I went to see Watchmen with a hateful review by Anthony Lane stuck in my mind. His review in The New Yorker came complete with dutifully snarky illustration by Istvan Banjai and it got me wanting to see what could have inspired such bile. In general, I love The New Yorker but Anthony Lane just doesn’t get it to the point of being absurd.
At first, I thought his review must be a gag but he means what he says. He thinks most graphic novels are trash and that those who read them are as obsessive as fans of Wagner. Wow, this guy sounds like the clueless blowhard in Annie Hall with the subject being graphic novels instead of Marshall McLuhan.
In an alternate reality where there’d never been a Watchmen graphic novel, I think the movie would have been taken seriously by the Anthony Lanes of the world. The same content objected to in a comic book movie would be placed in its proper context and be accepted much as it would in a film like Clockwork Orange or Pulp Fiction.
Fortunately, the reality is that there is a graphic novel. It came first and it was written by Alan Moore. The reason that he will not support the movie, despite what Lane would try to imply, is that he does not support Hollywood. Getting past preconceptions, when I look at Watchmen, I see a movie that holds its own in the world of cinema. It is a great movie whether or not it came from a graphic novel and it’s great that it indeed comes from a graphic novel.
I had the pleasure of seeing Billy Crudup on Broadway in The Pillowman where he portrayed a man whose parents drive his brother insane through a series of freakish experiments. In Watchmen, Crudup brings his gentle but determined presence to the role of Dr. Manhattan where he is the result of a freakish experiment. He is no one’s brother but it is literally in his power to save humanity. It is a wonderful role played to perfection by Crudup. Another standout performance, of course, is Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. He provides the most powerful moment in the movie when the volume is turned up on one of the panels from the graphic novel as he must stand his ground as a new prison inmate. He has just cut a rival down to size when he delivers these lines: “None of you understand. I’m not locked up in here with you. You’re locked up in here with me.” It is one of those moments suitable to be replayed as often as Jimmy Cagney saying, “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” in 1949′s White Heat.
Watchmen‘s theme of deconstructing superheroes is probably best expressed within the pages of comics. And the best argument for the need to move beyond the traditional superhero is the actual Watchmen graphic novel. As Moore states, the comics industry as a whole did not get his message. So, it’s understandable why he’d expect even less from a movie version. To the credit of the director, Zack Snyder, the screenwriters, David Hayter and Alex Tse, and the whole creative team, the movie is essentially in tune with the graphic novel while recalibrating it for the screen. It’s the politics of Watchmen that the movie fully develops in ways natural to cinema. Lifted up from the page, the doomsday geopolitics of the graphic novel of some twenty years ago, along with the universal truth of aggression, can be appreciated from the perspective of today. We’re still playing with a balance of power even if there are new players and the rules have changed.
For those gremlin reviewers determined to undermine the movie by overstating its violence and dismissing its relevance, that is the act of an elitist attempting to bully through his agenda. And that is more offensive than anything in the movie.
March 9th, 2009 at 10:50 am
hell yeah!
March 9th, 2009 at 11:47 am
The New Yorker isn’t the most objectionable. Read their interview regarding Cliffy B and Gears 2. It just talked down video games the entire time without paying much attention to how successful of a business it is.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
Man. That New Yorker review was absolutely awful. Lots of big words used as pretentiously as possible, presumably in an attempt to keep you from noticing that he really did not watch the movie (“I couldn’t work out if they had superpowers or not”…really? A central point about the film, and you couldn’t figure it out?), and just wrote the review so he could get his check.
Honestly, I never placed much respect on reviews, or reviewers in general (no offense meant to the writer of this one), but suddenly I have a newfound respect for people who write a review of something simply because they’re excited to do it, rather than to make a few dollars. Another thing I didn’t think possible: That New Yorker review was the most soulless thing I’ve ever read.
March 9th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
“Wah! He doesn’t agree with me. Wah! Wah! He’s hateful. He doesn’t know anything!”
Fanboys, even with the huge sucesses of IRON-MAN, DARK KNIGHT and SPIDER-MAN in their pockets, are still so insecure that anyone can send them scurrying to the shelter of their local comic book cave with a simple “Boo!”?
I’ve been reading comics since before they got tagged with the obnoxious “graphic novel” description, since before video game violence, since many of you were still in your underoos. I read WATCHMEN in twelve issues.
The movie is generic. Except where it is gratuitous and juvenile. Contrary to the “so faithful it hurts” argument, it’s faithful only superficially, as Zack Snyder just copied certain panels without maintaining the characters or recreating the tone. The book was subversive. The movie had neat-o visuals. And, when you say “Books are books, and movies are movies,” you’re just diminishing the potential of both.
I’m not going to call you names if you liked it. You may have an under-developed sense of what makes a good movie. You might never have seen a Bergman film or even a Kurosawa film yet. Your point of reference could be the STAR WARS prequels.
