Against my better judgement, I went to see the Watchmen movie today. As you probably learned from one of my previous posts, I was well aware that changes had been made from the book and was unhappy about them, but nothing I had heard prepared me for what I saw. Allow me to explain the biggest problems (*SPOILERS AHOY!*)
Malin Akerman? WTF?!
Who the hell decided that Malin Akerman could play Silk Spectre? Did they even read the graphic novel? Sure, she looks the part… sort of, but Silk Spectre is meant to be a chain-smoking, world-weary bitch, not the nice, naive, quiet little crime-buster that Akerman put across.
Matthew Goode? Double WTF?!
Ozymandias is meant to be built like Atlas and ooze arrogance from every pore. Why then, in the movie, is he a timid, weedy German man?
Red balloons? Really?
I don’t think the soundtrack for this movie can have been less fitting if it was chosen by a lobotomized deaf Labrador. 99 Red Balloons? Sure, it’s a nice song, but completely unsuitable for the context. And the one part of the graphic novel for which there actually is background music, has different background music!
The Watchmaker
Maybe it was for length reasons or something, but large, important chunks were just left out of Dr Manhattan’s back-story. Most important of these was the moment his father threw the pieces of his watch out the window and he failed to stop him. In the original graphic novel, this is the point he chooses to become a nuclear scientist, thus becoming a super-hero, thus causing the current world situation. It’s the tiny event that triggered the whole story. If Jon Osterman had caught those pieces, fixed the watch and gone on to continue as a watchmaker none of the story would have happened. It’s the key difference between our world and the one in the graphic novel and it was cut!
You found out how?
In the movie Ozymandias uses gigantic exploding generator thingies to blow up loads of cities. It’s explained that the Comedian found out about this while spying on him and that’s why he had to be killed. But how?
Ozymandias’s workers were under the impression he was building a new energy source. So too was Dr Manhattan, the government, everyone. How did the Comedian find out about it? Did Ozy decide to write it down somewhere in a state of temporary madness? You’d think, genius that he is, he’d be better able to keep his top secret agenda under wraps.
The Ending
Okay, I knew the Squid was out. I didn’t like it then, I don’t like it now but surprisingly, it’s not my biggest problem with the ending. My problem is that the movie answers its own moral question.
In the original book, Ozymandias creates world peace by killing most of New York. All but Rorschach agree to go along with it for the greater good. It’s left up to the reader to decide if what Ozymandias did was right or wrong.
In the movie, Nite Owl goes along at first, then after seeing the death of Rorschach, decides to beat up Ozymandias and tell him that he “hasn’t saved humanity, he’s distorted it.” Ozymandias is clearly presented as the villain, abandoned by the others, and no moral question is raised.
In Conclusion
Maybe I’m being overly critical here. There was a lot in the movie that I did enjoy. I thought that the casting was perfect for Roschach, Manhattan , the Comedian and Nite Owl anyway. And some of the scenes (Rorschach in prison especially) were done quite well. Still, given the source material, the movie could have been so much better.
