic book's Luthor, the character of Johnny Blaze in "Ghost Rider"-well the less said about THAT travesty the better, and the X-Men went the black spandex route instead of wearing the distinctive costumes from the comics series. The film version of "Spider-Man" wore the distinctive colors of the comics hero, but the costumes themselves cost Sony pictures $10,000 each to produce. Does that sound like something a freelance photographer like Peter Parker could afford? Even one of my favorite comic movies, "Batman Begins," took artistic liberties with both the story and the costume. While the liberties taken with the story were understandable (and even created a serviceable background to the Batman legend), I have never understood the repeated failure to replicate the color scheme of the classic Batman costume. In fact, no superhero film has treated its audience to a perfect translation of the hero's costume...until now.



Iron Man's various armors in the film (the Mark I, Mark II, and Mark III) mirror their comic book counterparts perfectly. Stan Winston and ILM worked hand in hand to create the perfect illusion of functionality in bringing the comic book icon to life. Several times during the film, I found myself catching my breath at the amazing likeness the costume bore to the comics version.

What about the film itself? In a word, AWESOME. All too often, special effects are used as a crutch to cover up poor storytelling or character development. Here, director Jon Favreau used the special effects in service of the plot rather than the other way around. The character of Tony Stark, Iron Man's alter ego, is perfectly inhabited by the immensely talented Robert Downey, Jr. The character's transformation from billionaire industrialist to superhero could not have been successfully accomplished by too many young actors. Downey convincingly evinces the character's flaws, his struggles when he realizes his own role as a global death dealer, and his need to make things right through the construction and use of his Iron Man armor.

And what about the supporting cast? Gwyneth Paltrow does an amazing job as Pepper Potts (yes, that is her character's name and yes, that is straight from the comics). One gets the sense of her unrequited love for her boss and the chemistry between Paltrow and Downey is palpable, but Paltrow never allows the character to fall into the cliche of the damsel in distress. Even while Iron Man is in the middle of a battle, Potts is there helping him out. For once, there is a completely realized comic book female played by an A-list actor (well, if not A-list, at least one who has excellent acting instincts). Jeff Bridges played the over-the-top villain Obadiah Stane, but this is something that one could glean from the previews. If anything, the story's development of Stane into the main villain seemed almost rushed. That, in itself, is the only thing that the filmmakers could have done better...that and have more shots of Iron Man in action. Terence Howard is excellent as Jim Rhodes, Stark's good friend and confidante who promises to be around in the sequel (please let there be one).

Strange. I have gone almost the entire review thus far and have not even talked about the story. Well, I do not think I am going to. I want everyone to experience it for themselves. I will, however, share with you 2 of my favorite scenes from the film. The first scene was that of Stark building the Mark I armor as a captive in Afghanistan. The shots of Downey's face, covered in sweat, his brow furrowed in concentration and determination, as he molds and shapes the mask of the Mark I is an indelible image from the film that I will keep with me. That one scene nicely summed up the character of Tony Stark. My second favorite scene? Stark's first flight over Malibu at night. This first flight sequence made me forget, for a moment, that I was watching a film. It represent the perfect marriage of special effects, music, and storytelling. What a great sequence.

There is one thing that I want to make clear. I know a lot of friends who do not want to see "Iron Man." They see it as "just another superhero film." I am here to tell you that it is so much more. The story, the acting, the action..everything raises this to a different level. I could not be more pleased with the first summer film of the season. I will see this a few more times in the theater. I hope that they keep the cast together. I can only assume that this is what results from a comic book publisher having control over the films. This was the first film completely financed by Marvel Comics, and they had final say on all decisions. They made a comic book movie for comic book fans. Lo and behold-it translates well for the masses. More publishers should take a page from Marvel's book. If this is what we have to look forward to from Marvel, then "The Incredible Hulk," being released on June 13, may be enough to wipe the horrible taste left over from Ang Lee's horrible "Hulk" film from a few years back.

A final note. Be sure to stay through the end credits. You will be rewarded for your patience.