I didn’t go into the theater with an open mind. I went into the theater with my knowledge of the source, my experience with the frat-boy director of garbage like “300,” and all the influence the Hollywood hype machine could pay for. I also went in – and came out – with my own personal taste intact.
$56 million opening? That’s less than SEX IN THE CITY, isn’t it? Maybe that’s what’s got your knickers all a-twisted. Your competitive instincts won’t allow you to admit that your big blue guy has been manhandled by a group of whiny cougars. Excuses, excuses. The length of the thing certainly didn’t matter since it was shown on a record number of theater screens. It’s just not that good. It’ll be forgotten by the time the next comic book inspired blockbuster comes out.
“Boo!”
March 9th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
Mike wins pedantic, pretentious comment of the year.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:30 pm
I enjoy The New Yorker’s film reviews because they do well at covering smaller films that otherwise don’t get much press. The consistently scathing reviews they give comic book movies are the norm, but I don’t know why they devote staff time and magazine page space to run reviews of movies that don’t appeal to their core audience. Wizard doesn’t cover arthouse cinema, nor should they have to. To me, the appeal of The New Yorker is that they cover high culture well, just like, say, Sports Illustrated covers athletic pursuits well.
March 9th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
It’s one thing for a reviewer to not like a film. To each his own.
But it’s another thing to rail against a movie that the reviewer didn’t understand, which was pretty apparent with Anthony Lane’s review.
It’s impossible to go into a movie (or a book, or a CD, or a super-hero comic book) without a set of prejudices coloring your experience of the movie. I think that, while slamming the movie, he does admit his rather limited experience with the medium (notice that he namechecks Maus and Persopolis in the first line, which are probably the two most FAMOUS independent books, instead of something more recent, like Scott Pilgrim, Bone or even Y: The Last Man). He has an obvious distaste for comic book media in general, and may have a beef against Moore in particular.
Reviews like this, even if it is from a well-respected source, are easy to dismiss.
I will say that most reviewers from The New Yorker, the New York Times and Wall Street Journal have an intense bias against anything that they consider “popular.”
March 9th, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Regardless of his opinion of the film, my favorite part of the review was when he asked where the comedy in comic books went, and then name-drops Maus and Persepolis. And he’s right. The crazy antics of those Jew-mice are classic…
March 9th, 2009 at 8:43 pm
I thought this was a fantastic film. Like our friend Mike, I also read Watchmen in 12 issues back in the 8th grade. I recently reread the graphic novel (nope, not afraid of the term) and have watched the motion comic. I felt the movie held up extremely well, if not topping the source material in some areas. I found the ending to be much better than the original. It just made more sense based on the continuity Moore invented. Now frankly I don’t really believe that Mike actually saw the movie. Based on his prejudice against Mr. Snyder one would think it would have been foolish of him to waste his money on a “frat boy director”. I’m sure his opinions are based on the trailers that he has watched and not much else. But to each his own. Like I said, I found this movie to be incredible and my wife and I have discussed many of the scenes and nuances several times. It makes you think and it makes you talk. ‘Course I loved 300 too, so my tastes are prolly not as “cultured” as some.
March 10th, 2009 at 6:59 am
“Mike wins pedantic, pretentious comment of the year.”
oh, matt… I think your ability to be so pretentious without using so many big words definitely puts your post in front.
March 10th, 2009 at 10:07 am
I think it is worth noting that the New Yorker does not, in general, issue positive reviews, particularly not of mainstream, mass culture products. Their specialization is the sneering, derisive putdown, and the contrarian view. In the end, I’m inclined to think that Lane gets Watchmen far better than most of you get Lane’s review.
For what it’s worth, Lane’s central criticism – that in the end the movie (and the comic) do not usefully or meaningfully offer a critique on the Rorschach/Veldt ideologies (which are, of course, two sides of the same coin). And they don’t – for all that Rorschach sounds like he fell backwards in time from Fox News to a 1980s comic, he is also, at the end of the comic, the lone hope for something resembling justice. And, from a simply social perspective, it is troubling the degree to which comic fans just embraced Rorschach as awesome despite him being ideologically reprehensible and stark raving mad. If Lane missed the fact that the comic is critical of Rorschach, it is only because so, it seems, have the lion’s share of comics fans, and the last page of the comic.
Watchmen does not give a useful or meaningful space to critique the entire enterprise of superheroes. In the comic, this is part of the point – the question “Who Watches the Watchmen” is never asked in full, because the question cannot be asked. In the film, the question is asked and answered – we watch the Watchmen, and we pay $9 for the privilege of doing so. Why? And what we see amounts to blood splatter pornography, as Snyder revels in the brutal, ugly fight scenes in exactly the way the comic doesn’t.