Comic Geek with Tech Chiq

mood: irritated

I want to get this off my chest. I consider myself a comic book nerd, so naturally I feel like I'm disgracing that title when I say that I haven't read what's considered to be, one of the best, if not the best graphic novel there is. The only remedy to that situation is reading the novel, and I did. I found a copy of the Watchmen graphic novel (wasn't hard to do with the movie hype) and read it within a couple days to catch up before the movie. and, Low and Behold, Watchmen is by far my favorite Graphic Novel. There's an endless amount of realism to it, something we don't get enough of in stories and movies these days. Even the most outstanding and extraordinary parts of the collection are above and beyond the levels of realistic response from individual humans, society and global politics as a whole compared to just about any other story out there.

The gritty, harsh world of Watchmen is the perfect balance of realism in a fantasy world. But who decides to come along and mess with that? Hollywood. The Watchmen movie, which I've regretfully seen tonight, is a complete and utter disapointment to me. Being brought so high up in the expectation set by the pulp fiction and the promises that the movie will not only be heavily influenced by the comic, but actually use the comic as a storyboard with slight changes for relevance. A bold promise Mr. Snyder, one I wish you could have kept. The overall tone of the comic was extremely dialog and thought heavy, something, of course, that hollywood just can't have. It would be too intellectual, too deep for your viewing public and it just wouldn't match the costumed hero M.O. The parts that drag on in the movie could have been shortened or spruced up, the parts of the movie that were too short or cut out were the most incredibly important to the story line, but the killing blow to this most abysmal of adaptations, was the order in which it was shown. Yes, everyone had their inner dialog from the comics. Yes, Rorschach was the first head we got insight into. Yes, their thoughts were well done and drawn out nicely. But apparently being faithful to the comic means taking all the dialog in it, chop it up, and place it in whichever order your pretty little head can handle it. How can Nite Owl grow up and regain his testosterone if his mentor never died? Oh, how bout we let him whine about Rorschach dieing...30 minutes AFTER said hormonal flux was needed to get him off his ass and out to Antarctica to kick Adrian's pretty little face in without guilt! How can we have Jon be happy for his ex-lover in her new relationship? Oh, well let's just cut that part out... It's not like his major doubt about aiding the world was his lack of connection with Laurie after losing her... Oh wait... Or how bout Adrian. Adrian in the comic gave me the most overwhelming sense of "there is no good and evil, there are only shades of gray." 5 minutes into this movie, not only did I know he was a douche bag, I knew he was the source of all evil in the decrepit world as opposed to a misguided hero attempting to save a war torn world. How can we feel a sense of deep emotional hurt over his lost pet and most prized possession when it was a poorly CGI-ed tiger with absolutely no back story at all. Speaking of complete annihilation of the most important parts... What was that abomination they called an ending?!? Hurray! Adrian's extremely high intellect and over abundance of synapses flying about inside his head leads him to .... frame the weirdo? As completely outlandish as the original ending was it showed the level of convolution that a genius would have in his master plot, not something a 13 year old fan fiction writer would think up, and jot down to move on to the next section. What's next, Adrian is a self made millionaire because he... tried hard? Oh wait! We wouldn't know, it wasn't covered!

The biggest complaint I see from the less-than-rave reviews is the fact that it's incredibly hard for someone new to the story to keep up. Well if you're gonna remove important chunks of information, you're gonna wonder why there's a large strange looking cat in the room rather than pay attention to the story. Or wonder why Jon is naked the whole time instead of fully understanding the unfathomable complexity of his thoughts. Honestly the worst parts of this movie are A. Rewriting the Comedians joke at the last second even though it is the moral and basis of the story and the Comedian in particular, B. Completely redoing the original fantastic and intellectual ending so that the movie goer doesn't come home with even a hint of afterthought that I was full of after reading the comic, and C. Rearranging or Cutting the more important parts of the story which would make any newcomer to the story scratch their heads. The exciting fight scenes, the initial joy of seeing these complex characters pour their hearts out on screen, and the impeccable acting of the majority of the cast (and no, I'm not calling any particulars out because the less than convincing acting of certain cast members was the last thing in my head at the time) just isn't enough to redeem this movie. I really believe this was the fanboy/girl's attempt at rewriting the story the way they saw it should to be better (something the general public doesn't seem to get). It's absolutely no wonder, at all, that Alan Moore didn't want his ideas remade in any fashion. In the words of Dr. Manhattan  "I'm disapointed .... I'm very disapointed."